One Piece, Chapter 1046: Raizo
Last chapter was super-focused on the Luffy-vs-Kaido fight, and it's neat to have a bit of a breather. It's surprising that our 'breather' this time around isn't a continuation of the Hiyori-Orochi thing, or explaining where Denjiro buggered off to, though. I do really like the opening scene as Kaido recovers from the hilarious head-punch from the previous chapter, demanding to know who Luffy is. Luffy, of course, has a very strong sense of self and his answer, as always, "I'm Monkey D. Luffy, the man who'll surpass you and become King of the Pirates". None of this 'I'm the next Joy Boy' stuff, which I think a lot of the fandom dreaded.
Kaido does give a bit of an exposition, explaining what Awakening is -- I'm not quite sure if this implies Kaido has or has not awakened? They talk about what they've lost, and then we have both of them doing the One Piece variation of the JoJo ora-ora-ora barrage. Kaido unleashes a Gundari Meteor Shower on Luffy, though his body goes into that play-doh style of conforming to Kaido's spiked club. Then Luffy follows it up with like, six arms beating into Kaido? I'm not sure if Luffy just made extra arms like what he does with Kong Organ or if it's just a variant of gatling. Honestly, either way wouldn't be surprising to me.
Kaido talks about how the flames are burning in Onigashima, something that's kinda been built up over the past couple of chapters, but I do absolutely love Luffy's line about how he's left 'everything down there' to his comrades. It's something that I feel is kind of similar to the Sanji/Robin interaction earlier this arc where the Straw Hats trust each other to take care of different parts of the operation. We see Kaido and Luffy exchange another series of blows, with Kaido unleashing the wind-scythe attack he used to dis-arm Kiku, while Luffy, uh... he, uh... grabs his crotch to scrunch up his abdomen and torso. Okay, Looney Tunes is still in effect, I see.
We get a bit of a check-in with all the other characters in Onigashima. Chopper and Nami talk about how they're all separated, Bepo (!!!) and Killer are being evacuated by their respective crew members, we get a hilarious skull joke as some of the samurai mistake Brook as being disfigured by the flames, Sanji's protecting courtesans, Usopp trying to use a water flower and talking about how he's going to protect the two wounded Scabbards... notably, Zoro is still unconscious and on Franky's shoulder. Is Zoro just flat-out dead after the whole Enma thing? I wonder.
there's an interesting bit of Apoo verbally abusing the Satan-looking Number, Ibi, and... you know what? I really don't care about this subplot. I can see Ibi just bashing Apoo, but... but I don't know. I really wished that Apoo had been taken out by CP0 guy or Drake at this point, because at least it'd be something vaguely important. I do like Apoo, but I really kind of feel like he's dragged on for quite some time now.
And then, the solution to all of this? The solution to the conflagration eating up the entire castle?
RAIZO OF THE FUCKING MIST.
You know what? When we entered into the Onigashima Raid... Raizo's honestly one of the Scabbards that I really didn't care about the most. It's either him or Ashura Doji, and Ashura's got a couple of powerful scenes that contrasted him to the time-traveling Scabbards, and that pretty great scene in the anime where he shows the gravestones of all the samurai that had gone to fight Kaido instead of waiting for the time-travelers. But Raizo? Raizo's been pretty goddamn badass, isn't he? He had that amazing scroll moment against Kaido, and for someone whose fight is literally just dragged on, one panel at a time, in the background, Raizo's victory against Fukurokuju is something I genuinely really liked.
And while I did really like that Raizo's victory revolves around his endurance and his ability to withstand the heat -- something he couldn't in the boiling pot -- I felt like it was bizarre that he didn't make use of his Scroll Scroll (or Maki Maki) Devil Fruit power.
Turns out Raizo's just saving it for this moment. This is the 'operations' that he alluded to Jinbe a couple chapters earlier. We get a great moment of Raizo having a flashback to his past failures and his inability to protect Oden's family. He unleashes his scrolls, and apparently at some point he saved up the water from Zunesha's baths, and he unleashes it in a "Ninja Art: Elephant Bath", a gigantic surge of water that shoots straight at Jinbe. Jinbe then uses Ocean Heart to redirect the literal surge of enough water to create a monsoon and redirects it all over the castle.
Absolutely badass. Again, another montage -- this time checking in with characters like the Minks, Killer and Chopper, but god damn. God damn, Raizo. I really like that this is his big contribution moment. We could've just had merely Zunesha to douse the water, but this is so much cooler.
The chapter ends with Yamato telling Momonosuke to create flame clouds to hold up Onigashima before Kaido falls... and the final page is a badass confrontation between Gear Fifth Luffy and Kaido... and Luffy just very fucking casually grabs a goddamn thunderbolt out of the skies, which... um I'm sorry nani the fuck???
Yeah. Wano's closing up and the jury's still a bit out for me on whether I think Gear Fifth is all right or if I really like it. But from how this chapter is structured, I guess we'll have a couple more scenes to show other niggling side-plots before we get the final Luffy-vs-Kaido and Momonosuke lifting up the island? I'm going to assume we resolve the Orochi death near the end. Who's left? Apoo, I guess. Plus whatever Denjiro's doing. But other than that, Wano-kuni's wrapping up and honestly? Sitting about it and thinking about it, especially since I'm in the midst of watching the Wano part of the anime, I really might rate this as one of my favourite One Piece arcs of all time.
Random Notes:
- The cover story shows two shadows entering Pudding's turf of Chocolat Town. From the way the cover story's set up, it's just probably Ichiji and Reiju. But I think a lot of people speculated that Blackbeard's forces might attack Whole Cake Island with so many of Big Mom's forces out in Wano, and it'd definitely be a great surprise.
- After her misleading red herring comments from previous chapters, this one kind of confirms that Zunesha is 'merely' just being nostalgic of Joy Boy instead of actually implying that we've got some reincarnation stuff and that Luffy's literally the incarnation of Joy Boy.
- We do briefly get an answer to a question I didn't even think to ask -- why not just use Zeus? Zeus just isn't strong enough, and he would've been burnt up by the fire.
- It's a bit understated, but I do like Hamlet demanding to be included in Usopp's lineup of people he's going to save. Mostly because I really like Hamlet and how fucking weird he is.
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