One Piece 907 Review: The Rulers of the World

One Piece, Chapter 907: The Empty Throne

Well, holy shit, this is a pretty bombastic chapter, isn't it? The cover story seems to herald the end of the Orlumbus arc, with him finally leaving the country to serve Luffy, which is what Sai wants to do post-Reverie. Which is neat, since the Orlumbus arc has been extremely... bland. 

But the actual chapter? Hoo boy, what an insane chapter. So much shit went down, and there are a whole lot of plot developments that I didn't see coming but in hindsight is pretty obvious. We start off the chapter with Big Mom still intent on pursuing and hunting down Luffy, and actually arguing with fellow Emperor Kaidou on the Den Den Mushi, arguing about past debts and who gets to kill Luffy. It's actually pretty fun that the events of the Whole Cake Island isn't quite done yet because Big Mom isn't the type of person to let things just go, and kudos to the manga for actually making good on the promise that Big Mom is the type of person that will hound down anyone who slighted her to the ends of the Earth. Also, having both Kaidou and Big Mom gunning specifically for Luffy? Yeah, it's a good thing Luffy's making friends left and right, because he's going to need them. 

The next scene is the Marine Headquarters, where everyone is panicking that Big Mom and Kaidou are contacting each other brazenly and paying no heed to Marine wiretaps, and we get a bunch of brief cameos of the minor marine vice-admirals. I think the one with the handlebar mustache is Momonga, and the scar-faced dude is called... Doberman? But clearly the big names here are Kizaru (who unless I'm mis-remembering things, makes his post-timeskip debut) asking Akainu about permission to go and make his own move... but Akainu refuses to let them do anything to Wano because it's outside the World Government's jurisdiction.

We get another conversation between Garp and a bunch of other Marine dudes we've not quite seen before. There is Hina, Fullbody and Jango, but the rest of the characters there seem to be new. Hina and Garp are basically discussing about how the two Yonkou are hunting down Luffy, discussing Akainu's orders and we get some delicious foreshadowing as Garp notes how he was hailed as the hero of the marines thanks to "the Rocks", who apparently ruled the world before Gol D. Roger? Interesting foreshadowing, especially since Hina notes that "their power is growing". 

We don't get any time to really think about this, though, because the chapter goes straight back to Mary Geoise, introducing the titular Empty Throne and delivering a huge amount of exposition. An empty throne that sits at the center of the world, with its vacancy symbolizing the peace in the world, It's surrounded with the 20 swords of the founding 20 kingdoms (Game of Thrones much?) and it sortr of symbolizes that just like the many kings, the Celestial Dragons and even the Five Elders/Gorosei, there is no single king of the world. It also confirms that the Gorosei stand even above the Celestial Dragons. All the kings have to make a pledge to never covet this throne, but of course, King Stelly is a piece of shit. We don't get to see how Stelly gets to do another faus pax, though, because we cut away to another thing that's honestly been inevitable.

In the socializing plaza, the Celestial Dragon Charloss sends out a giant slave to capture Shirahoshi, something that thankfully didn't get dragged on for too long. It really shows just how much insane clout the Celestial Dragons can pull, doesn't it, when even royalty isn't even immune? Vivi, Rebecca and Neptune's complaints fall on deaf ears because everyone else is just way too scared for the sake of their countries to stand against the Celestial Dragons. The only one to make a move are Leo and Sai, but they are swiftly dispatched by CP-0....

Who consists of Lucci, Stussy, Kaku and that one weird masked dude we saw on Dressrosa, who doesn't get identified here. Lucci goes on this rant about how the Celestial Dragons are the gods of the world and it's natural for them to get whatever they want from lesser humans. I've never bought into the fandom perception of Lucci as a decent guy since he's always been "orders first, everything else second" throughout the entirety of Water Seven/Enies Lobby, but this is definitely taking quite a leap in jackassery on Lucci's part when he starts going around talking about how "you can't reason with a god" and shit. 

Neptune basically loses his shit and resolves to abandon the surface world entirely, even the dreams of his late wife Otohime, while Vivi tells Neptune that "these people aren't humans!" and Shirahoshi still tells Neptune to not hate... It's actually pretty well-done, actually. The New Fishman Island arc gets a lot of flak for pacing and power-scaling problems, but the core story is probably one of the better ones that One Piece has given us, and it seems that this rampage by Neptune might very well wreck everything that Otohime, Shirahoshi and the Straw Hats had fought for in that arc. Oh, and very likely Neptune's life too.

But then someone whacks Charloss with a giant mace. Someone who identifies himself as a fellow Celestial Dragon, one who is indebted to the Fishmen Kingdom. It's actually very clever and I have to confess that I have completely forgotten that this one Celestial Dragon dude even exists. But this is the return and the introduction of the Celestial Dragon rescued by Otohime and sent back to the human world so many years ago... and we get his name as DONQUIXOTE Mjosgard. Yes, a member of the Donquixote family! Well, we have ourselves a Celestial Dragon ally, and that's a pretty huge twist, isn't it?

And then because the chapter still have one more page left, we get to see the Gorosei/Five Elders, who talk with a hooded figure... motherfucking Shanks, who wants to talk to them about "a certain pirate"... Holy shit. It's a pretty huge chapter, it's one filled with lots of sudden revelations and re-introductions of characters, and at this point I just really don't know where the Reverie arc is going to go. It's the culmination of 900+ chapters of One Piece history, with so many huge players and older characters interacting with each other, and it's glorious.