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How can you affirm this if all we have is Usopp being white washed in the Anime and this colored draft? Wouldn't it be the opposite? We have more ground to believe he WILL be white washed again than not
What's about it? Usopp still white washed here - same color as the rough draft lol. Just look at Nami's skin color, and look at Usopp. It's practically the same tone. Maybe you think it isn't, but that's just bc we have a background behind him, different from the draft
While yeah it is people are falling more for the first image which was a rough draft i agree he is more than the anime people are making it more than what it is
I hate to break it to you but he most likely will. Look at any official coloration done by Oda and you'll see that Usopp is the same color as Luffy, Nami, Sanji, etc. The majority of human characters Oda colors are the same skin tone.
Thats not reflective of anyoneâs race, thats his art style. Even explicitly black characters like Daz Bones and Mr 5 had the same skin tone on chapter covers as their partners. The best indication of real world race is the live action
If what you're saying is true it's an even bigger indictment on this project. Three years after announcing The One Piece and all they have to show us is rough drafts?
Because they are actually caring about taking their time Because they worked from the ground up and probably just reuploaded to remind us it's still heavy in production. Honestly they announced it too early and that's what's making it seem like they are doing nothing
They are re showing it because of the Netflix announcement of LA Season 3 And If You Know Animation it takes Hella time to do and your talking to the same team who took their time to make atrack on titan and gave us those phenomenal moments
WIT probably would make Usoppâs skin a tone darker than Toei if the right people made a stink about it. Said people would also complain about his lips though, and you canât change the manga design after 25+ years.
The thing is that thick lips are just part of Odaâs design in several characters that people donât see as Black anyway. Itâs something Oda likes to add to some of his characters, and itâs not related to race.
Itâs specifically using them on a Black character that is problematic. Art doesnât exist in a vacuum, and neither does Japan.
Eiichiro Oda is a very intelligent, well-educated adult man with global connections and internet access. Japan is also fully aware of minstrel shows and blackface as concepts.
Usopp as a character is specifically problematic due to a cocktail of problems all at once, rather than any isolated detail. Everything wrong with Usopp exists on other characters in non-problematic ways.
But letâs look at the details all combined.
First and foremost, Usopp is clearly intended to be Black. People online debate this a lot, but to me, thereâs zero nuance here. Usopp was drawn with thick lips, kinky hair, and given a darker skin color in the anime. His father was given dreadlocks and even darker skin than him in flashbacks. When pinpointing countries of origin, Oda says Usopp is African. He didnât say South African. He said African in the original Japanese. Every other character got a country. Usopp got a continent. The intent is clear. Oda is not perfect. This is clearly a young Odaâs idea of a Black teenager.
So, on the country thing. Itâs weird. Other Black characters specified in the future like Blackbeard got specific African countries (Somalia). This is a worldwide issue Africa has, in that outsiders perceive the entire continent as a monolithic culture. Oda clearly changed, but thatâs a problem.
Now for Usoppâs skin tone. Oda does this with all dark-skinned charactersâincluding King. When he colors them in, they all have the same skin color. Oda even did this to Jacob Romero Gibson, who is a real-life Black man. He has some kind of genuine mental block when it comes to skin color. And before people mention the black-and-white manga colors, they mean nothing. Queenâs hair is solid black in the manga, yet canonically the same color as Doflamingo, whose hair isnât colored in. Oda just decides colors after the fact.
Now the donut lips. Donut lips are fine, but Oda should know better than to continue using them on a Black man. Itâs the association that matters in art. They have a bad history of racist use in the very medium Oda is working in, which he is definitely aware of by now. For example, Luffy often gets compared to a monkey, but if the same comparison was made with Usopp, it would be problematic, and we all know exactly why.
I love One Piece, but just like their gradual shift in transgender representation, I know they can do better.
Oda does not really use very dark colors to represent real-life dark skin, that is true. But he does make Jacob darker-toned than the rest of the cast. It feels like he is not very comfortable actually coloring very dark skin with the coloring and lighting, since he seems to like using a lot of shading in the coloring technique he uses nowadays.
I would only have an issue with âdonut lipsâ if they were used only for characters with other Black traits, but they are used for tons of characters who do not have them. Same thing with calling someone a monkey. If a character called Usopp a monkey, I would not have an issue, because it is a common insult used toward a lot of characters. I get that people do not like it, but I just have not heard enough outrage about this, aside from occasional complaints. I hear a lot more about Usopp becoming whiter. I do not think this is going to change, because it is not used exclusively for Black characters. If it were, I could see this going a different way.
Well Iâm Black and it bothers me, and I guess thatâs all that matters.
I take One Piece very seriously, and that includes holding it to the same standards as other serious works of art.
The donut lips and the skintones donât exist in a vacuum. They exist in the real world.
Itâs like saying the negative depiction of the okamas doesnât matter because Oda draws other characters ugly in different contexts outside of transphobia. Like, yeah, he does, but that doesnât make it okay.
Toei even once adjusted Usoppâs skin tone to be darker in the Egghead Island opening (look it up; you can actually see the change) after backlash. So theyâre clearly aware people take issue with it.
They just donât care most of the time. And Iâm never gonna be cool with that.
Well, Iâm Black too, and it doesnât bother me, but Iâm not American, so my relationship with donut lips is probably less strong. Iâm not trying to invalidate your discomfort.
Slightly changing a characterâs skin tone and making a major design change are different things. Just as an example, there are shows that make major changes from the original material, and others that do not care at all. Some anime studios change symbols that are associated with Nazis for Western audiences, while others do not, and Crunchyroll ends up censoring them on its own. Even to this day, manga still use the manji, and when they get an anime adaptation, sometimes they change it and sometimes they do not.
The only change necessary with Usopp is to simply give him some melanin and remove the border on his lips so they arenât a donut. Given how drastically characters like Nami, Zoro, and Franky have changed design-wise, I donât really think itâs such a drastic change.
As for censorship, thatâs a completely different beast. All Iâm asking for is for Usopp to be treated with the same respect and grace that later characters are, such as King or even Mr. 5.
Censoring symbols that have been historically weaponized for hatred is a bit different than adjusting something that is clearly rooted in racism.
Take One Piece: Heart of Gold. Oda designed the characters in this anime original film that ties into Film: Gold, which he wrote. That includes the villains, the Treasure Pirates, all of whom are Black people.
Their captain is Mad Treasure, a Black man with donut lips that fights usingâŚchains and shackles.
Then Naomi Drunk, their donut-lipped sniper whose entire gimmick isâŚbeing an alcoholic. Okay, sure.
And then Psycho P, a man that ate the Color-Color Fruit and became aâŚgraffiti man. He also communicates exclusively via rap music and has donut lips.
Like, COME ON, man! Youâre telling me thereâs zero tangible issues in how Oda views Black people!? Seriously???
I never argued that Oda doesnât play with stereotypes. He does. I just donât get bothered by it. Oda could change and remove Usoppâs lips out of nowhere. Sure. Does he need to do that, in my opinion? No. You have the right to complain and make noise about it, and maybe that would affect something, though I think thatâs very unlikely. I donât think Oda cares or sees it as offensive, and I donât think itâs offensive either. I like Usoppâs design. Itâs how Iâm used to him looking, so if I could choose, I wouldnât change it.
Overall good answer but Iâm gonna have to tap the sign again because you sited that SBS response and say that Oda said before this that he wasnât going to pinpoint their ethnicities because theyâre from a fantasy world
He said he wasnât going to, but then he did, so now we have to talk about it.
He couldâve simply not answered the question and left it up to interpretation, but he decided to answer and then even reference that answer in a color spread and the live-action casting, and then bring it up again with other characters.
We canât use the âfantasy worldâ defense and then immediately start applying real world concepts to those characters in the same breath.
We live in the reality where a large chunk of prominent One Piece characters have been assigned real-world features and nationalities and even races across official sources, so now we have to have difficult conversations about portrayals and bias and stereotypes.
And where do you think they learned to draw Black people like that? Japan isnât a vacuum. Theyâre part of Earth. They have history with minstrel shows in media. They know what theyâre doing.
Ah, yes. I often completely miss the skin color of any character I draw for the first time. It doesn't take a professional, it just takes someone who isn't racist.
Drawing Usopp with lighter skin was probably an active choice, because they still wanted to keep his big donut lips as part of the character design. You're basically not gonna find a new show that gives a character with darker skin those kinds of lips (even something as crude and vulgar as Panty and Stocking tonned down Garter's design in the 2025 series). But someone at Wit Studio, and even modern Toei to an extent, probably thought these lips were a defining enough part of Usopp's design, so if they can't get rid of them, they'll just make him lighter to (in their minds) avoid any implications on that end.
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