One Piece, Chapter 803: Climbing the Elephant
This chapter's title is certainly appropriate. Luffy's crew does jack shit in this chapter other than climbing that elephant, which takes place in two scenes at the beginning and the end of this chapter. The Barto Club ship dock next to the Thousand Sunny, and apparently Bartolomeo is just going off to go on his way and not interrupt his senpai's "holy pilgrimage". Bartolomeo does this tearful goodbye and pledges to be a good subordinate and whatnot and honestly I expected him to be far more dramatic than this -- if he leaves Luffy at all. Luffy does remember part of his name, so Bartolomeo can die happy I guess. Anyway it's exit stage left for the Barto Club, easily my favourite among the new characters introduced in the Dressrosa arc.
Kanjuro conjures up this, uh, really sad-looking pigfaced dragon thing who tries its best to climb up the giant elephant's leg all shivering and shit. Everyone thinks it is pathetic... except for Nico Robin! How adorable, Robin! It's cute indeed.
The last two pages of this chapter just shows that Team Luffy, Law and the Samurai are just climbing up Zo's leg, and both Kin'emon and Kanjurou promises to tell everything (a two-year old mystery no one cares about, honestly) about the samurai and their backstory and all that bullshit, but their main priority is meeting up with Momonosuke and their third comrade... Raizo the Ninja. Samurais and Ninjas working together? Pirates and Ninjas woring together? MADNESS!
Everyone goes all "eh, he's a ninja?" expression that the Straw-Hat males make whenever mechas and robots come up... and hilariously this includes Law. Who's just turning around with the rest of the Straw Hats all >:( and shit. Something flies down towards Luffy and that's the cliffhanger, but who the fuck cares?
We visit three dudes who we have not seen since the timeskip, one of whom I don't think ever got a proper scene.
We see the Revolutionary Army Base "Baltigo", and we get formally introduced, finally, to Monkey D. Dragon, looking badass as fuck. And the Revolutionary Army's, well, revolution is going on pretty well, in no small part to the Donquixote Army's downfall. But Dragon mentions that the Cipher Pol is growing in strength over the years, and tells his troops not to be careful. Koala confirms that it was the Revolutionaries who took the weapons from Dressrosa, and apparently Dressrosan weapons are made up of some special kind of Wine Steel or Liq-Ore depending on the translation, though that gets glossed over.
Dragon asks about Robin -- apparently the fake Robin's capture in Shabaody is 'news', nice little callback -- and curiously Dragon doesn't really care about news of Luffy despite being the boy's father. Although I guess Dragon just doesn't know Luffy as well as he does Robin. Which is a shame. Though he does mention that Sabo (who's training with his Mera Mera no Mi) has told him everything, so maybe he just doesn't like repetition. Dragon then tells Koala to gather the leaders of the Revolutionary Army together, to which Koala responds that they're gathering a bunch of weirdoes. Well, we know Emporio Ivankov and Bartholomew Kuma are, well, hilariously weird, but I'm just curious to see just what the top brass of the Revolutionary Army is like. We can't have everyone be cool motherfuckers like Monkey D. Dragon, after all.
Do we know any of the other members of the Revolutionary Army? Wouldn't it be cool if, oh, Crocodile or Rayleigh or whoever is revealed to be a member of the Revolutionary Army? Don't think it's likely, though.
We then cut away to two Blackbeard log-ships! Again, despite the fact that his presence is everywhere ever since the timeskip, we've never seen Blackbeard or his crew, Burgess aside, since the Marineford Wars. Man, all these dudes we haven't seen in a while coming out of the woodwork! We see Shiliew and Lafitte getting a call from Burgess. Apparently they went to retrieve Burgess in Dressrosa, but the dude isn't around. Shiliew "of the rain" is one of the fleet commanders of the Blackbeard Pirates, specifically the second fleet. "Demon Sheriff" Lafitte is the leader of the fifth fleet.
Burgess is in kind of a shit state, and while Lafitte and Shiliew are just being cool and rather down to business, Burgess just asks them to come get him -- there are lots of weapons, though no one knows where he is. Burgess tells Lafitte and Shiliew to follow his vivre card there, since he's snuck on board the weapon smuggles and followed the Revolutionaries back to Baltigo! Well. Blackbeard Pirates versus the Revolutionaries?
We cut away to the final point of interest in this chapter, "Star Clown" Buggy, who is based in Kalai Bali Island. Buggy is dressed in some long-flowing big cape that I assume he's using the Bara-Bara no Mi to make himself look bigger. Apparently Buggy's running some big pirate dispatch business, and with Doflamingo taken out of the picture, Buggy's pirates are the alternative since all the people fighting the wars need manpower and Buggy's army is all up for the task.
Behind Buggy, his commanders -- Alvida, Mr. 3, Fat Mohji, Cabahji and the lion who's wearing clothes and shit -- are just eating and whatnot, and they inform Buggy that Hajrudin and the four other giants with him are quitting. Well, that's a surprise! So Hajrudin was working for Buggy? Well. Buggy really wouldn't want to know why Hajrudin quit, that's for sure. It's a fun little scene.
Man, we're just doing nothing these past few chapters except re-establish the setting of the new arc, a giant zombie elephant island... and just cutting back and forth between some characters who we haven't seen in a long time, and some new players... getting reintroduced to the sheer scale of One Piece after the rather messily-paced Dressrosa is absolutely welcome. Hopefully whatever big war we have will be more Marineford and less Dressrosa. Overall pretty fun chapter. We see the Blackbeard Pirates and how they operate. We get our first dose of Monkey D. Dragon and I love him.
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