One Piece 902 Review: The End of Whole Cake?

One Piece, Chapter 902: End Roll

(Sorry if reviews are a bit spotty and/or late for the upcoming couple of days. Have just recovered from being hospitalized, so yeah. )

Well, that was... that wasn't a conventional ending at all. I get what the chapter was trying to do, and as a standalone chapter, it's pretty well-written. I enjoyed this chapter for what it is, but as the ending of an 80+ story arc, it was wholly unsatisfying. Your mileage may vary, of course, and Whole Cake Island itself has been extremely polarizing with a lot of supporters who vow up and down that it's the best arc from One Piece, and a lot of detractors who likewise vow that it's the absolute worst. I'm somewhat in the middle, thinking that it's a lot like Dressrosa -- a lot of great moments, a lot of neat world-building and setup, but bogged down by extremely poor pacing. And most of all, it suffers from Bleach-style stretching out of scenes that just dragged on and on. 

Of course, I could be wrong and this chapter might not just be the end of the chapter and we might have a multi-part ending, and the final two pages with the 'end-of-arc' narration boxes might just be yet another fake-out, but this chapter... I'm not really feeling it as a proper ending. It's certainly a way to end an Impel-Down-style "the Straw Hats leave with some completed objectives, but with huge losses", with said losses namely being the presumed deaths of Jinbe, the Fishman Pirates and the Germa 66 at the hands of Big Mom.

(Although, to be fair... I don't really give two shits about Germa 66 other than Reiju -- unlike most of the fandom, I never latched on to them just because they're related to Sanji. The brothers are all completely flat and uninteresting, Judge is a pretty generic 'evil dad' archetype, and Reiju's the only one that's likable because she's written to be the one token sympathetic character among a bunch of baddies.)

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. That was one hell of a neat little cliffhanger. No, I don't buy that any of them are going to die, especially since Big Mom's abilities involves ripping out souls instead of directly killing them, so I do actually see Big Mom like dragging these dudes around in Homie bodies and returning them to life some time in the future. That is a plausible reversal of mass deaths that still doesn't betray the fact that there are some consequences caused by Luffy and Sanji's reckless decisions, as opposed to the simple, "oh let's make the fans freak out and then just shrug it with a mildly-plausible explanation" cliffhanger that was the ending for chapter 900. I don't particularly like it that much, especially the thought of this being stretched on and on, but it's a lot more palatable. What I do like, though, is the fact that while Big Mom was certainly slowed down by the cake and all the antics, she's not actually taken out at the end of this arc in any way, shape or form -- to set up that the Yonkou like Big Mom and Kaido are equal in power and then to have Big Mom taken down like this would've been disastrous to the audience's perception of how scary Kaido (and the Yonkou in general) would be, so good on that. 

I do like the early scenes with Sanji and Carrot, with Carrot crying while also telling Sanji that he shouldn't be responsible for Pedro's death. And Sanji reminiscing about Pedro's death... man, I know that there's that one weird scarecrow Homie that Pedro fought and was swiftly forgotten about in all the chaos of the moving pieces, but I really wish Pedro was kept dead, because this is actually a very good moment. 

Something I didn't quite appreciate as much is that while the Thousand Sunny did make it out of Big Mom's territory okay, the fact that Sanji straight-up just reverts to 'cheerful cook' mode and Luffy goes straight to 'cheerful hungry man' right off the very depressing 'Big Mom kills-slash-fucks-up a lot of their allies' scene didn't feel right. I mean, I get that they wanted to have the parallel between Sanji and Zeff, and I guess on Sanji's side of things I can justify it, but really, Luffy? 

Pudding's storyline is wrapped up with a simple scene. Of course she and Sanji kissed, and she took out part of Sanji's memory because of that. It's just a bit of build-up for yet another potential ally in the future for the Straw Hats. Maybe the Big Mom pirates will be relevant in the Wano-kuni arc? I hope so, just so we don't have so many outstanding plotlines left unsolved. This does tie a neat little bow for Pudding for now, though. 

I think my favourite scene has to be Brulee and Katakuri, though, with Brulee extremely unexpectedly showing a more tender side as she takes care of her beaten brother. Brulee calls out the fact that Katakuri has fallen on his back on purpose to let Luffy 'win', and Brulee also knows Katakuri's whole 'embarrassing eating' bit before. We get a neat little flashback that explains Katakuri's 'tough enforcer dude' image, where apparently as a kid some jackasses scarred Brulee's face, causing Katakuri to adopt this tough, no-nonsense super-perfect enforcer big brother image. It's actually extremely unexpected for Brulee and Katakuri -- I think everyone assumed that Katakuri's favourite sister was going to be Pudding, making the two a tag-team of possible defectors to the Straw Hats' side, but huh. This is interesting, really. 

So yeah... it's a mixed bag, as far as endings go. On one hand, I do appreciate that Big Mom wasn't just buddy-buddies with the Straw Hats just because of a cake. Also do like the brief closing moments for Sanji, Carrot, Pudding, Katakuri and Brulee. But on the other hand... there's also a lot of shit that simply was dragged on for way too long for this arc that it really feels like this arc didn't quite deliver on all of the stories. We'll see if we skip straight to the Reverie or Wano-kuni next chapter, or if we'll have some more wrap-up. Overall, I think my feelings for this Big Mom arc as a whole has been generally positive, but I'm not going to be averse of calling out some very glaring problems that the arc has.