One Piece 1035 Review: The King Falls

One Piece, Chapter 1035: Zoro Vs. King

Not too much for me to say here, but seeing that we're not getting another chapter until 2022, I guess I'll talk about this one in an individual chapter. I really wished that I had stayed my hand with publishing my review for 1034 -- nothing wrong with either chapter, but so much of both of them are 'a Straw Hat beats the enemy, and they get the full chapter to them' and there's only so much I can talk about it without going panel-by-panel and commentating on either the attack names or the artwork.

We do get a bit of a coda to the Sanji/Queen fight from the previous chapter, with the confirmation that Queen gets absolutely manhandled by Sanji and tossed out of Onigashima itself. There's a neat bit of Sanji flashbacking to his own pet mouse back during his days as the child of Germa, but otherwise the rest of the chapter is just King's fight. 

And it's... I'm not sure how I feel about it. There's a very video-game-y vibe to it, where Zoro realizes that King gets faster but more fragile when the flames on his back is out. There's no real rhyme or reason to this, no Haki-handwave or some justification... I don't know. It's just 'oh, this is the moment for you to hone in your attacks', and after the whole bit with King reflecting damage in the previous chapter (what's up with that?) and all the talk about the mystery of the Lunarians, I guess having a Defense Down, Speed Up buff is just something innate to them? I certainly haven't gone back to check (but I'm sure Oda's consistent about it) but I really do hope that we get an explanation to this, even if it's something as cheeky as 'dinosaurs in this world do hunt like this'. '

King's mask gets ripped up and we get to see what he looks like -- a typical anime dark-skin white-hair look with a tattoo. The tattoo at least looks pretty Skypiean-y, vaguely resembling Wyper's, but, again, we don't really learn too much about the Lunarians at all. We do get to know a bit about King, which is nice -- in-between the clashes against Zoro, the audience gets flashbacks of King's time as a captive of the World Government, and how a still-young-and-happy Kaido freed him from there. There's something to talk about here, how Kaido feels a lot more upbeat and optimistic in the way that we'd describe the likes of Roger and Luffy, but that makes me more interested about Kaido than I am about King. 

We do get a couple of sword clashes, a couple of named attacks, and the return of King's sword-breaker sword which Zoro deflects with Conqueror's Haki. But ultimately it's just a very cool action scene -- Zoro figures out the openings in King's powers, the two warriors exchange taunts, and Zoro cuts through King's giant dragon flame and unleashes a dragon-based Haki-sword attack. 

Pretty great takedown, and the only real crime is that it's just kind of simple. Zoro claims he has to master Enma a couple chapters back, and he does. And he cuts King down, just like he says he would. The artwork does really show just how much Zoro is struggling (he did just hang out in a fight against the Yonko) so I do appreciate that Zoro doesn't just treat this as a joke the way the Pica fight went. A neat fight, overall, 

I do feel that I'm pretty mellow, but with all the other Straw Hats already having huge 1v1 chapters and neither King nor Queen really ended up being developed more beyond 'slightly-strong lieutenant', I felt kind of lukewarm seeing them defeated. None of these chapters are bad, of course, but with how epic the scale of the Wano arc has been (particularly since I'm also watching the anime on the side) I really do kind of feel like the Sanji/Queen and Zoro/King takedowns lack a certain oomph to them. 

Random Notes:

• Looks like our cover story's going to be Germa 66 oriented, explaining what they did after Whole Cake Island. Everybody's just surviving Whole Cake Island via cover stories, it seems. 
• King's Imperial Fire turns into dragons in this chapter, and I guess it's just a nod at how loyal King is to Kaido, then.