Netflix's One Piece Season 2 Introduces The Funniest Character From The Anime

This episode contains spoilers for "One Piece" season 2, episode 6.

"One Piece" is one of the best-selling comic series ever, tied with "Superman," and it has one of the coolest, weirdest, worlds in all of manga and anime. Creator Eiichiro Oda is a big cartoon fan, and it shows. The world of "One Piece" is ridiculous, full of fantastical creatures, powers, and places. This is a story with an entire story arc modeled after a "Scooby-Doo" adventure, and another after classic Disney "Silly Symphony" animated shorts.

That's what makes the Netflix live-action adaptation such a surprise. It would be very easy for the streamer to go the way of comic book movie executives in the early 2000s and shy away from anything too comic book-y or too anime for this adaptation. In order to maximize universal appeal and capture interest from non-anime viewers, this version of "One Piece" could have, say, skipped the guy who has guns hidden in his wig, or the random side character whose hair is in the shape of a coat hanger. But "One Piece" is not only faithful to Oda's original manga, it embraces even the most ridiculous and over the top elements of it. Netflix's "One Piece" already passed its hardest challenge by bringing in the talking reindeer doctor, Chopper, this season.

Indeed, season 2 of "One Piece" doubles down on the cartoonishness of the first season. We get giants, dinosaurs, an enormous goldfish, character actor David Dastmalchian playing a man with wax powers, and the saddest whale you've ever met. But as funny and ridiculous as all that is, it pales in comparison to the funniest character in season 2 of "One Piece," who's also the funniest character in the anime.

All hail King Taco.

In episode 6 of "One Piece" season 2, we get flashbacks to Nefertari Vivi (Charithra Chandran) accompanying her father, King Cobra (Sendhil Ramamurthy), to the Reverie, a council of world leaders. The scene serves to illustrate the flimsy relationship between Drum Island and Alabasta, and to show that the king of Drum Island, Wapol (Rob Colletti), is the absolute worst. But most importantly, the Reverie is an excuse to showcase some of Eiichiro Oda's funniest and most ridiculous character designs. Among the leaders, we see a man who looks like Abraham Lincoln. This is Ham Burger, king of the Ballywood Kingdom, clearly meant to represent the United States.

The funniest of the bunch, however, is standing next to Wapol. He has a thick mustache, wears a sarape, and dons a sombrero with a cactus on top of it. This is none other than King Taco, the leader of the Kingdom of the Dead. He only makes one appearance in the anime, during the Reverie arc, but it's enough to make him extremely silly, funny, and unforgettable.

Eiichiro Oda excels at coming up with memorable, often ridiculous, character designs. He often works on the principle of recognizable silhouettes, ensuring that every character is instantly recognizable even if they're crudely drawn in the background of a scene. In the anime, King Taco doesn't do much other than just be a part of the gathering. He does, however, make a lasting impression when he proclaims he'd rather die standing than live while kneeling — a saying inspired by Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

Eiichiro Oda loves puns. There are plenty of character names, island names, attack names, and more that are plays on words and puns. The name Usopp (played by Jacob Romero Gibson in the live-action show) is a combination of the Japanese word for lie, "uso," and the legendary Greek figure Aesop, known for his fables. More recently, "One Piece" paid off a character's name being a stupid Marco Polo joke after 20 years. This is to say, the fact that he came up with a character very clearly designed after traditional Mexican culture and decided to name him King Taco is incredibly stupid — and also very funny.

Though the live-action "One Piece" doesn't give King Taco any dialogue, it still gives him a memorable and ridiculous scene. When we meet him, Rob Colletti's Wapol stands up to speak at a meeting of monarchs and cleans his dirty hands on Taco's sarape. The king immediately stares down Wapol in disdain and disgust before brushing off Wapol's stain on his clothes. What makes the scene funny is how reserved and quiet Taco is next to the extremely loud and obnoxious Wapol, with his facial expressions doing all the talking.

It's a very short appearance, but it's a gag that works better than other characters in the live-action series. That's because the camera focuses on this otherwise unassuming character in the background rather than the loud Wapol, a character whose name we actually hear before this scene. Taco is unnamed in the show, but fans know his name from the anime and manga.

King Taco is a testament of Oda's ability to create ridiculous characters and have their design do all the talking.