One Piece 1080 Review: It's Like A Devil Fruit Bargain Sale

One Piece, Chapter 1080: The Hero of Legend

Yeah, things were a bit hectic for me this week, which was why this review got delayed for as long as it is. That's the big reason why I don't do too many 'catch up to weekly/monthly releases' reviews anymore, honestly. 

But where to begin with this chapter? Last chapter gave us Shanks finally doing something that's not jus him standing around being intimidating, with the still legendary one-shot of Eustass Kid. After coming off the hype of that chapter's cliffhanger (and where I was riding the Shanks hypetrain) I'm not entirely convinced that Kid is dead, because I don't think Oda goes around killing established characters so brutally, and there is some discussion he was hyped up as a rival to Luffy and Law.... but never really enjoyed the same success that either of them had. I do wonder, though. I don't really think that Kid is important enough that taking him out like this would be a bad ending (compare him to Law and Law's prominence in the post-timeskip era) but it is a bit of an aborted storyline in regards to him and Killer. Oh well, we'll see if we get something with someone who bites off more than he can chew and if he'll mature or just give up. 

Anyway, this chapter goes to another location and brings in even more hype. We check in at Hachinosu, where the generic Blackbeard Pirates are being excited about catching Koby (who's escaped from his cell) and turning him in to Cross Guild. Which is such a nice little world-building tie-in. Koby himself is running around holding the iron ball chained to his leg, freeing the other slaves captured in the Hachinosu because of course evil pirates have got to have slaves. 

And then the giant skull mountain of Hachinosu begins to talk with a weird cutesy cat speech, and turns out it's Avalo Pizarro, one of the core members of Blackbeard's crew. We get a re-introduction of the Blackbeard Pirates stationed on the island -- we already know about Shiryu's Clear-Clear Fruit, but we also learn that Avalo Pizarro has eaten the Isle-Isle Fruit. It's basically something that people compare to Pica's stone assimilation fruit, and we get to see Pizarro's head pop up from the floorboards and later from the stone of the mountain. Again, it's a Devil Fruit that really does feel like it could be something rather devastating depending on how much the power stretches the 'island human' thing. 

We saw Vasco Shot a bit earlier this arc when Blackbeard was fighting Hancock, but he's also hanging out nearby, and he's revealed to have eaten the Glug-Glug Fruit, becoming an alcohol-man. He did talk about burning the entire town down, clearly as psychotic as ever, and he is shown here sitting on a giant bubble... but it's rather ambiguous if he's manipulating alcohol to make a bubble, if it's just bubbles rising up from San Juan Wolf's snoring, or if San Juan Wolf is drunk and Vasco Shot's manipulating the alcohol bubbles. 

We've known about San Juan Wolf's devil fruit from the SBS segments, but we get the name as the Huge Huge Fruit. San Juan Wolf's just sleeping throughout this entire chapter, with Pizarro and Vasco yelling at each other -- Pizarro's basically trying his best to keep everything according to how Blackbeard would want it, Vasco Shot's kinda the psycho-killer one. 

Which means, if you're keeping track with the membres of Blackbeard's crew that's currently fighting Law, this means that the members of Blackbeard's crew that's currently sailing towards Egghead would be Kuzan, Catarina Devon and Laffitte. 

We then get a flashback to the moment where Koby was captured -- which is a bit confusing since I was trying to keep track of the locations of the Blackbeard Pirates, but with the entire crew there it's clear that this happened before the Supernova Trio set off from Wano. And it basically confirms without any shadow of a doubt that Aokiji/Kuzan is part of Blackbeard's Ten Titanic Captains. Blackbeard talks about his plan to use Koby as a hostage to force the World Government to acknowledge his Pirate Island as an official kingdom, which... is strangely small-scale to what Blackbeard has already accomplished. Is he just trying to pull another Impel Down, getting a seat at the government only just as a means to waltz into Marie Geoise or something? I know the Gorosei hasn't been the best decision-makers, but I don't think even they are that dumb.

Anyway, Koby drops the bombshell that he's part of SWORD, which, as you probably would guess, causes Blackbeard and the other pirates to get confused and go 'buh-wha?' because no one's ever heard of the secret organization before. This is just kind of a way for Koby to get Kuzan to start talking, explaining that members of SWORD have turned in their resignations, so they can go wild and attack a Yonko and at any time, the Marines can disown them. They're wild cards, with the Marines having plausible deniability about anything they do that's inconvenient for them. Now it seems like Kuzan is doing something rather stupid, because it's also kind of clear that he's very likely part of SWORD, doing a deep-cover infiltration into Blackbeard's organization, but... I dunno. It's really exciting to see the Kuzan storyline finally pay off after being hinted and alluded to for so long. 

Returning back to the present, Koby thinks to himself how he got free -- Perona of all people showed up and gave him the keys to his cell, asking him to help free Gekko Moria. We don't actually get to see if Koby freed Moria, or what happened to Moria, or if Moria and Perona made it off the island, but it's yet another layer of complication into this wonderful mess. 

Oh, and Marines show up to rescue Koby, and... in a surprising twist that took me by surprise, the Marines aren't just there for the Blackbeard Pirates to show off their Devil Fruits! I had thought that it would just be Garp, Smoker, maybe Tashigi doing stuff... but no! The other new Marines that show off their stuff are surprisingly fun! A group of muscular dudes fight a bunch of goons, and one gets their head sliced off before the headless body morphs back into clay. The goons think this is a Logia fruit, but turns out this is the power of Prince Grus, who we saw a couple chapters back, who ate the Glorp-Glorp Fruit and is a Clay-man, creating adorable little clay golems that can walk around and fight pirates. 

We then get to see Kujaku, who's somehow making buildings move by whipping them. She ate the Whip-Whip Fruit, allowing her to, uh, dominate buildings and control them? By being a dominatrix? I, uh... okay? Kujaku's the granddaughter of ol' Tsuru, who is Garp and Sengoku's contemporary, this old woman with the Wash-Wash Fruit. 

Then we get to see Hibari, the girl who goes around calling Koby her 'senpai' a couple chapters back, and turns out she's a sniper! She also uses the GP Flower invention that we saw Vegapunk create in a cover story, which won Vegapunk the Nobel Prize of the setting. Turns out that it's a bit more useful than I thought -- instead of just shooting flowers, Hibari snipes the pirates' guns, turning their bullets into flowers! Also, she's a tsundere. 

Now neither Grus, Kujaku nor Hibari really fought any named characters, so there's still a chance that they get beaten up next chapter by Pizarro, Vasco, San Juan and Shiryu, but... it's still a rather impressive showcase of SWORD, especially since basically every single Marine that's not an Admiral, Sengoku or Garp have been very underwhelming. It's nice to show the Marines as being able to do stuff!

Kujaku and Grus herd the pirates into a square, and suddenly a ship flies through the air -- we don't actually get to see how this happens, but until proven otherwise I will assume Monkey D. Garp is a subscriber of the Taopaipai method of transportation. 

Garp is posing on the ship's front, poses, and is just exuding black lightning, which is Conqueror's Haki, right? There has been so much debate on what kind of lightning is and is not Conqueror's Haki or Armament Haki or whatever, but until proven otherwise, yeah. Garp just unleashes a gigantic explosion called Galaxy Impact that utterly atomizes the town square in something straight out of Dragon Ball or something. For an old man who honestly hasn't shown off his true strength before -- we see him throw cannonballs and bend Chinjao's drill-head and that's it -- Garp showcases just why he's considered the hero of the Marines and tangled with the likes of Roger before. That gigantic explosion looks suitably impressive, and that roar of how Koby is the future of the Marines and his 'precious protégé'... yeah, I do really like this scene a lot. It fits Garp very well, and considering how he's probably never forgiven himself for choosing duty over Ace, you really get the feeling that he's not going to lose another child, so to speak. Especially not when this child is in such a black-and-white situation, where Koby is a Marine being held hostage by a bunch of pirates.

Random Notes:

• So each star in a Cross Guild bounty poster is worth 100 million berries. Koby is worth 500 million berries -- to put it into comparison, this was Luffy's bounty after defeating Doflamingo, and almost close to Ace's bounty. Normal Captain-rank Marines are only worth 100 million, which is post-Crocodile Luffy. 
• A lot has been said about the matchups of the Blackbeard Pirates against the Straw Hats, with Shiryu, Van Augur and Doc Q all being easy one-on-one comparisons to Zoro, Usopp and Chopper thanks to their roles. I think Vasco Shot might be built up as the anti-Sanji? Vasco Shot is a genuinely lecherous bastard that made some comments that could've been taken as rape-y, he's disheveled and ugly-looking, and if his comments about being able to set a town on fire does relate to his Glug-Glug Fruit powers, then that's a fire-vs-fire thing going on. 
• Also, in the midst of everything, Avalo Pizarro casually drops that they've just finished repairing the Rocky Port. So the enigmatic Rocky Port incident that Koby, Law and Blackbeard were involved in happened in Hachinosu, huh? 
• There's a rather cute line about Blackbeard talking about "hey, why are you mocking a man's dreams?", considering the show's main themes. 
• Prince Grus, his golems and Kujaku all appeared on the cover story of chapter 966, as the group of Marines arresting Lola. 
• Hibari's part-camo, part-striped-stocking pants are... interesting. 
• Knowing that this is the caliber of strength Garp possesses, yeah. He definitely was holding back and is just making a token effort during Marineford. All the Garp scenes will feel a bit more different now. 
• Interestingly, while we see Tashigi and Helmeppo on Garp's ship, Smoker's nowhere to be found...
• ...Koby and Hibari are probably fine from the Galaxy Impact. Probably.