One Piece 853 Review: Voices, Third Eyes and Chicken Egg Man

One Piece, Chapter 853: Not Here

Sadly, we didn't get to see what happened between Brook and Big Mom, but we did get to see the conclusion. As cool as it was to see Brook stand up to Big Mom a couple of chapters ago and as much as the little Brook fan in me wants Brook to just defeat Big Mom and that's it... nah, it's not going to happen. Big Mom is actually a little fascinated with Brook, holding the dude in her hands while the other homies try to look for whatever Brook might have stolen... and apparently the paper with the Poneglyph scribblings on it isn't around?

Also, Brook lost to Zeus, Prometheus... and Napoleon, Big Mom's hat. Apparently these three particular homies actually have Big Mom's soul, so either it's a different power, or she cut some of her own lifespan and put it into a cloud, a cartoon sun and a fucking hat. Big Mom is all like 'sorry for suspecting you' and actually seems very cool with Brook sneaking around in her prized room and beating all her soldiers up as long as he doesn't actually steal anything. What a strange woman, that Big Mom, though I guess she's going to keep Brook as part of her collection so I dunno.

Also apparently she made a 'mistake' back then with Roger that allowed him to reach Raftel, and apparently Roger is able to hear the Voice of All Things that allowed him to read the poneglyph... so yeah, that's yet another layer of mystery over the whole Voice of All Things... thing. So far I think only Luffy, Momo, Shirahoshi... Shanks maybe? Can hear it. That's interesting.

Pudding then shows up and the manga is still keeping it delightfully ambiguous whether Pudding is actually evil or just pretending to be evil to drive Sanji and the Straw Hats away. For one thing, she's actually pouting and pretending to be a spoiled brat, something that she didn't really have to do in front of Big Mom. On the other hand... if she's evil, she's crazy so who knows? Also, her line of thought, "well, he's been captured. It should be fine" could mean either she's happy that Brook has only been captured and not killed, or that it's fine that he was stopped before he could steal anything. Also apparently Pudding is a half-breed of a race called the Three-Eye Tribe, who apparently can also read the poneglyph? This is all very strange and confusing and interesting, but we cut away.

In one of the most bizarre powers in One Piece and indeed the history of anything, apparently everytime Baron Tamago gets sliced, he evolves into an even more powerful chicken. So we have Pedro fighting Viscount Chick. So yeah, not only does he evolve from an egg to a chicken, he also ranks up from baron to viscount. Very creepy that the embryo that hatched from his 'Viscount Chick' form just squiggles around there, and apparently it'll evolve into Count Chicken? Pedro makes the wise move of going off to end all of it right there, pulling out a long string of dynamite and blowing the gathered soldiers up.

Except he doesn't die, of course. I mean, this is the Pell thing all over again, but at least here we see how Pedro survives -- Chopper and Carrot just drags him into the mirror dimension, and after a brief hilarious moment where Carrot asks the mirrors to look for the Straw Hats, drawn in Bishonen style. Just look at that beautiful rendition of Pedro, and that Brook -- his afro got turned into Marge Simpson's hair!

Meanwhile Luffy is still rampaging and gets help from Reiju, and the art makes his pain obvious, with blood splurting out of between his bandages when Reiju pulls him in particular. Reiju and Luffy do a little catch-up game, but Luffy gets reminded of his mission when Reiju offers him food, and he just buggers off out of the window to return to the meeting spot. We get a brief moment of Sanji remembering about the shit he's found himself in, and thinks to himself. "Luffy, there's no going back now." Hopefully he means 'if we pick a fight with Big Mom and Germa, there's no going back' instead of 'I can't go back to the Straw Hats'. Sanji has more sense than that.

So yeah, the Luffy bit was honestly a bit boring, but the Pedro bit was absolutely bizarre, and the Big Mom/Brook conversation is cool. A pretty uneventful chapter, honestly, but still a pretty fun read.