One Piece 929 Review: Power Rangers Dino Thunder

One Piece, Chapter 929: Orochi Kurozumi, the Wano Country Shogun

An interesting chapter, for sure. We get to see what the other Straw Hats are doing, starting off with a neat montage of Franky kind of cozying up to the master carpenter, before nearly getting into a fight with him when he realizes he doesn't have the plans for Kaidou's mansion that they need. More hilarious, though, is the scene of the badly-drawn painting fishes that Kanjurou is holding in his cover. That's a neat visual gag for sure. We also get Zoro wandering around with some dude called Tonoyasu, which... isn't super-interesting, but it's setup, I suppose.

Also, while all of this is going on, Kin'emon and Inuarashi seem to be framing Shutenmaru in a bid to presumably get him to their side? I must say that I am completely not invested in this subplot, although I appreciate that it at least doesn't take up too much screentime.

As the title suggests, though, the main focus of this chapter is the shogun, Orochi, who we first actually see telling CP-0 and the World Government to piss off, noting that they have lost their 'screen', Doflamingo, and that they are forced to negotiate with Orochi directly. Orochi basically refuses to give any weapons (presumably they're talking about Seastone here?) to the World Government for anything less than Dr. Vegapunk himself, citing that he has Kaidou at his back. It certainly is interesting that Vegapunk of all people ends up being brought into this arc, and whether Orochi is just an overconfident moron, or if Wano and Kaidou is that powerful... it's going to be interesting as more and more parties get drawn into this conflict. Orochi himself is a pretty gonk-y character that looks like one hell of a tool, complete with Burger King paper crown on his head, and he's... he's actually pretty much what I expected Orochi to be, actually.

Meanwhile, the final page shows off Basil Hawkins as he shows up with two powerful headliners, who are apparently called in to... kill Sanji the soba merchant. Because there's no overkill like sending two dinosaur-people to murder a misbehaving soba merchant. We get to see X-Drake and a new character, "Page One", and they're both dinosaur-devil-fruit users. X-Drake's half-human form is... it's got a big nose and a bizarrely long chin. Not sure if I like it. Page One looks like a grinning spinosaurus with some long hair, and I like the sheer ridiculousness of that.

Interestingly, both X-Drake and Page One are noted to have "Dragon-Dragon Fruits", with differing models. I do like how it's a neat troll to anyone who expects Kaidou's fruit to be the Dragon-Dragon Fruit (and it might very well still be), and a stealth pun in the Japanese language, something that most likely flew over the English-speaking fandom's head. Dinosaur in Chinese (and subsequently Japanese) is parsed as 恐龙, meaning "Dread Dragon", similar to how the actual word "dinosaur" means "terrible lizard" in Latin.

Anyway, dinosaurs! I like dinosaurs.