One Piece, Chapter 913: Tsuru Repays the Favour
I find it bizarrely weird that not a day after posting my first episode review for Part 3 of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime, we end up with Luffy and Zoro fighting a character whose power set feels more akin to a Stand as opposed to a traditional devil fruit. Oh, and the Tarot motifs that Basil Hawkins has doesn't hurt either.
Still, the first chunk of this chapter is just some japery with Zoro reacting to Luffy having a world-renowned sword, and Luffy's usage of the sword is... just doing his regular Pistol shots but while holding a sword. Oh, Luffy. But this whole sequence seems to just be a way for the story to remind us and really show off Basil Hawkins' power. His devil fruit has been hands-down the weirdest one out of the Worst Generation when we saw glimpses of the devil fruits in Sabaody. It ties with Law's Operation fruit, I suppose -- everyone else was pretty straightforward, but Hawkins is shown to have multiple abilities. The ability to transfer damage done to him to others via some voodoo dolls, and the ability to transform into a giant straw-scarecrow monster. And here he uses both of them, as well as some new ones -- a sword whose blade is entirely made up of straws that pierce into things.
Zoro gets a badass one-shot kill at Hawkins, which would've ended him if he didn't have the voodoo "Life Minus" ability, allowing him to transfer 'deaths' to his subordinates up to ten times. And also, he summons this giant ghost-like straw being that's less of a scarecrow and more like a traditional Japanese death god... and then Hawkins plays a 'game' of sorts, pulling out tarot cards and causing effects depending on them. The Fool card damages his own allies, and the Hierophant allows him to pursue. It's cool and while we don't see the full scope of the powers of the Wara Wara no Mi (straw straw fruit, as in mugiwara) it's pretty different and interesting!
Which makes me a whole lot less invested when we cut away to some pretty poorly shoehorned-in world building with the titular O-Tsuru (not to be confused with Great Staff Officer Tsuru of the Marines), a geisha or something drawn in a very... traditional Japanese painting style? S'weird. O-Tsuru is also shown to be just as helpful as O-Tama, and is willing to help out, so it's clear that we're just building up possible members for the Kouzuki clan resistance or whatever. We get to see another one of these ladies, O-Kiku, which... yeah, they're fine characters I guess. I dunno. The last episode shows off Beppo and two of Law's recurring crew members, so we're getting some Law action in this Wano arc for sure.
Again, I really kinda wished that we didn't spend so much time introdumping characters only to immediately move away from them. It's otherwise a pretty fine chapter.
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