One Piece 1138 Review: The Edda

One Piece, Chapter 1138: Harley

What a chapter! After some relatively staggered releases of revelations and excitement in the past couple of chapters, 1138 really delivers big-time. Just like the Reverie and Imu chapters, I feel like this is one of those chapters that's going to be hyper-analyzed and over-analyzed by fans for the months to come. 

The first half of the chapter isn't super epic, at least for me. It's just a continuation of the scenes we've seen last week with Shamrock and Gunko torturing Loki. We do get a quick acknowledgement from Loki's end about the similarities between Shamrock and Shanks, and the confirmation that the two of them are twins. So that's that confirmed. I thought that was the easiest and most obvious explanation. Shamrock also gives us a bit of extra information about how Shanks actually returned to the Holy Land for a bit. We don't know when -- was it before or after Roger's death? Was it as a child, as an adult, was it that one chapter where he met the Gorosei (that still may or may not be Shamrock)? I am quite intrigued by this little tidbit more than the fact that the two are brothers -- which, again, was what I was expecting in the first place. 

Loki swears vengeance, sweet sweet vengeance, against all of the misbegotten family line of Shanks. Shamrock pulls out his sword... and it transforms into 'Cerberus'! Very cool artwork as the dog heads glorp out of the tip of the blade, and form a massive three-headed dog with spiky dog collars. 

So yeah. Again, we still don't have any confirmation about whether this is another object that ate a Devil Fruit or if this is 'just a demon' like many of the Gorosei theories have been, but until we see any evidence to the contrary I'll just go for the simpler explanation. Cerberus's dog collars rotate in place like fucking helicopter engines, while blades pop out of the dog mouths. I think the Gods' Knights are just huge fans of ridiculously impractical gestures -- because just like Gunko's telegraphed arrow kicks, the dog heads are launched from Cerberus's body like missiles, and they circle around the air to impale Loki. Loki overacts like hell about the lethality of the dog-head-sword missiles, but I highly doubt that it's lethal at all. Neat showcase of powers, but not much else. 

Which is badass, no doubt, and the sort of ridiculousness I love from anime. It is also very impractical because Cerberus could just impale Loki right there. But fuck it, it's cool. (Also, Shamrock was able to 'retrieve' Cerberus's body back into his sword while the heads are flying around. I guess he just didn't want to wait?)

Speaking of Cerberus... one of the longest-running theories in the One Piece community has been that Blackbeard ate a Cerberus fruit that allowed him to utilize multiple Devil Fruits. I think we can safely say that this kind of put a kibosh to Cerber-Blackbeard!

Gunko, meanwhile, uses her arrow-bandage things to create like a bizarre arrow-headed bird that the two Gods' Knights hop on to and fly off on. Again, it's cute -- the arrow would be a way to point this method of transport in a certain direction! Shamrock is about to set off a plan that involves taking children hostage. Man, they're very rapidly checking off the boxes of being unlikable, asshole villains, huh? Shamrock also tells Gunko to call another person, so we're going to have a third Gods' Knights join in. Neato. 

Luffy and gang, meanwhile, meet up with the two giants that are in the castle... yeah, some big badass villains Gunko and Shamrock are, if they can't even kill two nameless giants! They are convinced that it's Shanks that attacked them, but Luffy just gets pissed off and we spend a whole page of Luffy saying how it cannot ever be Shanks due to all of the behavioural inconsistencies. And Luffy jumps straight into being able to troll-logic his way into the truth, that it's someone that looks like Shanks. We get a nice little discussion between Luffy and Nami, and Luffy points out that Nami would be equally angry if someone badmouthed 'Tell-Mere'. 

When the discussion of a potential brother comes up, Luffy notes that Shanks never talked too much about his real family, but... Luffy also points out, rightfully so, that Shanks' real family was Roger and Rayleigh. Found family being more important than blood family! That's another theme of One Piece. While Luffy is saying this, we get the mysterious kasa-hat person who may or may not be Shiki or Scopper or whoever walking up to them.

The second half of the chapter then begins now. And boy, what a doozy. It initially just starts off as something quite innocuous. Franky goes off to see so much Adam Wood, and we get a bit of a discussion about how Franky decides not to steal from the giants; and Ripley considers making some profit off of the Adam Wood. But then they find a doodle. Ripley handwaves it as something super-old that the local giants dismissed as being some punk's doodle, but Franky gets a bit shocked when he realizes that the mural was dated to being in the Void Century. 

We see just a bit of the mural, which shows various races working together. Not all the figures look like giants, and Ripley notes that the oddity of various races working together is what makes this likely "a child's dream".

Which, hey, I think this is probably the biggest indirect confirmation that this is Roger and Luffy's mysterious child-like dream. He might phrase it differently, but I really wouldn't mind that this was the big takeaway message at the end of One Piece. 

We then cut away to the Owl Library, where Saul shows off the sacred Harley text to Robin and Chopper. And just like many significant religious and ancient texts, Saul notes that there has been many different interpretations of the Sun God over the years, and that's why the Elbaph giants all believe in slightly different versions of the Sun God. In a manner similar to the legends of Ragnarok, the narrative in the Harley texts is split into three sections, with the third segment representing the present day -- and how it is prophecy.

And as Robin reads the text, we get a glorious two-page spread of Franky looking transfixed at the massive, quasi-Aztec/quasi-Mayan mural. This is going to take a while to analyze, but on the right side of the mural (where the story begins) is a bunch of very modern-looking buildings and gears and machinery. There are people giving some kind of... glowing things to a king? And there's a representation of the (or a) Ark with animals on it? Is that the One Piece universe's equivalent of the Noah Flood story? There's also a flying ship going to the moon, which seems to be a tie to the Ark Maxim. Oh, let's not forget two giant demonic dragons breathing fire. 

Then there's a huge tree in the middle, before we go to the right side of the mural, where a gigantic fleet led by Nika is fighting a giant shadow demon-monster that seems to have the sun captive. We see giants, iron giants, mermaids, tontatta, minks, lunarians, whales, even a giant fish randomly at the bottom... So yeah, very much a prophecy!

And the prophecy itself, which... at the moment, I'm using a fan translation, and I bet just like Binks' Sake, this is something that will be subject to slightly different interpretations as well with the various translations. I don't know if I'll have the time to go back and revise this once the official translations are out, but here we go from what we had:

"The First World: The Earth burned in endless flame, and the hearts of men burned with desire. From whispered prayers, the Sun God rose, beckoned by the enslaved who reached for the forbidden star. The God of the Land was enraged. With a Serpent of Fire, they cast the world into ruin. Darkness fell. Death reigned. They would not meet again."

Nika being summoned by the wishes of slaves and the oppressed is something we've learned before, but this seems to be the story of how the massive flood happened. What are the God of the Land and the Serpent of Fire? Actual god-like beings on the level of Nika and Imu? Or are they the Ancient Weapons? Is this the Ancient Kingdom with its higher level of technology, or something even more ancient? There are also elevators of people, some with halos and some holding the strange little star-like puffballs. What are those? Are we seeing the scientific creation of the Devil Fruits?

There are also a lot of ships. Something really resembling Noah's Ark, with angels and a king and animals waling up towards the ship. The Ark Maxim is also there, unleashing a gigantic thunderbolt down. 

"The Second World: A breath stirred in the abyss. The God of the Forest wove their magic, nurturing its devils. While the Sun lit the embers of war. Those of half-crescent and full moons dreamed. Yet the ones who slew the sun deified themselves, evoking the wrath of the Sea God. They would not meet again."

This seems to be the origin story of Devil Fruits, yeah? How they grew out from a tree. This also isn't the first time we've heard of a God of the Forest, as some of these titles were passed around offhandedly during the Skypiea arc. Are the ones that 'slew the sun' and 'deified themselves' the Celestial Dragons? I really wonder how these Worlds are defined, and how recent they are. It seems like this is the battle pre-Void-Century, but you can't ever be sure. 

Also, what are the moons? Tribes in the moons? The sky races? It's also notable that the 'Sun' in the First and Second World seemed to have different goals. The First World sun was a liberator of slaves, which seems quite straightforward. The Second World sun 'lit the embers of war' and was slain, which... again, seems to paint a more war-like and destructive incarnation of Nika. And if the timelines match, then this 'war' Sun God might be Joy Boy?

"The Third World: Chaos reigns. The world drifts in a void, yet time does not erase the memory of the promised day. Its shadow looms as the voice of the half-moon echoes through the ages. And once more, the Sun God shall rise - laughing, dancing, guiding the world to its final act. The sun is reborn, a new dawn will break. Surely, this time, they will meet."

Presumably, if this is the present day, then it's talking about Luffy in the present day as he is the reincarnated Sun God fighting against Imu. But there are still a bunch of questions. Who will (or will not) meet? What are these references to the moons? Who are the other gods? Again, are they ancient weapons or comparable deities to Nika? 

And that's not saying that the mural actually match up with the three segments of the Harley text either, because it could be just depicting the First and Second Worlds... I feel it works well either way, because it's still mostly symbolic, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the twist and the big 'assembled army' turned out to be a representation of the past war instead of an upcoming one.

So many interesting questions, and what a bombshell. This is a fun week to be looking around for One Piece theories for sure! 

Random Notes:

• Yamato Cover Story: To the surprise of no one, the villain is Who's Who. With apologies to the cover story, but this feels so inconsequential compared to the rest of the chapter. 
  
• I still can't take the name 'Shamrock' quite as seriously.
• In retrospect, if we look at when cloning was properly developed by ex-MADS scientists, the timelines don't line up perfectly. Although there always was an argument about the accelerated growth that the Germa 66 were able to do. 
• I suppose at some point here I should point out that we had another Cerberus character in Thriller Bark, a giant three-headed stitched-up zombie. Of course Treasure Cruise has a piece of artwork for him, and since I can't think of someone who represents the reveal in the second half of the chapter, Cerberus feels like a nice eyecatcher for the chapter. 
  
• To those that wonder why Blackbeard/Cerberus, the main proponent seems to be that his flag has three skulls on it; he has one Paramecia and one Logia fruit, so it makes sense for his third fruit to be a Zoan; he seems to have multiple personality disorder; and there were a bunch of 'three' in the chapters that introduced him. 
• Is this the first time we know that Luffy always knows that Shanks was part of Roger's crew? Or is it something he found out from Rayleigh in Sabaody? I don't actually remember. 
• Context clues of Luffy talking about Shanks's "true family" being Roger's crew would seem to point out that Mr. Hats is actually Scopper Gaban, but... I just really don't care about Scopper. That said, I will also admit that this was also my reaction when Kozuki Oden kept being name-dropped and I'm a huge Oden fan now, so I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
• It is quite interesting that we get three random panels of the giants' school right after Ripley compares the mural to a child's dream. I wonder if it's just there to highlight the comparison with children, or if there's actually something more to it.
• One detail was that apparently while the story of Nika has kind of been spread all over the world with changes in the details, the don-dat-ta-ta dance remained consistent. Interesting!
• Among the ships that charge in to fight the giant shadow-demon that may or many not be Imu, we see some people obviously from Wano -- with a katana and a topknot, and the person at the back of the ship holding a shuriken. 
• I wonder if there is anything on the foot of the tree at the center of the mural, which currently is covered by Franky's silhouette. The lightning bolt from the Ark Maxim is striking there, for what it's worth. 
• Are the three shadowy figures Uranus, Pluton and Poseidon? The giant serpent on the far right being Poseidon kind of makes sense, and a flying dragon being Uranus also makes sense, but we know Pluton's meant to be a ship... and the only figure that it would correspond to would be the giant Imu-like devil giant. Or is "Pluton in Alabasta" all a huge misunderstanding of how Imu and the Nefertari family once had a connection? Did Pluton become sentient and become Imu?
• If the 'Sea God' represented the flooding, was the 'God of the Forest' the one that created the Red Line?