One Piece 783 Review: Gear Fourth

One Piece, Chapter 783: In My Way

I’m not promising to catch up on all the manga reviews – I’ll try to get the past issues of the big five I usually do weekly (Bleach, One Piece, Toriko, Fairy Tail and Seven Sins) down, but no promises. I can sneak some bandwidth out of my phone to upload these reviews, so all is good for the moment. Time will tell if I have, y’know, enough time to review everything like Magi and Boku no Hero Academia and Attack on Titan and whatnot.

Anyway, this week’s cover story apparently has Wadatsumi wanting to join up with Jinbe to wherever the hell it is Jinbe is going. Is he going to meet up with the Straw Hats? Was he? I cannot remember at this point.

But the rest of the chapter is pretty freaking awesome. It’s just full-on action between Luffy and Doflamingo, just rubber and string attacks being launched at each other and it’s really epic. Luffy is doing all of these awesome Haki and Gear Second attacks – all these Hawk Whips and Grizzly Magnums and Eagle Bazookas – and actually landing them on Doflamingo, but the fucker is just shrugging all of Luffy’s attacks. After the big explosion from last chapter, Trebol is nowhere to be seen, but Law is in even worse shape. Luffy and Robin gets him out of the battle which leaves the melee to just Luffy and Doflamingo.

Cavendish shows up out of nowhere to help protect Law, and after some silly logic thing going in his weird head Cavendish agrees to stick around and protect Law. Leo and Mansherry are apparently able to use their powers in conjunction to heal Law’s arm – Leo can stitch them together and Mansherry can then heal it. Which is nice. Bartolomeo is still in an fangasmic seizure after seeing Zoro’s gigantic super badass slash. Law wakes up and he acknowledges that while he cannot fight anymore he’s got a thirteen-year-old vendetta and he’s going to share whatever fate befalls Luffy in the fight. Cavendish is all honourable and shit and sticks with Law, while Robin and the rest kind of retreat.

Doflamingo and Luffy continue to fight and we get some cool action scenes, and then Doflamingo starts again with the mocking, how cripples and old people and babies are going to die first, and how it’s all because Luffy and company butted into Doflamingo’s business. Not, y’know, because Doflamingo is a psychopath who created the Birdcage to murder everyone. We get Doflamingo calling Luffy a thorn, then Luffy calls him a thorn… and then activates Gear Fourth.

And the manga goes on a break, because that’s how Oda rolls. That was a big WHAT moment. I mean, we all know Luffy is going to win whatever the case, but Doflamingo has been such a fun villain and such a gigantic piece of shit and generally been indestructible that Luffy really needs some serious power-up to bring him down… and, well, who the hell expected Gear Fourth? Okay, probably everybody but did anyone expect it to happen now?

Also what the hell will it be?

It’s a good thing I’m writing this review within days of the next chapter’s release.