Ahhh yesss such good analysis. ♥♥♥ Some scattered thought below.
I've always been partial to the wording "Because there's someone in this village I don't want to die".
Speaking about wording - I think I've seen at least six different translations of the one-word reply Luffy gives when replying to Kuro's question on what makes Usopp superior to him! (Swedish manga, Viz manga, scanlations, Stephen's script translation, the Funi dub, and the Funi sub - maybe a fansub had yet one more version, too. THEY ALL DIFFERED. Freaky.) But "potential" does seem to be the one that comes the closest, from what I understand. (I asked someone who knows Japanese once.)
I agree, this arc says a lot about Luffy's views - and by implication also the narrative's - about what being a captain means and what it doesn't mean.
Oda shaped his antagonist for this arc well in terms of personality. (In terms of rock-solid planning, maybe not so much - at least, I've always been confused by how much killing Kuro really intended to inflict on the village. It seems like he should have wanted at least a number of villagers to survive as character witnesses for Klahadore? But evidently no-one of the servants in the mansion...)
Completely agree with everything you say re Zoro & Usopp here.
This arc says a lot not just about Usopp, but also of Luffy and the other two. I don't know if it's just my Usopp bias, but personally I feel I got a clearer sense of how the characters are in this arc than in the previous ones. (Though maybe that's unfair since this arc also builds on what we learned in the earlier stories, when it comes to the original trio.)
I also love everything we see with the Usopp Pirates here. They're heroic and proactive, but they're also believable little kids. We get to see what motivates them and how they're able to act. They're smart, they can dole out some damage, but not implausibly smart and they're also realistically "weak".
When you look at Jango's actions and characterisations more closely here, it makes it much easier to understand his later cover page story development. Now I speculate that back when Kuro really was Captain Kuro, Jango followed his directions because he thought being that brutal and merciless was the only way to survive on the seas. Being defacto captain for three years has made him modify that somewhat (though the Black Cat Pirates still attacked and raided villages, but as you pointed out in an earlier post they didn't, for instance, kill Usopp the first chance they got - they shouted at him to get out of the way). And unlike Kuro he cares about his crew. Yet he stays loyal to Kuro and never hesitates in following his plan. I wonder if that was the way he kept the crew together as a unit during these three years? They had a feared, infamous, but respected captain who is now believed to be dead, but Jango might have said: we know differently, we're going to be reunited with him and he'll lead us to glory and great treasures, he's so smart and strong...
That double-spread where Kuro and Jango are taken out simultaneously is so good. (And is one of the reasons I see Usopp as the non-antagonist character most often, and most formally, paralleled to Luffy, though I do think it happens to Zoro a lot as well.)
ETA: It's early morning. East is in the direction of the sun.
no subject
I've always been partial to the wording "Because there's someone in this village I don't want to die".
Speaking about wording - I think I've seen at least six different translations of the one-word reply Luffy gives when replying to Kuro's question on what makes Usopp superior to him! (Swedish manga, Viz manga, scanlations, Stephen's script translation, the Funi dub, and the Funi sub - maybe a fansub had yet one more version, too. THEY ALL DIFFERED. Freaky.) But "potential" does seem to be the one that comes the closest, from what I understand. (I asked someone who knows Japanese once.)
I agree, this arc says a lot about Luffy's views - and by implication also the narrative's - about what being a captain means and what it doesn't mean.
Oda shaped his antagonist for this arc well in terms of personality. (In terms of rock-solid planning, maybe not so much - at least, I've always been confused by how much killing Kuro really intended to inflict on the village. It seems like he should have wanted at least a number of villagers to survive as character witnesses for Klahadore? But evidently no-one of the servants in the mansion...)
Completely agree with everything you say re Zoro & Usopp here.
This arc says a lot not just about Usopp, but also of Luffy and the other two. I don't know if it's just my Usopp bias, but personally I feel I got a clearer sense of how the characters are in this arc than in the previous ones. (Though maybe that's unfair since this arc also builds on what we learned in the earlier stories, when it comes to the original trio.)
I also love everything we see with the Usopp Pirates here. They're heroic and proactive, but they're also believable little kids. We get to see what motivates them and how they're able to act. They're smart, they can dole out some damage, but not implausibly smart and they're also realistically "weak".
When you look at Jango's actions and characterisations more closely here, it makes it much easier to understand his later cover page story development. Now I speculate that back when Kuro really was Captain Kuro, Jango followed his directions because he thought being that brutal and merciless was the only way to survive on the seas. Being defacto captain for three years has made him modify that somewhat (though the Black Cat Pirates still attacked and raided villages, but as you pointed out in an earlier post they didn't, for instance, kill Usopp the first chance they got - they shouted at him to get out of the way). And unlike Kuro he cares about his crew. Yet he stays loyal to Kuro and never hesitates in following his plan. I wonder if that was the way he kept the crew together as a unit during these three years? They had a feared, infamous, but respected captain who is now believed to be dead, but Jango might have said: we know differently, we're going to be reunited with him and he'll lead us to glory and great treasures, he's so smart and strong...
That double-spread where Kuro and Jango are taken out simultaneously is so good. (And is one of the reasons I see Usopp as the non-antagonist character most often, and most formally, paralleled to Luffy, though I do think it happens to Zoro a lot as well.)
ETA: It's early morning. East is in the direction of the sun.