One Piece 782 Review: Trebol's Paramecia Fruit

One Piece, Chapter 782: Evil's Champion

The cover story of this chapter is people having a party as is requisite of any One Piece arc ending. Except, y'know, the cover story isn't really that interesting and honestly kind of confusing. But that aside... this chapter was pretty good. It's still largely just fighting, and we've got an unexpected focus on Trebol. The first half of the chapter is just Luffy fighting Doflamingo in an awesome Haki melee, but the second half has Trebol join in the fight again and not be completely shitty. He still goes down kind of like a bitch, but that isn't entirely unexpected. We also get a short flashback of how Doflamingo meets the four executives which has been hinted at before.

We get a pretty awesome 'clash of Conqueror's Haki', as Trebol can somehow identify, which happens when Luffy and Doflamingo's legs come into contact with each other. Trebol then flashes back to when he first meets Doflamingo, explaining Conqueror's Haki to a young Doflamingo, presumably after he knocks out the people trying to kill him. Trebol then gives Doflamingo his Devil Fruit and his trademark gun, starting off his path of darkness.

Trebol then continues to commentate on Luffy's fight against Doflamingo, talking about how he's cut from a different cloth, his birth caused his madness, his fate caused his rage, and how he's this Yaksha demon thing and whatnot. We then get a pretty cool melee of Luffy just spinning around and launching blow after blow at Doflamingo who blocks them and takes them like a boss. Luffy then uses a new attack: Gomu Gomu Eagle Bazooka, which, as far as I can tell, is a combination of Gear Second and Armament Hardening. Not that it does anything, because Doflamingo dodges the attack and kicks Luffy with 'Athelete Thread', a kick with strings running from the tip of his feet that sends Luffy flying into the distance..

Right into Trebol's lap. And as Doflamingo goes off to smash Law's skull in Luffy keeps trying to beat Trebol up (no idea why he doesn't punch Trebol in the jaw) but is unable to do so, because apparently Trebol, like Pica, is not a Logia but rather a Paramecia. Law then talks shit about Trebol, causing him to shoot a bunch of snot bullets at Law. Trebol then moves towards Law and apparently tells Doflamingo to just 'step back'. Trebol then begins ranting about how the four executives (including a young Vergo as the heart seat) found and took a young Doflamingo and groomed him into 'evil's champion'. They kind of bow down to a young Doflamingo and go all 'we pledge our loyalty to this king' and 'we're his family' and whatnot.

The four executives act like Doflamingo's enforcers. Some thugs attacked Doflamingo? Trebol guns them down. Doflamingo trips on a street? Fuck the street, they'll raze the town to the ground just to get revenge on the street.

That last bit cracked me up.

Trebol is about to burn Law alive by setting his mucus on fire, but Law then goads Trebol, talking about how Doflamingo is just controlling everyone like puppets on strings, and how for all his talk of being Doflamingo's faithful servant and an equivalent to a family, he's nothing but a pawn. This pisses Trebol off so much and despite Doflamingo's warnings Trebol moves in for the kill. But Law gets his room up, talks about how he's a captain of his own ship and can't let Luffy steal all the glory... and summons his sliced-off hand from earlier, still holding a sword, and has it stab Trebol and slice him up with 'Sterben'.

After a pointless distraction of the Tontatta talking some random commetary, we see that Trebol is this skinny, decrepit old dude who's just hiding under a huge layer of goo all the time. It's a nice subversion of Logias and Paramecias, and this causes Trebol to light himself on fire, intending to blow everyone up.

Well, there goes Trebol, at the very least. Don't think Law can do much more either other than maybe one or two things towards the end. There's some nice arguments about whether Doflamingo truly cares about the executives he calls his family, or if Law's speech about Doflamingo simply thinking of them as puppets is the actual truth. He does seem rather concerned about Trebol when he moves in for his suicidal attack, but that could easily be interpreted as disappointment too. And he definitely cares for Vergo...

Eh, we'll see next week, I guess. Pretty great chapter, and we're going to have the big final battle between Luffy and Doflamingo soon.