One Piece, Chapter 894: 12.05 AM
Yeah, sorry about all that -- things are super-hectic for me at the moment, and I just didn't manage to have the time to review manga chapters right on the very day that they come out. Or even read them on the very day that they come out, for that matter. Like, I could do a "oh, these shit happened in this chapter good chapter nine out of ten" and phone it in, but at that point, why even bother?
So yeah. If I didn't manage to review some of the chapters this week, maybe I'll just leave a footnote in the following week's review. Again, real life takes precedence. This chapter's a pretty "hype" chapter, even if it does feel rather uneven. Not in a bad way, though... This arc has been dragging on and on as far as pacing goes, feeling like it's running on Namek time, and in the process of this single chapter, we've gone from 10.10 PM to the titular 12.05 AM, the speed of which surprises me. I really thought that the huge time skip would've been revealed after a Luffy/Katakuri fight or after another Big Mom chase sequence, but I guess the writer or the editors realized how long and repetitive some of the scenes are getting. Thank god for that.
Let's acknowledge the cover story first, though. The Tontatta pirates are apparently going to be King Riku's escorts for the Reverie, which makes absolute sense while also coming somewhat out of the blue, making the little dudes potentially appear a bit earlier and sooner than everyone expected. That is like fifteen times better the meandering Ideo cover arc that quite literally went nowhere.
The chapter starts off with a bit of a flashback to Luffy's training with Silver Rayleigh, which I thought was a bit too much on-the-nose attempt to tie in Luffy's haki training with the faux foreshadowing that Rayleigh is aware that someone with this future-sight Haki exists. It... it really didn't feel like it belonged here, and really could've been sneaked in earlier during one of the more samey Luffy-Katakuri fights. There's a neat scene about Luffy refusing to accept food until he's completed his training, but it's not particularly necessary in my opinion.
We then cut off to the real Luffy/Katakuri fight in the present day, with Katakuri launching this weird "Grilled Mochi" attack where he quite literally causes an explosion that shoots off the tip of his haki fist -- on fire, to boot -- to punch Luffy. And then he re-makes his arm out of mochi. There... there's a fine, fine line between being a Logia-type and whatever fancy-schmancy "special" Paramecia term that they use to describe Katakuri, but for the life of me I can't see where the line ends.
We then cut away to a bunch of stuff that supposedly ran along for two hours (or, alternatively, Luffy and Katakuri's fight happened in a non-sequential manner... but then this chapter shows a montage of their fighting as we go from time to time). Capone continues to lure Big Mom under Chiffon's order, as they want to lure Big Mom even further away to give Nami and company a chance to escape... while Big Mom continues to get even more nightmarish. Hell, Big Mom's essentially a cooler-looking Brulee at this point.
Meanwhile, the Thousand Sunny is dodging blasts of sword-waves from Smoothie, who apparently turned into a giant off-screen. Since her actually being part-giant is out of the question thanks to Big Mom's own predisposition towards giants, it begs the question whether this is part of her squeezy fruit powers, or one of her two sidekicks's powers. Oh, and Carrot's awake. There's that. Meanwhile, Sanji goes off to help out Luffy, while Pudding continues to be Pudding.
At Cacao Island, Oven has summoned a crap-ton of other Big Mom children, and it really feels like... I dunno. Is One Piece parodying itself in introducing a crapton of characters that it even ends off with an "et cetera..." at the end of the introductory session? We've got a bunch of kids called the Decuplets, a long-arm dude called Raisin, a generic swordsman dude called Yuen, someone who quite literally doesn't care and just goes to sleep because it's only ten people called Brownie, a lady called Joconde... and snuck into the montage of random children is Snack, the former Sweet Commander who Urouge apparently defeated. He's... he's got a tiny head? His body's weird and ambiguous enough to be anything, to be honest, since we mostly see his clothes.
And then, of course, the final page has Luffy and Katakuri both huffing and puffing, and then Luffy preparing to go Gear Fourth... SNAKE MAN. Yeah, it's something everyone's been speculating, and something I really, really love about Gear Fourth -- it's not just going to be a sequential "bigger numbers, bigger strength" thing, and that Luffy's differing Gear Fourth forms will hopefully actually have different powers and be suited to differing situations. We'll see next week what Snake Man looks like, but overall this chapter and its sudden breakneck pacing is definitely a much-needed shot in the arm after last week's already-great chapter of Katakuri-Luffy rivalry goodness.
So yeah. If I didn't manage to review some of the chapters this week, maybe I'll just leave a footnote in the following week's review. Again, real life takes precedence. This chapter's a pretty "hype" chapter, even if it does feel rather uneven. Not in a bad way, though... This arc has been dragging on and on as far as pacing goes, feeling like it's running on Namek time, and in the process of this single chapter, we've gone from 10.10 PM to the titular 12.05 AM, the speed of which surprises me. I really thought that the huge time skip would've been revealed after a Luffy/Katakuri fight or after another Big Mom chase sequence, but I guess the writer or the editors realized how long and repetitive some of the scenes are getting. Thank god for that.
Let's acknowledge the cover story first, though. The Tontatta pirates are apparently going to be King Riku's escorts for the Reverie, which makes absolute sense while also coming somewhat out of the blue, making the little dudes potentially appear a bit earlier and sooner than everyone expected. That is like fifteen times better the meandering Ideo cover arc that quite literally went nowhere.
The chapter starts off with a bit of a flashback to Luffy's training with Silver Rayleigh, which I thought was a bit too much on-the-nose attempt to tie in Luffy's haki training with the faux foreshadowing that Rayleigh is aware that someone with this future-sight Haki exists. It... it really didn't feel like it belonged here, and really could've been sneaked in earlier during one of the more samey Luffy-Katakuri fights. There's a neat scene about Luffy refusing to accept food until he's completed his training, but it's not particularly necessary in my opinion.
We then cut off to the real Luffy/Katakuri fight in the present day, with Katakuri launching this weird "Grilled Mochi" attack where he quite literally causes an explosion that shoots off the tip of his haki fist -- on fire, to boot -- to punch Luffy. And then he re-makes his arm out of mochi. There... there's a fine, fine line between being a Logia-type and whatever fancy-schmancy "special" Paramecia term that they use to describe Katakuri, but for the life of me I can't see where the line ends.
We then cut away to a bunch of stuff that supposedly ran along for two hours (or, alternatively, Luffy and Katakuri's fight happened in a non-sequential manner... but then this chapter shows a montage of their fighting as we go from time to time). Capone continues to lure Big Mom under Chiffon's order, as they want to lure Big Mom even further away to give Nami and company a chance to escape... while Big Mom continues to get even more nightmarish. Hell, Big Mom's essentially a cooler-looking Brulee at this point.
Meanwhile, the Thousand Sunny is dodging blasts of sword-waves from Smoothie, who apparently turned into a giant off-screen. Since her actually being part-giant is out of the question thanks to Big Mom's own predisposition towards giants, it begs the question whether this is part of her squeezy fruit powers, or one of her two sidekicks's powers. Oh, and Carrot's awake. There's that. Meanwhile, Sanji goes off to help out Luffy, while Pudding continues to be Pudding.
At Cacao Island, Oven has summoned a crap-ton of other Big Mom children, and it really feels like... I dunno. Is One Piece parodying itself in introducing a crapton of characters that it even ends off with an "et cetera..." at the end of the introductory session? We've got a bunch of kids called the Decuplets, a long-arm dude called Raisin, a generic swordsman dude called Yuen, someone who quite literally doesn't care and just goes to sleep because it's only ten people called Brownie, a lady called Joconde... and snuck into the montage of random children is Snack, the former Sweet Commander who Urouge apparently defeated. He's... he's got a tiny head? His body's weird and ambiguous enough to be anything, to be honest, since we mostly see his clothes.
And then, of course, the final page has Luffy and Katakuri both huffing and puffing, and then Luffy preparing to go Gear Fourth... SNAKE MAN. Yeah, it's something everyone's been speculating, and something I really, really love about Gear Fourth -- it's not just going to be a sequential "bigger numbers, bigger strength" thing, and that Luffy's differing Gear Fourth forms will hopefully actually have different powers and be suited to differing situations. We'll see next week what Snake Man looks like, but overall this chapter and its sudden breakneck pacing is definitely a much-needed shot in the arm after last week's already-great chapter of Katakuri-Luffy rivalry goodness.
I’d bet 5 brownie points that he’s going to turn into one of those balloons clowns use to make dogs, girrafes and turtles.
ReplyDeleteThat would be hilarious looking, although I'm not sure how that's going to help him in battle.
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