One Piece, Chapter 769: Bellamy, the Pirate
Cover story is still continuing on, and apparently Jinbe is hunting down the perpetrator of... of whatever the fuck is going on. I cannot remember. Man, cover stories used to be nice and short-ish, but ever since Caribou it's just dragged on and on until it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Anyway, continuing from last chapter, Law has done the 'Injection Shot' thing on Doflamingo, though apparently it didn't do anything particularly special other than stab Doflamingo. From its name I thought there was going to be poison or something involved. We then get a cool scene as Law slices off a literal chunk of the palace in his Room and just launches it at Doflamingo and Trebol, intending to sandwich them.
However, Doflamingo does this Spider Web thing and just blocks the giant falling piece of architecture. Law launches a bunch of rocks and rubble and whatnot at Doflamingo, but he manages to fly up into the sky (Trebol's apparently just gone). Law reappears behind Doflamingo, making use of the rubble, which is a cool panel.
Law tries to go in with 'Mes', which is the heart-cutting-out attack (I'm assuming Law can't do his normal body-parts-flying-everywhere stuff against Doflamingo because of Haki) but Doflamingo catches Law's hand. He then monologues about how Law is so fired up and whatnot, how if Law really wanted to kill Doflamingo all he needed to do was to pit Doflamingo against Kaido. But instead Law went in personally and let emotions get the better of him.
(Also Birdcage is apparently still up)
They bring up Corazon and the letter and whatnot, and for a moment Doflamingo tries to get into Law's mind by saying 'if you haven't fucked up so badly Dressrosa wouldn't be like this', but Law isn't buying it. Doflamingo then extends his leg, which has a single string running down it, and while trash-talking Law he then proceeds to place the leg-string on Law's arm.
And at this point it's a "will they do it?" moment with Law's arm, because, after all, this isn't Bleach where arms fall off in every battle, and I was really expecting a fake out.
We get a couple of nice dialogue back-and-forth between Law and Doflamingo and all that as they plummet down towards the ground. There was a large explosion, Trebol is clapping... and the next panel is a pretty graphic one as Law screams with his right arm sliced right off.
Good lord, that arm. It was pretty shocking to see something like this happen in One Piece on-screen instead of in a flashback or whatever. And as Law writhes on the ground, Doflamingo continues his monologue, about how the other 'D' had influenced him, and how he'll forgive Law after killing him with a lead bullet for extra irony. Doflamingo's seriously screwed in the head.
Granted, the arm is probably not going to be that big of a deal since Law has the ability to remove hearts and toss them around without killing the person and whatnot, but still.
However, before Doflamingo can put a bullet in Law's head, there's suddenly 'JET GATLING' and what I initially thought as Law's dismembered arm being gatling'd to bits which would be funny. And for this moment I was pretty disappointed because it seems that Luffy's going to come in swinging to save the day and beat down arc villain Doflamingo just because he's the main character, but no. Thankfully, it's nothing like that.
Luffy has apparently blown apart the string clone of Doflamingo that fell down with him (did we really see this happen? I cannot remember) and the string clone disappears. Hopefully for good, since there's a lot of other characters that people can fight. You know, actual villainous characters instead of string clones. This distracts Doflamingo enough for him to look down, and apparently Luffy is still fighting the string-controlled Bellamy, and until very recently, String Doflamingo as well. Luffy is all screaming and telling Doflamingo to release Bellamy from his control or he'll die.
Doflamingo goes "sure, why not" and allows Bellamy to drop to the ground, and for a moment we get a little flashback from Bellamy's point of view, back when he wanted to join Doflamingo's organization, how Doflamingo got rid of him, his old battle with Luffy (as Luffy is going "are you okay? Well of course you're not okay"), his recent meeting with Luffy that's all warm and fuzz, and later on the recent betrayals by Dellinger and Doflamingo. And all this are intercut with Luffy talking to Bellamy as he's pushing himself up, and it is made as if Bellamy is going to change his colours and help Luffy and Law in taking down Doflamingo.
And literally, right until the last page, it looks something like this. Luffy is all 'stay here, I'll help Law to beat Doflamingo for you', and Bellamy seems to go and 'do you remember this skill?', seemingly giving Luffy a boost up with his stupid spring-leg ability...
Even the second-last page with the spread isn't quite clear as Bellamy is just hopping around the massive corridor and slamming into walls and shit, which could be intepreted as him trying to bring down the upper levels and get Doflamingo that way...
But the final page makes it clear that despite everything that Doflamingo had done to him, he's not going to bite back the hand that feeds him, and despite his injuries, he's still going to take down Luffy, declaring it to be his 'last fight'. Pretty interesting subversion of the normal manga cliches.
While I don't doubt somewhere in the future Bellamy might turn good (or he might die here) and Luffy's probably going to play a role in helping Law defeat Doflamingo, if not being the one who does it himself, I for one am very happy how Law doesn't immediately get Worfed and turned into a dude-in-distress for Luffy to come in and pull of a heroic rescue. Especially since, y'know, that whole backstory that makes me really want to see Law punch Doflamingo in the face really hard.
Do like this chapter, and it's nice to see Doflamingo laying down the smackdown both physically and verbally, as well as the several moments where it's subtly evident how Doflamingo's great at controlling people. There's Bellamy, of course, and there's the ways how he's trying to get Law to be a little 'oh no it's all my fault'. Doflamingo's a really well-written villain and I really want to see him get punched in the face. Looking forward to next week's chapter.
No comments:
Post a Comment