Why was One Piece white washed? After the two-year time skip, Zoro and Robin came back lighter skinned. I would have thought nothing of it, but after searching for "fishman racism" on Google, I ran into an article on Oda's racism towards "ethnic" people. One Piece is my favorite anime and I watch it a lot, so I don't take any "white washing" argument lightly. I don't even want to think of Oda as having racial bias, but I won't ignore the facts.

The article discusses different aspects of One Piece that can lead one to believe that the show has some racist undertones, but I won't go into detail about the article. The story about racism in One Piece mentions that Oda did tell the animators to change certain things concerned with the two-year time skip, and two of the dark-skinned characters came back way lighter. Is Oda racist? I don't know but I can't say he isn't, as the article had valid and reasonable points to prove that he at least has a racial bias.

Then after reading the article above, I am sitting around thinking about it from time to time. So was it actually white washed or did these changes happen for some other reason?
Well, Zoro did spend those two years in a dark island/gloomy castle, so he probably didn't see much sun. Robin also spent her time in the mountains, I believe, which were hardly places to get sun tans (compared to her old job in a desert).

I don't think the skin pigment changes had anything to do with racism, as these kinds of changes were more associated with tans and less with race.