Friday 6 November 2015

One Piece 708 Review: All Hail King Chopper!

One Piece, Chapter 708: The Right Belly Fort


More buildup, which is great! One Piece has always gotten their buildup chapters right. We get some more information about this exotic Zo country atop an elephant’s back. The elephant’s apparently called Zunisha, and it periodically shoots up water up to bathe itself, causing a crap ton of water that runs down some channels and even brings up fish for the Mink people to fish. It’s a cool concept. We also find out that the Mink people aren’t racist, going all ‘we hate who you are, not what you are’. Which is nice, since after Mermaid Island and Skypiea the whole race-that-hates-humans thing has gone a bit old.

Kanjurou and Kin’emon and the monkey that may or may not be Raidou are climbing up on Nekozaemon the painted cat, but they get knocked back down by the water. Good thing they only took up like three panels.

Bepo and the rest of Law’s team had to stay in the forest because they’re still pirates, though they’re under the protection of the boss of the forest or something. Interestingly, though, the Straw Hats are absolutely welcomed by the Mink living in the city, with practically the entire population hailing Luffy’s group as heroes and benefactors… so whatever Sanji’s team did in Zo (maybe protecting the little deer-tanuki girl?) probably impressed them a fair bit. We see at least Nami and Chopper, the former decked out in a sexy, sexy black dress whereas Chopper’s dressed like a freaking king. They’re definitely not prisoners, since Nami’s just hanging out with this big sheep dude that acts like a bed and is pretty popular with the Mink there.

There’s also them going all “Sanji’s…” and Nami cries, and Wanda looks away. Wanda did say the ‘corpses of your friends’, and Brook’s not around, so maybe she just mistook Brook as a corpse… but what about Sanji and Momo? Okay, I mean, what about Sanji? (Fuck Momo)

We also get some new information here, where Captain Jack is presumed dead after engaging in a battle to reclaim Doflamingo. Jack managed to sink two of the Marine ships, but considering he went up against Fujitora and Sengoku, plus Tsuru and Bastille and whoever else was there… Wanda, like us readers, don’t buy that Jack is quite dead yet, though. Also, whoever Jack tortured on that random torture cross we saw last episode is apparently important to Wanda that she gets a short flashback to Jack whipping the dude (all in shadows, of course). Did Sanji get tortured?


So many questions. But at least Nami and Chopper are alive and reunited, which is cool – Sanji’s disappearance is definitely something that’s probably going to be a major plot point… Brook, I think, is just a red herring for the ‘corpses’ line a while back. Which leaves Momonosouke  and Caesar Clown… which would be the two main objectives that Jack (or Kaido) would want. I dunno. We’ll see, I guess? This arc definitely is building up to be very, very interesting. I just hope it lives up to all the hype. 


No comments:

Post a Comment