One Piece, Chapter 887: Someone Somewhere is Wishing For Your Happiness
Let's just acknowledge the strange, strange ending to the team Ideo storyline and instead of gaining an army of long-arms and long-legs, the crew just.... leaves, stranding them on some random island? It's strange, but I can honestly say that Ideo's group is easily the least interesting and least built up among the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, and this was a chance to make them somewhat interesting... but they didn't take it. Oh well.
A good chunk of this chapter, thankfully, stays with the Sanji/Pudding/Capone/Oven/Pound situation on Cacao Island, and I've always said that focus is a good thing, especially when it's well-paced like this. Oven standing in the way of Sanji, Pudding and Chiffon is a rather unnecessary but logical complication, and last chapter we had Capone shoot Oven in the head. Naturally, he's fine, since since when does a gunshot ever hurt anyone in One Piece? We get this pretty cool scene of Capone's ship, the Nostra Castello, basically transforming into a land-based tank, which is so ridiculous yet awesome.
Sanji straight-up kicks the gigantic cake and all those on it up and onto the boat, Chiffon and Capone embrace, and Oven... gets run over by the boat-tank. It looks hilarious, but Oven isn't out and suddenly the sea around the Nostra Castello boils as they enter the water, and we see that Oven is burning the sea around them. I'm... not sure why he still has his powers when he's actually in contact with the ocean water, but no matter. There was a bit of 'our paddles are broken!' and 'oh no it will ruin the cake'...
But not before Oven gets whacked in the head with a club by Pound. It distracts Oven long enough (Pound was actually trying to knock him into the sea!) for the ship to quickly sail the fuck away. We get a brief two-page farewell speech from Pound to his daughter and the grandson he doesn't know, which... isn't very necessary, but it is amazingly done to bring Pound's character to full circle. And... it is sort of ripping off Mr. 2's death, except I don't care as much for Pound as I do Mr. 2. I just hope that, like Pedro's death earlier in the arc, Pound's death just isn't shown for violence-censorship reasons and not because 'Oven missed his vitals' bullshittery. Oven brings the glaive down on his head and seems to stab and/or behead him, and Chiffon doesn't even know that her father just died saving her life... it's a great and touching moment. Again, the chapter as a whole's pretty solid... although this might not hold up that well if the deaths turned out to be not real after all, something that One Piece has done a couple of times.
So, it's your friendly neighborhood ThatOneGuy, here to correct some misinformation!
ReplyDeleteDevil Fruit Powers vs The Sea. The problem here is that you, and quite a bit of the fandom, have conflated Blackbeard's negation with Kairoseki/The Sea's weakening.
You see, rather than outright negating or shutting off powers, the ocean only weakens Devil fruit Users, to the point that it becomes nigh impossible to use them voluntarily. However, this specific weakening only happens with standing water, and requires the user to be at least knee deep inside. They can still use their powers, albeit with some minor discomfort, so long as this doesn't happen!
We've seen this happen multiple times throughout the series, from Luffy's head stretching in Arlong Park, Aokiji dipping his hand in the ocean to create a bridge off of Long Ring Long Land, Luffy using Gear Third to punch out the Kraken from his bubble, Robin saving the Sunny from crashing into the rocks during the trip to Fishman Island, etc. And now Oven!
About the only time we see it flat out negate a power is when it comes to Seastone, but Seastone just seems to be like hyper-concentrated seaness, so it can bypass natural defenses like being lava/rubber, and wear out the recipients with the slightest contact.
Yeah, I guess you're right -- I keep forgetting that water doesn't immediately act as Kryptonite to Devil Fruit users (rather, Seastone seems to be the actual Kryptonite equivalent), and only knocks them out. That Arlong Park bit is definitely a great example of how Luffy is still rubber even though he's in water. Thanks for pointing it out!
ReplyDelete