One Piece, Chapter 1076: Old Friends
Yeah, so I wasn't particularly holding my breath or being super-duper excited about the idea of the Straw Hats teaming up with CP-0, and the scene with them kinda dicking around being kind of... what we expected. I do like that Zoro's suspicious of them, Kaku's trying to do the smart thing and fool the Straw Hats... and both Luffy and Lucci are just super-duper straightforward with what they want to do. Luffy being stupidly naive, and Lucci being stupidly honest about his desire to exact vengeance, basically making no effort to hide his desire to fight Luffy again. Basically Luffy and Lucci kind of reach a quasi agreement that Lucci won't go after the Straw Hats or the Vegapunks, and also kind of makes it clear that Luffy can basically stomp on Lucci any time... a fact that Lucci obviously is pissed off about and completely denies, and I think he decides to 'set an order' in response to Luffy's taunt.
Oh, we also get the revelation that S-Hawk, the Mihawk clone, has Mr. 1's Supa-Supa no Mi, allowing him to turn his limbs into swords. That's kind of the obvious answer to what fruit they'd give Mihawk, I guess.
Luffy frees the two CP-0 agents just as S-Bear unleashes an Ursus Shock, and we get a great quasi two-page spread of Luffy going Gear Fourth: Kong Gun and Lucci going Rokuougan on S-Bear; while Zoro does a Purgatory Onigiri and Kaku does a Rankyaku: White Thunder on S-Hawk. I don't think they're out just yet, but yeah, those two Seraphims are kind of being pretty beaten down.
Then we get to see where the Stella Vegapunk is, though not really the identity of his kidnapper. It kind of almost confirms that it isn't Caribou, Kizaru or Saint Saturn, though, since the same guy that kidnapped Stella Vegapunk is also the one responsible for shoving the CP5, CP7 and CP8 agents... who was mentioned when Lucci talked to Shaka and Lilith earlier this arc. With the generic agents claiming that they were attacked by Sea Beasts, it really does put into mind that one of the Satellite Vegapunks is the one responsible for all of this going on. Vegapunk also drops another bombshell -- about how he was researching Poneglyphs and word of that has leaked to the government.
Oh, and then we cut to 100 ships heading from the G-9 base to Egghead, so that's like ten Buster Calls all at once. Man, they really are basically sending everything the Marines have towards Egghead, huh?
And then we surprisingly spend the rest of the chapter in... Elbaf! And we get like a recreation of chapter 1, with a Giant Lady Bartender (a.k.a. Not-Makino) telling a Giant Bratty Kid (a.k.a. Not-Luffy) who wants to follow Shanks to sea. Does this happen in all islands that Shanks makes into his base? Anyway, Rockstar arrives to tell the rest of the Red-Haired Pirates, who are gorging on like, giant meat and stuff, that Kid is attacking their 'youngsters'. Shanks is drinking from a sake cup as big as he is tall, and mentions that he's catching up with old friends that he thought were dead.
We get one-liners from the other prominent pirates -- Beckman, Lucky Roo, Yasopp -- and Shanks just casually talks to two shadows, his 'old friends', that he doesn't want to cause any major collateral damage and asks them to help in dealing with Kid. And then we get a gigantic (heh) two-page spread showing Dorry, Brogy, Oimon and Kasshi hanging out with all of Shanks' crew, as they do a badass march towards the harbour. Now while we last saw Dorry and Brogy still fighting in Little Garden, we also last saw Oimon and Kasshi returning to Elbaf... so presumably at some point they met up with each other and... and I guess either Dorry and Brogy went to a draw or the king of Elbaf summoned those two back? I am genuinely surprised! I don't like Dorry and Brogy as much as most of the fandom, but I do like the Little Garden arc, and I do appreciate seeing them back. These two guys' plot... well, I thought they'd just be fighting even until the epilogue and the inevitable terrible sequel series, but hey, they're back with Shanks!
Shanks tells Rockstar to deliver a message to Kid, and, which is either hand over their Lode Poneglyphs and fuck off... or fight Shanks.
We then cut to the sea, on the Kid Pirates' ship, where they are fighting against Shanks' allied ships. We never really see whether Shanks had allied ships the way the other Yonko have, but he does, apparently. Killer kind of builds Shanks up even more, talking about how the allies are all big-shots, how Shanks won't settle with just an arm and will take Kid's life... and Kid is like "ha ha, only if I lose!"
And I really do appreciate this scene. It's like seeing Law fighting against Blackbeard, or Garp getting ready to assault Hachinosu... but where there's like a 50/50 or 40/60 chance of those fight going either way (I'm obviously leaning more towards Blackbeard winning both conflicts thanks to narrative demands)... there's really no shot here for Kid, huh? He's facing up not just against a Yonko, but a whole Yonko crew and they have giant allies. And allied ships, if you want to count them. I get that Kid has a power-up and a lot of the fandom kind of underestimate him a lot thanks to his performance relative to Luffy and even Law, but... but this is SHANKS we are talking about. I don't see Shanks straight-up killing Kid, no, but I really don't see a world where Kid somehow manages to prevail against Shanks and all of his buddies. Sorry, Kid, you really just keep drawing the short straw, huh?
Random Notes:
- A fun little background detail is that Zoro grabs Kaku by the nose to save him from the Supa Supa no Mi strike from S-Hawk.
- For a moment, it really does look like S-Hawk did a Rankyaku, huh?
- The two Seraphim kind of... they kind of let Luffy, Zoro and the others kind of just talk for two whole pages, huh? S-Bear was at least charging his Ursus Shock. S-Hawk doesn't really have an excuse.
- We don't see Shanks's (presumably) allied crews, but we do get to see their ships, which have a polar bear (it looks like Bepo!) and some sort of black demon-thing as their figureheads. To preserve the surprise for like three more panels, the Red Force's figuerhead is covered by the text box.
- Killer confirms that the Kid Pirates didn't even meet Shanks when Kid lost his arm, and Lucky Roo's dialogue implies that it's Benn Beckman that took Kid's arm.
- Did Oimon and Kasshi go to Little Garden, tell Dorry and Brogy about the true reason they fought, and they finally resolve it with a gegyagyagya gabababa laugh?
- There's a cute line when Shanks is walking through town and being mobbed by women where the Red-Haired Pirates shoot down some background person who wants to pay them protection money out of gratitude.
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