One Piece, Chapter 1030: The Impermanence of Things
But let's quickly zoom through the chapter as a whole, shall we? The first couple of pages is a bit weird. Apoo and Drake... apparently they're not even fighting anymore, but are... negotiating? We hvae the three remaining numbers (Inbi, Fuga and Zanki) hanging out with Apoo. Apoo figured out Drake's true allegiance to the Marine, and tries to get him to team up and swoop into claim victory. Pretty interesting, I suppose? I've always felt like as cool as the scene was, reducing Hawkins to just essentially a Kaido yes-man thug is a very disappointing end for one of the Super Rookies, so seeing Apoo at least try to make something out of his situation is something I appreciate.
But then come part two of this chapter. Usopp and Nami... meets a 'torso-less yokai'. Which is Kin'emon's lower body, running around and communicating by farting, in the same way that he did in Punk Hazard. It's stupid, especially since Kin'emon, Kiku and Kanjurou's deaths have been one of the most shocking parts of the Wano arc so far. It's not that I want Kin'emon to die, but one of One Piece's biggest failings has been its unwillingness to commit to killing off characters other than Ace and Whitebeard. It's a problem with Shonen manga in general, but one of the worst parts (and the biggest criticism of Fairy Tail) where any time someone looks like they're dead, the question isn't "oh no, what's going to happen?" but "what kind of bullshit will the author do to handwave his death?"
And with One Piece, while death or death fake-outs aren't quite as common, they're also... very protracted. Pound shows up alive in a random cover story hundreds of chapters after his death. Which makes me really pissed off if characters that died in the past couple of arcs actually do turn out to be alive. How terrible would all those moments with Pedro would be if he turns out to have somehow survived his suicide bomb? I'm also 100% sure Ashura Doji is actually alive and just lying in his own pool of blood, and even beforehand I already guessed that Kin'emon's life and the citizens of Kuri are alive. Hell, frankly, I wouldn't even be surprised if Yasuie and his amazing death scene turned out to be a fabrication and the real Yasuie survived being shot by Orochi, y'know?
And I feel like the problem isn't even the fact that the characters die and survive. We've already had that done relatively well -- Orochi was already kind of foreshadowed to have weird powers with his Devil Fruit; Kanjurou made ink clones before... but here? Going back to that panel where Kaidou beat the shit out of Kin'emon, we see him stabbing instead of slashing Kin'emon in half. And the lack of this foreshadowing is really what kind of irks me about the scene. In addition to the whole scene being played up for laughs.
Admittedly, the reason being 'Law didn't stick me back properly' does hold up. Going back to the Punk Hazard arc, it wasn't Law that stuck Kin'emon together, but rather Sanji. So yeah, I can buy that explanation. I just dislike the way this was narratively shown to us. Unless I'm missing something, I don't think there's even a point where Kin'emon complains about not being stuck together well, as a joke or otherwise.
Turns out Kiku is also alive, and so is Kanjurou -- Orochi manages to call Kanjurou and manipulate him, talking about the finale, about the cheering of Kanjurou's performance, and Kanjurou makes this gigantic shadowy burning yokai-ghost called a Kazenbo. I suppose the way this can be narratively resolved is for Kiku to finally find it in her to end Kanjurou for real? Eh. Again, I don't mind the plot development, I just feel like the pacing and the narrative structure isn't the best.
We get to see a bunch of other stuff going on around here, with the Kazenbo rampaging, Momonosuke making a bunch of small flame clouds, CP0 finally deigning to walk out of their room and seemingly going towards Brook and Robin, and shots of the other fighters as Orochi monologues. Also, a short scene of Yamato running towards where she's going to defuse the bomb.
Orochi just wants to kill everyone in Onigashima, and... and that page was cool, if only I wasn't still pissed off at the Kin'emon and buddies surviving and being revealed in this way. I do wonder who's going to get rid of Orochi. Denjirou seems to be the most logical character who hasn't done jack-all throughout the raid, I guess.
The final chunk of the chapter is interesting, though! Yamato's monologue is interrupted by a goddamn Ikoku blowing up a chunk of the castle as Big Mom blows Kid and his giant robot out into the main courtyard. Turns out, though, we get a brief flashback of Law and Kid discussing their powers... and the fact that, all this while, their Devil Fruits are awakened and it's just that it takes a lot of stamina to use their awakened powers.
And... this is a revelation that I felt made a bit more sense, and the explanation felt a bit more organic. Admittedly I don't buy that Law wouldn't have used his ultimate powers when fighting Doflamingo, but sure. Law's powers includes Kroom: Anesthesia ('Kroom' is pronounced like 'chrome' in Japanese) and Law just inserts his sword into Big Mom's body and unleashes a Shock Wave attack. I'm not sure how different this is from Law's usual Counter Shock attack, but I guess the idea is that it pierces Big Mom's impregnable defenses? Big Mom is explicitly bleeding after the attack, after all.
Kid, meanwhile, uses his 'Assign' awakening ability and does what we kind of guessed paramecia awakenings would be after seeing Doflamingo -- Big Mom gets turned into a magnet, and Big Mom gets buried under a bunch of giant metal towers. I don't think Big Mom goes down at the end of this chapter, but I actually am reasonably excited to see Kid and Law (and maybe Yamato?) do serious damage with their awakenings. Still have questions about Law's awakening, but ultimately that bit of a fight scene does kind of cause me to mellow out a bit regarding the rest of the chapter.
Overall, not my favourite Wano chapter for sure. I do reiterate that it's less about the survival and more about how it was presented to us. We'll see how things go in the next chapter.
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