One Piece, Chapter 884: Who?
Not... not a big fan of the developments we've done in this chapter, to be honest. Like, it's cool to see Luffy go Gear Fourth and unleash all the cool attacks, as well as the revelation that Katakuri's glooping around Luffy's attacks are all him responding to the future-sight granted by the Observation Haki, but beyond putting them at equal footing we don't actually get anything in this fight. There were some cool panels, sure, with Luffy's Gear Fourth and the giant donut-hand things that Katakuri creates, but coming off the heels of the previous chapter, I really think this fight's just one big mess, pacing wise. Was there a reason to have an entire chapter devoted solely to showing Katakuri gorging himself on donuts, and then another half-chapter devoted solely to Luffy catching Katakuri's trick with the Observation Haki? My issues aren't with the plot twists themselves, which my review of the previous chapter could probably come off as sounding. It's about the pacing. Couldn't we have integrated both these plot points earlier in the half-dozen chapters where Luffy and Katakuri are just exchanging blows and really not doing much? I really feel like this is being dragged on for no real reason.
In the Sweets Factory, Sanji, Pudding and Chiffon are continuing to build the cake. We get the requisite 'Sanji trusts Luffy to win and gives a badass line' scene, which is fine, but I'm definitely not a huge fan of Pound showing up to disrupt things. Mostly because I've never been a big fan of Pound, but this really feels like a plot point shoehorned in just to throw in a complication that, again, we didn't really need. You'd think Oven and an army of Big Mom's troops, as well as Big Mom herself charging towards the Sweets Factory, would be enough motivation for shit to break loose without Pound going in and mucking things up. Again, it's another symptom of how the arc's just dogpiling plot point after plot point (what's with those Germa 66, huh?) without really following up that much on them. I don't think it's quite as bad as Dressrosa is... yet. And that 'yet' is seeming to be a growing problem with the Big Mom arc ever since the wedding ended, where all of this seemed to be prolonged just for the sake of prolonging it, when many plot points like making the wedding cake, Chiffon and Pudding's alliance, the explanation of Katakuri's powers, et cetera, were all things that could've been done a lot earlier.
At least one plot point was kind of dealt with this episode, and that's the sea slugs. Mont D'or and his crew get the revelation that, oh noes, the sea slugs are all gone. And like everyone expected, it was Aladdin's forces, or specifically Praline, that drew all the sea slugs away with singing. That's cool. Now can we get to sort of wrapping the many, many other major plot threads up?
The cover story's been weird. Apparently the crew of Ideo, Blue Gilly, Abdullah and Jeet (which honestly I call in my mind as the 'random dudes squad' considering they all don't have much of a crew or motivation compared to the rest of Luffy's Grand Fleet) show up and see a war between the long-leg and long-arm tribe. Which... um... okay? Blue Gilly's part of the long-leg tribe, and I'm 80% sure Ideo is part of the long-arm tribe, but I genuinely don't really care all that much, to be honest. Considering what a strange note the Bartolomeo and Sai arcs have ended in, these four dudes are quite literally the members of Luffy's feet I don't really give a shit about.
No comments:
Post a Comment