One Piece, Chapter 879: Katakuri, One of Big Mom's Three Sweet Commanders
I'm popping back in from our regularly-scheduled Superman TAS, Walking Dead and Pokemon of the Week reviews with a brief review on the newest One Piece chapter. Things should go back to normalcy after September ends, and while I'll want to do a bit of catching up with all the manga series and whatnot, you can expect reviews of... well, I'll try to do the new season of Rick & Morty, I'll probably do Netflix's the Tick and that horrid Death Note adaptation at some point. We'll see. No promises.
One Piece first, though. Cover story has poor Sai being beaten up by his ex-fiancee, and Don Chinjao's just kinda scratching his head when confronted by the bride's father, I assume. I'm assuming this all will lead to the Happo Navy being ousted off the country and being more independent, 'real' pirates?
This chapter is another one that can clearly be divided into two distinct bits -- the Luffy-vs-Katakuri fight at the end, and Straw Hats versus Big Mom at the beginning. We'll cover the beginning first -- it's basically Jinbe telling every single person to shut the fuck up and not waste Pedro's sacrifice, and there are some neat dialogue exchanges between a very angry Brook (who fought alongside Pedro a lot in the previous chapters). Jinbe also seems to be settling in as like the helmsman of the ship, if we're going to have a role for every member of the ship. And if Carrot does actually join the crew, she spends the chapter almost exclusively on the crow's nest, and we don't have a lookout yet. So...
They're still going to meet up with Sanji's group (which we see a little bit of here, but absolutely nothing of significance happened there beyond more Pudding tomfoolery and reminding us that Pound exists). And Big Mom doesn't actually stop the pursuit, or kill Perospero... but instead is still allied with him. It's a pretty cool visual image to see Big Mom walking walking on water, an impossibility for Devil Fruit users... but apparently Perospero's just sitting on Big Mom's hat and creates this gigantic candy sea-slug for Big Mom to walk on. Oh, and he just makes a new arm out of candy to replace the one he loses, Aokiji style. It seems we're not just going to brush Big Mom or even Perospero off that easily just yet, which is cool.
In the Mirror World, Luffy and Katakuri are fighting... and Katakuri is mimicking Luffy's moves, almost mockingly, and that gatling-vs-gatling exchange in the first panel that we see the fight is pretty damn badass. Katakuri notes how much more efficient he is when he doesn't have to move his hands quickly like Luffy and just bloop out a dozen hands out of mochi. And when Luffy uses the gear second move-so-fast-it's-like-teleportation, we get a cool bit where Katakuri presumably uses his observation haki to just kick Luffy in the face.
And then, when Luffy uses Elephant Gun? Katakuri just creates a far bigger, haki-imbued mochi elephant gun of his own. It's insanely one-sided as Katakuri simply copies everything Luffy does, clearly not taking anything really seriously. It's a pretty damn cool fight, with some absolutely on-poinnt artwork. Looking forward to more. The Whole Cake Island arc has had some rough patches recently in my opinion, but this chapter is pretty on-point, weak Pudding scene aside.
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