One Piece, Chapters 1040-1041
It's been a couple of weeks. I kept putting these on hold again and again and new chapters keep releasing and then I kept delaying publishing 1040 because another chapter got released and.... well, you could probably guess what happened. It's honestly why I stopped doing weekly, timely reviews of shows and manga in general -- trying to keep up sometimes just isn't feasible due to real life. I'm trying to slowly catch up with stuff! Here's my review of One Piece chapters 1040 through 1041.
Chapter 1040: Wasted Words on Young Ears
This chapter is a pretty hype one to read, and I feel like the community in general was super-duper excited during the chapters leading up to Big Mom's defeat at the hands of Kid and Law. And... and I still feel like the build-up to this fight could have been better, since I really don't have too much investment in Kid and Law specifically taking down Big Mom. And Big Mom as a character has been kind of... well an unwelcome distraction in this arc? Particularly the first act? Regardless, though, the fight was pretty damn neat. And I appreciate a lot that Big Mom doesn't just fall after the Damned Punk in 1039. She's defeated here, yes, but I do really like that the chapter emphasizes how much of a monster Big Mom is and how she refuses to go down.
Big Mom uses her "Life or Slavery" attack to drag the souls of all the other nameless characters watching the fight, but of course Kid and Law aren't affected. There were a couple of pretty damn cool monster faces that Big Mom made throughout that sequence, too. Kid and Law get to say some one-liners about how Big Mom is an old woman that's about to die. Pretty cool stuff all around! Kid launches another Damned Punk just as Law slices the Misery homie in half -- that was a pretty cool double-page spread.
That's not all that Law is doing, though, because Law also uses a brand-new ability called Re-Room, a homage to Rocinante's Nagi Nagi no Mi. Man, Law's fruit is just busted as all hell, huh? I'm not big on power-scaling, but Law just straight-up copied another Devil Fruit's powers entirely. I didn't realize it on my first time reading through the chapter, but disabling sound around Big Mom means that she can't give commands to her homies... and we've been with Big Mom for multiple years IRL, and it never actually occurred to me that Big Mom needed to actually say the verbal commands to her homies to command them.
That's not quite enough, though, because even with the two Damned Punks, the Corna Dio, Puncture Wille and whatever else Law and Kid piled on to Big Mom over the past couple dozen chapters, Big Mom flails as she falls down through Onigashima... right onto where Yamato is fighting the giant Kanjurou monster. In the process, Big Mom grabs one of the Looney Tunes bombs, it explodes on her face, and she falls down even more.
Yamato blocks the blast from detonating the other bombs, but the Kazenbou just... fizzles out? I've always thought that the Kazenbou was a very disappointing 'final fight' for Yamato, especially if she is going to be a future Straw Hat member, but she doesn't even get to defeat it? That's kind of disappointing, to be honest.
Big Mom's final monologue as she falls down is her cursing and bemoaning Roger for kickstarting the great pirate era, and expresses a bit of uncertainty if the One Piece even exists. The line Big Mom specifically says is that "some of it" is in Wano, so... the One Piece is not a single piece of item? What a plot twist! That monologue, I feel, does kind of fit with Big Mom's whole characterization, where she's constantly blaming other people for her failures, and her entire personality could be boiled down to 'it's never my fault'. She falls down, and there's a gigantic explosion covered by the Re-Room that eclipses the size of Onigashima.
Which... it's pretty cool, for what it is. I love that Big Mom makes sure that the audience knows that she's not out of the story yet (though most likely out of the arc), re-establishes the danger of the Looney Tunes bombs on Onigashima's basement, and also somehow, despite all odds, the flower capital is still unaware of the huge fight going on.
Also, as Big Mom is falling, we get to see that the greatest ninja battle of all time, Raizou vs. Fukurokuju, ended in Raizou's stoic victory. I kind of find this very interesting? I've spoken about how neat I find Raizou's characterization in this fight is, where he's refusing to admit defeat to heat considering he's the one Scabbard that was unable to stand the heat in the Oden flashback... but it's probably not something that the writer felt could actually take up an entire chapter. And having a fight of endurance actually last for 15+ chapters, even if it's just one or two panel every other chapter, is a pretty neat way of doing it.
Then this chapter closes off with Yamato talking to Momonosuke. I think Yamato's dialogue implies that her role with dealing with the bombs is over? She might fight Kaido or something? But Momonosuke is about to talk to her about Zunesha and its arrival, and Momo notes that Zunesha is the companion of Joy Boy and committed a crime 800 years ago. I think the fandom collectively have pieced this information out together, and other than being specifically a 'companion', I feel like we've guessed it correctly. But it's neat to have confirmation nonetheless.
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Chapter 1041: Komurasaki
We start off with Momonosuke and Yamato talking to each other, but... but I feel like, again, we don't learn anything too much? We do get more and more cryptic talks about what Oden wrote in his journal. We get confirmation that the pages relating to end-game spoilers like the One Piece and Laugh Tale have been ripped out, and that's to be expected. Yamato and Momonosuke also agree that the journal seems to imply that Momo will be the one who will 'guide the world to the dawn'. I do like the doubts that Momonosuke expresses in his final scene. He's just a child, and while he's far, far more mature than a child his age should be, I love that Momonosuke is having doubts on whether opening the borders of Wano is going to be the right thing since Oden wasn't a prophet.
Actually disappointingly, the chapter titled 'Komurasaki' barely features Komurasaki at all.
It's nice to have some progress on the front of her little scene with Orochi, though. Orochi is ranting about Fukurokuju and the rumbling of the castle, and finally the idiot realizes that Komurasaki is very calmly playing her instrument when the world's going all straight to hell. Orochi starts to rant about Komurasaki's "pretentious" mask, which is something she always wears when she plays her favourite song.
Then Orochi gets crushed by some rubble, and finds out that he cannot transform into his Zoan mode, and turns out that while Orochi was being distracted by Komurasaki's playing, she stabbed him with seastone nails. Komurasaki then reveals that she's actually the daughter of Oden, and that she always wears the mask because she needed to hide that expression of anger that she undoubtedly has whenever she had to play 'Moon Princess', Oden's favourite song, for Orochi.
We don't see this confrontation anywhere else, and I'm going to assume that Denjirou, who's tied most to Hiyori/Komurasaki character-wise, would show up to help finish Orochi off... but I feel like it's particularly nice that Hiyori's the one out of all the characters to be the one to take out Orochi. It's the sort of character catharsis that I feel Big Mom's fight with the two Supernovas didn't quite have.
Meanwhile, Izo manages to score a mutual kill with one of the CP0 members, specifically the one with the Zelda Deku Scrub-looking mask. We learn that he is called Maha! I'm not sure if either of them are dead yet, but they are down and out. The main CP0 guy, the one with one white eye and black eye and a bowler hat and a scar... who still remains unnamed to this day, is all panting and being confused. But he's not having a good day, because the Gorosei gave him a direct order to eliminate Luffy right now. You can just feel that McBowlerHat is having the worst day ever, and he actually panics about the notion of getting in-between a fight between Luffy and Kaido.
However, the Gorosei's orders apparently highlight how crucial it is that Luffy needs to die, and there's something about a 'worst-class scenario'... which probably implies that Luffy is indeed the one with the super-special Devil Fruit. Between the Gorosei's talk and the Who's Who storyline earlier in the arc... yeah, I've made my peace that this is probably the case. Drake also stands up and seems to be about to hunt down the lead CP0 guy? Okay, sure.
Meanwhile, we get a montage of all the good guys running around and trying to avoid the crumbling castle. Franky caught Zoro with his grapple-chain Strong Right! Good cyborg man.
The rest of the chapter is just Luffy fighting Kaido, and we get an interesting brief flashback to Kaido's first meeting with Big Mom as part of Rocks's crew. Pretty interesting insight to their dynamic even if we don't learn much -- and it does seem like Big Mom is basically showcased here to be Kaido's big sister figure or a mentor of some sort. I do really like how this plays into Kaido's own drunken mood swings, with him being a sobbing, crying mess. Luffy goes into Gear Fourth Snakeman, and unleashes a move called 'Hydra' that seems to be the Snakeman version of Gatling? Luffy notes that this is his 'final Gear Fourth', whatever that entails, and trash-talks Kaido's ambitions since it harms the people of Wano.
Wano is wrapping up, and I'm all for it. There's realistically only Kaido and Orochi's defeats that we have to deal with, and I could see them happening simultaneously. Maybe (hopefully) we get a Kaido flashback in the way? The storyline about McBowlerHat and the World Government ships coming... I guess those could be like, the epilogue segment of the arc after the big bad is defeated, in the way that Kuma was in Thriller Bark? There's a lot of focus that seems to imply that Luffy's really going to awaken his devil fruit at the climax of this arc, which is something that I'm not super excited about, but am definitely interested to see.
Random Notes:
- The cover story shows us that two of the Vinsmoke brothers are beaten up by Big Mom at the end of Whole Cake Island, and are now trapped on Mont D'Or's book. Having watched the anime recently, I can definitely remember that Mon D'Or went with Big Mom to Wano. Pudding also ends up punching both brothers in revenge for Sanji? I can't say I really care all that much about the Vinsmoke brothers, but hopefully it'll be more interesting than the Pound cover story.
- I guess the Kazenbou got sucked into Big Mom's Soul Pocus attack? Or something?
- I love that in the montage of everyone running around in 1040, we just have Zoro's unconscious body just randomly sliding off the rubble. It should be dramatic, but I kind of found the panel unintentionally hilarious.
- Raizou's fight is cool and all, but we don't get to see his overpowered scroll-scroll fruit in action. I'm disappointed.
- There's a short scene in 1041 where Jinbe rescues Raizou and he talks about some ominous 'preparations'? Is that where Denjirou has been at all this while?
- I also find it pretty narratively accurate that for someone that has a devil fruit that's theoretically very cool, Orochi never actually gets into a single serious fight with his Yamata-no-Orochi devil fruit.
- Scarface McBowlerHat the CP0 guy is busting his ass doing all this work, but the third CP0 member, the one with the neck frill, is just... hanging out in the waiting room? The Go board isn't even intact anymore, why couldn't he have helped Bowler Hat guy?
- 1041 gave us a scene of Kid and Law talking about how both of them are completely down and out. I don't believe them, actually, considering how many times Law has gone 'oh, I'm beat' and then proceed to pull out additional awakening attacks.
- That panel of Luffy going Snakeman right as Kaido is crying is a badass-as-hell panel.
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