One Piece, Chapters 1011-1013
It feels like it's been a while since I actually talked about the manga! In case you guys missed it, I also did a watch-through of the first dozen or so episodes of the Wano arc. I'm not sure how regular that will be, or how long subsequent 'watch-through' segments of the One Piece anime is going to be on this blog (the filler arc bits were stuff I watched over the past half-year or so). I'm not really regularly watching stuff, so it could be anywhere from days to weeks to months in-between it. Anyway...
Chapter 1011: The Code of Sweet Beans
A lot of these chapters are mostly action-based. This one starts off with Big Mom showing off her new cloud homie Hera, and she unleashes a pretty huge electric blow on Kid and Killer called 'Fulgora'. Basically everything here sets up the one-on-one fight between Luffy and Kaido. Big Mom beats up Kid and Killer and falls down into the lower floors, Law teleports Zoro down, and even Zeus gets freed from his cage and flies off. We do get a couple of blows between Luffy and Kaido, which is neat, but for the most part it only takes up around half a page or so.
Then we get something fun! Particularly fun since I just saw him in the anime. Basil Hawkins shows up, and his Straw Face monster form now has octopus tentacle legs! We haven't seen more than half of the Tobiroppo fights, but here we have another fight being set up -- Killer vs. Hawkins. Again, these fights going on in the background between the Tobiroppo and the Straw Hats, or the Scabbards and their various enemies... I have a feeling that the anime will have a field day padding out episodes with these fights. I find Hawkins to be pretty cool and probably one of my favourite Supernovas, so it's nice to see what he's all about.
Tama, Usopp and Nami are riding on poor Komachiyo while a wounded Page One hangs on to the back and we get a genuinely funny sequence of Usopp and Nami trying to just beat the shit out of Page One by using their weapons like clubs. Usopp gets to show off some new weapons -- literally Pineco from Pokemon! Exploding pine-cone grenades! We also have the brief off-hand confirmation that Tama's kibi-dango only affects SMILE users and not true Zoan users.
Of course, while they are planning to go to the main hall and have Tama issue an order to all her newfound minions, we get interrupted by good ol' Big Mom. And... well, Big Mom is kind of the epitome of mood swings, and we get the payoff (?) of the whole amnesia sub-plot. Which is still the lowest point of the Wano arc for me, but all right. Big Mom still remembers everything that happens while she had amnesia, and she wastes no time in being nice to Tama... but when Tama tells her that Okobore Town was razed to the ground for helping the samurai, Big Mom gets pissed and one-shots Page One with a Conqueror's Haki punch because how dare the Beasts Pirates hurt the people that were nice to her.
And I remembered that this chapter apparently blew up online because everyone thought that 'Big Mom was joining the good guys' and it was an ass-pull... but I've re-read the Whole Cake Island recently, and one thing that I can tell you about Charlotte Linlin? She's, uh... what's a nice way to put it? She's unstable. There's an internal logic that Big Mom follows in her behaviours and motivations, and that's basically a weird 'if you're nice to me, I'm nice to you' relationship that she has with almost everyone in her life, and a 'if you betray me, I will kill you' reverse. So what happens to Big Mom here is... it's kind of annoying since I will admit that a part of me also wants a straight-up brawl between the Yonko and all the Supernova, and we did kind of get that... but at the same time, I think Big Mom's actions in these chapters do make sense for the character. It's not my favourite parts of the story, but I don't mind it so much.
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Chapter 1012: Itch
We start off with a bit more of a set-up, with Kiku and Izo talking about their separation, and a brief discussion with Kawamatsu about what to do with Wano once the borders are opened. It's a nice little moment to acknowledge Kiku and Izo being separated for decades -- their original reunion was kind of short. We then get the Scabbards splitting up, and it's even more set-up for fights. Kin'emon and Kiku go off to hunt down and put Kanjuro down for good, which is always something that I wanted. Kanjuro's original 'death' was very anticlimactic, which is why I was most convinced that he was still alive.
Meanwhile, Nekomamushi goes off with Shisillian to go off and avenge Pedro, because Nekomamushi (who arrived late to the battle) doesn't even know Pedro's fate. So it's Nekomamushi versus Perospero, following up on Perospero's brief off-screen fight against Carrot and Wanda. Okay, sure! Also being set up is Yamato, who also has an 'itch' to fight, and goes off with a Momonosuke decoy to ostensibly assist Luffy in the rooftop. It's pretty interesting that Momonosuke's... ability of either Observation Haki or Voice of All Things (or maybe they're both the same thing) basically allows him to have a sense not only on who is fighting on the rooftop, but how strong they are. While Yamato heads off, Momonosuke basically sits down to read Oden's journal.
Speaking of set-ups, Law had apparently hopped down and dropped Zoro in front of Sanji (who's been wandering around doing nothing since the Black Maria encounter, I guess), who proceeded to wrap him up in bandages and lug him around like a giant cross. It's actually kind of funny and I definitely laughed out loud at it, I'm not going to lie. They met with Izo and Kawamatsu, and head off to the performance floor, so I guess maybe they'll take over fighting Queen and King?
(Also, where is Denjiro? I don't think we've seen him since... since the Orochi encounter? In all the chaos with so many characters running around, I wouldn't put it past One Piece to slyly move Denjiro somewhere without showing it to the audience).
The final couple of pages go back to the Big Mom encounter, where Big Mom and Ulti face off against each other. I actually do like that we almost immediately quash any 'Straw Hat/Big Mom' team-up by having Big Mom threaten Nami and Usopp almost immediately, and we get some fun comedic moments of Nami trying to ally herself with either one of the heavier hitters and getting rejected immediately by them. Ulti headbutts poor Komachiyo and slaps poor Tama, and we get the final panel where we're led to believe that it's going to be Big Mom one-shotting another Tobiroppo... but it's Nami! Using her thunderbolts to zap Ulti! So yeah, Nami's pissed off and she's foregoing escape to beat the shit out of Ulti. I actually feel like this one is slightly clunkier compared to 1011 or 1013 overall.
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Ulti, unlike her brother, just refuses to stay down and keeps getting up. She gets hit with a Tornado Tempo by Nami almost immediately after getting up, and the Big Mom uses a combination attack between her three homies to unleash a MASER CANNON! Not only is it obviously a homage to the Maser Cannons from the Godzilla franchise, and being a badass huge combination attack, it's also a pun on 'maser' and how the English word 'mother' is romanized in katakana. That's cute. Ulti has a hole blasted through her and I think she's down.
But then Big Mom basically, well, continues to be kind of a loon. She helped to take out Ulti because she beat up Tama, but Big Mom is also completely oblivious to everything going on around them. Usopp and Nami are trying to get Tama to a doctor, because she's a little kid that got slapped by a dinosaur woman. Big Mom at one point just plucks Tama out of Usopp's grasp and is all like 'are you okay?', and when Tama gets up to run with Nami and Usopp, Big Mom's reaction is to 'are you betraying me? I will have to kill you then!' And I do like that -- Big Mom has been shown to be absolutely eccentric and extremely sensitive to betrayal and abandonment, even to her own flesh-and-blood children. So yeah, while she would totally defend her own 'friends', we've seen her turn on them at a dime at any perceived betrayals.
Speaking of perceived betrayals, apparently this also involves failure, because a significant portion of this chapter surrounds Zeus! We've seen little chibi Zeus run around in the past couple of chapters trying his best to get back to Big Mom, but now not only has Big Mom shown off her brand-new cloud homie Hera, Hera is also much better received by Prometheus and Napoleon, who talk about their great synergy and teamwork and stuff. (Apparently Prometheus wants a girlfriend; that's the request he makes). We get some really good faces from Zeus in page 7, that's adorable.
When Zeus makes his presence known, Big Mom just disparages Zeus, and tells Hera to straight-up eat Zeus. And I honestly wouldn't think that I would ever care about these Homies, but on the other hand the sight of Hera chomping down on Zeus while he cries and begs for mercy, as Nami straight-up ignores Zeus initially and gives him the cold shoulder... man I feel bad for the cloud. And for someone who's been mocking One Piece's very low body counts, I actually feel bad and don't want Zeus to die. (He won't.)
Zeus cries and begs forgiveness from Nami, and gives this whole speech about how he's all alone in the world, how Nami was nice to him, and even if it won't earn his forgiveness, he's going to betray Big Mom for the first and last time. Big Mom just grabs Zeus with her hand and rips Zeus's soul out, and feeds both cloud and soul to Hera. Nami tosses some black weather balls towards them but Hera seems to eat everything -- though it's kind of obvious that the black balls and part of the Clima-tact being chomped down by Hera is a way out for Zeus to survive -- either he's going to zap Hera after being empowered from the inside, or he'll survive in a weakened form to be a power-up to Nami like basically everyone had theorized.
The chapter ends with Kid showing up and grabbing Big Mom's face and smashing her into the ground with a massive metal arm. So I guess all this Big Mom mood-swings and O-Tama business is going to be put on hold temporarily while we have a fight. It's cool, I kind of really do want to see Kid do more.
And then we have the final two pages of the chapter, which sees Luffy, eyes white and beaten up, falling off the side of Onigashima while Kaido does his crying thing and laments not slicing Luffy's head off so he has proof to kill all the hope of his allies. I do like this. The suddenness of Luffy's defeat is actually something I welcome wholeheartedly, especially since One Piece has been relatively good at not following the formulaic 'main hero struggles at first, gains power-up and immediately wins' trope that I never really liked.
And Luffy unlocking the weaponized Conqueror's Haki like five minutes before theoretically beating Kaidou down is one of those Shonen battle manga tropes that I really, really dislike. Training with it several days before beating down an enemy? That I can buy. But unlocking and understanding it after taking a bit of a beating? That's a bit too similar to Luffy learning future sight during the Katakuri fight, and that's one battle that I argue wasn't entirely a victory. So yeah, I don't think I ever subscribed to the 'Luffy beats Kaido after learning how to use advanced Conqueror's Haki' theory, but man 1010 really did make us think and have some hope, huh?
I do like this. A lot of people have been questioning whether the Wano arc will still follow the 'five act' sequence, since act three needed to end in a 'big tragedy' and everyone's asking where that tragedy is. This would work, right? The main character getting Ryu'o, learning a new facet of Conqueror's Haki, even showing up to fight Kaido with four other Supernovas... and still losing. I do like this, and this makes the fact that the Kaido fight taking place before a lot of the other one-on-one fights are even touched upon a bit more sensible.
Of course I'm not saying that the good guys won't win, because they will. One Piece is still a shonen manga. But the fact that it's going through some effort to subvert the obvious formula and make the fandom hyped about 'oh, maybe this will be it, this will be how Luffy beats Kaido' and then twisting it around? That is fun, and I am extremely hyped up to see what comes next. Even the Big Mom stuff is pretty interesting even if it's still probably one of my least favourite aspects of the arc.
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