One Piece 788 Review: How to Ruin a Grand Finale

One Piece, Chapter 788: How I Fight

You know, I was truly hyped for the Luffy vs Doflamingo battle in ways you would not believe. Despite all my misgivings about the Dressrosa arc -- of which there are many -- it certainly delivers in making a truly effective villain out of Doflmaingo, a truly effective sympathetic character out of Law and a pretty awesome Shonen manga beatdown between Luffy and Doflamingo. And the previous few chapters is pretty awesome with Luffy activating Gear Fourth and Sabo fighting Bartolomeo. Granted there was the odd interruption by Birdcage, and the odd decision to reintroduce Gatz the MC as if he matters, and the constant cutting back and forth to Violet and King Riku.

So Luffy needs a couple of chapters to recover from his Gear Fourth. So naturally we focus on Sabo fighting Burgess, right? That's the big thing that happened last chapter, that's the most interesting thing going on... oh, no, wait, we're focusing on Doflamingo just walking through the city and transforming everything into strings and fighting these nobodies from the gladiator that get taken out really early -- people like the shaman mummy and the pyromancer and those dudes. Well, not quite ideal, but it's at least action-packed... oh, wait, it lasts only for a single page? Bummer.

We get a bit of Law using Room to teleport down to where Gatz and Luffy is and apparently offering his help to, uh, babysit Luffy? Well, at least he's going to be participating in the finale.

But the rest of this chapter? Good lord, it's truly trite and did not need to happen. Birdcage itself really shouldn't be dragged out this long and it certainly doesn't deserve an entire chapter to itself showing every single god damned character pushing against the Birdcage. We could've established all of that in scenes from previous chapters, but no, we get this super-long montage that's just a gigantic tumour interrupting what could've otherwise been a really epic finale to this bloated arc.

We get some nice scenes, granted. We've got the gladiators pushing Bartolomeo's barrier (Chinjao pushing horizontally with his head and Elizabello shouting KIIIIING was funny). And we get some explanation about Mansherry's powers, which materialize in the form of dandelions that drop down from the sky as she gets ferried around by one of the bug Zoan Tontatta. Mansherry's healing apparently only lasts for a few minutes before injuries revert to normal, making her nowhere as overpowered as she initially seemed and serves as a nice limiter whilst still making her really useful. We get a glorious short scene of Usopp going all 'SILENCE HEATHENS!' and random people going all 'do not anger god any further!'

But all that -- did they need to happen in the middle of the finale instead of Sabo fighting Burgess? Or some token resistance against Doflamingo? We get Rebecca monologuing for a bit and then Viola taking off her clothes to engage Doflamingo -- yeah, like you're going to do jack shit. For all the times you've wasted space and interrupted fights, Viola, I am totally hoping Doflamingo strangles you.

And then we get the truly eyeroll-inducing scenes in Team Franky and Team Zoro where it's just showing their faces going all PUUUUUSH before we cut to a two-page splash page of everyone shouting PUUUUUSH and did we really need all this bullshit. Basically the rest of the chapter proceeds the same. Oh, look, Fujitora's helping out. That's fine, get back to the action. Oh look, people reacting. Birdcage stopping for a moment.

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK

Get back to the actual things that matter. Sabo versus Burgess. Luffy versus Doflamingo. Hell, spending an entire chapter showing Viola getting herself massacred by Doflamingo would be a sight better than this.