Shanks Can’t Shake Rat Allegations After One Piece Unveils Shamrock Voice Actor — Who Really Met the Gorosei?

Shanks defenders, brace yourselves. The latest One Piece voice cast update pretty much kicked the door open on that long-running 'maybe it was Shamrock in the room with the Five Elders' theory. The new info doesn’t confirm anything outright, but the dots are basically drawing themselves.

So, what actually happened

Toei announced the voice actor for Shamrock: Kenjiro Tsuda. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s one of the most recognizable voices in anime. And that matters here, because fans have been arguing for ages about who exactly met the Gorosei in that shadowy manga panel — Shanks or someone from his crew who looks suspiciously like him.

'They tried to convince you it wasn’t the rat when I always told you it was him'

— posted Nov 2, 2025 by a fan hyping the reveal

That meme-y 'rat' tag is aimed at Shanks, by the way — a whole corner of the fandom is convinced he’s playing a deeper (and maybe dirtier) game than he lets on.

Why the Shamrock casting complicates the theory

The quick version: if the figure meeting the Gorosei was Shamrock, then casting Tsuda now would create a weird continuity tell. Fans who know his voice instantly pointed out it doesn’t line up with the vibe of that mysterious figure. And if Toei’s goal was to hide Shamrock’s identity until later, using a totally different voice earlier would have blown the secret anyway.

That doesn’t mean the studio is incapable of a fake-out — just that this would be a very obvious one. Add in that the panel itself was deliberately vague and moody (shadows, angles, the whole thing), plus the fact that Shamrock and Shanks look similar enough to spark confusion in the first place, and you can see how we got here. Some fans even talk like they’re siblings; that part is speculation, not canon.

• Shamrock’s voice actor is Kenjiro Tsuda, announced recently.
• Fans comparing voices say it doesn’t match the figure who met the Gorosei.
• The original panel is intentionally ambiguous, which fueled the Shamrock vs. Shanks debate.
• If the scene was Shamrock, using a different voice earlier would basically spoil the secret — which makes that unlikely.
• Fandom posts on Nov 2, 2025 leaned hard into 'it was Shanks all along' (yes, with the 'rat' jokes).
• Eichiro Oda hasn’t confirmed any of this. It’s still inference, not a stamp of approval.

If it was Shanks, the stakes are huge

There’s a reason the idea hits so hard. The Five Elders don’t just let any Yonko stroll into the Holy Land for a chat. If Shanks really sat down with them, that signals a top-tier crisis. He supposedly warned them about a 'certain pirate' — most fans land on Blackbeard as the most likely, with Luffy as the spicier alternate. Both make sense, and both imply the board is about to flip.

There’s also a theory that Shanks already knows about Imu and is working toward a world where people can actually live free. If that’s the case, his interests and the Elders’ could overlap just long enough to stop the next catastrophe — or to decide who gets caught in it.

Either way, if that was Shanks in the room, the scene wasn’t just politics. It reads like the quiet before a very loud storm.

Where that leaves us

Nothing is officially confirmed by Oda, but with Shamrock’s VA now public and the fan logic stacking up, the safer money is on Shanks being the one who met the Gorosei. The mystery was fun while it lasted. The clues look a little too aligned to ignore.

The One Piece anime is streaming on Crunchyroll, and the manga’s up on Viz if you want to read ahead of the show.

What do you think — smart misdirection or open-and-shut case?