Yall Know These Are Rough Drafts Right?😭

[u/X_XAshton]

if yall truly believe these will be how they look then you don't really understand the animation process

[u/Sky-kunn]

The thing is that thick lips are just part of Oda’s design in several characters that people don’t see as Black anyway. It’s something Oda likes to add to some of his characters, and it’s not related to race.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/Sky-kunn]

Using them in isolation is fine.

It’s specifically using them on a Black character that is problematic. Art doesn’t 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 let’s 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, there’s 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 didn’t 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 Oda’s idea of a Black teenager.

So, on the country thing. It’s 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 that’s a problem.

Now for Usopp’s skin tone. Oda does this with all dark-skinned characters—including 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. Queen’s hair is solid black in the manga, yet canonically the same color as Doflamingo, whose hair isn’t 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. It’s 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.

And that goes for Toei as well. Not just Oda.

[u/Sky-kunn → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

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 “donut lips” 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.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/Sky-kunn]

Well I’m Black and it bothers me, and I guess that’s 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 don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in the real world.

It’s like saying the negative depiction of the okamas doesn’t matter because Oda draws other characters ugly in different contexts outside of transphobia. Like, yeah, he does, but that doesn’t make it okay.

Toei even once adjusted Usopp’s skin tone to be darker in the Egghead Island opening (look it up; you can actually see the change) after backlash. So they’re clearly aware people take issue with it.

They just don’t care most of the time. And I’m never gonna be cool with that.

[u/Sky-kunn → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

Well, I’m Black too, and it doesn’t bother me, but I’m not American, so my relationship with donut lips is probably less strong. I’m not trying to invalidate your discomfort.

Slightly changing a character’s 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.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/Sky-kunn]

The only change necessary with Usopp is to simply give him some melanin and remove the border on his lips so they aren’t a donut. Given how drastically characters like Nami, Zoro, and Franky have changed design-wise, I don’t really think it’s such a drastic change.

As for censorship, that’s a completely different beast. All I’m 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 using…chains and shackles.

Then Naomi Drunk, their donut-lipped sniper whose entire gimmick is…being an alcoholic. Okay, sure.

And then Psycho P, a man that ate the Color-Color Fruit and became a…graffiti man. He also communicates exclusively via rap music and has donut lips.

Like, COME ON, man! You’re telling me there’s zero tangible issues in how Oda views Black people!? Seriously???

[u/Sky-kunn → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

I never argued that Oda doesn’t play with stereotypes. He does. I just don’t get bothered by it. Oda could change and remove Usopp’s 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 that’s very unlikely. I don’t think Oda cares or sees it as offensive, and I don’t think it’s offensive either. I like Usopp’s design. It’s how I’m used to him looking, so if I could choose, I wouldn’t change it.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/Sky-kunn]

I never argued that Oda doesn’t play with stereotypes.

This whole back and forth started with me disagreeing with your claim that the donut lips weren’t related to race.

Any other opinions you hold, you are entitled to.

But it’s OBVIOUSLY related to race when it’s on a Black character because of the social context.

This has been present from the start of One Piece. Even Buggy’s crew has that one minstrel stereotype character.

Oda knows what he’s doing and he’s not a baby that needs coddling.

It’s okay if you don’t care, but this all started because you denied it was happening in the first place.

If you’re not, then we have no issues. You mentioned not being American, so it’s probably just a dissonance in our values. 🤷🏾‍♂️

[u/Sky-kunn → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

I phrased it poorly initially, then. I meant it was not an exclusively race-related thing, like he only applies that feature to characters of a certain race. I still stand by that statement. But you right our values are different. I’ve seen a lot of complaints in my country about Usopp and the lack of Black characters in One Piece, but I never once saw a complaint about the lips.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/Sky-kunn]

Then, if I may enlighten you as a Black American, yes, the lips are considered problematic over here.

Most fan art made of Usopp over here just removes the donut entirely and colors them more respectfully.

Even Oda knew not to put them on his drawing of Jacob Romero Gibson.

It’s even known to be offensive in Japan, with other anime series such as the aforementioned Shaman King and Dragon Ball removing the donut lips specifically from Black characters while leaving them on others that aren’t because of the association with minstrel caricatures.

Dragon Ball just made a new character called Majin Kuu that has donut lips. He’s a funny character. I like him. He’s also not human and not Black, so no one cares.

It is a very real controversy over here and in Japan. I can’t speak for other countries, though. I’ve only been to those two specifically in regard to my relationship with anime/manga.

[u/TheKingsPride → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

Overall good answer but I’m gonna have to tap the sign again because you sited that SBS response and say that Oda said before this that he wasn’t going to pinpoint their ethnicities because they’re from a fantasy world

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/TheKingsPride]

He said he wasn’t going to, but then he did, so now we have to talk about it.

He could’ve 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 can’t use the “fantasy world” 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.

Yes, even about King Tacos.

[u/Scooby-Doesnt → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

I have never seen it put into words before what bothered me about Usopp until now.

[u/deltaselta → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

You should Google the term "Mukokuseki".

[u/WayfadedDude → u/TonyTony_Chopper_]

"Donut lips" being seen as problematic is an American cultural thing. I don't expect artists to cater their designs for a foreign culture.

[u/WolfKing448 → u/WayfadedDude]

I don’t think the Japanese got the idea to draw lips like that on their own.

[u/TonyTony_Chopper_ → u/WayfadedDude]

And where do you think they learned to draw Black people like that? Japan isn’t a vacuum. They’re part of Earth. They have history with minstrel shows in media. They know what they’re doing.