One Piece 1058 Review: Bounties!

One Piece, Chapter 1058: New Emperors

A bit of a slower chapter, but it is a bounty chapter. Now I don't really get as excited about bounty chapters as much as the fandom does, but it is always interesting just how exciting a chapter can be just by dropping a bunch of bounties. I think it's the fact that, with the exception of Mihawk, that these bounties are just bounty increase reveals instead of unknown bounty reveals. That's totally a me problem, though, and I totally know just how much the fandom flipped over this.

I do really think chapters like this are necessary, though. The anime adds a lot of these extra scenes of the Straw Hats interacting with each other, and I understand it's the medium... but scenes of seeing the group dynamic -- and this is all the members of the crew -- does really help to sell that the Straw Hat Crew are an actual crew instead of just a bunch of random protagonists. Yeah, most of the revelation happens with scenes like these that I won't really list every one of them out, but seeing Jinbe react to Nami's angry aura with "woah, Conqueror's Haki" or Luffy being tossed in a cage or the angry dynamic between Zoro and Sanji over numbers... it's pretty fun. I've missed that.

Anyway, going quickly through the bounties... Chopper still has the joke bounty of 1000 berries, Nami has 366 million, Brook has 383 million, Franky has 394 million and God Usopp has 500 million. It's a gigantic leap for most of these guys, and there's something interesting in seeing that Franky's bounty poster is... of the Thousand Sunny? I mean, I guess it's an extension of the Franky Shogun joke, and I wonder if this is foreshadowing of something Franky will do with the Sunny eventually?

Robin gets a wonderful and much-deserved raise to 930 million, which she really probably already deserves in the first place thanks to her ability to read Poneglyphs and being on a pirate crew. Considering World Government priorities, she really should've been higher a longer time ago. The Monster Quartet has Sanji at 1.03 billion berries, while Jinbe and Zoro get 1.1 and slightly more than 1.1 billion respectively. And... Jinbe being a former Shichibukai does make sense, and I've always seen bounties as something that's representative more of reputation and infamy more than power level anyway. It is hilarious that instead of being higher than both Sanji and Zoro or lower than both of them, that Jinbe ends up being in the middle. And so close to Zoro, too! Man, Zoro's going to lord this over Sanji for the next couple of years and it's great.

The rest of the chapter is checking in at the other Yonko, and... we go to "Empty Bluffs Island" or Karai Bari Island or whatever it's called, and... turns out that while the fandom was mostly right at figuring out that Crocodile and Mihawk are the ones really calling the shots of Cross Guild, it's nowhere as harmonious as people think it is. Buggy absolutely got thrashed by the two actually competent villains, and... it's interesting how fun this whole scene is. Just the sheer awesomeness of seeing Mihawk and Crocodile back, seeing Galdino, Daz Bones, Alvida, Cabaji and Mohji in the background... the comedy with everything involving Buggy and his fan club making everything worse for him... 

Basically, we get a couple of flashbacks explaining what went on, but basically Crocodile recruited Mihawk for his whole bounty-on-marines stuff, and the two apparently bond over their mutual distrust of anyone other than them. Mihawk was apparently just so tired of effortlessly wiping out Marines that he wants to move and ends up accepting Crocodile's offer. But when Crocodile comes in to help Buggy wipe out the Marines there, it wasn't because Crocodile wanted to recruit Buggy or anything. No, he wanted to collect his debts. Buggy owes Crocodile money, and Crocodile was basically two steps away from selling Buggy to slavery until Buggy offers his printing services and network. And, of course, Buggy's idiotic fanboys have already done the poster that highlights Buggy's prominence. Mihawk gives Crocodile the idea of using Buggy as basically a scapegoat should things go south, and let him be the fake figurehead. 

Pretty fun stuff. Always great to see Buggy essentially fail higher and higher, and I'm a huge, huge unashamed Crocodile fanboy, so seeing him be so relevant is pretty great. 

And, of course, we get bounties for them, with good ol' Brannew falling for all of Buggy's nonsense. Citing his pedigree and the misconstrued news of Crocodile rushing to Buggy's aid was how they set him up as a Yonko. And... well, we get the bounties for the Cross Guild members. Crocodile has 1.965 billion, Buggy has 3.189 billion (which is more than Luffy!) and, more interestingly than the Bombastic Clown himself is Mihawk, who has 3.59 billion... one of the few characters that are not Yonko but have the bounty of one, and also probably the only time that a subordinate character's bounty is higher than their captain? Alleged or not? Interesting. 

We close the chapter at the Kamabakka Queendom, where we see Ivankov and Koala welcome the Revolutionary commanders. Kuma is also back there, completely robotic and being all 'as you command beep boop'. Dragon isn't happy at all about Sabo killing random kings. And then Sabo (or someone that's allegedly Sabo) calls Dragon, we cut off at a cliffhanger. But I really don't care all that much about the Revolutionaries, more about their implication to the story... it's just interesting to see what they'll do, what they did do in the Reverie, and what they and the wiretapping Marines are going to do in the future.

Pretty solid chapter. I think I didn't have such a strong reaction because bounties are nice but not something I get uber-excited about, and I kind of figured out the Crocodile/Mihawk/Buggy situation already by kind of over-analyzing the Buggy is a Yonko chapter a bit too much. Pretty neat stuff all around, I hope we get something interesting with the Revolutionaries next chapter.

Random Notes:

• Cover story has Caesar Clown rescuing the Germa siblings and asking for them to be allowed to escape. Now the problem is, how did Mr. Perfect Future-Sight Katakuri not realize what's happening?
• Robin patted the News Coo, that's nice of her. 
• Okay, Chopper not getting a higher bounty despite a Marine, X-Drake, being there to see Chopper transform into Monster Point? Yeah, Brannew's just dumb, I guess. 
• To put things into perspective, Nami, the lowest non-Chopper bounty on the Straw Hats, outranks the bounties of all the Supernovas, pre-timeskip. 
• I love that Mr. 3's namecard already lists him as 'Crocodile's henchman'. What a sneaky bastard, I've always loved Galdino. 
• Honestly, my (and many other fans') idea was that Crocodile and Mihawk already forced out the 'Buggy is the leader of the Cross Guild' narrative intentionally to make Buggy their fall guy, instead of using it as a handwave after Buggy's men spread misinformation all around the world. 
• Mihawk's epithet is "Marine Hunter" and that cannot be any more perfect. 
• Mihawk is also identified as someone that has better sword skills than Shanks, and of course the fandom is up in arms picking out every single interpretation of that line. It really is simple, isn't it? Mihawk is better than Shanks in swordfighting, Shanks is better in everything else. 
• Okay, that one panel with Crocodile spearing random Marines on the ship is cool as hell. Does he have Armament Haki in that shot, you think? He probably should, right?