One Piece 1024-1025 Review: Kaido vs. Yamato

One Piece, Chapters 1024-1025

Yeah, a bit late to these chapters, but I... really don't have a whole ton to say here? Both of these are primarily action-packed chapters, setting up the presumably climactic final Kaido battle. 

Chapter 1024: So-and-So

So this chapter starts off with a bit of a montage of all the other Straw Hats moving around the castle. There's a fun moment of Usopp making use of Big Mom's Haki to pretend like he has Conqueror's Haki, which causes all the other random Beast Pirate goons to run away. Now this is a fun, comedic moment, but there's always that running theory of Usopp's lies actually becoming reality, which... I'm not going to lie, it'd be hella funny for Usopp to eventually awaken Conqueror's Haki. 

The primary part of the chapter is just Yamato fighting against Kaido, and I do like the brief exchange of 'arrow' attacks early in their segment in the chapter where we really put into scale just how far the difference between father and child is. Yamato's Narikabura Arrow just gets casually deflected by Kaido, whereas Yamato has to hold her ground to withstand Kaido's Vajra Arrow.

We finally get a flashback to Yamato's childhood, where she gets chained up and placed in a prison with some Kozuki samurai. We get confirmation that young Yamato had Conqueror's Haki, and basically Kaido trying to harshly 'educate' Yamato and beat her desire to pretend to be Oden out of her. There's an interesting bit in Kaido and Yamato's dialogue -- Yamato argues that since she's a child of Kaido, the samurai in the prison will kill her. Kaido's response: "but aren't you Oden?" which I think is meant to be a parallel to the dialogue exchange between the two in the present day before the flashback, which is Kaido telling Yamato that if she wants to take the title of 'Oden', then she needs to be ready for all it entails -- including Kaido essentially shooting to kill her. 

In the flashback, the samurai that are imprisoned with Yamato do the same 'a samurai does not feel hunger', which is an obvious call-back to the ending of the Punk Hazard arc with Momonosuke and Kin'emon -- which, well... it's obvious that the samurai imprisoned with Yamato are just putting up a tough front so Yamato would eat the single bowl of rice left there. We later find out that one of the samurai imprisoned there is Shimotsuki Ushimaru, and he ends up helping Yamato read Oden's journal. Ushimaru and his samurai companions break Yamato out of her prison, ultimately ending in their implied deaths. 

A neat flashback, and I also do like Kaido's reply to Yamato in the present day -- 'life isn't a series of simple questions with simple answers'. 

____________________________

Chapter 1025: Twin Dragons

We cut back and forth between Luffy/Momonosuke on the ground and the Kaido/Yamato fight on the rooftop. We get to see a bunch of additional skills from Yamato, including a pretty cool 'Mirror Mountain' ability where Yamato sheds an outer skin of ice that took all the brunt of last chapter's Thunder Bagua attack. Kaido keeps trying to tear down Yamato's self-confidence, telling her that she'll always be alone, and no one will see her as a comrade. Kaido also notes that everyone who helps Yamato dies, which... kind of rings extremely hollow when Kaido is the one going around killing all of Yamato's allies.

Which... yeah, if the sheer amount of other real-life merchandise news hasn't clued you in already, this basically sets in stone that Yamato's a shoo-in for the next Straw Hat, doesn't it? This means we're probably getting a whole lot more flashbacks for Yamato and Kaido, which I am all for. One thing that I really do want with Yamato is to really explore her as a character, which I feel is what we truly need. 

Also, Kaido just low-key reveals how Yamato is a 'child of oni', and considering that she has her horns even as a child, I'm going to assume that this is essentially confirmation that Kaido and Yamato are members of an Oni race. Neat.

On the ground we get some comedy moments between Luffy and Momonosuke. Shinobu's age-up devil fruit, very logically, doesn't actually age up Momonosuke's mind, and only his body. And, well, he's still got the mind of a child, and I completely forgot that Momo has a fear of heights. After we get the Yamato/Kaido fight sequences, we get to see Momonosuke and Luffy just essentially rampage throughout Onigashima because Momo refuses to open his eyes, causing all the other combatants to see this giant pink dragon and get confused. 

The chapter ends with two quasi-double-page-spreads. Momonosuke reaches the roof, right in time for Luffy and Yamato to do a combo attack to knock Kaido on his ass. Both Luffy and Yamato seem to infuse Conqueror's Haki into their blows -- that's what the black lightning is, right? And, of course, we get the dragon-meets-dragon between Kaido and Momo. Kaido is more amused than surprised (presumably we're saving the huge eeeeeh face when he sees Momo in human form) and Momonosuke gets a bit of a character development, announcing his name as Kozuki Momonosuke with no hesitation. 

Pretty cool setup for the final battle -- I'm kind of sure that we'll cut away to all the secondary fights in the next couple of chapters, but this is a pretty hype-building couple of chapters. Admittedly I'm not quite as excited about the dragon-vs-dragon war, and more intrigued about the Yamato and Kaido backstory... but that's just me. Pretty neat series of events all around.