#titus

Ever since Hoppers was released, it has been pointed out that Titus shares similarities with characters from the One Piece franchise. Which characters, one might ask? Without further ado, let’s get right into it and begin.

Usopp

Usopp is the sniper of the Straw Hat Pirates, and the former Captain of the Usopp Pirates. He is the son of Yasopp (the sniper of the Red Haired Pirates).

The first similarity he shares with Titus is the voice behind both characters. In the French version of the live action film, Usopp is voiced by Faustine Legrand when he was younger, while the caterpillar version of Titus was voiced by the same actress. Faustine Legrand is a French voice actress most known for voicing youthful male roles in anime, though she has voiced female characters as well, given she voiced ooooo, a female liquid supercomputer who aids Elio Solis on his adventures in the Communivers, in Elio. 

Second, both of them have tendencies to lie and/or manipulate, though Usopp is more mischievous and still heroic rather than villainous. Usopp makes a variety of lies, ranging from exaggerating his personal battles to making up stories about the strange creatures he encounters, to even using white lies that protect his loved ones. Many of his lies have come true later on, making them prophecies rather than genuine lies out of malicious intent. Titus, on the other hand, lies intensively to manipulate the Animal Council. The first instance of this is when after his mother dies accidentally at the hands of Mabel Tanaka, Titus cries only for him crying to become maniacal laughs as he steals the crown and declares himself the Insect King. The second is when Titus claimed Mabel stole and lied she was a beaver, when in reality Titus is a hypocrite whom he himself also has used humans to create a robotic clone of the male mayor Jerry Generazzo.

All that to say, these characters are very different, as Titus is not a pirate himself.

Tony Tony Chopper

Tony Tony Chopper is a reindeer that serves as the doctor of the Straw Hat Pirates and one of the Senior Officers of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. He is the sixth member of the crew and the fifth to join, doing so at the end of the Drum Island Arc, which is the 10th story arc of the manga and anime One Piece. Now you might be wondering how a reindeer doctor might be similar to a genocidal butterfly or spoiled caterpillar.

The main, if not only, similarity comes from the voice behind both of these characters. In the English version, the actresses are different, as Eman Abdul-Razzak is not an actress but a Pixar lighting director, something Daniel Chong has pointed out on Twitter. However, in other languages, their voice actors reveal otherwise. In Japanese, both of them were voiced by Ikue Otani, who also voiced Pikachu. In addition, the Turkish actress who voiced Titus, Ekin Ayca Gumus, has voiced Chopper in several of her Instagram clips.

Another is their negative interactions between humans, but it is done in a very different fashion. Tony Tony Chopper is merely naive and timid between humans. He acts like a child because he does not know any better. Meanwhile, Titus, even as a caterpillar, thanks to his mother the Insect Queen, has developed a strong hatred towards humans given humans have “squished” and hurt insects, interfering with their homes, and not only that, Titus is more self-centered and malicious and has developed a hatred towards vertebrates despite his previous alliances with them, revealing he was merely using them as pawns, despite them not willing to harm insects and the Amphibian King never once even making attempts to eat his mother even if he believed or had thoughts on how she tasted, only eating Titus when he betrayed the council, and even being the sole man behind crowning the ant as the next Insect Queen, something he does with the crown which is removed from Titus as soon as he was ingested whole. 

Tony Tony Chopper never once has thoughts of genocide, meaning Titus is merely similar to him due to their voice actresses in various languages. However, this does not restrict Titus to not being similar to non-villainous characters.

Yamato

Now there comes the character, yes there comes the character, we saw it coming! None other than… who?? (drumroll drumroll) NONE OTHER THAN, YAMATO!! Who is Yamato, one might ask? He is the child of Kaido, the former member of the Four Emperors of the Sea, who inspired by the legendary samurai Kozuki Oden, helps the Straw Hat Pirates liberate Wano, a fictional country within the story universe. 

Now, unlike the previous two, they have no similarities in terms of their voice actresses so at first glance just by sound alone they are very different. But, as we see later, in terms of other qualities they can be quite similar, even though Yamato is far from a genocidal megalomaniac.

Ever since the age of 8, Yamato began to idolize Kozuki Oden. Not only was he inspired by Oden, but he even declared himself to be “Kozuki Oden.” Titus, in a twisted way, shows a similar idolization towards Mayor Jerry Generazzo, even though it is more out of hatred and love, as his plan was to squish him, his kind, and as shown later on, vertebrates as a whole. Both Yamato and Titus began idolizing these respective men when they were younger. When Titus was a caterpillar, while his age may be ambiguous given he delayed his pupation he is still pretty childish as he is reliant on his mother, the Insect Queen, he found out about Jerry when Mabel Tanaka explains to the Council, led by the Insect Queen, about Jerry’s plans to take over animals’ habitats to secure the highway. Ever since, Titus grew an obsession for Jerry, just as Yamato did for Oden, even if it's more negative than the latter. Titus becomes like Jerry, just like Yamato later declares himself to be Oden. He does a reverse technology of the Hopper program, which Mabel did herself to disguise herself as a beaver despite being a 19 year old human girl, which helps him not only become a human, but become a clone of Jerry. Unlike Titus, Yamato never was a clone of Oden, he just declared he was Kozuki Oden. Titus also declares himself to be Jerry at the rally, even if it is more out of impersonation than Yamato identifying himself as Oden. 

While officially there have been no statements to contradict Titus’ gender being male, there are many contradictions, just as there has been with Yamato, to claim that he was male. Despite his male identity, Yamato has a feminine appearance, which differs from most transmasculine characters, leading Monkey D. Luffy in awe, as prior to this, Yamato referred to himself as “Kaido’s son” rather than “Kaido’s daughter.” Outside of impersonating Jerry, Titus’ wings as a butterfly also resemble more that of a female butterfly given its lack of black spots, and this can be similarly said for his caterpillar form, as despite his thick unibrow, he seems to be quite feminine especially given his antenna resembling that of pigtails. Yamato has long white hair tied into a ponytail using orange rods, which eventually fades into an aqua-green and bluish color the further it goes down, and he chose to don a similar type of clothing reminiscent of Kozuki Oden, though his breasts are shown rather than bound or removed. Not to forget, Titus’ struggles impersonating Jerry are reminiscent of a woman struggling when disguising as male. When he first impersonated Jerry, he questioned if the tie was a “tail for [his] neck,” awkwardly removing it. Second, he mocks male puberty while disguised as Jerry, mocking how his “voice has dropped” and how, thanks to that he “pupated into a man.” Most who go through puberty, whether trans or nonbinary (via testosterone) or cis (via puberty), do not exclaim this as they go through puberty to adulthood, and even if they do it is not out of arrogance or mockery unlike Titus given it doesn’t help he did it when he did so when disguised as Jerry, a man he supposedly hated, maybe if he did so as a butterfly, it would be more genuinely representative, but this is subverted by how disrespectful he was to his mother as well as his arrogance and malice. Even Yamato himself does not exclaim this, all he states is: "Well, Kozuki Oden was a man, wasn't he?! So I chose to be a man too!!"; Yamato uses the men's bathhouse, while it is presumed Titus would have done so when he was Jerry if the situation were to come, though as a butterfly and caterpillar it is not known.

While Kaido refers to Yamato as his son despite his abuse towards him, Titus was referred to by his mother as solely “Titus,” and not once was he referred to as a prince in the story, aside from official promotional materials and credits as the “Insect Prince” in various countries; Yamato was referred to in flashbacks as “Kaido’s daughter” or “Oni Princess” and supplementary material such as the Vivre Card - One Piece Visual Dictionary databook have him explicitly labelled as a female. As for Titus, he comes from a matriarchy, and he was the projected heir. Before he became Insect King, it was the Insect Queen, a female figure; after Titus dies, the next Insect King is passed to a female ant rather than a male, after the death of the royal monarch butterflies. If he was truly male, why would he not be given a father figure instead of a mother figure as his predecessor? This is especially since both beavers and ants are matriarchal. While Titus is a butterfly, which in reality is solitary, he is still matriarchal, as a female ant succeeds him the moment he dies. While King George also contradicts the gender of these matriarchies as Titus does at first glance, given he is referred to masculinely in official promotions, George, at least, has a patriarchy with his abusive father and his greedy paternal uncle to back him up, mentioning zero female family members in his backstory, unlike Titus, who solely has female family members and zero male family members. In addition, Titus and Yamato are voiced by women in the majority of the dubs. While it may not seem unusual given women voicing boys is standard practice, for Titus it is given the agency Hoppers comes from, which is Pixar and not anime. Pixar has cast actual children both domestically and internationally instead of women for boy roles. Plus, women (in general) train hard every day to sound like boys. Even in anime outside of children’s animations, these women who voice boys sound like boys! The Simpsons is more targeted at adults, and yet Nancy Cartwright’s Bart Simpson sounds like a boy and not a woman, showing women can and do voice boys, its just Titus is a woman voicing in her natural register rather than a boyish register voicing him. So to see a children-friendly animation have a boy sounding more like a woman, it is confusing, especially given it comes from the same agency that is least likely to do so given its emphasis on realism. When Ikue Otani provides the voice for Tony Tony Chopper or any of her male characters, she uses a boy register, which she has not done for Titus, making Titus sound more like Otani herself in her daily life outside of work, unlike Chopper, who sounds like a genuine male youthful reindeer. Even if in some dubs Titus is voiced by boys, such as Belgium with Kamiel Kolacny or Latin America with Elian Garces, as a caterpillar, and Titus later on is voiced by a man internationally whether it be Dave Franco, Pieter Verelst, Junya Hirano, or Carlos Vasquez Diaz, this is subverted due to his lack of screentime as a butterfly, indicating that these actors are more the mechanical voice of Robot Jerry the form he spends most of his time of if not the caterpillar. Not to forget his male voice as a butterfly was only for convenience, and while to the audience he sounded like his robot form due to them having the same voice actor, in-universe this may not have been the case, despite the actor being different from Jerry’s voice actor. It is also shown to be a glitching mechanical voice due to its sound when his robotic mask was removed by Mabel Tanaka as she and her gang try to fight against him. Same with Yamato, who sounds like a woman and has no boy register, due to being a grown adult character who presents more feminine, even though he identifies as a man. Speaking of which, Titus’ feminine voice was confirmed by Daniel Chong on a post on X (formerly Twitter) regarding his English and original voice, Eman Abdul-Razzak, who also praised Dave Franco for his performance as the Robotic Insect King.

Given Titus and Yamato’s background, Titus cannot be a cis man, especially given his wing anatomy, his vocal anatomy when he was a caterpillar, and his family background in contrast to the other monarchs; same with Yamato given his background story as “Kaido’s daughter” and the “Oni Princess”; Yamato is most likely a trans man. It is even debated constantly whether Yamato can even count as such though or if he is a cis woman, as most of his reasons for identifying as a male were mostly due to wanting to become Kozuki Oden, a dead entity, rather than his genuine authentic self, and the story does not take the time to address whether he actually identified as male if it were not for Oden. 

Personally for me, I think Yamato is a trans man, but he was definitely badly written with a lack of clarification, which can confuse the audience understandably. For Titus, whether he was a trans man, nonbinary, or a cis woman, it is even more debatable. Yamato declares he became a man because of Oden, while Titus mocks male puberty. Not to forget, Titus’ impersonation and taking over of Jerry’s identity was more so of misanthropy and his tendency to manipulate and mock others rather than idolization and becoming like their idol unlike Yamato. Especially when he even shows distaste for men's ties, as shown later on. He basically poses as his victim rather than his idol (Yamato for Oden) which he supported for years. Even if Yamato also impersonates Oden to some extent, this was more out of idolization than hatred, even if both of them were obsessed with Oden or Jerry to the point they want to become them, respectively. 

Not to forget it is not even sure if a villain who is genocidal is a good representation of transmasculine characters (whether nonbinary or a trans man), unlike a hero who saves the day and protects Wano, as it is never dived deeper that Titus is inconsistently heinous, only that he is consistently heinous given his genocidal revolution and his bratty and spoiled personality, as it is not even sure if he cared for his mother or not, the only hint is Mabel telling him he definitely cared for his mom at the rally which is subverted by Titus’ manical laughs. Either way, because of this ambiguity, there is no issue in using she/her for Titus, unlike for Yamato, who is almost certainly he/him even amidst the ambiguity of his reasoning for identifying as a man.

Conclusion

it’s one of Jerry’s outfits, unfortunately i can’t find the reference photo to compare with

fair warning: if ya thinking of following, that i don’t draw hoppers AS MUCH anymore 💔

heh