Saturday 27 January 2018

One Piece 892 Review: Smoothie Does Something!

One Piece, Chapter 892: Recognized as Strong Opponents


Hoo, lots of manga chapters we have to go through today. I'm not sure if I'll be able to deliver as quickly as possible, but we'll get One Piece done today at least. Real life's been pretty busy recently and I'll have to apologize if superhero TV and weekly manga reviews get delayed (even further in the case of the former). Still, this chapter's pretty decent.  

The cover story shows the Tontatta's ship, which has a figurehead of Usopp's screaming face and it's the most hilarious thing I've seen today. I still don't particularly like the Tontattas, but in very small moderation they're not bad. 

The chapter essentially has Big Mom change position as she now chases after the huge cake on Bege's ship, and Bege's been convinced to let Big Mom eat the cake before they do any sort of assassination attempts. It's definitely not what I expected how the plot to go, but it's a neat development. Pudding sends Sanji back to the Thousand Sunny and there's a big huggy reunion between Sanji and Nami. 

We get a fun bit as Perospero gets utterly bamboozled by what's going on (he assumes the cake's poisoned, after all). There's also a brief scene as Brook tells Sanji that Carrot and especially Pedro are just totally sleeping in another room... which... I dunno, would Sanji of people be the sort of dude to react otherwise if someone told him Pedro dies?

We get a fun little diagram courtesy of Perospero showing the positions of the fleet. Big Mom's chasing Bege to Liquor Island, which in turn is going to be chased by the fleets of Perospero and Bavarois, but they leave the Sunny to Smoothie. Who, I have to be honest, is a character who I completely forgot about, what with her having done absolutely nothing of note in this arc despite being hyped up as one of the Sweet Commanders. Smoothie's all like "yeah, should've have left it to us in the first place, silly men!" and she's got a pair of seemingly long-leg-tribe sisters, the pretty Cinnamon and the gonk Citron. As much as I like that a neglected character gets some screentime, is it really necessary to pad out this arc even further? Definitely feeling a huge pang of fatigue in this week's chapter. 

Meanwhile, everyone's figured out that the Big Mom Pirates are waiting for Luffy and the Straw Hats on Cacao Island, with Oven ordering all mirrors but one be smashed, and Mont D'Or noting that despite them being 'weakling' pirates, their track record of causing chaos and fucking over their operations have given them cause to panic and generally take precautions.

We actually get to see a bit of Luffy and Katakuri fighting, with Katakuri seemingly impaling Luffy on his spear, Luffy shouting loudly and the jelly-bean girl laughing. I think there's some sort of weird skill going on as the panel before the impact shows Luffy getting blurred... but I dunno. We'll see what happens next week... it's a decent chapter, but one where the questionable pacing of this arc as a whole is brought into question. 

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