One Piece 878 Review: 1v1

One Piece, Chapter 878: Captain of the Mink Tribe's Guardians, Pedro

So we don't have any actual confirmation that Pedro survives -- Perospero does, but no Pedro as of yet. Neither did we see a body, though, so I'm actually not super-duper convinced that the man's dead, and whether we look favourably on these sequence of chapters down the line is going to depend on whether Pedro ends up surviving at all, I think -- if Pedro does die, these flashbacks and backstory that Pedro gets is an amazing sendoff to a pretty cool supporting character. If it doesn't though... well, we'll burn that bridge if we cross it. Perospero survives with some bullshit candy armour thing, but loses an arm... and wakes up right next to Big Mom grabbing the ship. Yeah, even if he survives the explosion I don't think Perospero's got long for the world with Big Mom nearby.

We start off this chapter with a flashback that shows that Pedro and Perospero actually met each other in the past, after Pedro lost 50 years of his life. We also get the flashback-in-a-flashback that showed a young Pedro wanting to join Gol D. Roger's crew, and the meaning of the Nox Pirates' name, which is all well and cool and good. 

We then cut to the present day, with everyone screaming at Pedro's death -- Katakuri's shocked that Perospero is consumed by the explosion. Dude, I like you, but you can see into the future, use the goddamned ability! Of course, Big Mom rises, Katakuri launches mochi blasts and Amande's fleet starts firing at the Thousand Sunny as they try to activate the Coup de Burst. All great tense stuff.

And, well, because this isn't a shit illogical manga like some certain other shonen, Carrot gets whacked around by Katakuri even though she just got an inspirational emotional flashback of Pedro telling her that she can too be strong. Carrot might be an above-average fighter, but she clearly is nowhere the power level of Katakuri and that bit of action is a very neat bit of giving Carrot some focus while still keeping the power level game constant. (Also, Carrot's pretty strongly hinted to be the next Straw Hat, yeah? We just got Jinbe recently, but I dunno -- if not a Straw Hat, then a definite contender for a strong Grand Fleet ally thing.)

Luffy uses his Elephant Gun to grab Katakuri, a neat trick that locks Katakuri in place and disables him from going anywhere else. The Coup de Burst knocks Big Mom back enough from where she's about to grab onto the Sunny, and the ship escaping into the sky shocks literally everyone (including Jinbe, who's never saw that) which is actually a cool little thing. Somewhere in Zou, Franky is smiling with pride.

But this would actually be a bit anticlimactic since we still have Sanji and Pudding's little cake making plot on standby, and we don't actually have a proper big fight at all... but Luffy's prepared to oblige us with that. He grabs on to Brulee in the mirror, and drags Katakuri and himself into the mirror world, and then smashes the mirror that leads into the Sunny. So yeah, next chapter's going to be super awesome with Katakuri and Luffy essentially having a cage match without the distractions of 'Big Mom is coming' or 'the rest of the Straw Hats are nearby' or 'the rest of the Big Mom pirates are nearby'. Luffy versus Katakuri is certainly a fight I really want to happen, so let's go.