One Piece 787 Review: Wrong Focus

One Piece, Chapter 787: Four Minutes Before

You know, this isn't anywhere as bad as the Bleach chapter this week, but it's still kind of m'eh. Mostly because of the ADHD focus on all these random people and happenings and minor plot points that I couldn't really give a shit about. The main focus should have been Sabo versus Burgess and maybe Doflamingo just stringing everyone to death, but no. We jump around all the other random people so much and it's just distracting. Someone pointed out to me how One Piece arcs always have a time limit thing going on, and that's true... and by this point it's just kind of repetitive and, more annoyingly, freaking distracting.

Anyway the chapter starts off with people reacting to Sabo and the fact that oh my god Luffy's brother is second in command of the Revolutionaries. Sabo is trying to keep it cool like "oh, you guys killed Ace and really that's not your fault, he chose his own path" but his face is pretty visibly pissed off as fuck.

We get a rather unnecessary page of Burgess and Gatz just realizing that oh Sabo took the Mera Mera fruit and how Sabo was the 'Lucy' in the finals and did we really need that? Also Sabo and Luffy mispronounce Gatz's name and really, the whole Gatz thing in itself is a gigantic distraction that didn't really need to happen. Would've been fine if this arc hasn't already been bogged down with so many characters, but it is.

Burgess does this 'Galleon Lariat' that slices a building (and fire-form Sabo) in half. Sabo then rematerializes, hits Burgess in the side -- the art makes it look like he's attacking his armpit -- and does a combination of Ace's Fire Fist and his own Dragon Claw attack in the ridiculously long-winded "Flaming Dragon Claw Fist: Fire Flame Dragon King" which probably sounded a lot cooler in Japanese.

It's honestly a bit boring since as I mentioned in my Fairy Tail reviews punching people while your fist is on fire is boring. If Sabo didn't already been pre-established with having hard-finger powers and isn't combining skills, I would've similarly called foul. Burgess gets blown the fuck away and Sabo just zooms in to continue fighting, talking about how Blackbeard's crew is hunting Devil Fruits and shit.

And that's the last we see of these two dudes for this chapter because what the fuck One Piece. You tease us with such wonderful matchups -- Sanji vs Doflamingo, Sabo vs Fujitora, Zoro vs Fujitora, Sabo vs Burgess -- and only show us a tiny glimpse of those fights. Clearly seeing Sabo and Burgess fight needs to take a backseat to the umpteenth time of showing us that the random minor characters from the Colloseum can fight Doflamingo's mooks.

We get Gatz and Luffy talking about Sabo for a page -- again, didn't really need to happen -- and then a pretty awesome page of all the gladiators being left bloodied and presumably dead with the city being transformed into some kind of string-tendril monster while Doflamingo just walks through the bloodstained streets all calm and shit. Yeah, he's hurt, but he's pissed off as hell.

The next page has the random civilians -- the one running away from the Central Street battles and the ones running away from the Birdcge -- all running into each other and being all 'fuck where do we run'. Again, not the focus we want. We have Zoro Busoshoku Haki-ing his swords and trying to push the Birdcage back and calling the samurai goddamn pussies for not helping out. Then we have Franky and the little Tontatta pushing the Seastone factory to block the Birdcage elsewhere. Interesting but did we really need these plot threads? It's overcrowding the more interesting shit.

The next page is the random Doflamingo mooks shooting random civilians. So important. And the next page is a two-page splash of Bartolomeo, Don Chinjao, Kyros and the rest of the gladiators we care about (the ones we don't have been turned into Doflamingo fodder) beating the fuck out of the random mooks. Apparently Mancherie has healed the badly wounded ones like Hajrudin and Dagama. Beyond me playing 'how many minor characters I can name', which is always fun, none of this needed to happen.

The last two-page spread is Doflamingo pushing the Birdcage even faster to draw out Luffy and everyone reacting to it -- including Law, all ominous and shit, and Fujitora with blinking things above him whatever that is. We see that the Birdcage will close in 3 minutes, while Luffy needs 4 minutes to recharge.

I honestly cannot give a fuck about the whole oh-no-Birdcage-will-kill-everyone thing. It's a pretty awesome concept when it first started out, but now we spend so much time with Birdcage that it's pretty annoying. Why can't the four minutes time while Luffy recharges be spent with just seeing Burgess and Sabo fight, while Zoro and the rest blocking the birdcage just take up a couple of pages as a montage?

I mean, Gear Fourth and whatnot was really cool, but other than that awesome page of Doflamingo murdering everyone and Sabo doing that fire dragon claw thing on Burgess this chapter really feels like filler.