Netflix's One Piece S01E03 Review: Usopp's Fables

One Piece, Season 1, Episode 3: Tell No Tales

Well, it's been a while, huh? I actually watched the Usopp two-parter all the way back in August when the Netflix show premiered, but real life got in the way of me both watching and reviewing the show, and then both the Bleach anime as well as the Pokemon Scarlet/Violet DLC ended up taking up much of my time. But better late than never, right? I have been 'spoiled' about certain changes they did to the Netflix adaptation, though honestly I don't really think too much of it. 

This will be a bit of a shorter review, mostly because it's been languishing in my 'to-do' list for a while and I just want to get it done. The Syrup Village arc is where we start getting some large changes, though a lot of it does have to do with choreography than actual characterization... which I do really think is the most important part of any adaptation. It's pointless to mimic the costumes and panels if you don't adapt the real essence of the characters, right? The Syrup Village arc in the Netflix adaptation is also something that I would consider to be a strict upgrade to the original manga version, for the simple reason that Kuro's plan... actually makes a lot more sense. Any long-running manga will always have some degree of early-installment weirdness or roughness, but in One Piece I definitely would say that Kuro as a villain is easily one of the less well-executed aspects of the story. 

Usopp himself, isn't, though, and a lot of his 'boy who cried wolf' backstory is adapted very well. We start the episode with little Usopp yelling 'the pirates are coming', leading to adult (or, well, young adult) Usopp running around doing the same thing. I wasn't the biggest fan of them removing Usopp's long nose, but I also recognize that whether it's a prosthetic or CGI, putting a literal Pinocchio nose on Usopp's face would both take up precious SFX budget and be weirdly distracting. It's something that I felt is one of those pragmatic changes that I do kind of accept was going to happen. 

Anyway, cut to the Straw Hat trio, and we get Nami trying to figure out the maps (she wears glasses!) while Luffy shows off a comic-accurate terribly-drawn jolly roger. We get some sniping back and forth about being 'a crew', which was the joke that was repeated ad nauseum in the trailers. It's... it's what people have taken to dismiss as 'MCU humour', but... I don't really think it's really that cringey? Especially in the context of the full lines being spoken. Luffy also gets to name the Straw Hat crew in this adaptation, which... it's a change, but it's honestly such a minor, small change that I don't think it makes anything particularly better or worse. It's just different. 

Speaking of changes that makes things better, it's the fact that we're flat-out adapting the 'Training Diary of Koby-meppo' or whatever that cover story series was called. We actually get to see Koby and Helmeppo training as cadets on board Garp's ship. Bogard gets lines, Garp wears his bulldog hat, and it actually really emphasizes the presence of the Marines in the East Blue as opposed to just a bunch of random nobodies like Nezumi and Pudding-Pudding cameoing here and there as minor, forgettable roles. There's a nice way to show not only Koby's character development as someone trying to find his place among the marines, but also Helmeppo! Everyone shits on Helmeppo because... well, he's kind of a shit, but it's always nice to see that offscreen character development where he grows from a spoiled rich nepotism-driven brat into... well, not a nice guy, but at least Koby's friend. And it's nice to see him humbled by both Garp and Koby. 

The scenes cut back and forth a bit, but Garp takes an interest in Koby's interesting outlook on life, and begins to train him in the art of strategy. Or at least, tell him to play go with him. Ultimately, the lesson Koby learns is that it doesn't pay to be always on the defensive all the time. Again, it's not the most intricate or revolutionary scene, but it's extremely well-done. Koby always had the ethics of a 'good' Marine, and it's just him having to build up confidence that sometimes he needs to trust his gut when acting. Ultimately, around halfway across the episode, Garp promotes Koby as senior cadet when they find the abandoned sloop with the doodle Straw Hat flag, because "nepotism can only get [Helmeppo] so far."

Luffy, Zoro and Nami arrive in Syrup Village, and we get a lot of small changes that really does help to tie the dozen chapters or whatever that the manga equivalent of this storyline into a much tighter plot. Syrup Village in this incarnation is a shipmaking town, which makes the payoff of our heroes getting the Going Merry at the end of the two-parter much more built up. Usopp is even noted to be working as a dockworker, explaining both what he works as in the village, as well as why Kaya's family is so rich. That line where Usopp tries to use big words to make 'scraping barnacles' sound cool is also a great introduction between Usopp and the rest of the Straw Hats. Of course, Zoro and Nami can see through Usopp's bullshit immediately, and that's glorious. 

In addition, during the discussion of getting the ship, we do get a lot more insight into Luffy's childlike mentality, and his... very unique definition of what makes someone a 'pirate', which baffles Nami and Zoro when Luffy is so resistant to the idea of pirates stealing a ship. That said, though... I'm not a fan of Merry's hideous-smiling-Baphomet goat head in live action. It looks a bit better in the actual show as we rotate around it, but it actually looks kind of terrifying which is not what I would want for Going Merry. The Netflix adaptation has actually dodged a lot of the bad 'let's make things desaturated and realistic' design choices that make a lot of live-action adaptations so disappointing... but with Merry, I think it really feels like something that a less-passionate adaptation would make up. 

Also, a small detail that's cut out entirely are the three kids that follow Usopp around. The Usopp Pirates or whoever they're called... which is a smart move, because they honestly don't really add all that much; and taking them out of the adaptation makes Usopp's role as the town outcast (with only Kaya as his friend) a lot more poignant. 

A very interesting change, too, is that Buggy isn't just forgotten after his arc! And we don't get the adaptation of his silly hijinks adventure with giant birds and whatnot, no. Buggy just reassembles himself in the ruins of his big top... and then Kuro'obi shows up, representing Alrong, and one-shotting Buggy with a Fishman Karate punch. It's a very simple shonen manga trick and it's one that One Piece employs with regularity in future arcs, but it really is nice to build up someone that's going to be the final villain of the season. It also has the bonus of giving Buggy some more scenes, and I totally get that the showrunners realize they have a goldmine in Jeff Ward's Buggy. Around two-thirds of the episode, Arlong himself does show up, because he's the equivalent of the biggest mob boss in the East Blue. Buggy sweet-talks his way and worms his way into building up that "little rubber prick" Monkey D. Luffy as the real guy disrespecting Arlong. This seems to set up Buggy into working as an unwilling minion for Arlong... and while I'm not sure how far this will go to the end of the season, it's definitely a welcome change that helps tighten up the East Blue plot and making the major players a bit more interconnected. 

(Arlong's depiction in live action is... it's a'ight. Could've stood to be bulkier, but he looks better in motion than in still shots. Not ideal, but acceptable. Actor's great.)

Anyway, after checking in with both Buggy and Koby's part of the world, our heroes are brought by Usopp into Kaya's mansion. The whole talk about rich people gets some really nice lines about Nami and how her character would ultimately be tied around money and thievery. The foreshadowing about Nami's nature and how she's not just a greedy thief is seeded early on in the manga as well, but it's a fair bit more prominent here, particularly with certain interactions she would have with Kaya later on. 

Also, it's not just Kuro/Klahadore infiltrating the mansion as Kaya's butler and that's it. Sham and Buchi have also done the same, with Sham becoming the cook (and that hairdo is rather impressive) while Buchi is the maid (he's also a she in this version, but let's be honest, I don't think anyone cared?). It really does kind of make sense that the mansion had more than just a couple of people maintaining it, and it does eliminate the otherwise irrelevant rest of the Black Cat Crew. Sham and Buchi as a pair of siblings that are constantly being catty at each other is unobtrusive enough while also marking them as being more than just background characters. 

And I suppose this is as good a time to mention the fact that this is the elimination of one of the bigger characters in the show -- Jango the Hypnotist, who actually is one of my favourite characters in this arc! Jango ultimately doesn't have a particularly large role in the grand scheme of things, but I really am very surprised that Jango didn't at least make a cameo in a flashback with Kuro and Morgan... even if they had to cut Jango out of the present-day storyline, I am actually genuinely disappointed that this part is cut out. It really is kind of a shame that they kept the much-less-interesting Sham and Buchi instead of Jango, but on the other hand it's a lot easier to choreograph a fight with two melee fighters compared to Jango's bizarre hypnotism? I still find that reducing his role into nothing more than a bounty poster is a bit annoying, but otherwise it's... it's okay?

We get the introduction to Kaya, who's... well, she's Kaya all right, a rich but very nice ojou-sama who is sickly and Usopp's best friend. And Kuro/Klahadore, and god damn they managed to replicate the snotty tall butler look from the manga extremely well. Right down to the poop drawings on his coat! Again, the story of Kuro pretending to be a butler to infiltrate Kaya's household, and being pissed off at this ratty young street-rat that Kaya somehow really likes... the story is nice enough to be a stepping stone, and it's done well enough to come off as super-simple. There are a couple of extra details like the addition of secret passages in Kaya's gigantic mansion that Usopp sneaks in and out of. Love the fact that they kept the way that Kuro fixes his glasses with the palm of his hand even though nothing in the show actually calls out attention to it like the manga. 

We get the giant room full of fancy clothes that Luffy, Nami and Zoro pick out clothes from. Love that sequence, where Nami tries to get input from the boys about her outfits, and all she can get out of Luffy is "you're still Nami!". Nami goes into a bit of a rant about how the rich people in the world want nothing, while Luffy is as always super-optimistic about the people around her, particularly Kaya and Usopp.

We get some 'as you know' re-establishment of Klahadore's connection to Kaya, as she keeps getting herbal, medicinal tea that's tinged blue. And the episode trickles out this revelation across this episode and the next, but we fix one of the largest plot holes in the original version of the arc -- Kuro's plan... really is just kinda weird? It hinges on Kaya... maybe dying from her illness... and he can live in the mansion? Here the plan is a bit more explicit that Kuro killed Kaya's parents (which is ambiguous in the manga) and is slowly using Sham's blue soup to poison Kaya and hopefully kill her off right after she's old enough to sign over ownership and management of the dockworking business to her faithful butler Klahadore. A lot of the broad strokes are still identical to the manga version of this arc, but it's connected and condensed so well. 

There's the banquet, which takes a fair bit of time and I'm honestly going to gloss over most of it. There are a fair amount of nice little hints that Kuro's mask is breaking down, like his perfectionist nature scaring the shit out of Sham and Buchi; and Pirate Hunter Zoro managing to think of having met Kuro before. We also get the arrival of Merry, who is still a weird sheep-man... and he's actually the guy in charge of Kaya's family financial affairs. Kuro's protectiveness over Kaya ends up rubbing the Straw Hats (and eventually Merry) the wrong way, when Kuro shuts down any talk of the specifics of the will, as well as refusing to let Kaya eat anything other than Sham's nasty blue soup. Luffy jumps on top of the table and does an earnest speech about dreams and ships and whatnot, but this coincides with Kaya's coughing fit and causes Kuro to use that as an excuse to force them out of the mansion the next day. 

We get a scene straight out of a serial killer film as Merry confronts Klahadore, wanting to discuss the matters of the estate with Ms. Kaya instead of Klahadore. He's not backing down because it's very close to the point of no return, and... well, I forgot that Kuro had super-blitzing speed! As he zips around the darkened cellar and Merry is utterly terrified, Kuro unsheathes his utterly impractical but badass-looking finger-mounted blades and murders Merry. Yes, murder. It's kept a bit more ambiguous in this episode, but the next episode confirms that Merry is well and truly dead in this continuity, a change that is definitely for the better. Not that I dislike Merry, but it definitely is a nice little additional bit that increases the stakes of this arc and the danger of Kuro. 

Meanwhile, in a glorious gag that I missed on my first watch, Zoro gets lost on a straight corridor, bumps into Luffy and heads off to the kitchen for a snack. Nami, meanwhile, is burglarizing the silverware, like the glorious cat burglar that she is... and accidentally walks into Kaya's room. Kaya knows what Nami is doing, and doesn't really begrudge her, and... the two kind of strike a bond? Kaya gets a bit more of a personality as she gets pissed off at Nami initially trying to treat her like a fragile glass plate, and the two bond a bit over their own personal stories. This sequence runs all the way until near the end of the episode, and ultimately Nami tells Kaya not to let Klahadore rule all of her life... something that Nami probably experienced by her own more overtly hostile captor, Arlong. (Except, of course, Klahadore isn't obviously evil to Nami at this point) Showing the golden part of her 'thief with a heart of gold' character archetype, Nami ends up returning the stuff she robbed. 

Meanwhile, the boys get a nice little bro-bonding session in the kitchen, where we first see Usopp's slingshot skills for the first time. We cut back and forth between Usopp and Kaya talking about their respective feelings for each other, as well as Kaya's horrible situation... and Usopp originally refuses to go out to sea because he has an obligation to protect his friend. The conversation goes to Usopp's marksmanship, and there's a cute little moment which I always loved from the manga where Luffy tells Usopp that, yes, Yasopp the Great is a very successful and badass pirate. We also get a great melancholic shot from Usopp as he seems to consider the way that Luffy talks about Yasopp because Luffy knows about Yasopp more than he does. 

As Luffy gorges himself on Sham's poisonous soup, Zoro and Usopp head off to the wine cellar to find Merry's corpse. Usopp panics, while Zoro finally recognizes Kuro for the Captain of the Black Cat Pirates. There is a bit of a weird disconnect where the line about how Morgan perpetuated the fact that Kuro is dead. In the manga, this is because he was hypnotized by Jango into thinking that he's actually killed Kuro, but I suppose the reference kind of works in the context that Morgan is just that big of a blowhard? If anything, it makes Netflix!Morgan a much more horrible person because he's just constantly twisting the facts about what's going on. 

Zoro and Kuro clash a bit, and... Zoro very anticlimactically gets whacked in the head by Buchi with a wine bottle. It's dumb, yes, and I really did wish that it was Kuro's super-speed that took Zoro out or something. But in the manga, Zoro was literally 'trapped' with an oil trap, with him spending most of the manga's finale trying to run up a hill with oil slathered onto it. In this sequence, Sham and Buchi simply assume Zoro's killed, and dump both his unconscious body, Merry's corpse, and the three swords into the well in the estate grounds. 

This sequence, with Merry dead, Zoro presumed dead, and Luffy knocked out by poison, really does ramp up the panic in Usopp's situation, with Kuro's ominous line that 'no one will believe Usopp anyway' coming true as Usopp rushes into town, yelling about how the pirates are coming and no one, absolutely no one, believes him. We get a brief finale of the flashback, showing that Usopp lies for the sake of his sick and dying mother... and in the moment of desperation, who else is there to lend a hand, but... KOBY? Yeah, ultimately, it's going to be Luffy that saves the day, but I do really love that Koby is behaving like what a heroic Marine should do -- which is to be the hand that saves those that are begging for help, like what Straw Hat Luffy does. 

I'm not the happiest with some of the changes in this arc, admittedly. Jango's loss still rubs me the wrong way, and not all the jokes land. But there is a lot to appreciate here, like the absolutely smashing acting by Kuro's actor; the involvement of Koby and Garp's Marine squadron in this arc; and the general reframing of Kaya/Klahadore's situation in town and making Kuro's plan fit a lot better. I felt like there was a way to make Usopp a bit more prominent in this episode, since I do think that Kaya (who ultimately won't be going with the crew) gets a significantly large amount of this episode's screentime. It's nice in the context of the arc, but ultimately I do feel like in the grand scheme of things I would've preferred Usopp being highlighted a bit more. 

One Piece Easter Egg Notes:

• The bushes in Kaya's mansion are cut to resemble the animals from the Island of Rare Animals, from the Gaimon chapter.
• Zoro asks if he has met Kuro at 'Funky Bar, Mirror Ball Island', which is a location featured in the Jango cover story. 
  
• Zoro picks up a bottle of wine called Ithurzburger Stein from Micqueot, the specific wine that Fullbody bullshits about when he pretends to know all about wine in the Baratie arc in the manga. Manga!Fullbody even describes the wine as 'sour and dry', a line that's specifically also printed on the bottle prop. 
• The penguin statues are explicitly based on the ones featured on chapter 17's chapter.
• In addition to colour spreads (Nami's orange-bandana outfit in this two-parter is taken from chapter 28; her cheongsam is from chapter 32), Luffy and Zoro wear the mafia-inspired outfits from the cover of the tankobon volume 11. 
• While the lie about a giant goldfish and an island made out of the shit of said droppings is from the manga (and became true in the Little Garden arc), the anime adds another prophetic lie, which is killing a dragon and eating it over roasted flame, which Usopp would do alongside the rest of his crew in Punk Hazard. 
• This one takes an eagle eye to see, but there's a news pamphlet on Usopp's flashback that says 'Actress Dies Tragically on Stage', with the name Victoria Cindry underneath the picture. In the manga, the Straw Hats would meet Cindry as a zombie in the Thriller Bark arc, but looking at the Wiki, the timeline would put her death at around Usopp's childhood.