- Luffy and Usopp present one of the best friendships
in all of media.
The two go together like wine and cheese or pasta and cheese
or cheese and other cheese.
Or, most importantly,
like you and the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review.
The greatest friendship of all,
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Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything "One Piece".
And today we are going to continue our exploration into the
more detailed depth of relationships between Straw Hats.
And today we have quite a powerful and often underrated one,
as we are going to dive into The Captain and The Sniper.
Now, previously I've described
Luffy's relationship with Zoro and Nami
as more of a respective partnership.
In each of those cases,
Zoro and Nami brings a compounding quality to Luffy and
they almost fuse together to create a sort of unbeatable
presence on land, as well as on sea.
However, Usopp is quite different.
Yes he does possess a whole host of qualities
that Luffy does not.
But in this case,
I would describe this duo as a tale of best friends.
In fact, Luffy and Usopp
is a really fascinating examination,
right from the beginning because Usopp would have been
the first draw hat who just immediately
hit it off with Luffy.
Thinking back on it Zoro more or less told Luffy
to F off the first time.
And Luffy pretty much told Nami to F off
on their initial meeting.
But with Usopp,
they just immediately decided to go and eat together.
Wildly amicable in comparison
to the meeting of every other Straw Hat
except Brook actually, that was pretty amicable.
And it's because these personalities whilst incredibly
different are a near perfect fit for one another.
You know there's this really fun dynamic
where Usopp gets swept up in Luffy's
adventurous nature while Luffy often gets swept up
in Usopp's imagination.
And this works really well because as we all know by now,
Luffy is the kind of guy who dreams bigger than most people,
if not all people.
He has aimed directly for the top of this world in regards
to his goal of becoming the pirate king,
but each and every time he hears of something dangerous,
impossible, or potentially entirely fabricated,
he latches onto it with an intense desire
to explore and conquer it.
He's the kind of guy who hear's a tale about an island
existing in the sky and is willing to risk everything on the
off chance that maybe,
just maybe it does exist.
And Usopp is able to feed this part of Luffy.
Usopp is capable of stoking his captain's imagination
like nobody else.
Primarily through the realm of exorbitant lies.
And at the same time,
Luffy believing these lies feeds into Usopp
forming a very dangerous,
almost childlike combination, really.
Because with the addition of Chopper,
Luffy and Usopp make up the easily carried away trio
of the crew and form this band
of dreamers unrestricted by any kind of logic or reality.
And as such, they primarily just have a lot of fun together.
And weirdly enough fun is a pretty new word for these
relationship explorations because
I actually would not describe Luffy's relationships
with half of the crew as primarily fun,
but when it comes to Usopp
this is what they've got.
Two best friends exploring the world together.
Although that does come with some very interesting
implications for Usopp because as much as these two
heavily click there is a stark, stark line drawn
between the captain and the sniper.
The most obvious feature of which would be the juxtaposition
of bravery and cowardice.
When thinking about Luffy,
I find it difficult to identify a time in the series where
he has been scared.
And I mean truly scared.
I'm not talking about the more comical stuff like
running into zombies on Thriller Bark,
or being afraid of suffering the comical wrath of Nami.
When it comes down down to it,
Luffy will very willingly walk into any kind of danger that
he is presented with, consequences, be damned.
And maybe bravery is not necessarily the right word
for that because in theory,
you do need to actually be scared to enact bravery.
But Luffy has this quality that Usopp is
spending the entire series simply trying to attain.
Luffy just had this from the get go.
Whereas Usopp is struck with fear in almost every given
circumstance and would be unwilling to walk into a mildly
dimly lit cave,
much less all of the insane stuff that Luffy takes on.
And Usopp holds great admiration for Luffy because of that.
In some ways you may even be able to consider it a student
teacher dynamic because Usopp spends a lot of time
in the background, very much observing Luffy,
and more often than not,
he will spawn his own courage as a direct result of watching
Luffy in action.
That or simply being in close proximity
to Luffy kind of just forces him into acting,
which you know is just a form of very extreme
exposure therapy, really.
However, before we dive into
that aspect in a bit more detail,
I would like to point out one other key difference
because it isn't just Luffy
bringing something to the table for Usopp here.
It very much works the other way around as well.
Usopp might not be the greatest of individuals in the
area of combat bravery or intelligence,
but what he offers in terms of utility is priceless.
When you think about it Usopp is a very enviable character
because his skills cover such a wide breadth of areas,
from engineering to the arts.
And a fantastic example of this would be
the Straw Hat Jolly Roger.
this is Usopp's creation,
following Luffy's design brief.
Of course, but still to think that
our sniper is the man responsible for
crafting what will surely become
one of the world's most recognizable pirate symbols
is extraordinary.
And that is just one of many,
many examples of Usopp's utility
and sheer ability.
The subtleties and skills required
for which will always be completely
locked off to a figure like Luffy.
And Luffy might be
questionably intelligent,
but he is more than aware of that as well.
And that is part of the reason
for his enduring faith in Usopp,
which is a particular brand of faith that I'm not so sure
any other Straw Hat or even readers
or watchers of the series
initially had in old Usopp.
I mean to put it quite blatantly, he was a coward, a liar,
and evidently quite physically weak.
He did not seem like the kind of figure who you would want
to entrust an issue of any brand of importance to,
unless of course you're Luffy
because for whatever reason are
robber lad in his infinite wisdom,
places 100% unconditional trust in Usopp.
And that is a super powerful thing.
And that trust is reciprocated.
As a result of his experiences and permanent admiration
of his best friend Usopp has 100% faith in Luffy as well,
which would even culminate in a particularly famous scene on
Alabaster where Usopp was told that Luffy had been killed
and he just flat out refused to believe it.
But why did he do that?
Last time we saw Luffy he was facing off one-on-one against
Duval under the sea, whose ability seemed insurmountable.
And the captain had not been seen since.
All of the available evidence would point to Luffy
having been killed or at the very least
being defeated and down for the count.
But in Usopp's mind, that was never even a possibility.
Which I find amazing given that Usopp's brain
tends to always move to the worst case scenario
possible when thinking about himself.
However, the best part was yet to come
because following that,
Usopp used this faith in Luffy as his own driving force
to muster the bravery and endurance to eventually defeat
ms. Merry Christmas and Mr Fall.
Which was an incredible step forward in his own personal
journey of growth.
And the moment in which I would personally pinpoint in the
series that I began to take Usopp seriously.
And he only continued to grow from here.
Because Luffy has consistently forced Usopp
out of his comfort zone and into situations
where he is tackling and
overcoming greater and greater senses of fear.
So this is a heavily symbiotic relationship.
Usopp feeds Luffy's imagination and more juvenile side.
While at the same time,
Luffy is guiding Usopp on his journey to become the brave
adult warrior of the sea, that he one day dreams of being.
But if that's all there was to it,
then I'm not sure that this video would have been worth
making because there is a another massive layer yet to come.
Luffy and Usopp is not a flat story.
I've shown them as best friends
who just get along at all times.
And in fact, this relationship has
completely broken down
on one occasion during the walk to Seven Arc.
And I really cannot emphasize this moment enough because
this is the first and only time that Luffy has experienced
internal conflict on this level.
I mean, yes,
other Straw Hats have left the crew like Sanki and Robin,
but there were much greater outside forces facilitating that
and actually just outright blackmailing.
Whereas Usopp made the choice
to leave in order to fight
for his beliefs.
That is a very, very different situation.
This was a case where saw profoundly disagreed with Luffy's
philosophy in regards to the Going Merry,
which Usopp had always treated as a genuine crew member.
And this was because he was always much more connected to
the ship than any other member, having it,
being gifted to them by Kaia and even acting
as a makeshift shipwright
prior to the existence of Frankie.
Usopp had a really strong relationship with the Going Merry,
and in this case from his perspective,
Luffy was far too willing to leave a wounded friend
on the battlefield.
And that played heavily on his mind,
because of Usopp's own weakness.
And at one pointUsopp even questioned if Luffy
would do the same to him,
because that is how Usopp saw himself.
A weak link of the Straw Hats.
And if Luffy was willing to do this to
one of his comrades then
why wouldn't he do the same to Usopp?
Now in this situation,
I personally feel like both were right and both were wrong,
which is fine in the context of friendship
and is always often case.
But unfortunately there was also a crew structure
to consider here.
A disagreement between friends is one thing,
but under this umbrella,
this was an outright mutiny against the decision
of the captain.
Regardless of whether Luffy was right or
whether he was wrong this was a breakdown of crew hierarchy.
One that was only made possible via the extremely close
friendship that Luffy and Usopp had built up.
And that put Luffy in a really
rough position as well because the
decision to let go of Merry was not made lightly.
And so this disagreement between friends eventually devolved
into a full on fist fight.
Which I would like to say,
even though it was under very unpleasant circumstances,
also very much served to evolve both of these characters.
Usopp for quite probably the first time in his life
was knowingly facing off against a
stronger opponent without a single shred of fear,
because he felt that his ideals were worth fighting for.
Meanwhile, Luffy was put in a position where his place
as captain was being stress tested.
A test which he would go on to pass, albeit barely.
And after the conclusion of thisUsopp left the crew
and faced a life on his own for a while anyway.
Which is a pretty terrifying thought from his perspective.
A weak coward all on his own within the Grande Line.
But this time on his own would also
lead him into grand acts of bravery.
Some that he simply may not have been capable of
if he was still a member of the Straw Hat pirates.
Such as getting involved in the events of the Sea train
or any Savi,
putting his life directly on the line against impossible
odds for the sake of Robin.
But speaking of any slobby,
the Luffy Usopp relationship was effectively
the key to victory on this island,
because faced with the overwhelming power of Rob Lucci,
there was a moment where it looked like Luffy was
down and out.
Where rather uncharacteristically Luffy was
mentally broken and simply thought
that he could not go on.
And as such the entire Rescue Robin endeavor
was on the verge of absolute failure.
But it was in that moment with every other crew member
fighting for their lives,
where it fell to Usopp to do what Usopp does best and flame
the fire that is Luffy.
He delivered what is hands down
one of the greatest speeches in One Piece.
And at least in my eyes,
he is directly responsible for
Luffy's eventual victory over Rob Lucci.
Without Usopp and without that relationship,
One Piece probably ends during the Enies Lobby arc.
That is how powerful this bond is.
And of course the two would then go on
to reconcile, with Usopp admitting that he was wrong
and asking to rejoin the crew.
And the moment that the captain and the sniper were properly
reunited was a powerful one, indeed.
And this is because some of the strongest connections in
this world are forged through tough experiences like these.
I don't know a single couple
or pair of best friends who have not had at least one
major potentially relationship ending experience.
But once they got past that,
their bond had not only strengthened,
but become nigh on invincible.
And this is the position that we find
Luffy and Usopp in today.
Sadly, as with many post time skip Straw Hat interactions,
this one hasn't been particularly expanded on because
throughout the New World Era arcs,
Luffy and Usopp have been generally kept separate from
each other, even in ones where
they're both on the same island like Trust Rosa,
Fisherman Island, Punk Hazard, and of course Guanhao.
But even though we don't blatantly see it as much,
you can still feel this bond between them no matter where
they are Luffy and Usopp
still retain that unconditional belief in one another.
That is why Usopp is able to operate
these days in the context of Guanhao.
Faced with the prospect of going up directly against
Kaido, a figure who is quite literally referred to as the
strongest living creature in One Piece.
But what does that even matter?
Usopp is still going to
act without a single doubt in Luffy's abilities.
Meanwhile, Luffy's stance has not changed
one bit since the early days of Syrup Village.
Luffy always has, and always will believe in
Usopp and thus propagating one
of the strongest friendships in the entirety of the series.
What do you guys think?
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