One Piece Chapter 722: Cabbage and Romeo
It's a bit better than the past two chapters that are just kind of average and kind of takes out minor characters. I mean, we still aren't moving into the big fights like Zoro and Pica, or Kyros and Diamante (though we get a bit of it) or Luffy and Doflamingo and Law and Bellamy and all that. But at least I actually care about Bartolomeo and Cavendish -- unlike Machvise and Lao G and Sai who are just kind of m'eh before all this. Bartolomeo and Cavendish are two of the more, if not the most, major characters among the Coliseum newcomers, and I am quite interested in them, so it's nice to see them.Cover story is still continuing the Jinbei stuff and somehow he meets up with Vander Decken's giant sea giant dude Wadatsumi. I don't... I don't know what the hell is going on anymore. I'll just wait until everything is over and then just reread all the cover chapters.
Also it took me quite a while of puzzling before I got that the 'Romeo' in the chapter title refers to Bartolomeo.
The chapter starts off with a bit more of the Diamante fight, and I really hoped we would be getting more of that but judging from the title, of course it won't be. Anyway, in the sunflower fields, apparently Diamante's Army Bantera attack from way back when has caused the ground to become very wobbly and Diamante mocks Kyros and neatly wraps up his backstory in three panels. Kyros charges towards Diamante, but he blocks his sword with his steel cape.
Diamante does this 'Vipera Glaive' attack, sending his wacky wiggly sword straight towards Rebecca. She's kind of surprised but she already has her sword up somewhat... but Kyros does this cool leap through the air to deflect Diamante's sword. You could probably make an argument about the whole chickification of Rebecca the gladiator being reduced into just a passive bystander in the fight, but while there's a bit of that, there's an argument to be made about Kyros being such an overprotective father that he's not even going to allow Diamante's attack to even reach Rebecca.
Rebecca tells Kyros that he wants to join the fight, and Diamante is just being a massive dickbag and talking about how he wants to see Kyros' face after both his wife and daughter are dead. Kyros then says this kind of awesome speech about how he'll protect Rebecca, how he's unable to do so before and has been living in regret and shame, and how he'll never let his daughter swing a sword now that he's here to protect her.
I hope Rebecca does get to help out in beating Diamante, though, because I like Rebecca more than I do Kyros. At least Kyros doesn't tell Rebecca to leave or hide, which seems to be kind of the norm for manga, so yay! The two can take down Diamante together as a father-daughter team or something.
Also Kyros' face in that angry shouting panel looks a bit like Vivi's father, Nefertari Cobra. Just saying.
Really want to see more of this fight, especially on Diamante's end, because right now all he's doing is making his sword and cape all fluttery, and considering how creative One Piece has been with powers (a freaking giraffe man) I really want to see what this fluttery man can do.
We cut away to the second level where the Donquixote pirates are all 'Lao G has been defeated!' Zoro, not teasing us with the fight with Pica for once, notes how destructive the Happo Navy's power is and kind of acknowledges Sai's strength. We get a bit of Sai and Chinjao, and Baby 5, crazy girl that she is, kind of makes a dark joke about how they'll have to prepare for two ceremonies, a funeral and a wedding. It's kind of dark, but Chinjao is obviously still health if he can pull that big 'HEY' face and Baby 5 is the kind of socially-inept person who doesn't mean any real malice about it. Whatever. Those parts of this big war are kind of done.
We cut to the third level, where Gladius is fighting Cavendish and Bartolomeo. Gladius has apparently used his Pamu Pamu no Mi powers to inflate the entire terrain they're fighting like Diamante did, but instead of making it fluttery, Gladius is going to make the whole thing blow up. We get a bit of Gladius' soldiers kind of going 'we'll be caught up in it' and Gladius, being evil, of course doesn't give a shit. We also get a bit of a comedy moment where Cavendish tells Bartolomeo he wants to get behind his barrier, and I do like how Bartolomeo is still a massive dick to anyone not from the Straw Hats, picking his nose and going 'Robin-senpai and I will be in danger' while Cavendish kind of gets pissed off.
Gladius' big attack, 'Punct Rock Fest', erupts and it's kind of cool even if it's horribly ineffective and all it does is blow up the terrain and the random pirate troops just hanging around. And for a moment it seemed that Bartolomeo did act like a dick and not let Cavendish in, but he had eventually relented and we get a funny little scene where Bartolomeo tries to act cool and shit and goes 'being outside will surely mean certain death' while Cavendish is just pissed off. And then the two get into an argument, with Bartolomeo getting pissed off that Cavendish keeps wanting to go in and out of his barrier, while Cavendish is just pissed at Bartolomeo not being cooperative. I thought this flowed a lot better than last chapter's dialogue since we now both of Bartolomeo and Cavendish's personalities compared to Chinjao (whose interactions have been mostly 'you are Garp's grandson grawr') and Sai (who's a cipher) from last chapter.
Robin is apparently running up stairs created from her own legs, which seems really inefficient. Why not create a bunch of hands to pull her all the way up? Robin apparently wants to go back up Rebecca, which is cool. Gladius is using his weird goggles to zoom in on Robin, and uses some wrist-mounted Deadshot-style gun to shoot 'Catapult Punct' (the translation I read translates it as 'Punk', but since he's of the Puncture fruit I thought it's supposed to be just a shortening of the word puncture) but Bartolomeo extends his barrier in the form of a Racket, saving Robin.
Robin gives Bartolomeo this wink and it's still funny how she calls him Birdy-kun. Bartolomeo, of course, as with everything Straw-Hat-related, goes all apeshit in what can only be described as a fangasm, momentarily going all 'is she going to make me her slave' with hearts and all that, before getting a hold of himself and telling himself to have some shame. Bartolomeo is fun. I like him. He goes on about how he feels great.
Meanwhile, Cavendish and Gladius are like, going to clash. Cavendish is doing some Biken swordsplay, while Gladius expands his arms in an attack apparently named 'Blackium'. Before they can get a climatic clash, however, suddenly Bartolomeo's barrier charges forwards with Bartolomeo just raging, apparently driven to just craziness by Robin's wink. It's called 'Barrier Bulls', apparently, and he's just moving that big barrier onwards like a giant invisible bulldozer, and his expressions are absolutely hilarious. Cavendish tells Bartolomeo to stop, but Bartolomeo tells Cavendish (or rather, Cabbage, which made me smile as well) he can't stop now.
Gladius calls Dellinger to help out, and Dellinger is just standing nearby. We last saw Dellinger fighting Destruction Cannon Ideo, and apparently Ideo is still alive and kicking. Dellinger easily blocks Ideo's punch and apparently he's basically done for. Dellinger calls Ideo a member of the 'Longarm Tribe', possibly related to the 'Long-leg Tribe' that we've seen people be a member of. Ideo gives some generic speech about how a man must have honour and duty, and how he's going to buy time for Luffy since victory isn't won by a single person, while Dellinger just brutally kicks him with those weird high heels of his.
Dellinger tears off his hat and grows some shark teeth (his human teeth just fall off) and then brutally bites Ideo in the neck, before letting him drop down. Well, he's definitely out of the picture now. We get a nice face of Dellinger's crazy face as he tells us again that he's a descendant of the fighting fishes. That's short and sweet. Ideo's out, Dellinger shows off his abilities. I thought it was pretty well done.
Dellinger moves on to the third level, where Gladius is, and apparently Gladius survives the Barrier Bulls thing. Gladius tells Dellinger to get away, about how something is dangerous, while Dellinger is all 'come on, there's no one the two of us can't take down'... and then Dellinger just gets cut down. It's a slash on the side of his chest from Cavendish's insane sleepwalking alter-ego (Hakuba, as I found out after looking it up) and it's pretty cool. Delinger is apparently taken out, while Cavendish is just being scary and shit. Meanwhile Bartolomeo is just not really understanding what's going on. It's all fun.
I'm kind of curious about the specifics of Cavendish's Hakuba alter-ego, and just the specifics of how it works. Previously we're told by that one Vice Admiral (Bastille?) that Cavendish becomes Hakuba if he falls asleep, but is that really the case or is there something more sinister going on? Eh, whatever. Also curious about the limits of Bartolomeo's power and why he didn't do this crazy barrier rush before... though I guess Bartolomeo's just crazy and weird.
Overall a step up from the past chapter, mostly because we're focusing on the more interesting secondary characters like Cavendish, Bartolomeo, Cavendish and Dellinger (the latter two are a lot more interesting than Lao G and Machvise). Dellinger and Ideo get taken out, Bartolomeo and Cavendish get some fun scenes. We're kind of going through two executives or around that pace per chapter, which is good.
I'm going to assume next chapter will have the two of them taking out Gladius and maybe finish off Dellinger if he's not quite out yet. Or maybe Bartolomeo will have to deal with Hakuba-Cavendish? I hope not, though, since I think this arc is kind of suffering from a bit of overlong fatigue, and I just want to cut to the other major fights: Kyros and Rebecca versus Diamante, Zoro versus Pica, Luffy versus Bellamy, Law versus Doflamingo and maybe Franky versus Senor Pink. Gladius is basically the only minor Doflamingo officer left, and I really want it to just move to the climax with Doflamingo and Law, and then move on to all the bigger stuff like the Revolutionaries and Aokiji and Kaido and Big Mom... we haven't seen Sanji, Nami and the others for like half a year now! Whatever happened to them? I mean, I may sound a bit too harsh on this arc because I'm reading weekly instead of all in a go. It's not that I hate this, I just am really antsy to get to the good parts.
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