Netflix’s One Piece adaptation has activated every Buggy simp

Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, and die-hard fans will find something lovable about nearly any character — no matter how deplorable or slimy they seem.

Netflix released the live-action adaptation of the anime series One Piece in August. While the show revived interest in the series as a whole, it also brought newfound attention to one particular member of its cast. Now, a clown pirate named Buggy is getting loads of horny fan edits on TikTok. The trend might baffle some, but for others, the live-action show has inspired a much-needed renaissance era for the slept-on character.

One Piece follows a boy named Luffy and his quest to become the greatest pirate in the world. As he explores, Luffy meets a whole cast of colorful characters, including Buggy, a clown pirate with Joker-esque vibes who challenges Luffy and his newly formed crew to a fight. The perfect match to Luffy’s rubber powers, Buggy wields the power of the Chop Chop Devil Fruit, which allows him to break his body apart and control individual parts with ease.

A swoony Jeff Ward plays Buggy in the live-action, although you can barely see his face with how thickly he wears the clown makeup. Equal parts goofy and self-aggrandizing, Ward effuses a certain kind of swagger in Buggy that the character doesn’t always earn. He’s not exactly suave, but his confidence has a certain magnetic pull. Whatever he’s doing, it seems to be working for him, because I — along with every seemingly other person interested in One Piece — have been served up loads of Buggy edits by the TikTok algorithm.

The videos in question edit together moments of the live-action series that show off Buggy. A lot of them are set to sexy girl pop songs, like Britney Spears’ “Circus” and the allegedly leaked Ariana Grande single “Fantasize.” A rather simple edit with blurred transitions of footage has over 2.3 million views at the time of publication, and TikTok is filled with dozens of other viral Buggy fan videos.

I’m not joking when I say there are just so many of them.

There is truly no need for these, but I’m glad they exist. People have already been making jokes about how many Buggy edits are flooding TikTok.

Fans seem like they would do anything for crumbs of this man. This TikTok is just a recording of Buggy on a television, and it has over 1.7 million views.

While the current horniness for Buggy might be focused on the live-action show, the Netflix adaptation also awakened the dormant but pre-existing Buggy fandom. Polygon spoke to a longtime One Piece fan and self-identified Buggy simp who goes by the name L online and said they originally liked Buggy for his “good vibes, thick thighs, and a small waist,” but later liked getting to know him as a character.

Without spoiling too much of One Piece, Buggy continues to play a larger role in the story and appears in new ways. L’s comments and other TikToks from fans emphasized that a part of his appeal is that he is incompetent and continuously fails upwards.

Of course, each fan will see different things they love in each character. For some girlies online, Buggy embodies certain ideals of an internet babygirl, or popular character tropes for those on Booktok. For L, Buggy’s androgynous appearance in later arcs was a draw as well.

“I also think an aspect of it is that he reads as somewhat queer and gender non-conforming, which I personally like. He’s very masc at the beginning but still, no completely cishet person dresses like that. Then his whole Ariana Grande look at Impel Down is just flawless. And then post-timeskip, what gender-nonconforming person hasn’t wanted to be just a head atop a giant shapeless sack?”

Buggy has always been a sleeper character, and now there’s more to love.

“I think the live-action Buggy is like if he escaped and had been running around in the woods for a while,” L continued. “A little dirty, kinda feral, but he just needs a bath and a snack — I don’t love him any less.”