One Piece, Chapters 1004-1006:
Been a while. I'm in a bit of a slower mood these couple of weeks, but I did catch up a bit with One Piece. Watched a bunch of highlights from the anime recently, basically jumping around watching some of the best moments from the series as a whole -- if nothing else, the anime has made me appreciate many moments a lot more. I think if I have the time I might actually do a huge re-read of the manga? If nothing else, I think I want to re-experience all the buildup from Punk Hazard all the way to Wano about all the Wano-relateed characters -- and I wonder how I'll feel about Dressrosa now that I have the option to not read it weekly. But then I also do kind of want to reread Attack on Titan, apparently that manga is ending and everyone's hyped up about it. I would like to maybe do a review as I watch the anime, maybe? We'll see. I'm not sure I'm particularly keen on jumping back on the anime review train just yet.
I've been re-reading the Wano-kuni arc from the beginning and I do actually think that the entire arc so far really reads a lot better to binge-read, where a lot of the buildup for the secondary characters feel a lot less slow compared to when I read things week-to-week, and there's a bit of the Marineford syndrome where upon rereading I was a lot more excited to see the debut of characters like Ashura Doji or Kiku or Orochi, and things like seeing Luffy beat up Holdem or Babanuki feel a lot more less distractions and more like just things that happen. And I appreciate that a lot. And... I don't think I've ever actually reread One Piece, just jumped around to reread some of my favourite arcs. I might actually do that, either re-experience the manga as a whole or actually sit down, bite the bullet and watch the 1000-something anime episodes.
Chapter 1004: Millet Dumplings
We cut away to some of the fights between the Straw Hat crew and the Tobiroppo, so we get Franky versus Triceratops-mode Sasaki.. only to be interrupted by a pretty fun little troll moment by Usopp, Nami and Tama leading an army of their own Gifters to rampage and distract Sasaki's own troops. We get an unexpectedly badass moment from Nami where she just Thunderlance-Tempo's Ulti right in her heart (!!!) though Nami herself notes that she's far from being out of the fight. Franky also gets a V sword slash on Sasaki, though, again, I don't think it took him out.
Sanji, meanwhile, is held hostage by Black Maria, because... he can't kick women. So basically like Enies' Lobby redux. A lot of people get into heavy arguments online about this moment and the follow-up in the next chapter, I think, although my reaction is honestly just a noncommittal shrug. Black Maria's goal is to get Nico Robin under Kaidou's orders, and she's also about to go off and execute where the wounded Scabbards (apparently Law just shoved them into a random empty room) and Sanji seems to be conflicted between helping his allies or sticking true to his beliefs.
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Chapter 1005: Demon Child
And I kind of get it. Having recently watched some One Piece highlights, I know that this is referencing how Nami mocked Sanji pre-timeskip for not wanting to call for help when fighting Kalifa... but I kind of wish that we get a little panel pointing it out? I don't know, I feel like there was a way for this to make it feel more like "Sanji trusts in Robin as a fellow warrior to help him" instead of "well Sanji sure got himself fucked".
That said, this ends up leading to an actually badass moment. Robin shows up almost immediately, and fucking bitch-slaps Black Maria with a Gigantesco Mano arm. She can 'bloom' anywhere now, so, uh... this is a flower clone Robin? Or something? I never quite understood how Robin's flower clones work. She gets a pretty badass line towards Black Maria, talking about how 'the demon part of me starts to emerge' if her friends are harmed. Brook also shows up, freezing the threads and freeing Sanji to bugger off. That one panel with Robin asking Black Maria if "is that going to be your last words" with that fucking badass expression on her face? This leads to the final page of Black Maria taking off her shirt and pulling out a giant... a staff with a Wanyudo (a fire-wheel yokai) on its tip. Okay, Robin fight? I am all up for that. So I guess all the Tobiroppo are now matched up against one of the non-Monster-Trio Straw Hats, then? And I think this is like, the first proper Robin fight since... since New Fishman Island, since she's honestly just kinda there during Dressrosa? Neat.
Oh, and several of the allies -- Nami/Usopp and the Momonosuke/Shinobu/Yamato team seem to have realized that the Beast Pirates are using rats with paper talismans as communication devices. Yamato calls it a 'Mary'. We get a couple of pages showing Yamato shoving Momonosuke into her bosom and then she and Shinobu bust out and fight some goons. Oh, and Jack is apparently back up (someone literally duct-taped one of his mammoth tusks, that's hilarious) and wants to get revenge on the three Scabbards that opposed him in Zou. Okay, that's nice, I actually did think Jack got taken out a bit too quickly.
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Chapter 1006: The Honorable Hyogoro the Flower
But well, clearly this chapter's highlight is about all the other side-characters. I completely forgot Perospero was fighting Carrot and Wanda, but apparently Perospero won off-screen when the clouds covered the moon and knocked the two minks out of their Sulong forms. Perospero taunts them before tossing them aside, but doesn't kill them? Okay, sure. There are a lot of pretty obvious "yeah, this will take up around half an anime episode" moments throughout the Wano arc, and everyone tells me that it's actually something that makes the anime version a lot more entertaining... and honestly, from what I've seen of the Wano art direction, it really is something I do want to experience. Not sure if I'll review it properly or anything, probably just going to do a rapid-fire reaction about the notable bits of my watchthrough or something.
And then we get back to the Ice Oni stuff, which... honestly feels more of the same. Oh no, people are turning into ice zombies, Queen is a cruel mofo, Chopper is trying to make the cure... as the title of the chapter notes, it's also a bit of a spotlight for Hyogoro, who's apparently blossomed up back to his prime health because the ice oni virus brings up all of his inner strength while also simultaneously burning it up? We get a named technique out of him, and he goes all 'I will rampage and die when my limit comes', and that's the cliffhanger of this chapter... but honestly, Hyogoro ranks pretty low in my ranks of Wano supporting characters, and while it would be neat to have some casualties, I would say that Hyogoro really isn't a character I would really be torn about if he dies, and the moment would be a dampener on the inevitable Big Chopper Moment that's going to come. So yeah.
On the other hand, I am absolutely fanboying over the big-name fighting going on. Queen has a fucking laser beam cannon in his brachiosaurus mouth! Marco just unleashes a phoenix shockwave on his neck! We get a blue fire phoenix man flying around dodging laser beams from a dinosaur, then King flies in and slashes off Marco's wing! And in a moment that is a bit hard to tell at first, Marco just casually lands on a balcony, then manipulates his torn-off wing and causes it to blow up at King! And then he just jumps and knee-kicks the shit out of King in a pretty cool dropkick scene, before bursting out and talon-kicking Queen!
I have so much more of an appreciation for Marco. Sure, there's the pretty creepy shot of Perospero seemingly about to take a cheap shot at Marco, but as the chapter points out, Marco is holding off King and Queen, the two strongest members of the Beast Pirates, essentially singlehandedly. And, okay, he did have a pretty good showing in the Marineford war blocking Kizaru and stuff, but it's been a long while since we actually saw Marco being such an absolute badass, and I really did enjoy this sequence.
Anyway, I guess we're going to hopefully wrap up the ice oni stuff next chapter if the Hyogoro stuff is any indication, which is nice -- it's been going on for a while. And my guess is that we're going to wrap up a lot of the Tobiroppo fighting. So far we've got Robin/Brook vs. Black Maria; Usopp/Nami vs. Page One/Ulti; Franky vs. Sasaki; Jinbe vs. Who's Who; Chopper vs. ice oni stuff... and I guess Drake-vs-Apoo? Who else hasn't gotten a dance partner? I guess maybe Sanji deals with Jack? And maybe someone (Yamato, I guess? Maybe Carrot after a second wind) helps Marco out dealing with King, Queen and Perospero? I honestly could totally see Marco getting beat down by the strongest warriors on the bad guys' side. Again, I feel like this is what we're going to wrap up in quick succession -- or at least wrap up a huge proportion of the lesser fighters -- until we cut back to the rooftop battle. We'll see.
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