One Piece 1077 Review: Boom, Headshot

One Piece, Chapter 1077: You Should've Put It Together Sooner!

I am honestly rather... done with the speculations about who or what the 'traitor' is, and at this point I just kind of want to quickly see the next chapter and get it over with. Admittedly they did a rather interesting method by introducing us to a smattering of 7-8 brand new characters with minimal personalities and questionable loyalties, but honestly I don't really think it'll ever quite top the 'CP-9 actually infiltrated Galley-La' or even the Kanjurou twist. Anyway, this chapter is mostly just pretty fine buildup, with a couple of conclusions to some of the action scenes. Not too much for me to talk about, but I do also admit that we need a couple chapters like this for the mystery story to work.  

We open up with Sentomaru telling the other civilians and scientists on the islands to leave Egghead, citing Ohara and how the fate that befalls Egghead might be much worse. Then we get to see a couple more action scenes of Luffy, Lucci, Zoro and Kaku fighting against S-Hawk and S-Bear, and everyone shows off a bunch of older attacks. Kong Organ, Shigan: Oren, Rankyaku: Ran, Shishi-Sonson... always pretty cool to see some of these attacks. Zoro finally realizes that these Seraphims remind him of King, and Shaka confirms that he recognizes Alber. There's a bit of a fun moment where Zoro goes "ah, I should've realized sooner", about the weird Zelda-boss-fight gimmick of how the Lunarians are only vulnerable when the flames on their backs go out. Lucci is actually surprisingly calm about it, telling Zoro that it's okay that he didn't put it together sooner... and then Zoro goes down a list of all the similarities between the Seraphims and King, getting everyone (including Lucci!) to get pissed at Zoro for not putting it together sooner. 

Now I've gone a bit on record on saying that I'm not the biggest fan of how the Lunarians seem to rely on this bizarre gimmick of 'I can only be hurt if you strike me when my flames go out', which just really feels bizarre. For a one-off villain like King, I mean... yeah, sure. But if the Seraphim with Lunarian powers are going to show up a bit more in the story, I'm not sure how much I'll like it. 

We check in with another group, where S-Shark is fighting Nami, Brook, Zeus and Edison. Edison's already beaten and Brook's in the process of putting himself back together. Nami unleashes her Zeus Tempo attack, which seems to take out S-Shark. But he's actually swimming through the concrete and is about to attack Nami... when Sanji zooms in from wherever he's at, rants about the decrees of a country that he would run, and unleashes a 'filet strike' onto S-Shark. (I guess he just left Stussy and Jinbe behind? We're out of Seraphims for that group to fight anyway, unless S-Croc and S-Flamingo actually do exist.)

Meanwhile, S-Snake kind of... beat everyone that she's fighting against. Lilith briefly gets an upper hand with the seastone bubble gun, and Franky grabs the bubble and slams it down on S-Snake... but Franky gets distracted when he sees a little kid crying in pain. She uses her Perfume Femur attack to partially petrify Franky, before unleashing a Mero-Mero Mellow to completely petrify Sanji and Lilith. 

Shaka, having gone off to the basement while Luffy and co. hold back the Seraphim, gets surprised when he sees all the Cipher Pol agents and Stella Vegapunk in the old Devil Fruit research lab... and then as he's about to free Stella, a gun shoots him right in the head. Now I don't think he's dead yet because this is One Piece and Atlas also just survived having her head blown up by Lucci, but that sure is a surprisingly brutal panel of Shaka getting sniped and shot in the head with blood splattering everywhere. Whoever is following Shaka -- the true traitor -- slowly walks down the stairs, surprising Vegapunk. 

It's a pretty fun cliffhanger, and honestly, I really do hope next chapter clears everything up on who or what is going on. A bunch of okay action scenes, and I really do like the panels of Sanji's attack and Shaka getting shot. A perfectly okay chapter!

Random Notes:

• The cover story finally goes back to the present-day story (or rather, post-Whole-Cake-Island timeframe) and have Judge and Caesar stop fighting as they realize they don't actually have beef with each other, and their common irritant is Vegapunk all along. I guess it's just a prelude to Caesar Clown joining the Germa.
• Sanji's eyebrows swap directions to his Germa form when he's enraged after S-Shark attacks Nami. Really not sure about the connotations of this. 
  
• We get a Reverie-arc style recap of the Ohara arc, which is nice. I do like these little one-panel recaps for fans who might have forgotten a lot of the earlier chapters, and for a 1000+ chapter manga, it definitely needs some mini-recaps like this!
• Between Nami and Lilith, Oda, uh, must've been having a bit of a backside day when drawing this chapter...