One Piece 799 Review: New Straw-Hat(s)!

One Piece, Chapter 799: Parent & Child

When I clicked on this week’s chapter and saw the title, I let out a huge, gigantic groan because I thought we were going to get yet another chapter focused on Rebecca and Kyros. But no. Thankfully, no. And a lot of people were speculating that at the end of the arc we’ll get a new Straw Hat member. Rebecca, Viola, Law, Bartolomeo, Cavendish… (even if those last three don’t make sense because, y’know, they were already pirate captains of their own) people were speculating since the beginning of the Dressrosa arc.

And, in a sense, this chapter at near the end of the Dressrosa arc does give us a new Straw-Hat. But not just one. Several, in fact – basically most of Luffy’s allies from the Coliseum have proclaimed themselves as Straw Hats… I’m slightly unconvinced that Luffy will want to behave like a normal Yonko and accept all these other characters as his subordinates, but we’ll have to wait until chapter 800 for that.

The first few pages of the chapter starts off with Luffy fighting Fujitora, and while, y’know, it is Luffy fighting Fujitora we don’t get an entire elaborate fight devoted on just the two fighting. Luffy exchanges some blows with Fujitora and it’s awesome, but Fujitora calls Luffy out for obviously calling out where he is going to punch, telling him to take the fight seriously even if he’s blind. Luffy is still fighting seriously, but on the other hand he will not beat the crap out of a blind man without at least warning him.

Fujitora does a big PFFFFT face which is hilarious. Fujitora knocks Luffy back with his gravity-sword thing, talking about how Luffy has changed his own worldview… but he himself is bound by what he must do, so he is going to fight seriously as well. Hajrudin the giant catches Luffy and thankfully spirits him away with the other pirates. We get an awesome panel of Zoro, all insane and shit, going “all right, my turn.” What we would’ve given to see Zoro fight Fujitora! As it is, sadly, it’s not to happen.

Luffy’s allies forcibly abduct Luffy and run down a line of ships arranged to lead to Orlumbus’s giant Yonta Maria fleet. But Fujitora has created, y’know, a sky filled with debris from Dressrosa and while the pirates are running Fujitora reflects upon himself how the moment the pirates set sail, the debris will rain down upon them and completely obliterate them. And even if they did survive, taking out Doflamingo will have dire consequences.

Fujitora also gives us a bit of a background on himself, mentioning that he cut out his own eyes after seeing too many things he didn’t want to see – presumably he’s done this mercy-killing of technically-honourable pirates before? Fujitora goes all “I should make your trip to hell less painful” but before he can rain destruction, the entire civilian population of Dressrosa run towards the pirate ships and are all like “give our princess back you scumbag pirates!”… except, y’know, they’re actually smiling and are in on the story that Rebecca’s returned to her father, and are just using their concern for their princess to cover for the fact that they’re helping a pirate escape.

Fujitora knows this, but he ends up relenting and is actually curious just what kind of person this Luffy looks like to be able to inspire so many. Maybe he has a kind face? We leave Fujitora pondering that while muttering to himself that he can’t “show off [his] cool moves with all the junk he’s put up there.”

That’s the last we see of Fujitora for a bit, because we cut over to Luffy and company. We see Orlumbus’ giant ship the Yonta Maria. We get a bit of a re-introduction to several of the more prominent gladiators. First up is Hajrudin, who talks about his four giant crewmates, and how he’s hoping to bring back the giant pirates. Usopp brings up Brogy and Dorry and the giant land of Elbaf to remind us. Orlumbus then talks about how all 56 ships will be ‘of use’, Leo talks about how they ‘have permission’.Ideo’s crew is joined up by Bluegilly, Abdullah and Jeet, while Suleiman the beheader joins up with Cavendish… who, while acknowledging Luffy, still wants to be the most popular dude around… and it starts to dawn on the readers, if not the Straw-Hats that all of these pirates already want to join Luffy’s army.

Luffy is all like ‘so you guys just do whatever you want!’ And apparently they’ve even decided the ‘order’ by lottery. They have around 5600 people across their seven fleets, and they want to exchange wine cups with Luffy to become Luffy’s followers, like the little crews under a big crew. We’ve seen this demonstrated most clearly with Whitebeard, but also with the other pirates. Whitebeard has his own personal crew (Marco, Jozu, Ace, etc) but he’s also got like a gajillion other pirate captains who has sworn allegiance to him. It gets around people like Bartolomeo actually joining the Straw Hats while still retaining their crew and their identities as captains.

And while it’s a bit doubtful that Luffy will want this whole system to go down – he does seem friendly enough with them so I doubt he’ll decline. I mean, we even got an order! The order is as follows:

1.      Cavendish the White Horse with his beautiful pirates, 75 men strong

2.      Bartolomeo the Cannibal and his Barto Club, 56 men strong

3.      Don Sai and the Happo Navy, 1000 men strong (this one was actually pledged to Luffy a fair bit ago)

4.      Ideo and the ‘Triple X Gym Martial Arts’… 4 men strong. Apparently it’s just Ideo, Bluegilly, Abdullah and Jeet. Okaaaay.

5.      Leo and the Tontatta Army, 200 men strong.

6.      Hajrudin’s giants, 5 men strong

7.      Orlumbus and the grand Yonta Maria Fleet, 4300 men strong.

So yeah, a good chunk of Luffy’s (potential) future army is going to be provided by Orlumbus and Sai, but still, this is an exciting development whether Luffy wants to take part in it or not, but damnit, either way we’re set up for an insane chapter 800.