Like Usopp, in Search of a Role
Every ongoing series needs something to keep its cast together. Sitcoms — and even most dramas — gravitate towards families, close friend groups, or workplaces for this very reason; they’re obvious, natural ways to connect a group of characters and keep them in the same place. Genre stories — action and superhero series or even something like shonen manga — rely on the abilities and duties of the characters to provide this bond instead. The Avengers or the heroes of Dragonball Z may not always particularly get along or even hang out in times in peace, but when the world is in danger, they’ll always assemble because nobody else can do the job, or really even understand what it’s like to be the ones who have to.
With that in mind, I’ve always appreciated the mechanism my favorite manga, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, uses to bind its cast together. Yes, they’re a found family and, yes, they’re essentially a superhero team — they’re the only ones who understand each others’ dreams and the only ones with the power to make them come true — but they’re also a pirate crew, and each and every member has an important role to play in the day-to-day functioning of the ship, in making sure they make it from island to island in one piece (pun intended). As the Captain, Luffy sets the destination and protects his crew from threats they otherwise wouldn’t be able to handle on their own. As the first mate, Zoro takes command and protects the crew when Luffy is otherwise incapacitated. As the navigator, Nami keeps the ship pointed towards its destination no matter what. There’s a cook, a doctor, a shipwright, a helmsman, a musician; even Nico Robin’s role as an archaeologist, while not needed in the everyday operation of the ship, proves essential whenever they arrive at a new land and need to understand its culture and history.
Yet, for much of the series, there’s one member of the crew who doesn’t neatly fit into any sort of role. His name is Usopp.
Of all the many, many characters in One Piece, I relate to Usopp the most, and that’s likely by design. Usopp fits into a common shonen archetype of the more human, everyman team member (think Krillin in Dragonball Z, or Kuwabara in Yuyu Hakusho). In a genre dominated by cool, powerful, aspirational heroes, the everyman is a more down to Earth contrast; they’re often the butt of every joke, and if something bad is going to happen, it will happen to them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be brave and strong too, just in a more realistic way. There’s a lot I admire and can even emulate about Luffy — his kindness, first and foremost — but I’m certainly not the heroic type who can face up to any threat with no fear, effortless confidence, and a smile on my face. I’m Usopp, cracking a joke to try to hide my fear, hoping anyone or anything can handle the situation for me, and generally forced to use my wits to succeed.
This structure of the Straw Hat Pirates, though, creates a unique challenge for Usopp: finding his place within the crew. It’s a major part of his character development, and a journey that, as someone who has often felt like an outsider and struggled to feel like I really had a place or something to offer even among friends, I’ve always found fascinating.
It’s also one that’s been there from Usopp’s very introduction, though subtly at first. Luffy and his crew just kind of stumbled across Usopp on their quest to acquire a ship. At the time he was known as a bit of a troublemaker, who told tall tales around his village until nobody believed a word that came out of his mouth (this is built into his character at his very core; his nose is a nod to Pinnochio’s, which grew when he lied, and his name is a combination of “Uso,” the Japanese word for lie, and “sop” from “Aesop’s fables”). Though scared out of his wits, he convinced the Straw Hats to help him protect his village from a pirate attack, and his knowledge of the landscape and skills with his slingshot proved invaluable in their victory. Still, it wasn’t immediately clear how those skills would carry over to further adventures together; the experience motivated Usopp to finally embark on his own journey, but he was never expecting to be a part of the Straw Hat Pirates, until…
(Note: All the manga excerpts in this article are read right-to-left)
Luffy tracked down Zoro because his strength was legendary, and he recruited Nami when he discovered she was a navigator because they desperately needed one, but Usopp was brought aboard simply because he was their friend. It’s sweet, and says a lot about the kind of man Luffy is, and in fact, he and Usopp pretty much go on to be best friends, constantly getting into shenanigans together during their downtime. But it also left Usopp with a bit of an inferiority complex, somewhat unsure of his place within the crew. In fact, in an effort to define himself he quickly became a bit of a jack-of-all-trades on the ship, helping Nami upgrade her weapon, painting the crew’s Jolly Roger, repairing the ship whenever it was damaged, and declaring himself a “back-up Captain.”
None of those really stuck as a position, though, and the murkiness of Usopp’s role in the crew became a running gag. When Nico Robin joined the crew, it was after spending close to 20 years on the run from the government, hiding in various shady organizations, betraying and being betrayed alike. Expecting the same this time, she didn’t want to get too close to the Straw Hats, so she would only refer to them by their positions — “Navigator” instead of Nami or “Cook” instead of Sanji. Usopp, though, she referred to as “Long Nose,” having no idea what he actually did. (Some of this gag is lost in translation; she referred to everyone on the ship with the honorific “san,” which is a standard sign of respect like “Mr” or “Mrs,” but with Usopp she used the honorific “kun.” It’s an honorific children generally use to refer to each other, or close adult friends; affectionate, but not a sign of respect.)
Likewise, early in the series Luffy fights Arlong, the half-man, half-fish whose confidence in his abilities had curdled into virulent racism against all humans. Arlong was mocking Luffy for lacking the natural talents he, as a fishman, possessed, such as breathing underwater or jaws that can bite through stone. This was Luffy’s response:
Luffy’s countering here by saying that there’s tons he can’t do — all he needs to do is be strong enough to defeat Arlong. Each skill Luffy lacks is one a crew-mate has instead, their role in the crew, except for Usopp. When it comes to him, the first thing that comes to mind is a flaw instead.
This is played for laughs, but it also builds up until it explodes in the most upsetting, dramatic fashion possible. After a while, the crew’s ship, the Going Merry, has been repeatedly and significantly damaged far beyond Usopp’s ability to repair. They arrive at the island of Water 7 with a cool $300 million earned on their last adventure, looking to recruit a full-time shipwright who can restore the Merry to tip-top shape. Usopp, though, while guarding much of the money, is attacked and beaten into unconsciousness by a local gang, the money stolen. While out, he misses two important events: his friends’ absolutely savage beatdown of the punks who robbed him, and the discovery that the Merry has been damaged beyond repair.
An important detail here is that the Going Merry is from Usopp’s home village, a gift from his childhood friend Kaya. It’s why he took special care of it, and it’s why, when Luffy tells him that the ship can’t be salvaged in the most abrupt, inelegant way possible, Usopp can’t help but refuse to believe it. He projects himself onto the ship he loves; if Luffy is willing to cast it aside when it’s no longer useful, who’s to say he won’t do the same to Usopp?
This moment is one of the reasons I love Usopp as a character so much. He’s so wracked by his own insecurities that he can’t see he’s blatantly wrong — the ship is beyond repair no matter how much he loves it, his friends would never abandon him, and his opposition to Luffy is outright mutiny — but his pain is real and the reasoning that brought him to this point, that’s led to abandoning his crew before they can abandon him, is crystal clear. Usopp’s flaws are deep, complex, and fascinating.
Almost immediately after this, the Straw Hats learn that the government has caught up to Robin, and that she’s handed herself over to them in return for the safety of her friends. Luffy won’t stand for this, of course, and immediately mounts a rescue mission. Usopp can’t stand not helping, but he also can’t show his face to Luffy, so he instead dons an incredibly transparent disguise that everybody except Luffy immediately sees through. It’s a gag at the expense of the rather dumb, trusting Luffy, but it also becomes an important plot point much later, when Robin’s been freed and the only thing standing between the Straw Hats and their freedom is Luffy defeating the psychotic government assassin Rob Lucchi. As Luffy lies on the ground, seemingly defeated, Usopp finally reveals himself.
While Usopp still has to give a heartfelt apology before being allowed to officially rejoin the crew, this is the moment where the animosity between Luffy and Usopp fades away, where Usopp realizes what exactly he means to Luffy and the rest of the crew. Their friendship is literally the linchpin of the entire mission; without it, every single one of them would be dead.
But is that really enough to resolve Usopp’s insecurities? After all, part of why he quit was because he felt like a burden, because he thought he couldn’t pull his weight in battle or in the crew, right? Fans at the time — myself included — expected Usopp to prove himself by winning a fierce battle, especially as the crew started to be paired up against powerful government assassins for one-on-one fights. Usopp’s opponent, Jabra, was one of the strongest, which practically had me salivating, but once the battle began, Jabra massacred Usopp, and would have killed him had he not been rescued by Sanji.
It was deflating…at first. Sanji, though, came armed with words of wisdom. “Everyone has things they can and cannot do…I’ll do what you couldn’t, and you do what I couldn’t!” At the time, Robin was moments from the point of no return, from being dragged onto a Navy Warship headed straight towards an impenetrable underwater prison. She was too far away for Sanji, or any other Straw Hat, to make it to in time…but she wasn’t too far away for Usopp.
See, as Usopp had been so desperately trying to prove himself all this time, he’d been neglecting his greatest skill: his aim. Usopp can hit any target with any weapon. Robin didn’t need a warrior; she needed a sniper.
And Usopp is the Sniper of the Straw Hat Pirates.
This is really just brilliant writing on multiple levels. Shonen is a genre all about strength, but Oda subverts that by handing Usopp key victories based off skill instead, granting him a role he had the ability to fill all along if he hadn’t been so worried about strength the same way many readers were. It allows Usopp to continue to keep up with the rest of the crew despite his lack of raw power, but it also forces him to grow as a person.
Usopp’s lies, his tall tales, his bragging, they were a way of fighting his low self esteem, of trying to make himself feel big, strong, and important. But snipers aren’t showy; it’s a support role, and with his worries finally quashed, Usopp settles into the role with a newfound confidence. He’s had multiple opportunities to prove himself as a sniper since, with his most impressive accomplishment — sniping an enemy who could have erased Luffy from existence with a single touch from several miles away — remaining completely unknown to Luffy.
And it’s been a joy to watch Usopp finally find his place amongst his friends.
I’m no sniper, and I honestly don’t know what my equivalent skill would be. Instead, what I personally take away from this story is the fact that, even when Usopp didn’t quite know how he fit in or understand what he brought to the table, his friends did. I often think about Sanji proudly proclaiming “Look, our sharpshooter rules!” as Usopp rains down hell on their opponents. Sanji always understood what made Usopp special, and always had faith in him, even when Usopp didn’t have faith in himself.
So I have faith that my friends really do like me, and that, if they’ve kept me around this long, they must see something worth appreciating in me. I have faith that, someday, maybe I can fully appreciate it too.
THE KIND CHEF
I could probably write a book about the clever ways Oda uses his characters’ roles to define them, but the one I want to briefly touch on is Sanji, the chef of the Straw Hat Pirates. Sanji is incredibly strong, considered by fans to be part of the “Monster Trio,” the three strongest members of the crew along with Luffy and Zoro. Readers greatly admire his strength, yet sometimes fail to understand that his power doesn’t define him the way it does the other two. It’s Luffy and Zoro’s job as Captain and First Mate to be strong; it’s Sanji’s job to cook for the crew.
Like all aspects of Sanji, his passion for cooking stems from his inherent kindness. This is easy to miss, as Sanji is rarely actually nice, but he’s kinder than just about any other character. He’ll feed anyone who’s hungry, even his fiercest enemy. He cooks to care for people, to protect them, to show them affection, to make sure no one starves the way he almost once did as a child.
Fans sometimes overlook Sanji’s kindness and instead obsess over his strength, which is why I especially appreciate a storyline from a few years ago. It’s revealed that Sanji’s father is a powerful pirate warlord, Vinsmoke Judge, leader of the Germa 66 Army. He experimented on his children in utero to turn them into his ultimate weapons, but while Sanji’s brothers were born indestructible psychopaths, Sanji was a “failure,” a weak little boy who just wanted to bring his dying mother a homemade meal. Sanji was verbally and physically abused, locked up, and eventually disowned, turned out onto the ocean to fend for himself before he was even ten years old. In the present, Judge was looking to make an alliance via marriage with the Pirate Emperor Big Mom, and rather than sacrifice one of his beloved child soldiers, he instead tracked down, kidnapped, and blackmailed Sanji into being the groom.
Just like with Robin, the Straw Hats quickly came to his rescue. They all could have escaped Big Mom’s territory without a fight, but by then Sanji had learned that Big Mom never planned to honor the alliance — she was going to kill Sanji’s entire family and take their advanced tech and army for herself. He could have let it happen. He should have let it happen; they’re the absolute worst, irredeemable assholes. But Sanji is too kind to just let people die, even his abusive family. So instead, the Straw Hats go to war with one of the pinnacles of power in the One Piece world.
Echoing the Usopp situation I spoke about earlier, fans expected this to lead to an intense, character-defining battle for Sanji, but it never materialized. Instead, Sanji’s (absolutely vital) contributions to their assault and escape came in other ways, ways more rooted in his skills, role, and character. He created the world’s absolute tastiest wedding cake, which put an end to Big Mom’s pursuit of the Straw Hats ship (this sounds — and is — silly, but it makes sense in context). Meanwhile, his intended bride, Pudding, had been ridiculed and persecuted her entire life because of her third eye, even by her own family and her own mother. When she finally revealed her extra eye to Sanji, though, he immediately called it beautiful, and showing Pudding just this tiny bit of kindness, the first she had ever experienced, won her over, gaining Sanji’s side an invaluable ally. They could not have survived this encounter without Sanji’s contributions, and he didn’t have to land a single kick to do it.
The Vinsmokes at least helped Sanji and his crew escape the scuffle, but as the smoke cleared, they’d still learned nothing about him. Judge ridiculed Sanji with even his parting words, which were a question for Sanji’s captain. “What does he mean to you, Straw Hat Luffy? Did you really risk your lives just to save him?! Sanji is the failure of Germa! His skin is no armor! He busies himself with menial cooking! He has no royal pride! He is swayed by pointless emotion and exposes himself to danger for the sake of the weak! His mentality is soft! He’s is flawed as a soldier! He is a failure!!!”
Luffy, in response, ignores Judge entirely, and instead turns to his crew.
Now, in no way is Oda saying that readers aren’t allowed to enjoy Sanji’s fight scenes. It’s cool when he does some insane acrobatic move, or kicks through steel! It’s compelling when he comes to the aid of someone who needs his help! But when fans get caught up in the idea of strength and begin judging a character solely by how many fights they get or win — as shonen fans infamously often do — they’re going down the same path as Vinsmoke Judge, whose only metric of success is strength. Sanji isn’t driven by battle or the pursuit of strength; he just wants to take care of people by making them the best food in the world. A character who is so powerful being defined by kindness and service is something I’ll always appreciate.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
Logo by Lewis Franco, with respects to Saves the Day.