Fuck my computer for eating up all my reviews. Oh well. This week's chapters aren't all that essential, so let's just lump them all together.
Toriko, Chapter 384:
Some cool fight scenes as Midora finally walks up to Acacia, but fuck, man, they're trying their best to make Acacia as big of a dick as they can, yeah? Not enough that he's manipulating everyone to give him the power of Neo, and he wants to eat everyone, and he's killed Jirou, Bambina and so many others... he also taunts his adoptive son that he cheats on Froese all the time. What a dick, that Acacia. Most of the chapter is just fight scenes and some confirmation that there's some food spirit soul swapping around going on, and apparently Joie is Acacia and Froese's child, brought to life by the cure water? It's honestly the most anticlimactic revelation, just a stating of facts, and the big Joie mystery has gone so stale at this point. Oh well. Midora and Acacia are fighting, that was entertaining enough.
One Piece, Chapter 837:
Luffy and Cracker fight a bit, and Cracker just tanks Gear Third so Luffy has to go to Gear Fourth. Some decent action scenes. Nami fries Brulee with a lightning bolt, and Brulee and Cracker kind of build up the amount of power that Big Mom has, both politically and just the physical power of her crew. Apparently Kidd, Apoo and Urouge has stumbled into Big Mom's territory as well and got royally fucked off and driven away, while Bege chose to serve. Urouge apparently took out and/or killed the fourth candy commander that's on Cracker's level, which is surprising because back during the Supernovas arc Urouge seemed to be one of the less impressive among them. Looking forward to seeing the Supernovas be relevant again, that's for sure. Cracker's probably taken out at the moment... he seems to be quite the disposable villain. Overall quite entertaining, I guess?
Boku no Hero Academia, Chpater 104:
The free-for-all begins, and we get to see the weird powers of some of the other heroes from the other schools. Definitely cool to see the upgraded equipment and skills of the Class 1A students, with Kyouka's sonic boom gauntlet things being a particular highlight. We've got some dude that can retract himself to his lower body, someone who can boomerang things, Shindou You can create super large earthquakes, the hot-blooded dude has cyclone powers and just took out 120 people in one go by sucking up all the balls and launching all of them at a big swarm of examinees... yeah, cyclone dude probably is going to be a relatively large player in the following arcs, methinks. Midoriya has a long internal monologue about feeling excited and whatnot, at which point he's tagged once by the older hot girl from Shiketsu. Good opening to the fight scene, that's for sure.
Two things.
ReplyDeleteJoa is Frohze reincarnated, not Acacia's child. What scanlation site are using, btw?
And Cracker probably isn't out for the count for a couple reasons. The first and foremost of them is that Cracker's power is still active. You can see the various lines for his arms in the second to last panel.
The second reason is that his eyes going white, while usually signifying a character being knocked out in other manga, just means he took an unexpected and painful hit in One Piece. It's happened to tons of characters, including but not limited to Magellan, Blackbeard, Moriah, Caesar, Akainu, Ace, etc.
Hell, it's even happened to Luffy from time to time, like when he and Bellamy "fought" on Dressrosa. Bellamy lands a hit that makes Luffy's pupils fizzle out.
So, yeah. You should probably expect Cracker getting up next chapter.
Mangapanda or Mangastream, I can't remember on the top of my head which one I read for this particular chapter. Though honestly does it really matter if Joie/Joa is Frohze reincarnated or Frozhe's child? It's not like Frohze herself has been a character we've developed an emotional attachment to.
Delete'Passive' Devil Fruit powers being active isn't generally a good indication for being knocked out, though, especially for Paramecia types... we've had several occasions like Luffy back in the Arlong Park arc where Luffy's body was still stretchy when he was unconscious.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either way for Cracker. Him getting up is just him living up to the whole 'great commanders are strongkt' thing that's been built up in this chapter, and him staying down would show that, hey, the Vinsmokes are going to be the primary antagonists, and what's to say that Big Mom doesn't have another layer of generals above the four great commanders?
Cracker's power isn't truly passive though. It's more comparable to Sugar's power, or Doflamingo's Birdcage than to Luffy's Rubberiness. He had to activate it by knocking on his shoulders.
DeleteAnd God help Luffy if Big Mom really has multiple subordinates greater than Cracker.
As for the whole Frohze thing. It... Kinda matters? Seeing as we were told that Frohze was pregnant, it's entirely possible that she may have had the child/children in secret, away from Acacia's influence.
And given that Starjun's spent the arc asking about his parentage, and we've been getting Back Channel references and explanations everywhere, well... You get where I'm going with this right? Winkwink nudgenudge totallyreachingIknowbuthearmeout
I dunno, for Frohze, I just can't really bring myself to care about her or Joie or whatever. Toriko and Starjun's already obviously either Acacia or Midora's children, but there's honestly so little buildup between the multiple parentage plotlines. Given some actual time to develop organically it might actually be good, but right now it's just this kind of shoehorned plot. Admittedly it does make the fight a lot more interesting other than just having Midora and Acacia launch superpowered attacks at each other, but it's another sad casualty of the breakneck speed of plot-resolution that Toriko is going through.
DeleteFair bit on Cracker, I forgot about the knocking.
Honestly I do want the Yonko's forces to be a lot, lot more powerful than Doflamingo. Doflamingo is scared shitless of Kaidou, every single Supernova that went up against either Big Mom or Kaidou got royally fucked over, and the buildup in this chapter showed that Urouge only managed to break through one of the commanders. We don't know how powerful the dukes of Zou are relative to Luffy and the others, but Jack kind of batted them around quite easily. Plus Luffy is hinted to have a Gear Fifth thing during the Doflamingo fight, which really needs to happen.
The point is, though, finally, after a long, long while, the Straw Hats are finally meeting another very capable and very powerful group of enemies -- all throughout the post-timeskip era, every battle that the Straw Hats had gone through with the exception of Doflamingo's innermost circle has been mostly pushovers or just waiting for Zoro or Sanji or Luffy to bother actually using their killer techniques. Hody Jones honestly only managed to be a fight because they're underwater and he's going to drop a giant ship on Mermaid Island, whereas every single member of his forces got utterly one-shotted by every single Straw Hat member. Caesar Clown wasn't a bit threat either, being one-shotted quite easily by Luffy and the biggest threat at that point came from the big poison explosion. So yeah, having a group of enemies that can pull a Crocodile/Aokiji-style "you're playing with the big boys now" power flexing is definitely welcome.