One Piece, Chapters 964-967
It's been a while since we talked about One Piece, huh? Mostly because I myself have been kind of taking a break from manga in general. I'm trying to catch up, though -- I caught up with My Hero Academia recently and I've been enjoying the Endeavour training arc, although I really don't think there's a whole ton for me to actually review? A lot of it is just buildup, and apparently there's a whole lot of controversies surrounding some aspects of the manga's latest chapters or something? Eh. I've been watching the newest seasons of One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia, and it's neat to see some series I've already read in manga form get animated. Probably won't do reviews for any of these, though. I've also been reading (and highly enjoying!) Dungeon Meshi. Maybe I'll get to watching one of the new and hot anime like this Demon Slayer thing that everyone's apparently recommending.
Chapter 964: Oden's Adventure
Anyway, everything from chapter 964 to the currently newest chapter are all revolving around the massive flashback to Kousuke Oden's backstory, and it's... it's actually quite neat. A lot of it feels like we're just going through the motions of what we already know, but from 964 onwards there's the sheer glee of seeing long-dead characters like Whitebeard and Roger, these larger-than-life characters actually be people and interact with Oden, giving some context to what transpired during the golden age of piracy -- it's something we mostly see from Oden's point of view, but seeing him interact with legends like Whitebeard and Roger does really put into perspective a lot of the hype surrounding Oden.
964 starts off with Oden basically asking to join Whitebeard's crew, but neither Whitebeard nor Oden's own retainers are particularly keen on letting Oden do so -- the samurai know that leaving Wano is going to cause Oden to be subjected to punishment, while Whitebeard doesn't want an unruly dude like Oden to join his crew since he's got bad experience with the Rocks Pirates. Obviously, Oden ends up trying to sneak on board, hanging on with a chain. Izo tries to stop Oden and hang on to him, and the two basically get dragged along the back of the Moby Dick. Whitebeard ends up bringing Izo on board, while letting Oden trail behind their ship. Whitebeard gives them the reason that Oden's going to have to convince him that he can change his fate, and he has to hang on the chain for three days if he wants to join the crew. We get a brief montage of him sleeping while hanging on to the chain, and getting beaten up, and Whitebeard's crew began to even start cheering for him.
But then Oden ends up letting go because he ends up seeing young Amatsuki Toki in trouble, as she's trying to hold off a bunch of human traffickers, apparently fresh off of a time-jump. Oden, beaten to shit, ends up letting go of the chain in order to scare off the pirates threatening Toki, and he brushes it off as, oh well, too bad about Whiteberad's ship, right? They immediately get attacked by the pirate captain Karma (who I completely remember from the Marineford War as one of Whitebeard's men because he has an octopus for a head), and Whitebeard just one-shots him and we get a hilarious 'ah' expression from Oden. Whitebeard realizes that Oden let go of the chain for the sake of rescuing someone in need, and Whitebeard's soft enough to reward Oden for that. (Oh, and also, Inuarashi and Nekomamushi snuck on board, and also Izo isn't super happy with Whitebeard either)
The rest of the chapter is pretty fun stuff, kind of redundant but very much needed to show us Oden and Whitebeard's wacky adventures in the ocean as pirates. We get Oden slicing an enemy ship in half, them exploring weird lands with wacky weather and buildings and giants and piranha plants and giant koalas and shit, and it's pretty neat to see that as the monologue given by Oden emphasizes just how much his eyes are being opened to the greater world. The final panel shows us a different legendary pirate crew as two tiny boys -- Buggy and Shanks -- read about Oden being recruited into Whitebeard's crew, and Gold Roger gets super duper interested in meeting a pirate from an isolated country.
Chapter 965: The Kurozumi Clan Conspiracy
965 continues on with Oden learning about facts about the world, and learning with ease that Wano is really quite tiny in the grand scheme of things. We get to see a bit of the romance that blossoms between Oden and Toki in the midst of Whitebeard's crew going around the world, and in particular, we get an interesting bit from Whitebeard telling Oden that he should be surprised that Wano is still free and not governed by the global organization that is the Marines. Also, on board Whitebeard's ship, baby Momonosuke is born, and we briefly get to see the birth of the Division Leaders of Whitebeard's massive crew. I think we know about this beforehand, but Oden is the Second Division Leader before Ace.
Also, surprisingly, we also get to see Whitebeard's crew adopting an orphan, Marshall Teach, the future Blackbeard! It's something that doesn't amount to a whole ton but is doubtless going to be a little detail that we'll look back to once we learn a bit more about Blackbeard's backstory later on.
In Wano, on the other hand, Oden's dad Sukiyaki is suffering from illness and he really wants Oden to take over... but appoints Oden's "brother-like figure" Kurozumi Orochi as his successor while Oden is gone, a decision that confuses the shit out of poor Yasuie. Even at this point it's clear that Orochi is hiding something. Sure, we can excuse his initial announcement as him just not being the most tactful or charismatic person, but when Yasuie confronts him about never mentioning his Kurozumi name, the panel of zooming in on him saying "I am very sorry" is pretty dang ominous!
We get a bit of a flashback-within-a-flashback to Orochi's rise of power, where he is hiding in some ramshackle building when a creepy old lady shows up and confronts him, telling him that his future is to become Shogun, revealing him all about how the Kurozumi Clan fell, particularly Orochi's grandfather. The old lady (we learn later that her name is Higurashi, and I'll call her that for ease's sake) twists Orochi's grandfather's death as not just being executed for treason, but simply struggling to obtain power. It's kind of the same sort of "what was considered a crime can be redefined as noble" mentality that Doflamingo expouses in his speeches, revealing that Orochi's grandfather slowly poisoned and assassinated the other Daimyos with poison, but before he could claim the throne, baby Kozuki Sukiyaki was born, throwing the Kurozumi plan into chaos and forcing Orochi's grandfather to commit seppuku and all of the Kurozumi power to be absolutely crushed. Orochi ends up 'realizing' that Kozuki Sukiyaki is to blame, realizing that he would've been Shogun had it not for their presence.
Higurashi is basically being the Palpatine to Orochi's Anakin has left Wano before, and she is a user of the Mane-Mane Fruit... the same fruit that Mr. 2 uses! Which is interesting -- it's a very, very interesting way to tie in with the current storyline, as well as the "Devil Fruits will reincarnate across users" thing. Also, even more interestingly is that the old granny, in addition to manipulating Orochi and being essentially his evil mentor, seems to also have touched Shiki the Gold Lion before, turning her face into young Shiki for a panel. Film: Gold is canon, y'know? Anyway, Higurashi gives Orochi a devil fruit of his own, and basically tutors him in what he should do, telling him to hoard gold, manufacture weapon, and Orochi basically spends the next couple of years groveling and begging for scraps, borrowing and stealing money frm the likes of Yasuie and the utterly naive Oden. After gaining the acquaintance of Oden, Higurashi uses her shape-shifting powers to introduce Orochi into the castle, introducing him as a 'younger brother', before eventually masquerading as Sukiyaki himself. It's also heavily implied (but interestingly not stated outright) that Orochi and Higurashi poisoned Sukiyaki to death, while, of course, also manipulating the succession to put Orochi in power.
Meanwhile, Oden's still traveling at sea as part of Whitebeard's crew, and we've seen that Hiyori's also born, and also Marco has the phoenix power. They arrive on the very island of beasts that Luffy trained on during the time-skip with Rayleigh, they see animals running and whatnot... and we get this glorious two-page spread of the Roger Pirates assembled after beating up a bunch of Marines... and hey, a clash between the two legendary pirate crews! Young cabin boy Buggy and Shanks! Crocus! Rayleigh! And Roger, who grins and notes that this might be their last meeting since he doesn't have long to live -- he already knows he's going to die!
Chapter 966: Roger and Whitebeard
And, of course, 966 is the huge fanservice chapter. The fights doesn't last long, which I do appreciate -- it's less about showcasing an elaborate fight and more about illustrating the story and the confrontation between the two pirate crews... although I don't doubt that the anime will probably have a bit of a field day with this. One thing that One Piece does in a lot of its later arcs is that it recognizes that fights are more of a means to an end and we've been getting increasingly speedy fights that are resolved within a matter of pages , especially when it doesn't involve a member of the Straw Hat crew, and this being a fight that takes place in a flashback... it doesn't need to take too long, particularly with so many more of Oden's story left to tell.
That doesn't make this chapter any less hype, though, and I remembered that it basically broke the internet fandom when the chapter debuted online. The chapter starts off with a confrontation almost immediately as Oden charges straight in with his Oden Two-Sword Style moves (all of Oden's moves are puns on Japanese food, kind of like Zoro's), and we briefly get to see Rayleigh and Scopper Gaban about to stand in Oden's way... but Gold Roger is apparently the type of cheeky dude that gets in the way just to try and try and get in a good fight. We... don't actually see if Roger has any sort of special ability beyond Haki, but his move, "Kamusari", unleashes some black lightning and basically knocks Oden backwards. Roger then proceeds to clash with Whitebeard, and the visual of these two mighty pirates's blades clashing mid-air, the force of the weapons themselves impacting on each other onto a crack of black lightning in the air between them... that's a pretty awesome shot.
Roger and Whitebeard sort of trash-talk each other before the two crews fight each other, and we cut away to a transition that talks about how the two crews fought each other for three days and three nights, until the fighting ended up basically being the pirate crews hanging out with each other and exchanging booze. There's a neat bit where Shanks and Buggy discuss the other crew's apprentice, Marshall Teach, and there's this completely random bit of detail that I'm pretty sure is important about how apparently Teach has never slept before in his life, and how "he's a monster".
Meanwhile, the discussion between Whitebeard, Roger and Oden turn to the Poneglyphs, and how Oden, being a Wano resident, is able to read Poneglyphs. Apparently, Roger has reached the end of the Log Pose, getting to the island Road Star (or Lode Star, depending on the translation), and it's not the end of the journey. Now we readers know that the end of the journey is a different island, but this is Roger discovering the existence of said island for the first time. Roger figures out that the Red Poneglyphs are the key to triangulate the existence of these final islands, and Roger proclaims his goal... which we don't hear, and Whiteberad and Oden are sort of baffled. It's probably something simple like being the 'most free person in the world' or something, and it's probably something that's going to be compared to a similar scene where Luffy does the same thing, but whatever Roger said, it's enough to make Oden speechless and impress him a lot. Roger then decides to want to borrow Oden for a year as he travels to the final island, and I do really like how Roger is prepared to even bow down to Oden to beg him to come, while Whitebeard is so angry at the idea of Roger poaching a member of his family that his Gura-Gura fruit activates and causes the ocean itself to get fucked up.
Oden ends up begging Whitebeard to allow him to travel with the Roger Pirates, which, of course, is what we know ended up happening, but it's still, again, nice to see how it all panned out. Absolutely love the tsundere, angry way that Whitebeard behaves, being all angry but at the same time also forcing his crew to return the treasure given to him by Roger because "do you want Oden and his family to starve?" I do like the return of the 'disgusted face' running gag, and it's sort of neat to see the canon welding bit of showing Izo staying behind on Whitebeard's ship, while Neko and Inu followed Oden onto Roger's ship. We get a quick montage of Oden quickly being accepted as a member of Roger's crew with his carefree attitude and whatnot, the revelation of Roger's terminal illness, and even more adventures -- including the bit where Roger's crew arrives on Skypiea and how Roger ended up making Oden carve the line onto the Skypiea Poneglyph.
Chapter 967: Roger's Adventure
Chapter 967 is basically a huge continuity cavalcade, with the Roger Pirates arriving on Water Seven and meeting Big Tom and Kokoro... and also, surprisingly, a young Cutty Flam, who refuses to get on board the Roger Pirates ship because he thinks the pirates will abandon him too. There's a brief acknowledgement of the Road Poneglyph on Zou, as well as the fact that Roger stole the rubbing of Big Mom's Road Poneglyph, and the Roger Pirates even sing Bink's Sake at one point. The huge scene that they ended up going through is basically Fishman Island, where both Roger and Oden basically display the whole 'voice of all things' ability, seemingly able to hear whatever the Sea Kings are saying. We get to see young prophet Shyarly predicting the huge disaster that'll happen after the mermaid princess is born, basically sort of outlining the whole New Fishman Arc before Neptune even gets married, which is... it's neat, I suppose!
More interestingly is that Neptune shows off the undersea forest, where there isn't one, but two poneglyphs, a Road Poneglyph and a regular one (which we know about) that is an apology from some dude called Joyboy. Roger and Neptune also discuss the 'weapon' that we know is Poseidon... which, of course, isn't born yet, something that Neptune, Roger and Shyarly outline will happen in ten years. It's kind of interesting that while Rayleigh is all "well, we're not interested in weapons, right?" which Roger... doesn't actually confirm. So is Roger actually interested in the ultimate weapons after all? Hmm.
We then have a bit of a montage before Oden makes a brief pit-stop in Wano, because Toki ends up falling ill and unable to travel, and despite Oden's wishes, Toki refuses to allow Oden to stay in Wano and break his promise to Roger. We get a brief look of the remaining Scabbards asking Oden to return to his position as Daimyo, and we get a pretty cool bit of Oden pretending to be cool and detached as he turns his back on how his country has changed -- it's selfish, perhaps, but I do like that Oden at least acknowledges that it's for his own selfish reasons that he's turning his back on his country, and that he wouldn't have left if he had actually taken stock of the situation. Anyway, they got Wano's Poneglyphs off-screen before buggering off to Zou.
It's interesting, too, that both Roger and Oden's voice-of-all-things radar is set off at Zou. It's something we know from Momonosuke and Luffy hearing Zunisha's voice during the Zou arc... but the panel actually ends up focusing on the weird whale-shaped tree and the specific line is about "something huge is stored here". So, uh... what? Anyway, the Roger Pirates get the final Road Poneglyph in Zou, and end up meeting little Pedro... and the Roger Pirates have finally figured out their final destination. Interestingly, we get the revelation that Shanks and Buggy never actually set foot on the final island, because Buggy caught "you'll-die-if-you-go-to-that-island disease", which, of course, is something that Usopp made up with as one of his lies... another genuinely random retroactive example of Usopp's lies becoming truth, since it doesn't seem like Buggy's faking it. Shanks notes that "we'll get there with our own ship", which is neat.
We don't actually see what the last island is like (of course), but Gold Roger is announced as the Pirate King, the man who has conquered all of the oceans of the world, and Oden's monologue tells us that the Roger Pirates have learned about everything in the world (whatever it is), including the Void Century, the Ancient Weapons, the meaning of the D. name... basically everything that all the One Piece theorists and fans had wanted to know for years... and we learn that Gold Roger laughed when he treasure he sought was placed before him. Roger noted that the treasure was left behind by Joyboy, and he named the island that no one has set foot before in 800 years as... "Laugh Tale", the proper parsing of what we've been calling as "Raftel" thanks to the katakana.
967 is a pretty dang interesting chapter, telling us so much while raising even more questions. It's neat to see chapters like this that really weave around the long, winding continuity of the series, and while I've never been one to really like long, exposition-heavy flashbacks, this Oden flashback really ends up telling us so much -- branching out of Wano's self-contained story and actually exploring Oden's years of working alongside Whitebeard and Roger and experiencing the huge world and meeting all the characters in the story is definitely an awesome thing to witness, too, and I feel like 965 through 967 is basically the perfect length to have this journey be paced well while not feeling like it drags on a bit too long. Of course, the flashback still have a ways to go since we still need to see just how Kozuki Oden's story and the backstory of Wano ended up panning out.
Random Notes:
Chapter 964: Oden's Adventure
Anyway, everything from chapter 964 to the currently newest chapter are all revolving around the massive flashback to Kousuke Oden's backstory, and it's... it's actually quite neat. A lot of it feels like we're just going through the motions of what we already know, but from 964 onwards there's the sheer glee of seeing long-dead characters like Whitebeard and Roger, these larger-than-life characters actually be people and interact with Oden, giving some context to what transpired during the golden age of piracy -- it's something we mostly see from Oden's point of view, but seeing him interact with legends like Whitebeard and Roger does really put into perspective a lot of the hype surrounding Oden.
964 starts off with Oden basically asking to join Whitebeard's crew, but neither Whitebeard nor Oden's own retainers are particularly keen on letting Oden do so -- the samurai know that leaving Wano is going to cause Oden to be subjected to punishment, while Whitebeard doesn't want an unruly dude like Oden to join his crew since he's got bad experience with the Rocks Pirates. Obviously, Oden ends up trying to sneak on board, hanging on with a chain. Izo tries to stop Oden and hang on to him, and the two basically get dragged along the back of the Moby Dick. Whitebeard ends up bringing Izo on board, while letting Oden trail behind their ship. Whitebeard gives them the reason that Oden's going to have to convince him that he can change his fate, and he has to hang on the chain for three days if he wants to join the crew. We get a brief montage of him sleeping while hanging on to the chain, and getting beaten up, and Whitebeard's crew began to even start cheering for him.
But then Oden ends up letting go because he ends up seeing young Amatsuki Toki in trouble, as she's trying to hold off a bunch of human traffickers, apparently fresh off of a time-jump. Oden, beaten to shit, ends up letting go of the chain in order to scare off the pirates threatening Toki, and he brushes it off as, oh well, too bad about Whiteberad's ship, right? They immediately get attacked by the pirate captain Karma (who I completely remember from the Marineford War as one of Whitebeard's men because he has an octopus for a head), and Whitebeard just one-shots him and we get a hilarious 'ah' expression from Oden. Whitebeard realizes that Oden let go of the chain for the sake of rescuing someone in need, and Whitebeard's soft enough to reward Oden for that. (Oh, and also, Inuarashi and Nekomamushi snuck on board, and also Izo isn't super happy with Whitebeard either)
The rest of the chapter is pretty fun stuff, kind of redundant but very much needed to show us Oden and Whitebeard's wacky adventures in the ocean as pirates. We get Oden slicing an enemy ship in half, them exploring weird lands with wacky weather and buildings and giants and piranha plants and giant koalas and shit, and it's pretty neat to see that as the monologue given by Oden emphasizes just how much his eyes are being opened to the greater world. The final panel shows us a different legendary pirate crew as two tiny boys -- Buggy and Shanks -- read about Oden being recruited into Whitebeard's crew, and Gold Roger gets super duper interested in meeting a pirate from an isolated country.
Chapter 965: The Kurozumi Clan Conspiracy
965 continues on with Oden learning about facts about the world, and learning with ease that Wano is really quite tiny in the grand scheme of things. We get to see a bit of the romance that blossoms between Oden and Toki in the midst of Whitebeard's crew going around the world, and in particular, we get an interesting bit from Whitebeard telling Oden that he should be surprised that Wano is still free and not governed by the global organization that is the Marines. Also, on board Whitebeard's ship, baby Momonosuke is born, and we briefly get to see the birth of the Division Leaders of Whitebeard's massive crew. I think we know about this beforehand, but Oden is the Second Division Leader before Ace.
Also, surprisingly, we also get to see Whitebeard's crew adopting an orphan, Marshall Teach, the future Blackbeard! It's something that doesn't amount to a whole ton but is doubtless going to be a little detail that we'll look back to once we learn a bit more about Blackbeard's backstory later on.
In Wano, on the other hand, Oden's dad Sukiyaki is suffering from illness and he really wants Oden to take over... but appoints Oden's "brother-like figure" Kurozumi Orochi as his successor while Oden is gone, a decision that confuses the shit out of poor Yasuie. Even at this point it's clear that Orochi is hiding something. Sure, we can excuse his initial announcement as him just not being the most tactful or charismatic person, but when Yasuie confronts him about never mentioning his Kurozumi name, the panel of zooming in on him saying "I am very sorry" is pretty dang ominous!
We get a bit of a flashback-within-a-flashback to Orochi's rise of power, where he is hiding in some ramshackle building when a creepy old lady shows up and confronts him, telling him that his future is to become Shogun, revealing him all about how the Kurozumi Clan fell, particularly Orochi's grandfather. The old lady (we learn later that her name is Higurashi, and I'll call her that for ease's sake) twists Orochi's grandfather's death as not just being executed for treason, but simply struggling to obtain power. It's kind of the same sort of "what was considered a crime can be redefined as noble" mentality that Doflamingo expouses in his speeches, revealing that Orochi's grandfather slowly poisoned and assassinated the other Daimyos with poison, but before he could claim the throne, baby Kozuki Sukiyaki was born, throwing the Kurozumi plan into chaos and forcing Orochi's grandfather to commit seppuku and all of the Kurozumi power to be absolutely crushed. Orochi ends up 'realizing' that Kozuki Sukiyaki is to blame, realizing that he would've been Shogun had it not for their presence.
Higurashi is basically being the Palpatine to Orochi's Anakin has left Wano before, and she is a user of the Mane-Mane Fruit... the same fruit that Mr. 2 uses! Which is interesting -- it's a very, very interesting way to tie in with the current storyline, as well as the "Devil Fruits will reincarnate across users" thing. Also, even more interestingly is that the old granny, in addition to manipulating Orochi and being essentially his evil mentor, seems to also have touched Shiki the Gold Lion before, turning her face into young Shiki for a panel. Film: Gold is canon, y'know? Anyway, Higurashi gives Orochi a devil fruit of his own, and basically tutors him in what he should do, telling him to hoard gold, manufacture weapon, and Orochi basically spends the next couple of years groveling and begging for scraps, borrowing and stealing money frm the likes of Yasuie and the utterly naive Oden. After gaining the acquaintance of Oden, Higurashi uses her shape-shifting powers to introduce Orochi into the castle, introducing him as a 'younger brother', before eventually masquerading as Sukiyaki himself. It's also heavily implied (but interestingly not stated outright) that Orochi and Higurashi poisoned Sukiyaki to death, while, of course, also manipulating the succession to put Orochi in power.
Meanwhile, Oden's still traveling at sea as part of Whitebeard's crew, and we've seen that Hiyori's also born, and also Marco has the phoenix power. They arrive on the very island of beasts that Luffy trained on during the time-skip with Rayleigh, they see animals running and whatnot... and we get this glorious two-page spread of the Roger Pirates assembled after beating up a bunch of Marines... and hey, a clash between the two legendary pirate crews! Young cabin boy Buggy and Shanks! Crocus! Rayleigh! And Roger, who grins and notes that this might be their last meeting since he doesn't have long to live -- he already knows he's going to die!
Chapter 966: Roger and Whitebeard
And, of course, 966 is the huge fanservice chapter. The fights doesn't last long, which I do appreciate -- it's less about showcasing an elaborate fight and more about illustrating the story and the confrontation between the two pirate crews... although I don't doubt that the anime will probably have a bit of a field day with this. One thing that One Piece does in a lot of its later arcs is that it recognizes that fights are more of a means to an end and we've been getting increasingly speedy fights that are resolved within a matter of pages , especially when it doesn't involve a member of the Straw Hat crew, and this being a fight that takes place in a flashback... it doesn't need to take too long, particularly with so many more of Oden's story left to tell.
That doesn't make this chapter any less hype, though, and I remembered that it basically broke the internet fandom when the chapter debuted online. The chapter starts off with a confrontation almost immediately as Oden charges straight in with his Oden Two-Sword Style moves (all of Oden's moves are puns on Japanese food, kind of like Zoro's), and we briefly get to see Rayleigh and Scopper Gaban about to stand in Oden's way... but Gold Roger is apparently the type of cheeky dude that gets in the way just to try and try and get in a good fight. We... don't actually see if Roger has any sort of special ability beyond Haki, but his move, "Kamusari", unleashes some black lightning and basically knocks Oden backwards. Roger then proceeds to clash with Whitebeard, and the visual of these two mighty pirates's blades clashing mid-air, the force of the weapons themselves impacting on each other onto a crack of black lightning in the air between them... that's a pretty awesome shot.
Roger and Whitebeard sort of trash-talk each other before the two crews fight each other, and we cut away to a transition that talks about how the two crews fought each other for three days and three nights, until the fighting ended up basically being the pirate crews hanging out with each other and exchanging booze. There's a neat bit where Shanks and Buggy discuss the other crew's apprentice, Marshall Teach, and there's this completely random bit of detail that I'm pretty sure is important about how apparently Teach has never slept before in his life, and how "he's a monster".
Meanwhile, the discussion between Whitebeard, Roger and Oden turn to the Poneglyphs, and how Oden, being a Wano resident, is able to read Poneglyphs. Apparently, Roger has reached the end of the Log Pose, getting to the island Road Star (or Lode Star, depending on the translation), and it's not the end of the journey. Now we readers know that the end of the journey is a different island, but this is Roger discovering the existence of said island for the first time. Roger figures out that the Red Poneglyphs are the key to triangulate the existence of these final islands, and Roger proclaims his goal... which we don't hear, and Whiteberad and Oden are sort of baffled. It's probably something simple like being the 'most free person in the world' or something, and it's probably something that's going to be compared to a similar scene where Luffy does the same thing, but whatever Roger said, it's enough to make Oden speechless and impress him a lot. Roger then decides to want to borrow Oden for a year as he travels to the final island, and I do really like how Roger is prepared to even bow down to Oden to beg him to come, while Whitebeard is so angry at the idea of Roger poaching a member of his family that his Gura-Gura fruit activates and causes the ocean itself to get fucked up.
Oden ends up begging Whitebeard to allow him to travel with the Roger Pirates, which, of course, is what we know ended up happening, but it's still, again, nice to see how it all panned out. Absolutely love the tsundere, angry way that Whitebeard behaves, being all angry but at the same time also forcing his crew to return the treasure given to him by Roger because "do you want Oden and his family to starve?" I do like the return of the 'disgusted face' running gag, and it's sort of neat to see the canon welding bit of showing Izo staying behind on Whitebeard's ship, while Neko and Inu followed Oden onto Roger's ship. We get a quick montage of Oden quickly being accepted as a member of Roger's crew with his carefree attitude and whatnot, the revelation of Roger's terminal illness, and even more adventures -- including the bit where Roger's crew arrives on Skypiea and how Roger ended up making Oden carve the line onto the Skypiea Poneglyph.
Chapter 967: Roger's Adventure
Chapter 967 is basically a huge continuity cavalcade, with the Roger Pirates arriving on Water Seven and meeting Big Tom and Kokoro... and also, surprisingly, a young Cutty Flam, who refuses to get on board the Roger Pirates ship because he thinks the pirates will abandon him too. There's a brief acknowledgement of the Road Poneglyph on Zou, as well as the fact that Roger stole the rubbing of Big Mom's Road Poneglyph, and the Roger Pirates even sing Bink's Sake at one point. The huge scene that they ended up going through is basically Fishman Island, where both Roger and Oden basically display the whole 'voice of all things' ability, seemingly able to hear whatever the Sea Kings are saying. We get to see young prophet Shyarly predicting the huge disaster that'll happen after the mermaid princess is born, basically sort of outlining the whole New Fishman Arc before Neptune even gets married, which is... it's neat, I suppose!
More interestingly is that Neptune shows off the undersea forest, where there isn't one, but two poneglyphs, a Road Poneglyph and a regular one (which we know about) that is an apology from some dude called Joyboy. Roger and Neptune also discuss the 'weapon' that we know is Poseidon... which, of course, isn't born yet, something that Neptune, Roger and Shyarly outline will happen in ten years. It's kind of interesting that while Rayleigh is all "well, we're not interested in weapons, right?" which Roger... doesn't actually confirm. So is Roger actually interested in the ultimate weapons after all? Hmm.
We then have a bit of a montage before Oden makes a brief pit-stop in Wano, because Toki ends up falling ill and unable to travel, and despite Oden's wishes, Toki refuses to allow Oden to stay in Wano and break his promise to Roger. We get a brief look of the remaining Scabbards asking Oden to return to his position as Daimyo, and we get a pretty cool bit of Oden pretending to be cool and detached as he turns his back on how his country has changed -- it's selfish, perhaps, but I do like that Oden at least acknowledges that it's for his own selfish reasons that he's turning his back on his country, and that he wouldn't have left if he had actually taken stock of the situation. Anyway, they got Wano's Poneglyphs off-screen before buggering off to Zou.
It's interesting, too, that both Roger and Oden's voice-of-all-things radar is set off at Zou. It's something we know from Momonosuke and Luffy hearing Zunisha's voice during the Zou arc... but the panel actually ends up focusing on the weird whale-shaped tree and the specific line is about "something huge is stored here". So, uh... what? Anyway, the Roger Pirates get the final Road Poneglyph in Zou, and end up meeting little Pedro... and the Roger Pirates have finally figured out their final destination. Interestingly, we get the revelation that Shanks and Buggy never actually set foot on the final island, because Buggy caught "you'll-die-if-you-go-to-that-island disease", which, of course, is something that Usopp made up with as one of his lies... another genuinely random retroactive example of Usopp's lies becoming truth, since it doesn't seem like Buggy's faking it. Shanks notes that "we'll get there with our own ship", which is neat.
We don't actually see what the last island is like (of course), but Gold Roger is announced as the Pirate King, the man who has conquered all of the oceans of the world, and Oden's monologue tells us that the Roger Pirates have learned about everything in the world (whatever it is), including the Void Century, the Ancient Weapons, the meaning of the D. name... basically everything that all the One Piece theorists and fans had wanted to know for years... and we learn that Gold Roger laughed when he treasure he sought was placed before him. Roger noted that the treasure was left behind by Joyboy, and he named the island that no one has set foot before in 800 years as... "Laugh Tale", the proper parsing of what we've been calling as "Raftel" thanks to the katakana.
967 is a pretty dang interesting chapter, telling us so much while raising even more questions. It's neat to see chapters like this that really weave around the long, winding continuity of the series, and while I've never been one to really like long, exposition-heavy flashbacks, this Oden flashback really ends up telling us so much -- branching out of Wano's self-contained story and actually exploring Oden's years of working alongside Whitebeard and Roger and experiencing the huge world and meeting all the characters in the story is definitely an awesome thing to witness, too, and I feel like 965 through 967 is basically the perfect length to have this journey be paced well while not feeling like it drags on a bit too long. Of course, the flashback still have a ways to go since we still need to see just how Kozuki Oden's story and the backstory of Wano ended up panning out.
Random Notes:
- I like Capone bege and I enjoy the idea of them going to a place that the readesr have seen before in Dressrosa and going on an adventure there, but the actual contents of the cover story is basically just them fighting a bunch of nobodies, the Germ Pirates or whatever?
- I have read through my little tankobon of the Marineford War enough time to be happy that I can recognize a lot of the random people in Whitebeard's crew like Atmos or Karma or Epoida. Young Marco and Jozu going all 'kyaah' seeing Oden and Toki being lovey-dovey is adorable.
- I do really love the little moment of Marco talking to Inuarashi and Nekomamushi and absolutely shocking them with the fact that there are more than five islands in the world.
- There's a bit of a running gag of people getting a completely disgusted face in 964 at the thought of Toki requesting them to return to Wano which I find funnier than it really is.
- Toki gives her actual age as 26, but notes that she came from 800 years ago... and my memory is a bit rusty but this places her smack-dab as hailing from the Void Century, doesn't it? Her parents also hail from Wano, but it's 800-year-ago-Wano.
- The five great families that served the Kozuki shogunate are Shimotsuki, Uzuki, Amatsuki, Fuugetsu and Kurozumi. All of the clan names contain 'moon' in some way, except for Kurozumi, literally meaning "black coal".
- It's not until this chapter that I realize that I genuinely forgot at what point in the series we ever met Scopper Gaban. Like, I know the character exists, I know there's a fair bit of fandom speculation about him, but I genuinely forgot where we met him before. Was it just one of Buggy or Shanks's flashbacks?
- Shanks and Buggy talk about how Teach not being able to sleep means that he has 'twice as much time to enjoy your life', which might be the reasoning behind his whole unique body allowing him to be able to consume two devil fruits? Is this a Cavendish sort of thing where two personalities inhabit a body, because doesn't Cavendish's alter-ego emerge when he's sleeping?
- Roger notes that "it's been a while since I last held a baby" when he sees Momo and Hiyori, so, uh... did he have a kid before Ace? Interesting.
- I do love the little background conversation where Roger tells Buggy that he has no time for Skypiea's golden bell, and tells Buggy to get the treasure himself once he's captain.
- Did Franky ever mention that he met Oden as a kid? I feel like it's probably something that should've came up in conversation, but I guess we just never had enough conversation opportunities between Franky and any of the Wano-kuni characters, huh?
- One of the places that the Roger Pirates pass through is a gigantic bridge being constructed, which seems similar to the bridge being constructed in that place that Nico Robin got Kuma'd off to in the timeskip... except Robin was hanging around dry land, and not the ocean. Who's making this huge bridge?
- Absolutely love Roger's snarky "scum" comment after Oden leaves Wano behind a second time.
I think Scopper first appeared in a flashback during the Strong World movie.
ReplyDeleteIt has been nearly six years since I watched Strong World, and I really don't remember too much of it. The Wiki credits Scopper's first appearance in chapter 19 of the manga, so, uh... I guess he's like an extreme wallflower, then, spending most of his time in the background?
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