Yosaku

Yosaku wears a black shirt under a green coat, with red headgear knotted on top. Yellow plaid boxers cover his hairy, unshaven legs, his feet shod in dark shoes, and a cigarette is usually burning nearby. Like Johnny, he keeps a sword slung at his waist.

By the time the story jumps ahead, the coat is gone and his chest is bare, exposing a back tattoo that reads Big Catch, his arms now bulked up with muscle earned from his fishing work.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Johnny, one arm crossed over his torso while the other hand rests near his lips, the pair affect a solemn, serious air, yet at heart they are clownish and tender. Yosaku is the more sentimental of the two, capable of crying for hours over a tale of hardship and sulking whenever nobody bothers to listen to him. He holds a grab-bag of rumors about the world without the precise particulars to back them, a carelessness Zoro pinned on him over the Hawk-Eyes versus Drunk-Eyes blunder.

Danger normally sends him running, though food or a stirring story will make him forget his fears in an instant. Pushed hard enough, he finds the nerve to square off against someone like Arlong, and in keeping with Johnny he stubbornly insists that any defeat came down to the slimmest of margins.

Yosaku partnered with Johnny as bounty hunters before the two crossed paths with Zoro and grew close to him. Their tie to the Straw Hats began when scurvy struck Yosaku down; nursed back to health aboard the Going Merry by Nami, his illness drove home for the crew how badly they needed a cook, and the duo steered them to the Baratie. There Nami outfoxed the pair, lulled their guard, and made off with both their treasure and their boat.

Yosaku later turned up inside the mouth of a panda shark to warn that Nami was bound somewhere perilous, then sailed onward with the group to Arlong Park, explaining along the route how Arlong, bound up in Jinbe's deal with the World Government, had been turned loose on the East Blue. At the gate his courage failed, but after Nojiko recounted Nami's painful past he and Johnny rushed Arlong's crew, were swiftly flattened, and afterward held back the desperate villagers so they would not sacrifice themselves needlessly. Mid-fight the two passed Zoro their blades so he could cut down Hatchan. With Arlong beaten, they thanked the Straw Hats and went back to hunting, until a run of failures finally pushed them into settling as fishermen near Cocoyasi Village.