Geezus, the last five years have been an endless loop of this. I'm just going to start cutting and pasting one of these from now on until something new actually happens. Note that these posts are FIVE YEARS OLD, mostly made within the first week or two of Zou, and literally nothing has changed since then.
What is there TO take? We haven't seen anything yet. We're about to see a whole bunch of animal people. I'd be cool with one joining, but we already have Chopper so they'll have to really stand out.
Nothing about the designs so far screams "Oda spent a lot of time making this character design distinct in a way that will differentiate them for the rest of the series." If you can point out three-five really unique character design elements (Beyond "they're an animal person) that shows Oda really thought about their backstory, then we're talking.
Look at Chopper and he has things like the unusual hat, the broken antler, unusual body shape, and a blue nose (which is hard to tell in black and white.) ANd him being the first, being an animal person was unique for him. ANd he also had two different forms insantly… and then a bunch of forms pretty quickly within the first couple chapters of knowing him.
Franky had Popeye arms, star tattoos, metal nose, crazy eyelashes, ace ventura hair, three pronged chin, and a speedo... and started by doing a dance routine.
Brook is a skeleton with an afro that's dressed like a gentleman, and had a crack on his skull that uses a sword cane and laughed yohoho. That poops. Who Luffy asked to join after five seconds.
Jinbe has a specific tatoo, topknot, eye scar, unusual body shape, stripes in his hair, completely unique face shape, nose, tusks, unusual clothing style.
The earlier human characters are a little less unique initially due to them being early designs, but Nami gets by with just being a girl originally.. but has since added the tatoo, log pose,Nojiko's bracelet, cimatact, and post time skip a certain style of dress. Luffy has the scar, hat, shorts and sandals (and now has an x scar on his chest) ... Zoro has a unique haircut, three earings, three swords (and now a scar). Usopp curly hair, armbands, long nose, armadillo hat, overalls and boots. Sanji has the hair swoop, curly eyebrow, kick attacks and suit. Robin had unusual eyes, haircut, and nose bridge (which have diminished and changed over time as Oda has drawn her thousands of times) and a clothing style and introduction that were really unique.
Carrot just looks like... what Oda would do if Oda decided he needed to draw a bunny girl. Outside of her being the third character to appear on the island, there's nothing about her screaming that much design thought. In fact, we still haven't gotten a clear shot of her. Just a minkman in action. If we see someone that's a legit candidate, we'll know them when we see them, they'll have backstory in their design. (And probably a splash shot and an introduction text box... but that's not requisite, Zoro and Chopper didn't get one, but were introduced in other ways.)
And other girl's main thing so far is "She's wearing Nami's clothes!" so she's definitely out.
As far as theoretical "we've only seen two panels of them" characters go, my money is still on three eyed girl given that she's still the only one in the series and how early on she was introduced in relation to the Big Mom story, even though she doesn't scream unique past the eye thing.
The issue isn't that they're both animal people. It's that there's very little thought about backstory put into her design. For Chopper 70 volumes ago, being an animal person would have been enough, but he still had way more than just that.
Carrot wasn't introduced as a major character with an establishing shot and intro box. She's cute sure, but pretty generic, considering two seconds later we see another girl with just as much effort in her design and a better entrance and establishing shot.
Carrot's not even on the level of Pekoms or Bepo for unique design. (Pekoms being a lion turtle with shades… Bepo for being a talking bear in an orange jumpsuit among a crew of humans. Unique in context... but not if he first showed up here.)
She's a bunny girl. What else can you gleam from looking at her? She... has some gloves to give her an offensive attack and... what else? Where's the scar, the unusual clothes, the unique body shape, the odd trinket, the old wound, the floppy ear, the eyes unlike anyone else's, the strange eyebrows or earings? She's pretty straightforward.
They don't need "dozens" of unique features... but they do need a couple.
When someone latches onto a character and then talks about their personality, in a way that isn't 100% fanfic or based on a single panel, then there's a case, sure.
There was no such thing for Monet, and people were reeeeeally stretching to apply tons of personality she just didn't have based on a line of dialogue, or misconstruing the scene where Law left a note for Chopper.
Monet was NOT a quiet blushy shy girl with a heart of gold working for the badguy with no idea of what she was really doing, no matter how much someone wanted it to be so. And Perona was someone that abandoned her friends at the drop of the hat and had no team loyalty. And Hancock had a huge list of reasons and obligations that couldn't be ignored, but that didn't prevent people from saying things like "Amazon Lilly can just go to war with the world, and Hancock can travel with Luffy then!" It's amazing to me that, given how hated Rebecca is now, people made such passionate cases for her… despite the fact that her dreams and aspirations were all along tied to Dresserossa... and she looked EXACTLY like Nami. Or Viola who looked just like Robin.
It's not that there's no room for such a character, its that people really wanted that character and were bending the actual facts to their will, writing huge essays about a single panel and their interpretation, and actively ignoring the actual problems and lack of character, at length, in order to make their case.
The fact that Brownbeard was overall a MUCH better fit as strawhat ally, but was wholly ignored while Monet was fantasized over for a year shows that yes, it purely came down to people wanting that character design, and not the character, to join the crew. Cripes, the amount of resistance Jinbe had, for YEARS, is ridiculous... and mostly boils down to him being fat or "boring".
That this thread is only interested in boobs wouldn't be a cliche if it didn't keep happening.
Every.
Single.
Time.
Sure, obviously there's room for another female character instead of a 9th main male character. (And especially for a grandmother or youngest daughter role.) But I wouldn't put "push in media for stronger female roles" at Oda's doorstep... especially not Japanese media.
But when people are saying "tomboy brawler lookout gardener minkman girl" before such a character even exists? (And before that it was fishman...) When the first character we see, over and over, who have the same exact bodytype and face as the two girls already around? It's fanfic, pure and simple. And no, there really isn't room for discussion about that, because it is "I like boobs", consistently, pure and simple.