One Piece, Chapter 899: One Last Time
It's obvious that we're building up to some huge event in chapter 900, although it's honestly not quite what I expected. See, I think everyone expected chapter 900 to be the end of the Whole Cake Island saga, but it clearly's just meant to be the climax. And I really just wished that a lot of the earlier padding chapters were used instead to extend things that really needed to be delved into as opposed to be obvious padding. Split milk and all that, of course, but hey... this chapter's pretty good, honestly.
The cover page's been just showcasing new characters that are members of Hajrudin's new pirate crew, and this time around we've got Goldberg, the cook, and he's... he's weird. He's got a shield with a face. I'm not sure how interesting people are finding the Hajrudin crew cover story. I mean, it's neat that we're being introduced to stuff as opposed to the generic misadventures-that-don't-mean-anything that some of the previous cover story arcs have been, but eh.
We start off this chapter with a recap of the events happening on the Big Mom side, with Mont D'or getting increasingly frustrated at the increasing amount of complications they're getting. He's in contact with Perospero, who's getting so weak due to his wound being left open for so long, and Perospero's no longer on his candy slug but on top of Bavarois's ship getting his amputated arm bandaged. The cake's apparently already on Puffs island, with the conclusion of the chase sort of happening off-screen, and Perospero outlines the three different possibilities depending on the taste of the cake and the content of poison within it. Of course, the Big Mom pirates are under the assumption that of course the Straw Hats and Fire Tanks poisoned the cake, and I'm legitimately curious if they'll even figure out that the cake was meant to 'shock' Big Mom with its flavour. Out of those options, two out of three means disaster for the entire kingdom.
Oh, and by the way, Stussy the CP-0 agent egging the conflict from the background, and Big News Morgans, have gone missing, presumably up to some mischief that's probably going to be highly relevant to the next chapter. Again, I really wished that Stussy and Morgans felt more like characters instead of plot devices, but I've seen worse plot devices than them.
Oh, and also, off-screen, Big Mom's apparently destroyed the entirety of Nuts Island, as well as Capone's ship, the Nostra Castello. As the cake's left behind, Capone makes a run for it, carrying Chiffon with him, while Big Mom prepares to descend upon the cake. Very curious what'll eventually happen to Capone without a ship, though. Does he carry a spare within his castle body? Otherwise the man might be in a bit of a pickle.
Meanwhile, the Straw Hats are sort of caught between a rock and hard place as they're trapped between two gigantic fleets. And yes, Germa 66's huge castle-ship does help out, but eh. We get Judge shouting at Sanji from atop his ship, talking about what an idiot Sanji is for risking life and limb to save one person, so I do like this. The siblings might have been sorta-redeemed-kinda thanks to fighting on Sanji's side during the previous chapter, but Judge makes it clear that he still doesn't respect Sanji for associating with a mere pirate crew, and is all "emotions is dumb, cooks are dumb" and all that. The whole writing behind the Germa characters have been, in my opinion, pretty inconsistently done, but at least the sudden motivation switch isn't quite as abrupt as we're initially led to believe.
We get a brief clash between Sanji and Daifuku's genie,where Sanji kicks the genie's glaive in the blade, and Smoothie still does pretty much nothing... but yeah, maybe it's these two that Sanji's going to get to defeat? Maybe? Regardless, the huge fleet of minions gets batted aside, quite literally, by the extremely unexpected but definitely logical arrival of Wadatsumi, who just tosses everyone away, and he's accompanied by Aladine, Praline and the rest of the New Sun Pirates, who claim that until Jinbe finishes his business in Whole Cake Island, he's still their captain. And... yeah, pretty much a given that the Sun Pirates are going to join Luffy's grand fleet, aren't they? Pretty neat stuff and a pretty neat setup for 900... I'm just curious which one of these plot threads -- Stussy and Morgans; Pekoms; Germa 66; Wadatsumi; the cake; Pudding -- will be followed-up upon in the next chapter. We'll see, I suppose. Overall, pretty neat stuff.
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