One Piece 1028 Review: Dinosaurs Don't Work Like That

One Piece, Chapter 1028: Brachiosnakeus

Sometimes I wonder just how much fun it is to be in the same room as Eiichiro Oda when he thinks up of weird stuff like this. This chapter's really fun! The first two pages focuses on CP0, where Lucci talks with the still-unnamed CP0 guys on Wano about a contingency plan in case Kaido loses. In what's perhaps something that's easily a lesser priority compared to everything else going on, they know that a second dragon is rampaging around and it's a matter of time before they connect the dots with Vegapunk's missing artificial Devil Fruit. 

More importantly, though, we're getting the One Piece world of gunboat diplomacy, where the World Government's fleet is heading to Wano in order to place it under the Government's direct control. With a lot of people already getting parallels between Wano and the real-life Sakoku Edict of 1635, many people theorize that the Marines or Blackbeard will take the role of the USA to use force in order to open Wano to the rest of the world, but not by their own terms. In a way, this is a bigger 'tragedy', I feel, than just a simple loss to Kaidou in combat. 

Oh, and Lucci wants CP0 to bring back Nico Robin, because of course they do. Robin's up and about again, and Brook is with her, and... I don't know. Is this going to be Brook's huge moment? Because I really don't think we're going to get Enies' Lobby Redux, as much as the post-timeskip stories have been parallels to the pre-timeskip stories. 

Yamato, meanwhile, leaves Momonosuke to deal with the flame clouds all on his own, because she wants to go off and defuse the bombs in Onigashima. Not too much to say here, I feel, other than we get a full look of Yamato's beast mode.

The main part of this chapter, and easily the best part? Sanji's fight with Queen. We start off with pretty standard stuff -- Queen continues with his Brachio-pun attacks (none of which, I must say, translates easily into English). Lasers, Diable Jambe attacks, sword attacks... pretty basic stuff as far as these two characters are concerned. Queen is pretty intent on forcing Sanji to use the Germa 66 Raid Suit, and... I guess he wants to compare his own technology with that of Judge's? 

And then we have this, which Queen describes as "the true power of the ancient dinosaurs":

I dare any of you who claim that you didn't have to do a double-take on what the fuck is going on here. This makes helicopter Triceratops Sasaki look positively mundane in comparison. This makes pasta machine giraffe Kaku look pedestrian. Somehow (well, we know it's due to cybernetic enhancements) Queen is able to separate the entirety of his dinosaur spine from tail to neck and launch it like a goddamn snake to crush Sanji. 

And... and I have no words as to how ridiculous this whole thing is. Look at the reactions of everyone! Look at Marco and Izo -- those two travelled the world with Whitebeard, and even they have never seen such ridiculousness before. 

Queen's 'Brachiocoilus' attack causes his whole snake-body to crush Sanji, and apparently many masters of Armament Haki has fallen to this trick. And then... we get probably another comedic highlight in this fight, with Queen talking about how he has equipped his 'otherwise useless' brachio-body with brachio-launchers, which are triggered when he says the words 'brachio-launchers'... which means that his body missile-shoots Queen's head twice in quick succession.

God damn, this manga is dumb and I love it so much. 

The big revelation, of course, happens in the final two pages. Sanji's bones are utterly shattered and bent in terrifying angles, but he just flexes and everything snaps back into place, and when Queen swings a sword at him, the blade shatters. Sanji informs us that his own personal worst-case scenario has happened -- his latent 'modified human' genes or lineage factor or whatever term this setting substitutes for DNA has finally activated, and he's getting perhaps one of the biggest power-ups our heroes are getting. 

But you know what? Between the huge revelations of Sanji's modified human Kamen Rider body, the order to catch Nico Robin, Yamato's wolf form, the World Government about to annex Wano... none of those revelations can really top the sheer ridiculousness of the Brachiosnakeus. God bless this manga and how ridiculous it can get.