One Piece Chapter 768: The Trigger Back Then
Cover page's still meandering about Jinbei investigating this stupid rain of buildings or whatnot. I cannot honestly say I really give a shit anymore unless there's some huge plot twist and it turns out to be, oh, the third Navy Admiral or Kaido or Shanks or someone doing it just for shits.
Thankfully we don't see more flashbacks. It was a great flashback, but it's high time we get back to the present.
We get a short half-page recap of Corazon's death as we cut back to Law's fight against Doflamingo. Law activates Room and throws a rock behind Doflamingo, using Shambles to switch places right before Doflamingo string-slashes down onto where he is. That's pretty cool. Law trash-talks Doflamingo, who definitely isn't smiling now, going all 'what do you think of the name D?' and 'I just found out you're a Celestial Dragon!' and all that stuff, driving Doflamingo mad, and I thought it was pretty cool how Law is just egging on Doflamingo, who's apparently known to be able to play to other people's emotions and just make them get pissed.
Law tries to stab Doflamingo with his sword, but Doflamingo stops it by arming his hand with that Busoshoku Armament Haki, and just grabs the sword and pulls Law towards him. He tries to slash Law right in the face with these strings and that panel where he suddenly turns looks pretty cool. He's all 'do you think you can take the head of someone descended from the gods' and seems to go in for the kill... but Law activates his own Busoshoku Haki and it's pretty freaking cool! I don't think we've ever seen Law use Haki before, and definitely not Busoshoku Haki, and apparently Doflamingo hasn't either, judging on the surprised expression on his face.
And then Law goes 'I am a D as well', which makes Doflamingo like super-duper pissed.
Though Law guarded against it, the force of Doflamingo's string slash thing is apparently so powerful that it cut a visible chunk of the palace away.
We cut away from the fight and get a few panels of what's going on around the city, with people still fighting and burning stuff. For a moment I thought that Birdcage is being withdrawn, and it might actually be, depending on what that sound effect in Japanese means. I'm confused. That panel could go either way.
We cut to Viola and King Ricky, and Viola's using her Giro Giro Fruit powers to see everything and bring the King (and the audience) up on what's happening. Law is fighting Doflamingo, and apparently Luffy was thrown down to the floor below? I honestly didn't remember this detail happening, nor do I have a clue where Luffy is at the moment. Hopefully we can get a break from the standard main-character-takes-down-arc-villain and have Law get his well-deserved revenge on Doflamingo!
We get a short glimpse of the marines (not Fujitora or Bastille, though) trying to put out the fires, and the two samurai tending over the wounded Usopp. Which is good, because other than Franky-vs-Senor and Zoro-vs-Pica I'm kind of confused as to where everyone else is. Granted it'd be better if we get a little more conventional and actually show some of these other fights, those two in particular, as actual chapters, but I guess it's all been done and we're doing this setup right now? We get this cool two-page spread as Viola describes where the members of the Donquixote family are all located.
Except, you know, Sugar, who's taken out by the power of Usopp's face, and Buffalo who's I guess dead? We haven't seen him ever since Kairos pulls that awesome-looking neck-breaking suplex on him and throws him out of the tower. I hope he doesn't, because he looks funny.
We also get epithets for most of the Donquixote pirates, and what I presume to be the official English spelling of their names. "Free Swimmer" Senor Pink is guarding the facility. "Living Statue" Pica is on top of the giant statue that used to be him, of course. Oh, and it's Pica instead of Peeka or Pika or Pikachu or whatever. Diamante is on the fourth level, Doflamingo and Trebol are on the highest-level floor... what happened to Trebol, anyway? Gladius is on the third level, and Lao G, Machvise, Baby 5 and Dellinger are on the second level. We get a few details about these two, with Lao G apparently being a practitioner of the 'Chicken Technique' which is hilariously ridiculous, and Dellinger... being a half-merman of fighting fish descent, which is not something I expected! I guess all those fighting fish things from before ended up being useful after all.
Viola goes all 'the end of the battle isn't far off', and I am honestly worried that all the things that've been built up to are just going to be montages of Zoro, Franky, Kairos and everyone else taking down their marks. On one hand, I can understand that this arc's been dragged on for a fair bit, and the writer probably regrets introducing so many characters a bit, but on the other hand I'll absolutely welcome if the fights against Gladius, Pica, Senor Pink and all the rest are properly explored.
We get a little two-page montage. First we see Senor Pink protecting a cat from being hit by Franky's punch and giving it this giant thumbs-up, and Franky wipes away those manly tears with the extendable hand from his giant cyborg hand like it's some kind of super-touching scene. Man, I love Franky. He hasn't gotten a lot of screentime. We then get a bit of Zoro and Pica, still swordfighting. Bartolomeo has apparently recovered and has erected a barrier to cover 'Robin-senpai' who's running up the barrier stairs, while Cavendish has made his way through the troops all the way to Gladius... so their fight is just starting? Huh. I had a feeling they already started the fight some time ago, but oh well.
Diamante and Kairos seem relatively well-matched, and Diamante does this 'Army Bantera' thing which seems to do something to the ground, and we don't really get to see the full result. Rebecca comments on the ground... yeah, good job not helping out your crippled father there, woman. Curious about Diamante's crazy ability and he's apparently able to use his rippling flag ability on things other than himself and his sword, so yay. We see the fucking Tontatta doing the Beelzebub style face-in-the-wall on a bunch of randoms and going off to rescue their princess... fuck the Tontatta. I honestly forgot they were in this arc at all. Man, the Tontatta could've been taken out and this arc would've been compressed so much better.
The next page is those characters introduced in the colosseum fighting with the Donquixote officers, which was mis-ordered in the first translation I read. We see King Punch (Elizabello, I think?) just punching. We then see Dellinger avoiding Demolition Cannon Ideo's explosions, and apparently Dellinger is still in the game, not taken out by... by whatever. I have a feeling he was in a bind last time we saw him. Machvise (this chapter confirms this spelling as opposed to Machvyse or whatever) uses his weight-altering powers to take down the giant dude Hajrudin.
We see Baby 5 fighting Sai, while her own hands have turned into sais. I thought this was a nice visual joke. But Baby 5, for some reason, is going 'what did you do', so maybe there's something else going on? Then Don Chinjao gets kicked right in the jaw by Lao G... that's one of the stronger competitors down there seemingly taken out, so these Donquixote pirates don't seem to be really pushovers, which is nice. We haven't really seen much of what Lao G can do, whereas Dellinger and Machvise have mostly been relegated into jokes during their little haphazard battle against Franky.
Freakin' Sabo and Koala are trying to evacuate the civilians, and Sabo! That's another character that needs more screentime. And I feel totally cheated we didn't get to see the full fight between Sabo and Fujitora. We get a bit of Viola talking, and then Fujitora's face.
Thankfully we cut back to the Law-Doflamingo fight, with Trebol apparently having pieces himself together after the events before we went into the flashback. Doflamingo gets completely pissed, trying to trash-talk Law and going all 'that D-is-the-natural-enemy is just superstition!' He's just lashing wildly with his finger-string things and Trebol shouts that Doflamingo's getting into Law's ability's range... and then Law brings his sword right into Doflamingo and does Injection Shot, the attack that Trebol was so scared of earlier.
Injection Shot pierces right through the side of Doflamingo's chest and straight through that silly feather boa thing, so that's definitely the worst hit that Doflamingo's taken all fight long. Pretty awesome. Law brings up some other dude's name, 'Hyaku', which I'm not sure is someone we've heard before. Law himself doesn't believe in all the name superstition, but he's going to kill Doflamingo regardless.
Overall still pretty entertaining. I'm fearful for the pacing of this arc, though. It has so much potential to be awesome, but there's just been so many things left in the sidelines. Kairos, Rebecca and Diamante... Zoro and Pica... Franky and Senor Pink... and whatever happened to Sanji, Brook and Nami, who meets that gigantic Big Mom ship? I think that hasn't been addressed. What about the Tontatta princess, or the Revolutionary Army, or Jesus Burgess being there, or freaking CP-0 who everyone seems to forget with? Hell, there's just too many things going on, and if it's not done right it's going to be hella annoying. But I have faith. Relatively.
For now I'm just enjoying the Law-Doflamingo fight.
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