I don't want to drudge of the issue in here, so if you want to read about it, it's under the spoiler:
! There's clear evidence that the word doesn't have an extra special magical candy-coated meaning within the One Piece story itself. That evidence is the Davy Back Fight and the Whitebeard Pirates. In the DBF, you can be FORCED to become someone's "Nakama" against your will. Nobody ever made any grandiose speeches about the meaning of the word, and in fact, Chopper was Foxy's "Nakama" for a short period (and Robin, and the stakes were raised to the rest of the crew in the Anime). He didn't want to be, but he was. Nobody ever verbally contested that fact. There was never a speech about how "We may be forced to be on your 'Crew', but we will never be your 'Nakama'!" The word means "(Part of) a group", and that's how it was used here. Losing the game would have forced them to become part of Foxy's group.
Then WBs crew. If the word means "A Special bond that runs deeper than family", how come Whitebeard prefers to act like his crew are family? How come his biggest dream is NOT to have 'Nakama' but to have 'Family'?
Leaving "Nakama" untranslated actually ruins THAT message. It spits in the face of that message and stands to confuse viewers. "Wait a minute, why would Whitebeard want a family, when 'Nakama' is more than family? why would he want to take a step down?"
! Bottom line: Nakama doesn't mean anything special. Luffy's Crew are special to him because they're HIS crew and that's how he feels about HIS crew. The word itself has absolutely zero special meaning beyond that.
That spoiler is beautiful and I worship you for it. I can admit to being one of the "nakama is a special word" crowd for a long-arse time, and then I hit college and took a class on Japanese. I'm on year 3 now, but if anything I had a few conversations with the professor and at one point we had a "pen-pal" thing going on where we wrote back and forth in the other person's native language… (I'd like to point out before anything else that I fail with Japanese beyond belief)... But at one point my Pen-Pal and I started talking about shows and OP showed up... soooo I did the derp-y American thing and asked about it. Needless to say she laughed about it and said something along the lines of "no its easy to translate, you crazy American you... it isn't super special or anything!". Really makes me wish I kept her letters now that I think about it >>;;
On another note, I'm a part of the population boosting the collection sales... Since I've been away so long I hadn't even owned a single one of their dubbed episodes... and now that I'm watching them I wished I'd caved and bought them sooner. [Although my money hogging side is like, if you hadn't waited you would have paid twice as much for them!]
Oh and whoever mentioned the collection cases being fragile… ohgod they are. I'm terrified for what could happen if I dropped them on a hard floor... I went to open the first collection and cracked a little bit of the case already. Cheap plastic[orwhatever] is cheap.
