Tag: Usopp

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 41

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!

Did you think we were done with our big emotional climax after last chapter? Well, we mostly are, but not quite yet.

Two things happen in this chapter; for one, Kaya gifts Luffy’s crew a caravel, which I and any other former Civilization III players reading this will recognize as a mid-sized vessel common in the 16th century. It’s hardly the Queen Anne’s Revenge, but this ship, the Merry Go, is the first proper vessel our heroes have ever had. 41 chapters in, we’ve already covered a lot of ground (even if we’re still very early on in the greater scope of things), so it’s nice to see them tangibly upgrading to something bigger and better.

Secondly, Usopp says his last goodbyes to Kaya. Granted, not before overpacking to the extent that his comically large backpack causes him to topple over and role down a hill in true slapstick fashion.

Other than a few other jokes (including a great bit where Luffy has to be told not to eat the entire bones of a fish), the main takeaway here is that Kaya will be just fine, and that Usopp’s chronic lying actually has a reason behind it. A pretty sad one! Although you could probably guess that much.

To be honest, this strikes me as a little unnecessary? The simple fact that Usopp’s mom isn’t around kind of makes it obvious from the start that something’s happened to her. That said; the target audience for this manga is, or at least was at the time, kids, so maybe being a little obvious is fine.

As the chapter ends, Kaya talks to Merry—her actually loyal butler—about her dreams for the future, while Usopp’s former “crew” gallavant through the town, continuing his, ahem, sacred work.

Usopp himself and the rest of Luffy’s crew? They’re gone, back on the deep blue sea.

Tomorrow: new adventures.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 40

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!

In today’s chapter: farewells and castings-off.

The defeated Captain Kuro is batted out of the series with one final panel of Luffy piledriving his head into the ground. I actually particularly like this because we also see his glasses bounce away, crushed. It’s fun to see a character’s personal symbol of sorts destroyed as a visual metaphor for their defeat.

And Luffy manages to get off one last bit of “I’m gonna be king of the pirates” chest-puffing before promptly collapsing from exhaustion and/or blood loss. (Don’t worry, he’s fine. You know how shonen protagonists are.)

But for the most part, this chapter is about Usopp, who decides to swear his “crew”—as well as everyone else—to secrecy, so that the people of his town don’t worry about the pirate raid that they only just avoided being caught up in.

I remain rather averse to the “boy who cried wolf” trope, but I like Usopp basically twisting it inside-out here, relying on his own bad reputation to protect the townsfolk’s peace of mind. One can understand where he’s coming from in a very immediate way, that’s a nice thing in a story like this that more or less lives and dies on the readership being able to connect to the characters in an immediate, intuitive way.

At the end of the chapter, he strikes off on his own, now dead-set on becoming a real pirate, rather than simply a teller of tall tales. Of course, in order to do that, there’s a group of people he has to bid farewell to.

As he leaves his “pirate crew” behind, Usopp makes the boys swear to keep pursuing their own dreams. It’s genuinely really sweet.

All this to say; Usopp is a good lad, my initial impression of the character wasn’t terribly favorable, but hey, that happens sometimes.

Now then, before I bid you all farewell for the day, I’ve decided that fielding y’all a question every ten chapters or so will be a fun way to keep things fresh.

Last time I asked you what manga you were reading other than One Piece itself (and hey, if you’ve picked up something in the interim, feel free to share). Today I’ll ask what anime you’re watching this season, if any. Y’all can reasonably intuit from my anime columns that I’m watching Lycoris Recoil, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer (the recap for which I’m slightly putting off by writing this first, in fact….), and Call of the Night. In addition to that I’ve been keeping up with Smile of the Arsnotoria, Teppen (although it actually skipped its second episode for absolutely wild reasons I won’t go into here), YUREI DECO, Tokyo Mew Mew New, the RWBY anime Ice Queendom, and carrying over from last season, Summertime Render (don’t tell Disney). What about you?

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 39

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!

I like the way today’s chapter is put together. Functionally, you’ve got two fights; one between Luffy and Kuro and another between Kaya, Usopp’s ‘crew’, and Django (which later gets two extra participants as the chapter comes to a close). The chapter keeps up the tension with the fairly simple trick of swapping between them, so there are no real “dead moments” at any point.

One Piece is good about this in general, but I find chapter 39 fairly exceptional in this regard. Basically everybody—at least, all the ‘good guys’, excepting Nami—get a solid badass moment. In something this long, you cannot expect every single chapter to have major story revelations or anything like that, but it’s good one when can make an exceptional showing on the Cool Points front, if nothing else.

It’s Luffy who gets the bulk of them, as despite Kuro’s techniques, he’s not much of a match for the rubberband pirate (assuming he doesn’t have some other secret trick up his sleeve anyhow), and Luffy is able to lay him flat without too much trouble over the course of the chapter.

Kuro of course panics about this, and we get one of those huge open-mouthed hollers that Oda seems to love drawing.

Meanwhile, Kaya is willing to sign the will without being mind-controlled, if Django will just leave Usopp’s little friends alone. The hitman hypnotist is having none of it, though, and Kaya actually has to threaten to hurt herself in order to get him to even consider it.

And Usopp’s crew promptly get their moment a few pages later when they charge him from behind and knock him on his ass. Which buys all involved just enough time for Zolo and Usopp to show up.

It’s actually Usopp himself who gets the final blow on Django, hitting him with some sort of exploding projectile via his slingshot.

And meanwhile, back at the beach, Luffy seems to put Captain Kuro down for good. Look at that neck; I don’t know if he’s coming back from that one.

Tomorrow: Is the battle over, or just beginning?

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 35

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!

Hello folks! You’ll have to forgive the late upload today, I thought I had one in the tin for this morning already only to wake up and realize I did not. Hence; this one coming to you a bit late. (Don’t worry, I’m going to be penning a couple this afternoon, so this shouldn’t happen again. At least not for a while.)

Something I like about One Piece, and I’m not sure if I’ve outright said this, is the amount of weight it gives its battles. In modern shonen, even the very best fight scenes can sometimes feel over too quickly owing to the rather brisk pace of most modern TV anime and the manga they’re adapted from. (A particularly bad offender here, because I never miss a chance to take a shot at it, is the anime version of God of High School.) This isn’t to say the opposite is inherently a good thing, as someone who grew up watching a lot of Dragonball Z with my stepfather I am well aware that a single fight being doled out across weeks or potentially even months can be on the draining side, but still, I think so far, One Piece strikes a nice balance. (How this goes in the show I couldn’t tell you, given that I’m not watching said show.)

Not a ton actually happens in this chapter from a “narrative perspective.” Basically it boils down to “Luffy and Zolo cover for Usopp’s little ‘crew’ of kids as he orders them to flee the battlefield with Kaya.” But everything has a nice sense of solid urgency. That it manages to convey that in the still rather economical space of just 20 or so pages is pretty impressive. (Get used to that observation, I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve made it here and it will almost certainly not be the last.)

Take for example, the mostly-comical Butchie getting a chance to slam into the ground with enough force to do that “rocks and terrain explode everywhere” thing that people (including myself) are so fond of.

“What happened to the ground?!” “My parents took it down because I’m grounded :/”

Or even this on-its-face silly scene where the pirate kids wail on a still-laid-flat Captain Kuro with sticks. Sure, it’s funny, but he could straight-up disembowel those children if he wanted to. That’s a scary notion!

Especially since Kuro is only wounded to the extent of feeling the need to remark that Luffy slugging him in the face “smarted.” (What is he, a British schoolboy?)

Usopp certainly knows the score, as he spends several pages trying to get the kids (and Kaya) to run away.

Eventually, he convinces them to by framing it as an order from their ‘captain,’ which is pretty clever. I don’t know if I’ve properly conveyed this but I really have come around on Usopp since his introduction, it’s clear he cares a lot for these people and (spoiler alert here) I know from prior knowledge that he joins the main cast eventually, so I’m interested to see what he adds to their dynamic when he does. (He also gets an amusing and very literal cheap shot at Django, here, which is mostly worth noting because it literally makes the big bad hypno-pirate say “owie.”)

None of this is to say our other heroes don’t get a minute to shine here, though, because they do. Specifically, Luffy and Zolo pull off a pretty badass “you shall not pass” sort of moment when intercepting Django, who’s been ordered to pursue Kaya and the kids.

And the chapter ends there, leaving what will become of the heiress and Usopp’s little buddies a question for tomorrow. See you then, pirates.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 34

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!

Today’s chapter is a terrific little tornado of tough-talk, tussling, and takedowns. First of all; if you were worried about Nami yesterday, well, don’t be. Luffy happens to (quite accidentally) get between Django’s chakram and Nami’s very vulnerable body. Unlike Nami, Luffy can take a blade to the head just fine.

Average Abdullah the Butcher match aftermath.

Not that he won’t complain. In fact, the speech bubble for his yell is so loud that it’s larger than the panel!

The real development of this chapter though is Kaya arriving on the scene. She calls out to her former butler to stop all this, but, predictably, it does not help.

She even just tries to buy Captain Kuro and his crew off, but because Kuro is a villain in a shonen manga, that doesn’t work either.

Kaya pulls out a gun in response to that little comment, but Kuro successfully rattles her by listeing off all the things he’s done for her, and making it clear that he hated every minute of it. Then he goes on the defensive, and Usopp tries to cut in to prevent him from hurting Kaya, despite his being rather unsuited to the task.

But then, well, someone else gets the drop on him.

He’s gonna feel that in the morning.

The chapter ends with that explosive pop from Luffy. I imagine Kuro will have something to say about that tomorrow.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 32

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!

Today’s chapter continues basically directly on from yesterday’s, forming a clean continuation of the battle between Zolo and the Meowban Brothers, one of whom, Siam, has stolen two of Zolo’s three swords, as Nami so helpfully recaps for us with a zippy one-liner.

I kind of love this line, and to be honest there’s quite a bit of fun dialogue scattered (cattered?) throughout the chapter. I’m not sure how much of it is a faithful conveyance of Oda’s original dialogue and how much of it is the translator having a spot of fun. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

A “pirate-flavored pancake.” That’s poetry, right there.

Siam continues to make me slightly uncomfortable, but Butchie is a decently fun character, “cat-a-pault” shouts and all. Zolo gets some good moments here too, including one where he deliberately takes one of Usopp’s slingshot bullets to the back so that way the cat brothers don’t turn their attention on him and Nami.

Of course, there’s really only so much the guy can do. Django steps in when Nami tries to return Zolo’s swords to him, injuring her what looks to be rather badly.

And not long after that, Captain Kuro arrives, and he’s more than a little angry that the Black Cats have been dragging their feet.

The chapter ends there. Tomorrow, we learn what becomes of Luffy and friends.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 29

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!

Today, One Piece returns to its usual forte. Basically, a whole chapter that’s a long action sequence. (In fact, this and the next chapter seem to form a contiguous single action sequence. That in mind, it’s really more like half of one.)

We open on an unenviable situation; Usopp and Nami, easily the least combat-capable of our protagonists, are forced to stand alone against the Black Cat Pirates, who, after some banter, promptly charge.

Surprisingly though, they manage to fend the pirates off, at least for a little while, with a combination of caltrops(!) and Usopp’s slingshot(?!?!). Also, hijinks continue to occur.

“My work here is done.” “But you didn’t do anything!”

And I’d be remiss to not at least briefly touch on Luffy being lost for about half the chapter.

The real centerpiece of the chapter though comes when Usopp gets his head knocked in. He’s clearly hurt pretty bad, but he still doesn’t just let Captain Kuro’s crew walk all over him. It’s a bit of the old burning justice that keeps him hanging on, and it’s nice to see him trying an honest stab at being genuinely heroic.

But, of course, the real capable hands arrive just as Django’s lot push their way past Usopp and Nami. Meaning that the conclusion of this particular fight is a concern for tomorrow.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 28

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!

Today’s One Piece is a comedy of errors.

Something I suppose I should’ve picked up on by now is that there’s usually a little more time before the Big Climactic Battle in a given One Piece arc than you might expect. So today’s chapter is almost entirely setup, but it’s at least decently fun setup.

We open with a bit of half-character development for Usopp (PS: thank you guys for pointing out all the interesting literary references baked in to the character in the comments. To be honest, I’d never have picked up on those on my own).

It’s a start.

Our heroes prepare an ingenious trap wherein they coat the only passage leading from the island’s southern beach to the village with an oil slick. We’ll get back to the flaws in this plan momentarily.

Meanwhile, Captain Kuro lays his cards on the table, or at least he does for the other butler in Kaya’s employ (who I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a name for).

I absolutely love this; he has zero reason to do any of it and it ends with him killing the guy. Was the whole point of the long con here not specifically that he could do all this without having to commit any violence other than killing Kaya? What is the point of the pirate raid itself, actually, now that I think of it and on that note? Is it to create plausible confusion that Kaya might die in?

Whatever the case, that marks the end of Kuro’s nice guy act. Good riddance. In the sort of thing that seems counterintuitive only if you don’t know how stories work, he’s actually more likable as an out-and-out bad guy.

When we cut to the next day, Luffy and co. realize they’ve made a minor mistake. Namely; they’re on the wrong beach.

As the chapter ends, Luffy, Zolo, and Nami are two-for-three on being somehow unable to confront the pirates. Luffy runs off in the wrong direction, and Zolo gets caught in the crew’s own oil trap. (Which Nami accidentally pushes him into.)

Is this girlboss behavior? Vote now in the comments below.

Tomorrow: Can our heroes overcome this comedic series of obstacles to stop the Black Cat Pirates, or will Usopp truly have to fend them off alone?

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 27

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!

Something that may not have been immediately obvious is that yesterday’s chapter was the end of its volume. To me, this is a little odd, given that that felt more like the dead middle of a story arc than the start or end of one. But on the other hand, maybe it’s building to something more. Certainly, the new volume has a promising title.

We open on a dramatic irony, Kaya buying a gift for “Klahadore”, to commemorate the third anniversary of his arriving at the estate. This sets a pattern that recurs throughout the chapter. Despite her warm feelings for Usopp, Kaya very much believes that her butler is a kind person who has only her best interests at heart.

Usopp, meanwhile, has predictably found his warning of the impending pirate raid to be met with incredulity, and, eventually, torches and pitchforks. Things do not go any better when he tries to convince Kaya that her butler is out to get her. In fact, they escalate quickly and unpleasantly.

And indeed Usopp eventually resorts to trying to physically drag Kaya out of her manor. This goes about as well as you’d expect, and culminates with Kaya—who, remember, has no context for any of this—slapping Usopp.

Driven farther out of town, Usopp deliberately drives off the three children who follow him around and pretend to be his “crew” by claiming that this pirate attack, too, is all a lie. He does this so they won’t get hurt, but it’s clear that the hit to his pride bothers him. Toward’s the chapter’s end it really does seem like he intends to face the incoming horde of the Black Cat pirates all on his own.

But, of course, One Piece is not that sort of manga. Don’t go expecting Usopp to die heroically alone here.

Tomorrow; Luffy’s crew vs. Captain Kuro’s.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 24

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.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.