One Piece 1061 Review: Cybershark

One Piece, Chapter 1061: Egghead, the Island of the Future

Okay, I guess we're here for the long haul as we hang out in this island! It's the Egghead arc, I guess? The Egghead arc of the final saga? We all thought we were going to Elbaf, but nope! I honestly don't... don't really care about Elbaf and Vegapunk's Island was always what I'm more curious about, but I'm sure when we do get to Elbaf I'd totally love it the way I did Wano. But it's nice to have a shorter arc somewhere first before we go to somewhere explosive.

And the chapter opens with some chaos, as we get one of the coolest full-page spreads we've had in a while, with a giant monstrous shark maw that eclipses the Thousand Sunny in size just appear from the depths of the ocean, like one of those terrifying thalassophobia artwork. The giant shark turns out to be a much goofier-looking One Piece style robo-shark in the next page when we actually see it, but damn that one panel? That one panel's going to stick with me forever. 

Anyway, Jinbe, Luffy, Chopper and Bonney are separated from the rest of the crew as they navigate away from the giant robo-shark, but the giant robo-shark has mouth torpedoes. He's got SHARPEDOES! Hee hee hoo hoo. 

Jinbe is forced to bring the Devil Fruit users away, but as the giant shark is about to chomp down on the Sunny we get the sudden arrival of what I thought to be a new upgrade by Franky. Did he have a giant underwater Battle Franky stashed somewhere? Is the Thousand Sunny suddenly a Transformer that's able to transform into a giant Gundam Voltron Evangelion robot mode? Nope, this is actually a brand-new newcomer that I didn't realize until a reread, and it's got VEGA FORCE on its chest, and it blows the shit up of the shark by punching it. 

And then we cut to the nearby island G-14, which... I think is just a setup of characters that will be relevant in this Egghead arc. We did see Smoker and Tashigi discuss bringing the victimized giant children from Punk Hazard to meet Dr. Vegapunk, and turns out that they've apparently improved and shrunk. Apparently, at least, because I didn't care to go back and check. We get to meet a bunch of new characters, too. Vice Admiral Doll, who the fandom immediately calls mommy... but also a bunch of Sword members!

Helmeppo and a lady Sword member with headphones called Hibari are begging the rear admiral Prince-Grus for help in getting Coby back. And... and they're all Sword members. Prince Grus is even someone we saw before -- him and his unnamed clique of buff Marines behind him were minor antagonists in Capone Bege's cover story! But they can't stick their noses into Blackbeard's territory in the Beehive Island, and there's something interesting where Helmeppo asks them to deploy a Seraphim, but is vetoed by Prince Grus, mostly due to the lack of information. Very interestingly, they can't get ahold of X-Drake either, so... what happened to Drake?  

Cutting back to Egghead, Luffy's group has taken refuge on a cave, and we're treated to a completely topless shot from Jewelry Bonney. Yep, we're not getting Yamato, but we're getting this, at least. In typical fashion, Luffy doesn't really remember Bonney, though his brain puts the Supernova stuff together and decides to call her Bogey. Okay. There's a neat little discussion where Bonney gets exasperated about Luffy's lack of knowledge, as well as his lack of white hair. After a discussion about food, Bonney finally name-drops the fact that they are on... Egghead Island, home of Vegapunk's laboratory! Dun dunnn dunnnnnnn!

Yep, it's huge revelations time in the near future, I'm sure. We get to see the Thousand Sunny being rescued out of the water by the giant underwater Gundam, and a figure speaking in 'old-timey speech' walks out muttering about how the shark is a failure, and how overwriting primal desires is impossible. We get to see that this is actually a lady! She looks friendly, but she did program the mecha-shark to destroy ships for her to salvage, and she says that she's the Marines' scientific genius "despite her mediocrity", and... well, she introduces herself as Dr. Vegapunk!

Wait, Dr. Vegapunk is a woman? It would be a welcome addition, sure, and I have no problems at all if this is Dr. Vegapunk in the future. But she has been explicitly called as 'Old Man Vegapunk' multiple times in the story, and... I don't know if that's just going to be handwaved away like the whole 'Kaido's son' thing. But there are some interesting theories that this may or may not be the real Vegapunk. Or at least the real Vegapunk's original body. 

After all, on her bodysuit we can see "PUNK 02" written and it would be remiss to not speculate that she's either a robot, a cyborg, a clone, a remote-controlled body, someone who received the immortality surgery, Vegapunk's daughter/granddaughter/clone daughter/niece/doppelganger, someone who got Bonney'd, someone who got Ivankov'd... or some combination of the above! Or she could just be Dr. Vegapunk, and Dr. Vegapunk is a hot anime chick. That's possible, too. It's actually quite surprising and definitely in a pleasant way!

...anyway, I am definitely far more hyped about this arc now that I know it's about Vegapunk and not something else. I don't even really care what Vegapunk looks like or the huge storm of confusion that gripped the fandom on Vegapunk being a sexy lady or an old man or whatever, just give me my Devil Fruit lore!

Random Notes:

• The cover story is showing Caesar Clown and the four Germa siblings escaping with the power of flight. Other than the ridiculousness in terms of power scaling of seeing them beat Katakuri somehow, it's basically proceeding basically how we expect it to. 
• Apparently there's a "rabbit attachment" to the Sunny's underwater engine. Was that there all along? Was that a joke about Carrot in a barrel? I know that we had a scene briefly in Punk Hazard or something about the attachments within the Sunny, but the ones I remember are the shark submarine and the Mini-Merry.
• The shark is '03' and the underwater Vega-Force is '12'. I highly doubt Vegapunk just made this many robots in his time, so it probably isn't a numbering system like Franky's Battle Frankies. 
• Really does get me curious about just whether Sword is a secret sub-organization within the Marines or what? Unless Doll and Tashigi are also aware that Sword is a thing?
• Hibari calls Coby her 'senpai'. Okay, Coby.
• Okay, why does Jinbe need to dry his clothes? He's a fishman! You'd think the seawater would make him comfortable?  
• Bonney claims that her ship and crew were swallowed by the metal shark, so I guess they were rescued after the Blackbeard/Akainu incident in the pre-timeskip? Wait, are they all dead when the metal shark blew up?
• Maybe it's the sleeves and the short hair, but Vegapunk does really give me heavy Uta vibes?
• If there are actually multiple clone Vegapunks, it would explain the wildly inconsistent things that Vegapunk has done, from the kind (working with Kuma) to the evil (clone child soldiers).