One Piece, Chapter 790: Heaven and Earth
Well, finally this chapter is something really good! Doesn't completely excuse the utterly pointless bullshit detour we had with Gats and the last chapter and Birdcage, but this chapter was really really good! Also One Piece apparently got a Guiness record for selling the most printed material worldwide or something along those lines, so good stuff. It's got its poorer moments, of course, but One Piece is easily one of my (if not the) favourite mangas ever so yeah good for it.
Doflamingo and Luffy face off with each other for a bit, with Luffy still huffing and puffing (though he regained his Haki) while Doflamingo is... well, I'm just assuming he's really good at hiding his pain. He summons these giant stabby needles of string that kind of remind me of how Shukaku's body is formed out of sand tendril-things in Naruto. These giant string needles hit Luffy, though Law Room's Rebecca out of the way.
Doflamingo notes Law's presence, but doesn't really bother with him, and uses 'Ever White', which transforms the ground all around them into string, and binds Luffy up. Doflamingo then uses something he calls 'A Thousand Arrows: Flap Thread' or something like that, which is a lot of sharp needles coming into Luffy. Luffy blocks it with his Armament Haki, but he still bleeds quite a bit and gets hit into the mountain... again and again.
We then see Luffy stumble forwards, all bloodied and shit, but apparently Doflamingo's moving him along with his strings. This is alternated with a short flashback of Luffy and Rayleigh, and Luffy talks to Rayleigh about wanting something bigger than Kong Gun, and Rayleigh apparently wants to teach Luffy something new. Doflamingo continues to do the I-can-do-no-wrong rant, blaming everyone for not acting as nice little puppets, and this pisses Luffy off.
Luffy activates Gear Fourth again, snapping all of Doflamingo's strings, and Geppo's into the air. Doflamingo himself shoots into the air after Luffy, followed by his giant string needles. Luffy does an angry rant about how Doflamingo had everything controlled, punctuated with short panels showing the gladiators, the transformed toys, the Tontatta, King Riku and Bellamy, while Doflamingo goes all 'curse your blood for being born as trash'.
Luffy does... Gear Third on his Gear Fourth arm, blowing into it, while Doflamingo creates a giant Spider-Web shield while launching his 'sixteen rounds of holy ammunition', the 'God Thread'. But Luffy brings down his giant King Kong Gun (not to be confused with Kong Gun before) and it hits Doflamingo right in the face and cracks his glasses. The panel showing Doflamingo being hit shows him almost disintegrating, though I'm sure he didn't actually die because this is One Piece.
We then get an awesome wide shot of Doflamingo being sent straight down, with the remnants of Spider Web looking like Luffy just pulled a Whitebeard and broke the sky. We get a short reprise of Rocinante's line while Law looks on with a cool look on his face. "There's a family that goes by the name D. God's biggest archenemy" while Doflamingo's ever-present sunglasses clatters onto the ruins.
Doflamingo is down! That was awesome. Really, really would be more impactful if we went from the Gear Fourth chapter to maybe a chapter of Luffy recovering (we could pillage the good Sabo, Viola and Law parts and sneak in a short montage of Birdcage) and straight into this. Dressrosa's biggest weakness is really stretching things on for too long... but Doflamingo is finally down and what a freaking awesome villain he was.
Hopefully the follow-up to Dressrosa doesn't take that long, though... we have Fujitora, Burgess and Sabo still outstanding but hopefully Fujitora won't give the Straw Hats that much bullshit, and we can wrap up Burgess and Sabo next chapter -- wouldn't mind a couple of chapters showing them fighting. Hopefully we can return to Team Sanji after two years of not seeing them. What happened with them and Big Mom? I really miss those dudes.
Next up... Kaido, I guess?
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