One Piece 805 Review: Bepo!

One Piece, Chapter 805: The Mink Race

Just typing whatever chapter I pull out and reviewing it. Anyway, One Piece now. On the surface it's just an arc introducing us to the weird aspects of this new island and all the insanity in it, but I do absolutely love how we're getting a fair amount of tie-ins to previous stuff that has been foreshadowed from all the way back to before the timeskip, things that people might've pieced together (I didn't) before.

The overall plot of this is relatively a generic 'Luffy causes a misunderstanding' where he gets to a fight with the guardians of the jungle, a gorilla Mink and a bull Mink, but the fight gets interrupted by Law's crew (who's hanging around), as well as Carrot and the Nami-clothes dog Mink, Wanda. We get the rest of the crew trying to solve the mystery of a destroyed city, and apparently Team Sanji has been killed -- no one except Usopp buys it... even though Usopp would be the sane one in-universe, Zoro and the rest are savvy enough to know that there's no way Sanji is going to die off-screen. We see some things that the Mink people can do -- Carrot can jump really high and at least Carrot and Rody the bull can use some kind of electrical technique.

We get some fun little moments with Robin's morbidity as well. Why has Robin been so underused in Dressrosa?

We get the return of Law's crew -- Bepo, Jean Bart (the big slave captain that Law rescued) and the other two nameless (?) dudes. And apparently Bepo himself is a polar-bear Mink man that just hung out with Law for like ten years. It's some intricate planning ahead, since both Bepo and the Mink tribe (as a single line in a price list) have been around ever since Sabaody.

Bepo being a Mink is something I honestly didn't consider even after knowing that the Mink people were, well, animal men! I just didn't consider that a world with Zoan Devil Fruits would have an entire race of beastmen, but why not? That goes to say that the lion-man that works for Big Mom (Pekoms?) is a Mink man too, since his Devil Fruit is a tortoise shell.

Bepo is trying to stop the Guardians and Luffy from beating each other up, but Wanda and Carrot manage to defuse the situation. For whatever reason Bepo's all bandaged up, and we get a fun little moment where they have no idea that this 'Traffy' dude Luffy's been talking about is Law. 

Meanwhile Team Zoro is investigating a ruined city and there are claw marks and giant footprints everywhere, and they find clues pointing that the battle was recent... and apparently the one who destroyed that city was Jack. So Jack, the Kaido-affiliated captain that's going to engage Sengoku's ship to retake Doflamingo... isn't just a random dude, and might shape up to be one of the arc villains instead of just Edward Weeble! Huh. And he might be an elephant Zoan of some sort? I don't think Jack's going to be the villain of this arc simply due to the fact that, he, y'know, left Zo already. But hey.

And, again, Jack is a character foreshadowed all the way back since the Mermaid Island arc. A fair amount of planning for this, yeah?

Not to mention the fact that an entire race of animal-men exists, and Kaido is amassing an army of artificial animal men... just what's going on? Is there some connection between the Mink men and Zoan Devil Fruits? Kaido's certainly mysterious himself, and we know that at the very least Jack and Sheepshead -- two villains that have connections to Zo -- are affiliated to Kaido. So what's going on? Not to mention the whole Zo having lived through the Void Century and everything... yeah, this is really going to be interesting.