One Piece 888 Review: Were-Rabbit

One Piece, Chapter 888: Lion

Well. This chapter. There's a bunch of things that happen -- Luffy and Katakuri re-start their match (sigh), somehow the Ideo cover story is... still going on; we see Daifuku, Smoothie and a new child of Big Mom called Bavarois... but all of that doesn't really matter, because this chapter is one huge show-off for everyone's favourite little rabbit girl. 

So basically we get a setup the situation. The Thousand Sunny is surrounded by all sides by Big Mom's forces, among them Perospero and Big Mom on the huge candy slug creature. We also get to see that Big Mom's turned a bit skinnier -- she's still a big woman, but she went from 'morbidly gonk' to 'hulking hag'. We also see that the homies are somewhat... erratic? Bavarois notes that this is because Big Mom might be losing control over her homies. So is this like a "Luffy shrinks down after Gear Third" thing going on? We've seen how Luffy sometimes self-damages after using powerful skills, so is Big Mom's rampage doing the same, except it burns through calories.... again, like Luffy's Gear Fourth Tankman form that he uses to defeat Cracker? Interesting.

And we get this bit where everyone's about to fight, and I was honestly not expecting what happens next, because the beginning of the chapter seems to imply that we're getting another prolonged Luffy/Katakuri fight to eat up the time until Team Sanji arrives with the cake. Then Carrot looks up at the full moon and, well, transforms. The initial two-page spread of multiple panels makes it look like it's a typical werewolf transformation similar to Chopper's monster point, with a particularly horrifying screaming face... 

But instead she transforms into, well... she basically kind of ages up? And she grows claws, and her hair and tail becomes super-duper long. Apparently everyone knows what this 'Ceylon' form is, and only the audience and the non-Jinbe Straw Hats are clueless. We get a brief flashback to how Inuarashi notes how they couldn't show their full power against Jack the Drought due to the chemical weapon, and apparently this Ceylon form is what their true form is, if, as Carrot mentions in passing, they're 'trained' properly.

(Please don't have Pedro randomly survive with this skill. That'd be a shit way to cheapen his death.)

Ceylon is apparently some sort of Sri Lankan prehistoric lion, and the kanji reads 'moon tiger'. And apparently all minks can transform into this? So... maybe we'll have a mink-vs-mink fight between Carrot and Pekoms? So Nekomamushi and Inuarashi can turn into a cool, non-obese/non-geriatric werecats and werewolves? Most importantly... can Beppo use Ceylon?

And apparently this form allows Carrot to swoop down and glide like a streak of lightning and she pulls off some Goku Instant Transmission shit as she moves too fast for the crew of Daifuku's ship to even hit. And then she just jumps around, claw-scratching and biting and kicking everyone, and in the chaos she rips off the helm of the ship. So yeah... Carrot's pretty powerful! I'm not sure if she's actually going to fight Daifuku, or if she's just going to hit-and-run all the ships and rip off their steering helms to buy some time, but it's definitely a cool showing. Again, this is the type of chapter I prefer if we're going to have a 'filler' chapter between huge events, where essentially the chapter is just another small thing that happens ("Carrot transforms and takes out a random enemy ship") but it's done with such oomph that it feels like a huge event on its own. 

Also, Carrot for the next Straw-Hat? It does seem a bit sudden considering we just got Jinbe joining the crew... although one could argue that the 'Jinbe Arc' was the Fishman Island arc, while this arc is one for Carrot. Which I definitely agree. It's been a fair bit of time since we had a newcomer, and Carrot's certainly been a tagalong for quite some time and if the internet's anything to go by, she's got a huge amount of fans out there. I guess she could become another fleet captain, the way that Bartolomeo and the others are, kind of becoming Pedro's successor? I really doubt that, though. Regardless, a pretty great chapter.