One Piece 1073 Review: An Old Man On A Boat

One Piece, Chapter 1073: Ms. Buckingham Stussy

Been a little busy the past couple of days thanks to the Lunar New Year, but this chapter... whoo! What a chapter, am I right? 

After the gigantic revelation last chapter about Stussy being a clone and also a vampire and also a traitor to CP-0 and also the real Ms. Buckingham Stussy is a member of Rocks... yeah. Kaku gets instantly one-shot and reverts back to his human form, and... it is rather surprising. People were expecting a long, drawn out fight like the original CP-9. Some other people expected the CP-9 to be one-shot to show how much the Straw Hats have grown. Pretty much no one expected a third party to come and one-shot the CP-0 agents! admittedly, Kaku had both the element of surprise and a massive weakness to vampires, with his super-long neck... everyone knows a neck's greatest enemy is a vampire, right next to guillotines!

Lucci immediately attacks Stussy with a Shigan, but Stussy just Kami-e's away, the first really fun usage of Kami-e I've seen in a long while. It's so fancy! It looks like something out of Naruto. Stussy talks about how Lucci's first instinct is to go for the kill whenever he meets something he doesn't understand. That's a very accurate analysis of Rob Lucci! But then Stussy stabs Lucci with her lipstick, coated with Seastone... and then we get a closeup of her vampire mouth as she monstrously chomps down on Lucci's neck and chest. Lucci gets taken out immediately. We do get an acknowledgement from Stussy that she wouldn't be able to fight Lucci hand-to-hand, but... well, they are assassins. Really doesn't behoove them to bitch about a sneak attack now, does it? 

Stussy also gets revealed by the celebrating Satellite Punks as the ally they had on the island that Vegapunk called, and they later explain how they didn't expect Stussy to still be on their side. Stussy can't override the Seraphims' orders since people of the same rank can't stop the Terminators, which sounds like a bit of a design flaw. The Seraphim actually have the Vegapunks ranked higher than Stussy, but... a far bigger design flaw is that S-Hawk takes a look at Lilith and immediately goes to murder mode before Lilith can even get "hey, Seraphim, listen to me" out.

Zoro zooms in, recognizing S-hawk, and clashes with him and... I didn't necessarily expect a long drawn-out fight with the Seraphims either, but, hey, current Zoro is equal or a bit stronger to a kid Mihawk. Zoro notes that S-Hawk has a bit of a spark of humanity on closer inspection, whatever the hell that means? I guess the Seraphim have personalities or some such?  S-Shark also immediately takes a potshot at Edison in the midst of a sentence. Sanji zooms in and saves Edison from the explosion, being fast enough, and... yeah, it is rather a bit of a design flaw to not program in a "don't kill some of the people highest up in the authority chain" clause. 

Lucci and Kaku get bound with Seastone cuffs off-screen, while Shaka asks Stussy to join them in escaping. Usopp gets pissed that they keep adding people, but I don't think the others (especially Sanji) would mind. It would be interesting to see what Stussy's reaction to Luffy not being the massive Death Note mastermind would be! 

An interesting scene caps this off, though. Luffy is looking for Bonney and the Stella body of Vegapunk, who we last see was beholding the mysterious Ursus Shock ball. The narrator, however, states that on that day, Vegapunk's Stella body vanished... which felt odd if it was just describing Vegapunk leaving with the Straw Hats from the Government's POV, so I wonder if Bonney absconded with Vegapunk, or if something else is at play that causes the real Vegapunk to be taken away by someone else. 

And then the second half of the chapter cuts away to something else. Sphinx Island, Whitebeard's hometown, which Marco has been protecting. The stories leading up to Wano have been really hinting that it's going to be Edward Weevil and Ms. Buckin that arrive there beating up the townsfolk to try and get Whitebeard's treasure. As we see in a flashback, it's actually a corrupt group of Marines that show up, using the same excuse of them not being a registered nation under the World Government as their right to do whatever they want. They straight up were pointing guns at children and grannies! 

...And then EDWARD WEEVIL shows up as the hero, and he just beats the shit out of the incoming Marines with his mighty naginata, yelling about how they should stay away from his daddy's home. Weevil may be a brute, but the thing is that despite his impostor status, he does really genuinely believe that Whitebeard is his daddy and that he's supposed to be protecting his dad's legacy. 

In the present day, however, Marco is confronted by a panicking Ms. Buckin, who rants that the Marines actually called for backup, summoning Admiral Ryokugyu, and Weevil got arrested. We also get the confirmation that Ms. Buckin is Buckingham Stussy, and she is a "self-proclaimed scientist" among the Rocks Pirates. Buckin rants about how they took Weevil away, and how she wants her son back... and also the treasure while they're at it. There's a bit of a debate between Buckin and Marco about whether Weevil is truly Whitebeard's son, and she mentions going to Dr. Vegapunk to ask it. Okay, so we are getting the Buckin/Weevil stuff covered in this arc. It is nice  to catch up with Marco, too, after the rather abrupt way that his story was closed in Wano. 

And then the final page is... a Marine ship meeting with a World Government vessel, with Kizaru preparing a bunch of snacks and tea, and taking the drinks to a guest. Kizaru asks this guest if he's ever met Vegapunk before, and the guest is none other than one of the Gorosei... who is finally out of the Room of Ominous Meetings in Marygeoise. It's the dreadlocked, bearded Gorosei member, the Karl Marx looking one, whose name we get as St. Jay Garcia Saturn. DUN DUN DUNNNN!

It really does speak to the sheer length and worldbuilding that this series has done that an old man whose name we just know this chapter just walking out of a room is exciting enough. Characters like Shanks and the Gorosei who barely have screentime can somehow grab the entire fandom by the balls when they show up, and that's amazing! The 'Saturn' name is probably what's the most interesting. With 'star' in Japanese being applicable to planets as well, I wonder if the Gorosei will each represent one of the planets not represented in the Ancient Weapons? I mean, I didn't really realize until this moment that the Ancient Weapons borrow names from the three 'outer planets' discovered in relatively much more modern times (Uranus was discovered in the late 1700's, as opposed to the planets from Mercury to Saturn, which even the ancient B.C.-era people know about). Presumably, the other four Gorosei members represent Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Where does Im fit into all this? Is he the Earth? Or the Sun?

Anyway, pretty amazing chapter. Egghead has been delivering on all fronts but extended battle scenes, but I really did feel like this arc wasn't going to have one -- that Luffy/Lucci scrap we got earlier is the closest thing to one that we are going to get.

Random Notes:

• The cover price has Dr. Vegapunk invent a... flower shooting gun? And winning the Ibel Prize (fake Nobel Prize) for Peace? Okay. The other MADS scientists are bamboozled. Wonder what Vegapunk would feel about Pop-Greens? 
• Poor, poor Hattori is just panicking so much when Lucci gets manhandled. Poor pigeon! 
• Since Stussy was also surprised when the forcefield came down a couple chapter back... was she just a good actor, or if that dome was actually her doing, too!
• The corrupt Marine that attacked Sphinx is called Ratel (a rat, get it) but he does really look like a jacked-up version of Nezumi, the corrupt Marine that was in cahoots with Arlong! 
• So I guess this is all the Shichibukai-vs-Marine confrontations accounted for, right? We saw what happened to Buggy, Mihawk and Hancock... is there anyone else we're missing? 
• Oh man, even the Gorosei managed to walk out of their office before Akainu did! Poor red dog. 
• Speaking of planets, we already also have some associations with the Celestial Dragons and outer space, what with the spacesuits and shit.
• As a side-note: Been super-busy and probably will be in the next couple of weeks, so expect a bit of a delay on the future playthroughs of Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon/Persona monster reviiws.