One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
Why does Usopp tell so many lies? Well, today we find out; mostly, to entertain a pretty girl. There are worse reasons to just Make Things Up All The Time. That girl is Kaya, the rich, ill heiress alluded to but not shown in the previous chapter. We meet her formally here, as well as her butler Klahadore. Their dynamic—and their relation to Usopp—becomes clear pretty quickly.
What the hell is he doing with his glasses.
Usopp sits outside of Kaya’s window and tells her tall tales of his “exploits” as a “gallant pirate.” These are nonsense, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows they’re nonsense, but they make her happy, which is all that matters to either of them. Klahadore is having none of this, as he apparently thinks that…being excited is bad for Kaya’s constitution. I suspect there is more to it than that, but that’s what he claims his motive is, at any rate.
Luffy and friends learn about all this from Usopp’s “pirate lackeys”—a trio of kids with vegetable names who look up to Usopp because they like his ability to tell stories—and promptly decides that this, clearly, is where he and his crew should acquire their ship.
Thus, the final scene of the chapter is a big morass outside Kaya’s bedroom window. Usopp, who’s been telling her a story is confronted by her butler, and then Luffy and friends show up to make things even more complicated.
But things really heat up when Klahadore starts laying into Usopp about his father being a pirate. This, apparently, is 100% fact. And Usopp does not take having his missing dad spoken ill of kindly.
There’s an overtone of class tension here. Not that “working class pirate falls for rich girl” is anything new even if Usopp really were a pirate, but it’s interesting how Klahadore deliberately provokes Usopp and then blames him for snapping. A dynamic that is, unfortunately, quite true to life. (On a level more immediate to One Piece’s original target audience, I imagine it reminded no small amount of kids of their school bullies, too.)
The chapter ends here, quite literally mid-thought from Luffy. What does he remember? That’s a question for tomorrow.
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