One Piece, Chapter 823: A World Abuzz
I immensely enjoy One Piece chapters that show what's going on all over the One Piece world. That's one of those things that make One Piece so good as a manga. It really wins out in worldbuilding by getting old supporting characters out of the way while still making them relevant to the plot. This chapter goes around showing a lot of characters. We get a good chunk showing Vivi, Cobra and the rest of the Alabasta supporting characters being escorted by the marines under Hina to the Reverie, and we get some funny moments where everyone has to keep remembering that, hey, Vivi being a pirate temporarily is not cool with the marines. Cobra talks a bit about how he needs to attend the reverie to find out the truth about the poneglyphs.
We get King Stelly, otherwise known as Sabo's asshat brother, and while we don't see his face he's still a smarmy elitist twat. Apparently the Kano Country's war is over, and since Sai and Chinjao aren't back yet they won't attend the reverie. We get to see other kingdoms. Wapol, Dalton, Kureha, Viola, Rebecca, Mansherry, King Elizabello (whose castle's roof is a flexing man and that is hilarious), Shirahoshi... we also get a montage of other kings who we have never seen before, but it's cool seeing how many allies the Straw Hats have amongst the kingdoms. Who knows, maybe we'll have a big civil war? We also see the positive effect that the Straw Hats' liberation efforts have done to Drum Kingdom, Dressrosa and Alabasta, as well as allowing the Fishman Islanders to join the reverie for the first time.
Carrot stows away on the Thousand Sunny and just acts cute and she's just so out of touch with actually how big the world is. Her antics are funny, I guess, though it's something I could do without. Then a News Coo drops in a newspaper saying that the Revolutionary HQ, Baltigo, is in ruins.
One Piece, Chapter 824: Little Pirate Games
This news about the Revolutionaries being defeated -- they're not killed, of course. Captured or routed, but this is One Piece. We don't resolve series-long arcs off-screen. What do you think this is, Toriko? We get a hilarious moment where Luffy is like 'oh, shit, this is my dad?' He knows that this Monkey D Dragon dude is his father, but it's natural that Luffy doesn't care nor does he ever consider looking up what Dragon looks like. There's a bit of a discussion about Sabo, and apparently Brook has met Dragon before? Dammit Brook, why are you so mysterious in these recent chapters?
But apparently by the time Cipher Pol showed up, the Blackbeards had escaped. Pedro notes that if Dragon or Sabo had been captured or killed, they would've mentioned it. We get some funny stuff with Luffy's attempts to cook, but that's mostly fun filler.
Jack survived, and apparently he's just stuck at the bottom of the ocean because he's... a fishman or something? He's got shark teeth, and maybe those horns on the side of his head are actually from those bull fighting fish? Maybe he's a half-fishman like Dellinger, since Vander Decken can walk around the seafloor just fine. So he can sink and breathe underwater, but he can never drown... man, what a sad life!
Meanwhile, Kaidou is just being drunk. It's hilarious to see him crying over the loss of the Smile project, then he goes on a drunken rage and whacks a bunch of stupid mooks into the sky for daring to insinuate that the Straw Hats are a problem. Kaidou is angered, and blames Doflamingo for being weak. He also notes how Law and Luffy are from the supernova generation, and tells Eustass Kidd, who's beaten up and imprisoned, to go tell Luffy and Law that 'up until this moment we're only playing little pirate games'. And Kaidou just doesn't give a fuck about everything, viewing something like taking out Shichibukai members as trivial. And, yeah, considering how Doflamingo is scared shitless of Kaidou...
Meanwhile, we finally see Sanji in the flesh, and he's talking with Baron Tamago. Sanji refuses to join with Big Mom pirates and only wants to talk, and makes it clear that he has burned his bridges with the Vinsmoke family. Sanji is pissed about how they left Pekoms to die, but it's an offhanded remark instead of something that Fairy Tail would make into a big 'moment'. And going all 'I will only cook food for my friends' is one of the most badass yet hilarious things he can say.
Vito shows up and brings up a picture of Sanji's bridge-to-be, Charlotte Purin, and, well, she's the cute three-eyed girl we saw all the way back during the Fishman Island arc next to Big Mom. Except her bangs are covering her third eye. Sanji's in looove though and that's fun.
Yeah, a pair of satisfying chapters, all things considered.
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