One Piece, Chapters 943-947: SMILE; Partner; O-Lin; Queen vs. O-Lin; Queen's Gamble
So a little bit more than a month ago, I stopped doing weekly manga reviews for One Piece and My Hero Academia, stating that I would do them monthly instead. And, well... here I am, with a month and a half's worth of chapters. It's a lot nicer for my mental state not to go "shit I haven't done this week's manga chapters", or having to extend a chapter into a proper review's length when there honestly aren't much for me to really talk about.
Granted, though, this stretch of chapters have been pretty much a roller-coaster of plot developments, huh? Chapter 943 initially starts off with just a little recap and reaction that everyone has to Yasu's death, including members of the Straw Hat crew like Zoro, the Minks and Sanji's group getting super duper pissed at Orochi for his heinous acts. Really does look like Yasu is just permanently dead, which is... it's nice. Like, death in One Piece has been so inconsistently handled that sometimes my gut reaction is to go "did he really die, though?" We get significant focus on how horrible it is for Yasu to essentially cause the people of Ebisu to be unable to mourn Yasu's death properly. I feel like this chapter is a bit too recap-heavy, but I feel that it works pretty well in making just the sheer disgust of Orochi's deeds seep in.
Plus, we learn all about the SMILE devil fruits, noting that the rate of the enhancement from these artificial fruits are 10%, and the other nine will essentially be turned into people who are unable to feel emotion. That's how Kaidou's army is split up -- the Waiters waiting to eat the fruit, the Gifters who successfully became Zoan hybrids, and the Pleasures who can only laugh due to the side-effects of the fruits. I really do like that despite Caesar Clown nominally being more of an ally now, we still really show that, nah, he still really needs to be punished for his deeds. I think that's what is going to break a good redemption or not -- whether a character is punished for the crimes he or she did in the past. It's something that I felt bothered me the most with the constant inorganic redemptions for villains in Fairy Tail. Anyway, we also learn that Orochi dumped the waste fruits into Ebisu town to make the town more "palatable", by essentially causing the entire starving population to be able to do nothing but laugh.
Pretty information-dump heavy, and the chapter ends with Orochi about to shoot Toko in the head until Sanji and Zoro arrives and ends up glaring at each other. This is the huge Zoro/Sanji meeting we're all expecting, right? Maybe Zoro will confront Sanji for the whole Big Mom arc being technically his fault? Maybe we'll have a verbal confrontation, if not a physical one?
Well, not exactly. Chapter 944 does have a brief Zoro/Sanji team-up, for the pretty sensible reason that the Straw Hats actually have to fight against Orochi and his goons. It's paced a bit too erratically for my tastes and might work out a bit better in the anime where the scenes are drawn out a bit more, but it's neat. Zoro just tasks Sanji with Toko-protecting duties while he goes straight for Orochi, and, interestingly, Kyoshiro protects Orochi, blocking Zoro's Pound Cannon attack. Considering how everyone's picked out Kyoshirou as being a potential defector, it's interesting... is he playing a long con game where he makes himself look good in front of the people, or is he just actually loyal and everything about him is just genuine misdirection?
Most of the Straw Hats and their allies sort of only really get one-panel montage shots, which is unfortunate, but we do get Sanji briefly fighting allosaurus-form X-Drake, while Franky gets a pretty badass panel of his cyborg face and one glowing eye. The last we saw from this is Zoro fighting Kyoshirou with neither getting the advantage, Orochi being brought away, while the Straw Hat allies escape with Yasu's body.
Cut away to Udon prison, where the rest of 944 and almost the entirety of 945 through 947 takes place in. And as Luffy cheers for those "people I don't know anything about", we get the revelation that Queen's minions have captured Kidd... and Kamazou the Man-Slayer, which this chapter reveals to actually be Killer. Actually one of the best surprise revelations we've had for a while, subverting the long-awaited Zoro/Killer fight that fans have been dreaming about and just having it be an immediate curb-stomp. Apparently Kamazou has been given a SMILE devil fruit and now is suffering from its side-effects. This is something Kidd didn't realize was happening, and the sight of his partner being in such a sorry state caused him to recklessly attack Queen's minions and get his ass captured.
I actually really like the Killer/Kamazou twist. Unlike any of the other Supernovas, Killer has quite literally been a blank slate whose only distinguishing feature was his visual design and the fact that he's the only non-captain member of the Ten Supernovas. The fact that we really should have expected Killer (and Apoo) to be around in the Wano arc after seeing how that particular group confronted Kaidou is something that we, as readers, should have been expecting, but when I read through the Kamazou sequence I just brushed him off as a random scrub. And that's actually a neat little subversion!
The end of 945 has Killer and Kidd about to be executed and Luffy about to confront Queen (who makes it clear he never has any intention of letting them escape in the first place) but then Big Mom arrives, demanding O-Shiruko... which is sort of a plot development everyone expects, so it's not such a huge "OH SHIT" moment as it probably should've been.
945 starts off with Orochi going kind of crazy in ordering his subordinates in beheading every single one of Yasu's loyalists, so maybe this is all part of Kyoshirou's plan to make Orochi look bad and like a loose cannon, while he's the loyal and sensible shogun candidate? We get more fight scenes, with the Oniwabanshuu and Hawkins arriving. We get more Sanji/Drake and Kyoshirou/Zoro fights, but nothing too exciting here other than Sanji just being real angry that people are still calling him a Vinsmoke. Some fun comedy moments with Brook using his ghostly powers to scare off the ninjas, or that one of the Oniwabanshu makes a big deal about "ninja arts: Hell Lute" when it's just a gun disguised as a lute. There's that whole comedic bit of Sanji being jealous at Zoro for rescuing and palling up with Komurasaki, something that sort of kind of fell flat for me personally.
Interestingly, Law shows up to rescue his comrades and faces off against Hawkins, and Hawkins has apparently hidden Bepo somewhere else, while he has jacked himself up with the voodoo abilities that reflects damage he takes to Shachi, Penguin and Bepo. Again, we don't really see much here, just the set-up of a fight, before cutting away. We also hvae a brief confrontation between Ashura Douji and the Minks, which... it's neat, and sort of expected, and them asking Ashura to join their cause ends up with Ashura about to reveal something to them. I don't really care about Ashura's sub-plot, honestly, and it's at least nice that they're keeping it pretty short and succinct.
And then Udon! Everyone, including Queen and Luffy, freaks out that Big Mom (or, well, "O-Lin") has shown up randomly, and I absolutely love the sight of Team Chopper all looking horrified, except for Tama, who just has the biggest "yay yay" grin on her face. 943 ends with Queen showing off her ability, the ancient zoan devil fruit that turns him into a brachiosaurus... which is neat, I guess. I like dinosaurs, and seeing a goofy-ass one with a muscular body but with Queen's silly facial hair is just a hilarious design. And then Big Mom seemingly one-shots Queen. Because of course she does. She's a Yonkou.
946 shows that it's not a one-shot kill, but a two-shot kill, but Big Mom still is pretty damn poweful and is way beyond Queen in terms of raw strength, which is nice. I really, really didn't want Big Mom's strength and power to be cheapened just because her arc is over and her amnesia, and while I do think that the sheer amount of people out there that's too caught up over 'power levels' and debating those are frankly ridiculous, I do think that it's appropriate for Big Mom to be able to effortlessly manhandle a mere commander of Kaidou's forces.
We get a couple of extra mini-developments of all the sub-plots in Udon prison, which is honestly done a bit anti-climactically. Kawamatsu's cell is shattered in the Big Mom and Queen fight, while Caribou has proven himself surprisingly useful by gooping around and destroying the snail cells. Caribou is another one that I'm curious -- he's nowhere as evil as Caesar Clown, but he's definitely an evil ally.
And then, of course, Big Mom goes crazy over the Oshiruko, only to find the pot is empty, and everyone else runs around panicked... and, like the moron that he is, Luffy accidentally antagonizes Big Mom. And as Luffy runs around to avoid Big Mom's rampage, he ends up activating that Haki ability that Old Man Hyo was trying to teach him. Or a variant thereof, at least, where in desperation he's able to crush and rip off the exploding neck-bracelets as they're being thrown around by Big Mom. Also, interestingly, Big Mom's rants is that she had wanted to share Oshiruko with everyone, putting more fuel to the fire that Big Mom's psyche is inherently good, it's just warped with bad parenting. I'm all for that, but the way Big Mom's been written throughout the Whole Cake and Wano arcs have been pretty... rocky, so to speak.
Particularly how the amnesia is handled, too, in 947. We get a brief information swap between Luffy and Hyo, who compares the ability that Luffy just did to something Rayleigh did, and of course it's a more advanced version of "Ryuu-ou". Thankfully, we're not getting such a speedy power-up for Luffy, because he still is unable to control Ryuuou and gets slapped straight into a wall by Big Mom. We get some Hunter x Hunter Nen-style talk about the difference between what Luffy did and what Hyo was trying to teach. Neat, I guess?
The rest of the chapter revolves around Queen waking up and setting up a little trap with an empty Oshiruko container, allowing Queen to attack Big Mom with a... "Brachio Bomber", which basically involves a big-ass headbutt from Queen's fat dinosaur form. Which does absolutely nothing to Big Mom... but randomly restore her memory? And then she immediately falls asleep? Okay, I've been pretty cautiously positive about the Wano arc throughout the past couple of chapters. Yes, I don't care about all of the newly-introduced characters, yes, I feel that the plot developments could've been spaced out a bit more, yes, I think that I really didn't like Big Mom's amnesia... but I was holding out hope that we could've gotten something neat out of it. And we kind of didn't. We just went through the motions of a very, very expected and frankly plain arc of Big Mom befriending some nice folk, going to Udon, then rampaging because Luffy ate the Oshiruko, and it's honestly pretty dang lame that right after she gets her memory back, she just falls down asleep for no real reason other than plot contrivance.
All this honestly seems to do is to toss Big Mom to resolve everything in the prison. Free Kidd and Killer! Distract Queen so Luffy can escape! Be an opponent for Luffy to practice Haki! Free Kawamatsu! Get Queen away from the prison and leave the prison ripe for Luffy to take over! It's honestly pretty damn sloppy especially for One Piece standards, and while I actually enjoyed a significant portion of this batch of chapters I read, even if it's in "yeah, we probably could've shown a bit more of the fights" sentiment, the conclusion is honestly pretty cheap and uninspiring. We'll see how things go from here... these have been an... interesting collection of chapters.
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