One Piece, Chapter 798: Heart
It's still a relatively m'eh chapter that's obviously prolonging things. And I'm truly of the opinion that the Rebecca stuff last chapter really could've been combined with the whole 'post-war recovery' chapters or, well, this one. Honestly throughout the Dressrosa arc the manga's really making liberal use of the many new characters to create large montages of Luffy's allies doing stuff... and we really don't need so many montages, especially when it's not developing any of their characterizations. And honestly the whole "Kyros wants to leave Rebecca behind because it's better for her this way" is really so forced that a shorter scene with them just hanging out together all reconciled and shit would be far, far more effective.
A good four pages are wasted just showing the Tontatta fucking shit up -- Leo stitches a bunch of ships together, other Tontatta are stealing stuff from the Marines, Mansherry's actually using her donation drive thing to distract a bunch of troops... which is yet even more padding. Any reason that these actions by the Tontatta couldn't have been collapsed into a single montage with the gladiators last chapter? No, not really. Most of the main fighters -- Bartolomeo, Cavendish, Sai and all those dudes -- are just trying to stave off Fujitora behind Bartolomeo's barrier and Fujitora's just taking his own sweet time walking because, well, none of these mooks are really a threat.
Meanwhile, one of the more interesting encounters this chapter is Sengoku apparently seeking out and finding Law just to talk to him and get some closure. We get a bit of a redundant flashback of Rocinante reporting to Sengoku about Law's existence... we didn't need an entire page for that, if we hadn't already gotten confirmation that Sengoku knows about Law and Rocinante (I can't be bothered to look back to confirm). Sengoku apparently raised Rocinante up like a son and we get another more effective flashback of Sengoku just crying his eyes out when he saw Rocinante's corpse in Minion Island.
Sengoku kind of confronts Law about it, and Law tells Sengoku about how he's been planning to bring down Doflamingo for years just to get revenge, and we get a couple of nice little cryptic hints about "D." And Sengoku knows what's up, though he isn't keen on divulging it to Law or us readers. Sengoku notes how there is no way Rocinante knew Law was a D, and it isn't some destiny or fate or whatever and basically tells Law that, yes, Rocinante loved him. Sengoku then kind of just buggers off with the excuse that he's no longer an active officer and basically tells Law to live his life free, for Rocinante's sake. Great closure for Law -- why couldn't this gotten the entire chapter if we had to have padding instead of Rebecca? Though I guess it's just at the right length not to drag on for too long.
We get three entire pages showing Fujitora levitating an entire city's worth of debris into the air and while, again, obvious padding... it's still pretty fucking awesome. We get the Marines basically in shock and retreating because, well, no one needs reinforcements when you've got freaking Fujitora in your way -- again it emphasizes just how the Marine Admirals are on a whole different level. We get another needless page of everyone reacting "fuck we're doomed" which is all unnecessary because come on, that splash page speaks more than reaction shots.
Law arrives, and when Bartolomeo spies his Luffy-senpai running up, they all wisely begin a mass retreat before Fujitora literally brings down a rain of destruction on them. Luffy, however, runs up to Fujitora, asks the gambling man if he remembers him... and just shouts out loud "Imma punch your face!" And, well, he does exactly that, doing a gigantic Elephant Pistol straight onto Fujitora and holy crap never has punching an unsuspecting blind man looked so damn badass and awesome.
Bartolomeo and Sai are so shocked their eyes and teeth pop out (I'm surprised Bartolomeo didn't die of an orgasm right there) and Luffy proclaims that while he probably can't defeat an Admiral, he's fucking tired of running away like he did two years ago so he doesn't give a fuck. Admiral, Marine, Yonko, he's going to be the King of Pirates and he's going to beat the fuck out of everyone.
So yeah, at least chapter 799 is going to be a fucking entertaining padding before the big event at 800. I don't really rate Luffy's chances that highly, not unless Zoro, Law and everyone else pitches in to bring down Fujitora. I also have a feeling that this is going to be interrupted. Sabo, perhaps? Blackbeard? Kaido? The Kid Alliance? But whatever the case, next chapter it looks like we're getting Luffy fighting against Fujitora. He's wounded after fighting Doflamingo, and to be fair I do think Fujitora's going to try to go easy on Luffy for the sake of Dressrosa (though he's also all about justice so hey), but, well, it's going to be fucking interesting to see him at least try and put up a fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment