One Piece 914 Review: NANANANANANANA BATMAN

One Piece, Chapter 914: Okobore, the Town of Leftovers

If One Piece was a D&D campaign or an RPG, these set of chapters would be the moment where the game-master gives a whole ton of world-building details and introduces the players to a lot of the soon-to-be-relevant NPCs. We get O-Kiku, who's a tall lady who refers to herself with a masculine pronoun, so either just a cross-dresser or maybe someone affiliated with the actual Okama culture in the One Piece world? We get O-Tama eating some food,  which is nice, and she's totally cured. O-Tsuru also shows herself to be somewhat pushy. We get some confirmation of the Kouzuki clan's role in Wano's history, and of the whole "Town of Leftovers" giving the audience a group of oppressed rebels to root for. It's all written well, I just don't think it's as particularly special or as insanely hype-inducing as half of the fandom seems to think Wano is. 

Thankfully, as is common in these exposition chapters, we get someone shooting an arrow at one of the tea ladies, and that dude is... Batman! No, the dude is literally called "Batman", and he's this fat, bat-person working for Kaidou and his Smilers. Another one of Kaidou's men is the gazelle-man Idaten, who kidnaps O-Tama and he looks more like an Okama than O-Kiku does. Kiku, Zoro and Luffy go off to rescue Tama, and Kiku tells the three of them all about the recon that she (he?) has done in regards to Kaidou's forces in the area. Again, neat world-building stuff, but not super-duper exciting or fresh, despite what the rabid Wano fans would have you believe. I'm not criticizing the Wano arc at all, since I do enjoy it, but the sheer amount of HYPE HYPE HYPE online really makes me feel at odds for what I feel is a pretty chill and slow-paced exposition, table-setting and re-introduction of Kaidou's gifters. 

So yeah, Luffy and Zoro are going to raise some hell, and caught up in all this is the long-suffering Trafalgar Law, who, as usual, is utterly baffled at everything that's going on. Overall, an okay expositionary chapter, and the Batman dude made me chuckle a little. Still not entirely taken in by the new supporting cast, though I don't outright dislike them.