One Piece 998-999 Review: Sashimi

One Piece, Chapter 998-999

Chapter 998: Ancient Types

Yeah, these two chapters are essentially just a huge introduction and a build-up to whatever huge revelation in chapter 1000, huh? 998 is basically almost entirely filled with two-page spreads, and as someone who has been a huge, huge fan of Zoan-type devil fruits and just how creative One Piece can get with them, and as someone who's a big fan of prehistoric creatures, I am a huge, huge fan of this chapter! Even if the content of this chapter can basically be summed up to "Marco and Chopper essentially deal with the ice plague; every Tobiroppo transforms into their Zoan modes". 

So yeah, of course, Marco's flames turn out to be the healing flames that can suppress the ice oni plague. Chopper's infection is suppressed and he can make the antibodies... yeah, this sub-plot is probably one of the less interesting and more drawn-out ones in this whole Onigashima arc. Marco says he's going to bring Zoro up to the rooftop, and then we get a bunch of confrontations all over Onigashima. 

The events in this chapter is basically just an excuse to show off everyone with an ancient-type Zoan fruit. Two-page huge panel spread with Marco doing a phoenix fire attack! X-Drake chomps down on Apoo! Franky faces off against Sasaki, who's a Triceratops! Sanji faces off against Black Maria, who's an ancient spider! Jinbe stays behind to fight Who's Who, who's a sabertooth tiger! Ulti and Page One burst into the scene!

There are of course a couple of neat scenes in-between the huge Zoan-type revelations that are fun, for sure. Like Jinbe and Luffy going all "oh, Sanji's observation Haki is so advanced that he can sense a powerful enemy". Sure, it's his haki that's powerful. There's the revelation that Who's Who apparently knows Jinbe from somewhere. And, of course, the final panel is Yamato, Momonosuke and Shinobu finding that broken statue and Yamato talking about an 'old friend' that destroyed said statue...

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Chapter 999: The Sake I Brewed To Drink With You

And this one starts off with a flashback! Ace fights Yamato in the past, when Ace arrived at Wano to attack Kaidou... but only managed to find Yamato, since Kaidou and all his officers are conveniently on an expedition. The two are apparently relatively evenly-matched, and Ace notes that Yamato could very easily 'be a captain'. We only get short snippets of their argument, and I do really wished we had gotten a bit more of the two's interaction, but Ace yelling at Yamato about how they can't choose who their fathers are is certainly something that ol' Fire Fist would know and understand very well. 

This led to the two of them bonding by bashing down the dragon statue and fire-fisting it to molten slag, while Yamato makes a declaration about how Yamato wants to go out and sail on the sea and live free like Oden. If this isn't a huge crewmate/grand fleet confirmation, I don't know what is. The two of them share sake, and Ace talks about all the badass rookies and powerful pirates that are rising all over the world -- Cavendish, Kidd, Bege, Law -- which is going to be interesting if/when Yamato meets them. Of course, Ace being Ace, he keeps hyping up his brother, who hasn't even gone off to sea yet. 

There's a fun little bit where we get a couple of in-story revelations, with Yamato's parentage being revealed to Momonosuke; and, more importantly, Ace being Luffy's brother being revealed to both Momonosuke and O-Tama. I completely forgot that Tama is buddies with Ace and she didn't know that Ace is Luffy's brother, but man, having both of them revealed back-to-back like this is some nice narrative scripting. Yamato lampshades what a great coincidence this all is, and how it's an 'act of fate', and Yamato pulls out Oden's journal and talks about the letter "D". Are we finally going to get the big revelation about what D means in chapter 1000? It's "Destiny", isn't it? 

Marco, meanwhile, carries Zoro up into the hole on the ceiling, while he has a flashback to the moment when Ace wanted to travel to Wano. I do like the confirmation that, yeah, Whitebeard's crew all knew about Oden's death and there was an argument on whether they should attack Kaidou, but are afraid of the massive amounts of casualties. Not a particularly super-satisfactory answer, but at least it's an explanation. There's a couple of fun moments from Whitebeard, Blackbeard and Izo as they talk to Ace about his desire to attack Kaidou... and, y'know what? We've gotten a couple of short scenes about Ace and I honestly do think that these scenes really serve a lot to build Ace up as a character posthumously.

We also get a sneaky two-page continuation of 998's "everyone in Zoan form" bit with King and Queen appearing in their dinosaur forms (fuck Jack, I guess). Marco just doesn't give a fuck and flies past them... although, to be honest, the only resistance he met is Queen having cannons sprout out from his throat. Okay. 

The final couple of pages is a fun one, with Big Mom and Kaidou gathering on the top of Onigashima. Big Mom talks about how all the Straw Hats are fair game, except for Nico Robin -- they need her alive for poneglyph reasons since Big Mom doesn't care to wait for Pudding's powers to awaken. Kaidou wants to drop Onigashima on the flower capital and destroy Oden's castle. Big Mom apparently thinks Kaidou as her 'little brother' from Rocks Pirates... and oh-so-casually drops the fact that she gave Kaidou the "Fish Fish Fruit". He's not a dragon, he's a fish!

Or, more accurately, he's probably a fish that ascended into a dragon! It's a Japanese myth -- and anyone who's played Pokemon and looked into the cultural significance of some Pokemon origins would be familiar to the myth that inspired Magikarp and Gyarados. And, well, everyone basically guessed that -- the fact that we've seen a bunch of koi swimming up a waterfall at the opening chapters of Wano is brilliant foreshadowing if, indeed, Kaidou was someone who ate a mythical koi fruit or whatever. 

Anyway, bring on chapter 1000! I love this. I love every moment of this huge barrage of fruit and power revelations. 

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Random Notes:

• Black Maria transforms into specifically a Rosamygale grauvogeli. I'm not familiar with that species, but it's apparently the most ancient spider from the mygalomorph-type spiders, a sub-type of spiders with fangs that point straight down and include modern-day spiders like tarantulas, funnel-web spiders and trapdoor spiders. 
• All of Who's Who's catboys and catgirls, as well as Black Maria's yokai minions, are all very, very cool looking! I could spend a while talking about them. 
• It's always so weird to see a Triceratops with sharp teeth. Or teeth at all. But I actually do think that Sasaki is 100% the coolest-looking Tobiroppo Zoan. It's a very close competition between him and Black Maria, but her weird drider spider-face is just a bit too goofy for me. 
• Yep, the baboon gets absolutely one-shotted by Page One and Ulti. Poor baboon. 
• Wait, is this why Kaidou attempted to gatecrash the Paramount War? To kill Ace himself, because he somehow never got the chance to do so before? 
• So Kid, Bege and Law were already active during the time that Ace and Cavendish were running around, and before Luffy set out to sea? I guess that works -- I suppose Luffy was just a late starter that made his way to Sabaody in a relatively shorter period of time compareed to the other Supernovas. 
• Phoenix-mode Marco with glasses really makes me happy. He looks so dorky.
• Marco eats a pineapple in the flashback, ha!