One Piece 780 Review: Bloody Cliffhangers

One Piece, Chapter 780: The Heart Curse

Jinbe's cover story has not ended, surprisingly, and apparently the Sea Kings are showing him the ruins where they found the Poneglyph. Okay then.

This chapter finally lets us see Luffy begin to fight Doflamingo, as well as show a bit of what happened while Luffy was fighting Bellamy. We see Trebol and Doflamingo beat Law, probably shortly after his arm got sliced off, and Doflamingo does what he does best -- talk shit. He talks about how Luffy will take time to deal with Bellamy because he considers Bellamy a friend (what) and talks shit about Law's life and backstory. Doflamingo then makes Law what is possibly the shittiest deal in the world: die instantly, or perform the immortality surgery... and then die. You know, Doflamingo, normally you want to make the option you want the other dude to take be beneficial so they'll pick it. Granted Doflamingo does say that he'll grant Law's wish, but do you really think he's a trustworthy dude?

Doflamingo's deal does allow Law to deliver one of the most awesome comebacks, though. It may be more PG in the original Japanese translation, but Law says something along the lines of 'bring Corazon back to life, and then go lick the asshole of every person in the country'. Law then fucking flips the bird at Doflamingo and then goes all 'the Straw Hats can work miracles' which is honestly a bit annoying because I want Law to freaking end Doflamingo but why not.

Doflamingo then shoots Law in the gut, which is a nice break from villains who just talk a lot and never do anything. I mean, Doflamingo did talk a lot, but at least he shoots Law too. He talks a bit about how Law had the word Corazon on the back of his jacket and he named his pirates the 'Heart Pirates' and shoots Law in the back, in the insignia, a couple of times before talking about how Corazon's heart curse ends today.

(From the title I honestly expected Law using some kind of awesome unseen-before-now power called the Heart Curse, really)

We get a totally pointless recap page with Viola, Tank and Riku and good god do we really need to waste an entire page to them again

Another short recap of Bellamy's caved-in face, and then Luffy bursts out of the ground and Doflamingo, being the dick he was, talks shit about Bellamy in front of Luffy. Luffy does an Elephant Gun, but Doflamingo blocks the giant thing with his Spider-Web thing. Luffy is shouting all about how Bellamy could never run and vaults over by grabbing Doflamingo's Web (you'd think the web would cut into Luffy's hand, but I guess Haki) and does a new attack -- Hawk Gatling. Which is nice, since I really liked Red Hawk. Doflamingo gets away easily, though, and summons this gigantic wave he calls 'Break White' which I don't think makes a lot of sense. It's like... a bunch of strings wrapped together like Robin's giant-hand-made-out-of-little-hands?

Luffy gets away and finds Law's bleeding (and apparently dead but I don't buy it) body. The chapter ends on people commenting that Birdcage is getting smaller, which could either mean Doflamingo has set the thing on a timer -- which doesn't really make sense since he could just do it in the first place and kill everyone without any real problem. Or maybe he just used a lot of string to do that weird Break White thing and that took some string from the Birdcage or something. Doflamingo (and Trebol) mocks Luffy about how Law died like a bitch or something, but apparently Luffy hears some telepathic message from Law...

Okay, let's be honest -- I'd be more surprised if Law actually did bite the dust in the following chapters. He's not going to die like this, especially not without taking Doflamingo out first. Plus, we have two healing devil fruits in play -- Law's own Ope Ope no Mi and Mancherie's healing fruit and really Mancherie and the Tontatta have been the odd thing out in this entire arc. But I still kind of like this development, and hope we wrap up this fight nicely in two or three chapters before moving on to other stuff. We haven't seen Sanji's group and Big Mom's ship in like a year now!