Character · One Piece
Usopp
Every lie he tells about himself is a plan, and the story keeps quietly arranging for them to come true.
In Otakana the clue reads: Long-nosed sniper and teller of tall tales
- Type
- Character
- Series
- One Piece
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Usopp lies. He claims eight thousand followers, monsters he defeated single-handed, and sudden illnesses that prevent him entering dangerous buildings. It began as a small boy running through a village shouting that pirates had come, so his sick mother would look out of the window, because the pirate he was waiting for was his father, who had sailed off with Shanks.
On a crew of monsters he is the ordinary one, and that is the job. Usopp is a marksman with a slingshot and a bag of ammunition he builds himself: pepper, fire, oil, exploding stars. He is also the crew's engineer of small things, the one who patches the ship, builds Nami's weapon and works out what an enemy's power actually does while everybody else charges at it.
The fear never goes away and the series refuses to remove it. He runs, he shakes, he negotiates with himself out loud, and then he plants his feet somewhere he should not be standing. When he needs to be braver than he is, he puts on a mask and becomes Sogeking, a sniper from an island that does not exist, which is both a joke and the most honest thing he does.
Spelling USOPP
USOPP is five letters ending on a doubled P, which is the whole test. The kana marks that double with a small tsu, so Japanese agrees with English here. The name is built from uso, the Japanese word for lie, plus Aesop, who wrote fables with morals attached. Knowing that fixes the spelling, since dropping a P breaks both halves of the pun at once.