One Piece 979-980 Review: Inner Conflict

One Piece, Chapter 979: Family Trouble; Chapter 980: Fighting Music

Thanks to the multiple hiatus, these chapters have been coming out basically bi-weekly now. And... and it's kind of slightly unfortunate that we're just entering the part of the arc that seems to be focused on mostly just fights? At least the first part of this Onigashima raid arc, which is probably going to last a while. And these two chapters are... they're all right, but at the same time it's not something that would be particularly conducive to reading weekly, let alone bi-weekly. 

Anyway, 979 starts off with an interesting revelation, that Orochi is still supremely confident and thinks that he knows everything Kanjurou is telling him via bird-messages, and I'm curious if this is actually going to matter in the long run, because for the most part, he doesn't seem to know that the Straw Hat pirate alliance is infiltrating Onigashima. The chapter seems to imply that it's simply because Kanjurou is delayed, but I dunno... couldn't he have sent another bird message to Orochi? It could be the case that he's just delayed, according to the dialogue when Kanjurou briefly appears in 979, talking about how the Beast Pirates apparently just had shit communication and Kanjurou was even forced to defend himself against a bunch of mooks. Sure. 

We get a bit more of a showcase of the lesser characters running around. Kin'emon and the Minks at one point; Denjiro and the ex-prisoners on another point; Law and the rest of the Scabbards... again, I'm not entirely sure that many of them are going to do anything in the arc, probably fight like one of the lesser commanders or two, but I do wish that the plot would work them into the story in some way considering the amount of time we spent with them throughout the arc. We also get to see Franky deploy his Super Sentai combination mecha team vehicles, which we haven't seen since Fishman Island and I love them. 

Chopper is totally happy to play commander Chopper and just happily lead the tank. I also do like the pacing of the chapter telling us that Luffy has gone off to stop Kid from running amok (haha, hypocrisy much?) and Zoro has gone to stop Luffy from the inevitable cock-up. It's actually kinda funny, and I love that it's Jinbe who is just telling this matter-of-factly and everyone else just panics. We get a bit of comedy here and there as Sanji couldn't manage to get his way into the 'paradise' of the tank with most of the ladies, because Usopp is the team's sniper. Franky tries to get Robin to sit on the back of his bike... but Brook of all people cockblocks him with the most perfect featureless skull-expression on. It's not even one of Brook's many exaggerated faces, it's just literally a generic skull. Jinbe and Robin basically elect to stick around, walk slowly and sort of be the mature parents trying to herd a bunch of wild children. They're being watched by somebody, too.

The most interesting thing comes from the Beast Pirates, where the Tobiroppo, plus King and Jack, show up in front of Kaidou, and while I do still not really care about the Tobiroppo until they actually do something, the manga's at least trying to make sure that some of them stand out. Sasaki's the most passive-aggressive one, dissing King any time he gets the chance to speak, while Ulti alternates between being a Kaidou fanboy and calling him an annoyance. Turns out it's King that's actually summoned the Tobiroppo without Kaidou's consent, mostly because if it's King that summons them, they wouldn't have cared. Kaidou sends out the Tobiroppo and the two All-Stars there to bring his son Yamato back, and apparently there's a huge announcement... that's not just the alliance. Considering Big Mom's modus operandi it might be that the two of them have decided to seal their alliance by marrying one of Big Mom's daughters to Kaidou's son Yamato, and that might be why he's escaped. Okay, then. There are some neat implications here -- that Yamato, despite having not appeared, might be strong enough that they need a lot of powerful people to track him down... plus the price for helping Kaidou out is a right to challenge any All-Star they choose. It's kind of an interesting dynamic. 

979 ends with Luffy overhearing a bunch of soldier trash-talking the oshiruko dumplings and thinking of Tama is starving and stuff, and 980 opens up with Luffy getting so angry about this that he starts whacking people with Gear Third attacks. And it's dumb, of course, but it's also Luffy. This doesn't go unnoticed, and this bit takes up basically the entirety of 980. Kid mocks Luffy for being a moron, while Zoro slices off like an entire tower, and with a simple explanation from Luffy, he too gets angry at the Beast Pirates mooks spilling oshiruko. 

There was a point where it seemed like it could've been handwaved as a brawl, but of course, using your powers wily-nily causes at the very least Apoo to notice things quickly and then use his position as DJ to speak to Queen, telling Apoo that, hey, these bunch of people who's supposed to be imprisoned in Udon Prison, a.k.a. Queen's responsibility, is running amok. Apoo isn't exactly putting Queen down, but he quickly rises to the challenge and actually talks about wiping out one of the Tobiroppo... which seems to conflate to 978 where some of them are talking about a hypothetical situation of Queen dying, so there's definitely some sort of conflict between the two miniboss groups, huh? Queen raises hell and causes everyone there that's at least a Gifter to fight Luffy and Zoro, 

And, sure, it's just action scenes as Luffy and Zoro fight through a bunch of generic mooks... There are way too many random cool Gifters in the background of these scenes! A bunch of Japanese ghost-themed minions, Fake Monet, a giant snake lady, a gorilla with a human lady embedded on the gorilla's chest, a dude with a wolf's head growing out of his crotch, a giant lobster-centaur woman, some iguana on the wall with a bow... pretty cool stuff, but the focus, of course is Scratchmen Apoo. Constantly ranking the lowest and deemed one of the more forgettable Supernovas, is this Apoo's first real, proper fight? He sort of plays music on his piano-teeth and drums his chest and stuff, and at one point his hand detaches to reveal guitar strings connecting his arm and hand, and he can basically make shockwaves and slashes appear out of nowhere next to Luffy and Zoro. It's similar to the one attack we see him use against Kizaru pre-timeskip, something vaguely sonic or music based. Hopefully next chapter we'll able to see some specifics, but apparently Apoo's powers activate fast enough and moves fast enough to hit and slice our heroes and befuddle them. 

And one of Apoo's attacks manages to blow Luffy up and even send him into KO-mode with whited-out pupils and stuff, and Zoro has to drag Luffy away. Sure, it lasts like maybe a page and Luffy wakes up to chomp down on some Gifter's mouth, but I do like this. Just because our heroes are strong doesn't mean that they can waltz up the enemy's massively-protected stronghold, yeah? One-shotting these random Gifters is one thing, but if there's a lot of them and there are also enemies like Apoo that can attack them while they're overwhelmed? I actually like this, I actually like that Luffy is being punished for his utterly stupid tactical decision. It also makes the crew of a Yonko actually feel fearsome, y'know? At the very least in the amount of numbers of these lesser members. 

That said, it's not like Luffy and Zoro are just two against Apoo hiding behind a shield of animal-men. Kid's also there and while he initially wanted to stay hidden while Luffy became a distraction, the sight of the treacherous Apoo does make him go super-angry and summon one of his giant scrap metal magnet arms to utterly smash Apoo into the ground. I'm not sure if this is it for Apoo; I'd like a proper fight between Supernovas, after all, but I'm not sure that if for pacing reasons their fight will basically end in a one (giant, metallic) punch from Kid, or if it's going to be in the background or something. 

Still, decent chapters.  Nothing that really stands out to me, and at least for the time being I still find it really hard to care for like the Tobiroppo or King or whatever when their characterizations basically amount to 'minion of a main villain's crew', but the added little goals here and there do make them more interesting than they would've been. 

Random Notes:

• The cover story has two... interesting developments. 980's cover story is Charlotte Lola basically asking Bege's henchman Bege to marry her. I'm not sure if he'll accept, but I guess that's going to be the conclusion of this particular storyline? 979's is something that got people up in arms, though, mostly because it's yet another character who died and turned out to have survived because of deus ex machina reasons. This is the sort of terrible writing that is easily the biggest weakness of One Piece, and frankly, it's pretty eye-rolling when every single god-damned character that has a vaguely heroic sacrifice death ends up being confirmed to be alive randomly here and there. Pell, Mr. 2, and now Pound? It's frankly getting ridiculous, and this is the sort of reason people are still holding out hope that Vergo, Monet and most recently Pedro are still alive. This honestly stretches the suspension and tension of disbelief if even a literal Z-stringer like Pound could be alive. 
• A good part of Momonosuke's character arc in the Wano arc seems to be him finally getting the courage to stand up and be a man for himself instead of crying and expecting everyone to save him, and we get a close-up of him seeing and noticing a bloodied knife. Now, the question remains, is that whether Momonosuke's going to attempt to use the knife against Kanjurou or Orochi? Or, hell, even Kaidou? Sure, he's not going to really hurt them, but I am curious. 
• All the Tobiroppo are noted to be ex-pirate captains, which... okay, I guess it sort of implies they're at least the level of the Supernovas, but in the world of One Piece, someone's rank really matters jack shit on whether they'll deliver in actually being powerful. There's hope, though, considering that the Beast Pirates seem to basically be all Spartan and how the strongest can manage to climb up to higher ranks. 
• Kaidou's tiny flying-squirrel SMILE user, Bao Huang, is neat. She's named after a Chinese card game that translates literally into "Protect the Emperor". So she could actually be as much a bodyguard as a schedule-keeper. 
• Do like the other people around them screaming "why are they reacting like this?" when Zoro takes Luffy's excuse about them spilling the oshiruko as a totally valid excuse to run wild in a stealth mission. 
• A lot of people have issue about how Luffy's Conqueror's Haki doesn't just wipe out half the banquet hall, but I dunno, I like this better. Like, not everything has to be about Haki, and I kinda wish the rules were just a smite clearer on why Luffy doesn't abuse those powers a bit more. A simple 'it takes too much out me' would've sufficed, really. Likewise, the fact that Observation Haki isn't just online 24/7 makes fights like this a bit more sense... presumably this is going to be how they beat Apoo? If Kid doesn't rip those piano-teeth off one by one, that is.