One Piece 939-940 Mini-Review: Haki Punch

One Piece, Chapter 939: An Old Hyourse Knows the Way; Chapter 940: The Spark of Rebellion

Been very, very busy for the past week, and I'm honestly considering taking it a bit easy and just... enjoy life, y'know? Which was why I didn't do a review for 939. I'll do a mini-review of the two, though, since I don't really think these chapters give a whole ton to talk about. I'm going to take a brief hiatus from the more time-sensitive stuff like TV episode reviews and manga reviews for a week or two, but updates for things like Pokemon and other articles will continue to go on -- I have a backlog for these sort of days where I just get pretty tired and just need a break. 

Anyway, 939... it's just a confirmation of the whole Komurasaki/Hiyori theory, which... I guess is the most predictable and bland way you could go around things, especially since the telegraphed "oh, the people she swindled are all evil men that deserve it" twist ends up being done in 940... but I genuinely don't think I actually care either way, y'know? The Wano-kuni people really haven't stuck around long enough for me to go "whoaaaa what a twist" when I really don't super-care about the characters. Komurasaki-Hiyori also ends up being a wee bit more of a kooky character, which... yeah, I guess the alpha bitch thing was just a visage.

We get a proper headcount of the Nine Red Scabbards -- Kinemon, Kanjurou, Raizou, Kiku, Inuarashi, Nekomamushi, Kawamatsu (who's the kappa in the prison), Ashura Doji (the traitor thief) and "Denjiro".

What else... we've got the whole bit of a lot of people being rounded up and arrested thanks to the tattoo thing, before we cut to Luffy and Grandpa Hyou basically treating the whole tournament as a bit of a training exercise, which is... all right, whatever. We get some utterly bizarre half-Zoan creatures, which is always fun, but ultimately the fact that this is all happening because Queen is a ditz is honestly a bit weird. Basically Lufy shows off the whole Katakuri style "see into the future" powers, while also trying to use Armament Haki without turning his arm black, something that Rayleight and Sentomaru used in the past... it's a bit of a neat little retcon to some powers where characters seem to raise their hands without any obvious power... it's just super-advanced Haki, I guess. 939 and 940 establish that, of course, Hyou knows exactly how to do this, because just like Skypiea, apparently the people of Wano know all about Haki, they just call it by a different name and focus on a different aspect of it. S'neat, but a bit too contrived for me.

940 is... a bit more uneven. After establishing that Law has apparently gone off to rescue his teammates, we get some Nami/Usopp comedy bit before a whole lot of generic buildup about Tonoyasu, although, again, things are kept so ambiguous and mysterious that I genuinely can't bring myself to care? He's a nice dude, I guess, and is likely to be Denjirou or the Witching Hour Boy or some shit... but I really don't honestly care? It felt similar to the whole one-legged soldier/Kyros revelation because initially I really didn't give too much of a shit about either one of them. It's part of One Piece's style of introducing a lot of characters and building them up very slowly, but until they actually have more personality and characterization beyond a one-sentence "always laughing, somewhat mysterious" blurb, I really can't bring myself to care.

Then we return to Luffy learning more Haki skills from Hyou, but even after beating up everyone he still really is unable to master it. Then turns out that Raizou has recruited the completely-unrepentant Caribou... who, as always, Luffy takes at face value and goes "kay you're my buddy now" and I really don't want Caribou to be treated similarly to the likes of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet people. Caribou's not a horrible villain, but he honestly struck me as pretty much irredeemable, and I kinda hope the situation that rises is more of a Caesar Clown one.

And then Luffy basically decides to rampage in the prison and get allies for the rebellion, just as Big Mom shows up all hungry and Chopper panics.

Overall... eh? I really am happy that the Wano-kuni arc has really ended up sparking a lot of discussion online, and I suppose the Haki retcon/revelation (depending on how much you put stock in Oda's revelations) is exciting to most, but I genuinely really don't care all that much about the Wano characters is all. We keep getting introduced to so many of them, but so little really have any actual personality to speak of.