One Piece 1016 Review: Fire Festival

One Piece, Chapter 1016: It's Me, Otama!

A single chapter review this time around, because I'm kind of feeling like it. I've had long articles for a while! We have a break next week anyway. I'm a bit on an anime/manga train for the past couple of weeks. Thanks to some recommendations from friends, I read up Jujutsu Kaisen, a Shonen Jump manga about exorcists. That was a pretty cool manga! I'm not sure if I've said it on the blog, but I finally also caught up with My Hero Academia, and finished reading Attack on Titan. Honestly the final arc isn't my favourite part of the manga, but it really does fit with the tone of the manga and it's paced and resolved adequately. I also reread and finished up Solo Leveling, which has some pretty damn amazing artwork. And apparently after that I'm in a bit of a isekai binge, because I then read Konosuba, part of So I'm A Spider, So What? and watched the first season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Not going to review any of them, just noting that I had fun with them over the past couple of months. More or less trying to catch up with superhero TV shows, but am taking it easy. Next week I'll probably watch a bit of the Wano anime and catch up with Kamen Rider Saber, I think.

But anyway, chapter 1016! We get no real follow up to the huge events of 1015 with Kin'emon's seeming death. Or do we? 1016 starts off in the Flower Capital with the civilians celebrating the Fire Festival. We've got a bunch of the background characters from way earlier in the arc like the old lady that taught Robin how to be a geisha having fun, before we zoom into Tenguyama Hitetsu and Toko. So those two are just hanging out in the Flower Capital. I was wondering about Tenguyama, because up until when I watched the Wano arc I forgot he existed! Whatever happened to the Nidai Kitetsu, by the way? 

And everyone is happy and everything, oblivious to the fact that Kaidou is trying to drop a literal island on the city, Ultron style, and that's cool and all, but I'm far, far more interested on what Tenguyama is telling us. The Fire Festival is noted by Tenguyama as a festival to mourn and celebrate those who are dead, because the 'fires are so high, to reach up to heaven'. Toko also asks if her dead dad Yasu is watching over them now, and... and see, this might be something that I paid a bit more attention to because I'm in the process of re-experiencing the first acts of Wano, but there are definitely some odd scenes in the background of them like Brook finding a bunch of kokeshi dolls. Or the many wacky foreshadowing of Kin'emon being a diarrhea ghost. I wonder if actual ghosts will show up in some way?

Because that would be a way for me to really see characters like Kiku and Kin'emon straight-up die without shaking up the tone of One Piece. One Piece as a manga has really been very reluctant to kill off present-day heroic characters at all, but even when they do there's a huge message of 'their deaths mean something, their will is inherited by other people'. Going through the present-day, non-flashback deaths that I can think up of very quickly... Pedro dies without even succeeding to kill Perospero, sure, but he makes sure his will lives on in Carrot and the Straw Hats. Whitebeard died knowing Ace is safe and his children can get away. Ace died looking Luffy dead in the eye and his will is passed on to Luffy. Yasu died knowing that the Scabbards' raid will be successful due to his interference. If nothing else, it's a way for the story to close the curtains on writing those characters while giving them closure.

So I wonder if the spirits will show up? Apparently a brief glance to twitter and reddit show a bunch of huge posts detailing that exact theory, and... I haven't really cared to read about them, because 'theorycrafting' in this specific manga is something that I really don't want to do, because there tends to be so many opinions and there's a herd mentality that sometimes get really pissed off when something doesn't happen the way they want to. But I honestly don't know. There are some foreshadowing here that I picked up about the ghost theory, and it's not like we haven't seen ghosts before... but Brook has the power of the Yomi Yomi fruit. So... I don't know. I just find it really interesting that right after the chapter with multiple character deaths, we get Tenguyama and Toko discussing about spirits looking down from the heavens. 

Anyway, we cut back to CP-0 discussing the change in the go board and the numbers balance between the Straw Hats and the Beasts Pirates. In the grand scheme of things these random soldiers wouldn't really matter, but as with the pervious go board sequences, some huge thing happens to upset the balance of numbers. And while the numbers don't really matter (one Conqueror's Haki glare from Luffy or Kaido will easily equalize the thousands of mook characters running around) I do like that the efforts of the secondary characters like Tama and Chopper matter. It makes the whole thing feel more like a larger conflict, at any case. 

Interestingly, the bulk of the chapter focuses on Usopp and Nami. They basically run around carrying Tama and they discuss the sudden appearance of Zeus within Nami's Clima-Tact. As far more observant people than me have pointed out, the artwork did show that Zeus's soul was halfway out of his body when Hera chomped down on him, and I think the idea is that Hera ate Zeus's cloud body, but the soul jumped out and now inhabits Nami's Clima-Tact when it was stuck in Hera's mouth. Okay, sure! That one chapter did really make me like Zeus, so I'm happy that he sticks around as a pet or accessory or something. 

Nami and Usopp see Bao Huang about to announce Momonosuke's seeming death-by-falling-off to demoralize the samurai, and just as they're about to interfere, Ulti shows up and headbutts poor, poor Usopp onto the ground. Isn't he already running around with a fractured skull? That unfortunate man. Ulti is... good lord she's tough! Somehow she managed to get up after getting a hole shot through her stomach by Big Mom's Maser Cannon, and she had tanked hits from Nami, Luffy and Yamato all throughout the arc. I'm frankly surprised -- it's not like we're hurting for more goons for the good guys to fight, but I guess the Nami/Usopp team have had a prior engagement with Ulti before, which is why it's a bit more cathartic that Nami gets to take Ulti out. 

It is kind of a shame that unlike every single one of Nami's pre-timeskip fights that the bulk of Ulti's damage is done to her by someone that's not Nami, though to be fair... I don't think Nami actually ever got a serious fight post-timeskip, so I'm taking what I get. It's more of taking out Ulti for good, and just showing off what Zeus-Clima-Tact can do. Zeus can change the form of the Clima-Tact, turning it into a long, stretchy pole with spikes in the end, and basically direct the attack of Nami's lightning. With Zeus's power and a bit of help from Usopp to get Tama away from the blast radius, Nami ends up zapping Ulti down. Pretty cool moment, even if, again, the victory does feel cheapened a bit. 

I did really like the next scene with Bao Huang panicking and yelling that Page One and Ulti have fallen, before screaming and yelling as a 'monster' (Usopp's venus flytrap) takes her out. Yeah, it's basically the opposite effect, demoralizing the Beasts Pirates instead of the Samurai alliance. And... and then Tama ends up using Bao Huang to make an order to the many Gifters she has fed her dango to? We don't hear the order, and I have so many questions on how the Marys and Bao Huang's face talismans work. Are those technology? Are those part of someone's devil fruit? Definitely not Bao Huang's; we know that hers is a flying squirrel SMILE. Or is it just something weird like the snail phones that I just have to accept? 

With that particular subplot concluded, the final scene has Kaido and Yamato confront each other. No real confirmation on how Momonosuke is saved, but Yamato is just utterly defiant towards Kaido and gives some pretty badass declaration. Kaido drops something pretty interesting, noting that he's not leaving to go anywhere and he's in Wano for a specific reason. Father and child clash in a massive explosion of black lightning. It'll be interesting to see what Yamato can really do in a fight, because for every single one of the fights Yamato has been in, she basically one-shots everything in her path. 

Oh, and Yamato did say something about 'going out to sea with Luffy'. Which I guess I'll discuss here since I'm only covering one chapter today. And the fandom is in a huge tizzy about this single line, because, well, speaking of huge fandom theories, there's apparently this huge war in the fandom on whether Yamato, Carrot or Momonosuke is going to be the next Straw Hat. Oh man, remember Dressrosa? Where we had a similar argument but in a way more chill fashion because the contenders were kind of weird (Law and Bartolomeo were captains of their own crew; Rebecca and Leo weren't particularly popular). Honestly, I really don't have a horse in the race and lean more on the fact that I really don't care, but it's really interesting how it's either 'who's the next Straw Hat' and 'rooftop feats' is basically what causes the fandom to explode nowadays. If nothing else, I feel like as cool as Yamato is visually, I don't think we've spent remotely enough time with the character for me to care whether Yamato joins the main cast?

So I guess let's dissect the characters that might join the crew? And I'm going to throw 'power levels' right out the window because I really don't think that's what Oda really cares about when bringing something new into the cast -- Franky and Brook didn't really 'powercreep' the rest of the crew too much when they joined, after all. Momonosuke is a character we've been around with since Punk Hazard, we've known him for a while, we know a lot of his backstory and his struggles and he's got a lot of 'we're friends, right?' moment with Luffy, which tends to be a pretty great indicator for crewmate membership. But on the other hand, it's also something that makes a lot of sense if he stays in Wano and actually becomes, y'know, a shogun and a leader to his people, so for Momonosuke I really feel like it's going to be a Vivi-style decision. Sure, Hiyori is a viable alternative, but on the other hand a lot of Momonosuke's character does feel like it hinges on him actually succeeding his father's legacy. Granted, we also did get a lot of hints that Momo isn't really sure what Oden's legacy really is -- and maybe we'll get a "I'll leave Wano in the hands of my sister and retainers while I explore the world and learn to become like Oden", but that just feels completely irresponsible. So I don't really feel like he's going to be a crewmember. 

Carrot? Narratively, I feel like if Carrot was just intended to be a one-off guest star in the same vein as Rebecca, she wouldn't have stuck around for that long. And in any case, we've had seeming one-off guest stars like Brook turn out to be a permanent member of the crew as well. She's extremely popular, as the recent global popularity poll shows, but it's not like I have a burning desire to have her be a permanent fixture in the crew, you know? She does have a motivation with the whole Pedro's death thing, and she does have a more unique design. Plus Sulong really does feel like a power-up for a character with more staying power. A lot of people think she's discounted because Perospero beat her up in that one chapter, but it might really just be setting up for a huge, dramatic comeback? Again, using some other theories as a guess, some people think every single one of the Scabbards will die. I don't subscribe to this theory at all, but I could see a version of this where Perospero beats Nekomamushi and Carrot comes in to save the day. I don't know. Some people suggest that Carrot might be a member of the Grand Fleet (which was how the Dressrosa conundrum was solved) but I really don't think that as a character Carrot would be able to handle the responsibilities of being a captain of a ship. 

Honourable mention goes to Tama, who did express a desire to go out to sea, and the wanderlust of adventure is something that most of the Straw Hats have. And she did have that one promise with Ace. But... I don't know. The anime does really make Tama more likable, but I don't really feel like she's going to be someone who's going to stick around with the Straw Hats out at sea, at least not until she's older. 

Which brings us back to Yamato, who also expresses a desire to go out to sea and hang out with Luffy specifically. And she seems to get along well with Luffy! Power-scalers also probably like it a lot that Yamato seems to easily be as powerful as the strongest Straw Hats, being confident enough to go one-on-one with Kaido. The thing that really bugs me and something I do wish the next couple of chapters would explore is that... I don't really know anything about Yamato's characterization beyond the fact that Yamato is Kaido's child and that one meeting with Ace. Oh, and the whole "I am Oden" thing. I kind of want a flashback, or, failing that, give us much more screentime so that I feel even more attached to Yamato as a character. I feel like particularly after the core members of the Straw Hats were established, this is how the manga handled Robin, Franky, Brook and Jinbe in particular. Their story arcs didn't really make them feel like they're going to be obvious members of the main cast, but we spend so much time with them that when the arc ends and Luffy does the 'join my crew' spiel, it feels natural. And I kind of do want that with Yamato. And honestly? Honestly, if at the end of this arc we get both Yamato and Carrot joining the crew, I really would find it particularly funny if it was the solution all along. Anyway, that has been my rather rambling review of chapter 1016 of One Piece.