One Piece, Chapter 872: Soft & Fluffy
Neat little 20th anniversary cover page with the Straw Hats reimagined in Germa 66 style raid suits, and a neat little appreciation letter from Eiichiro Oda. That's pretty cool. Basically the collapsing Whole Cake Chateau ends up being enough of a distraction for our heroes to get away. We get some cool scenes for Katakuri, Stussy, Morgans (who's still going all big news! which is hilarious) and Tamago, but the MVP is the chef Streussen, who turns the entire mountain to an actual cake, so it splooges around harmlessly. It's a bit anticlimactic as far as these things go, honestly, and the fact that the straw hats and firetank pirates literally just get away scot-free without any problems is a bit oddly paced. Like, I would've combined the explosion and the Germa 'last stand' thing together. This is just weirdly paced.
Mont D'or and Katakuri round up the troops to send out against Luffy and Bege's team, which is good that they're not just giving up. Meanwhile, Caesar Clown gets his heart back at long last and probably leaves the alliance for good, while the Firetank and Straw Hat pirates part in good ways... although we did get a weirdly funny bit where Capone hammers down a 'straw hats went that way' sign as a bit of a weird slapstick joke.
Of course, what seems to be the big excuse for Luffy and company escaping seems to not be just the Tamatebako explosion, but rather Big Mom getting so pissed at the wedding cake being destroyed that she's about to go on a rampage. It's a bit telegraphed, I think, but the lady's going to go berserk. Either the Straw Hats are just going to escape, or Sanji the chef's going to cook up something and that'll put them in Big Mom's good graces or something... but I dunno. It just kind of feels slightly more anticlimactic than I expected? It's not actively bad, though. We'll see next chapter.
Honesty speaking, given how things have gone and how much the Yonko have been built up as a group you don't mess with, I really didn't find the collapsing cake anticlimactic in large part because I don't think it's the actual climax yet. I mean, both groups of pirates quite clearly still need to actually get off the island and than sail away - and even than, she's probably going to chase them well beyond her own territory. It also kinda harkens back to the treasure from Fishman Island being a decoy and all that, but that's an older thread.
ReplyDeleteIn hindsight though, Big Mom's rampage seems more due to the loss of the wedding cake rather than the collapse of Whole Cake Chateau - and by extension, it's possible that she's going to chase them down well beyond that island. Adding to the possibilities is that, after watching a video by one youtuber called King of Lightning, I realized that Whole Cake Island looks to be the same exact one where Mother Caramel's Lamb's House was located, so they might not be too far from Elbaf - and by extension, if the Straw Hats go to the giants (who's former leaders they met and befriended way back when on Little Garden), it might set up for the giants to get involved and get their grudge with Big Mom resolved, Caramel's fate in the open and a whole bunch else. Course, that's just making assumptions, but I like to hope big for series that are at least consistently good-to-decent.
I don't mind the fact that Team Luffy needed to get away from Big Mom. In fact, it makes perfect sense if we consider the power levels. Other than the teased fifth gear, Luffy's strongest abilities make him on par with Doflamingo (who's scared shitless of Kaidou) and Cracker (who's one of Big Mom's top guys but still more or less a flunky). It's not like other inferior manga where he'll eat a plot device and get a power-up to beat Big Mom. And the tamatebako isn't a newly-introduced element too, having been foreshadowed and re-introduced here; and discussed to death by the fandom.
Delete(Plus, the whole 'infiltrate Big Mom's crew' thing was originally meant to just be a simple rescue mission for Sanji and stealing poneglyph rubbings -- I honestly didn't expect it to turn into this long of an arc before Wanokuni or Elbaf)
It's really the pacing that makes me feel a little fatigued -- though mind you, I still enjoyed the chapter a whole ton. A little alteration in the ordering of the fights, the 'last stands' and the tamatebako's explosion would've done wonders to make this a lot more epic-feeling.