One Piece 1081 Review: Ice Ice Baby

One Piece, Chapter 1081: Kuzan, 10th Captain of the Blackbeard Pirates

What a chapter, huh? All these recent chapters have been hype-train banger after hype-train banger! We get to see the aftermath of Garp's Galaxy Impact, which blew up the whole town square, and there's a great shot of Garp looking positively demonic with his fist crackling with Haki. Prince Grus uses his Glorp-Glorp Fruit's ability to soften the ground so Garp's goofy-ass dog-headed ship can make a soft landing, which is another badass shot. 

And, of course, just as the fandom have been talking about, Garp notes how he's 'out of his prime', and he's lost his touch with the results of this attack... which means that instead of a small town, he probably could've wiped out a much larger town with one punch. we get the reactions from some of the other newer Marine characters. Prince Grus is a bit of a Cavendish-esque 'grr grr this other guy is the new future of the Marines' quasi-rival... and then in the midst of them just talking to each other HIBARI GETS FROZEN SOLID!

That's such a great shot, by the way, and I can't wait to see this animated on the small screen with the smash-cut to Hibari's shocked, frozen face. 

Of course, this heralds the arrival of Kuzan, the former Admiral Aokiji, and... yeah. The manga has been really good at keeping Kuzan out of the spotlight ever since the timeskip and the revelation that he's joined the Blackbeard Pirates, and everyone's kind of really on the same page -- that Kuzan is part of SWORD, that he's infiltrating Blackbeard, or that there's something fishy going on. And while I personally still feel that Kuzan is still a good guy, this chapter does give us the showcase of Kuzan joining the Blackbeard Pirates... and it really does make it feel like Kuzan's really pissed off with the Marines and is down and out and depressed and really looking for something to fill in that void in his heart that would let him achieve whatever goals or beliefs he has. 

And we get to see Kuzan after losing his duel with Akainu... with the giant San Juan Wolf frozen in the background. Blackbeard arrives to see Kuzan all emo and sad and stuff... and we smash cut to Kuzan and Blackbeard's entire crew (everyone's there!) drinking booze and just listening to Kuzan regaling them about his fight against Akainu. Including a hilarious bit where Kuzan makes fun of a line that Akainu said about his blood boiling. "That'd be the magma!" We also finally have the reveal that Kuzan lost a leg permanently in that fight, and he has to constantly re-craft it with ice. Something the fandom discovered basically a decade or more ago with Film: Z when Kuzan made a non-canon appearance there, but only really shown in the manga now. 

Devon and Burgess then talks about the Red Poneglyphs, and they discuss about the enigmatic 'Man Marked by Flames'. This leads to a hilarious bit about Kuzan being confused, thinking that he is the Man Marked by Flames, to which Vasco Shot gets one of those exaggerated anime eye-bugged-out reactions because Kuzan clearly just got that scar recently. Does that take Saul off of consideration, too? Laffite talks about how the Flame Guy is on a pitch-black ship and anyone who tries to follow him gets drowned by whirlpools that manifest spontaneously. Is this Dragon, then? Shiryu also posits a fun theory about how the Government might be playing keepaway with one of the Poneglyphs, which would make it near-impossible for Pirates to ever find the One Piece. 

Kuzan gives a pretty cool narration about how the Poneglyphs hold only bitter memories for him, about Saul and Robin. And as he's waxing poetry with the fate of Ohara, Laffite starts talking to Blackbeard, suggesting that they attack Kuzan and steal his Hie Hie no Mi, and Kuzan is right there. He can hear them, and he flash-freezes Burgess, Pizarro and a bunch of other Blackbeard Captains until Blackbeard himself goes "hold on, my pal's being an idiot". Blackbeard offers Kuzan an offer to join his crew, something that Kuzan gets pissed off about since all they did was share some drinks. 

Interestingly, Blackbeard talks about how he has as different kind of 'justice', and how pirates don't gather around because they are chums but because they have a certain goal. Now I think it's the statement of that goal that won Kuzan over -- if he really was won over and it's not just a super-long infiltration game. 

We cut back to the present day, where Garp demands that Kuzan unfreeze Hibari and return to wearing a uniform. We get a badass Oda Box re-introducing Kuzan as the Tenth Captain of the Blackbeard Captains. Kuzan gives a speech about how he's going to live life on his own terms, unleashing an Ice Ball attack on Garp, and talking about how Garp might be forced to kill his old pupil to save his new one. Garp grabs Kuzan and bashes him through the ground with an attack called Blue Hole, yelling that 'only weaklings lose their way', which is, again, very consistent with Garp's on view on life. 

Very interesting. While I don't doubt that Kuzan will be an ally to the good guys at the end of the day, this chapter does do a lot in making me doubt what Kuzan's real goal is, and whether he's merely infiltrating the Blackbeard Pirates or if he's actually abandoned the Marines in search for a different answer. 

...But we cut over to Winner Island, where we see the shot of the Polar Tang, Law's ship, sinking into the ocean after being shattered. It's a fair bit more tragic than Kid because Law's been with us a lot longer. We get to see Blackbeard and his crewmembers standing over the defeated Law and his crew. Blackbeard gloats about how the pirates of the Rocky Port that Law attacked are still there on Hachinosu, and he gloats about how he's considering forcing Law to do the Immortal Surgery on him... which confirms that Blackbeard hasn't actually stolen Law's Fruit powers yet. 

While all of this is going on, we get a brief shot of Bepo munching on something, while remembering a conversation with Chopper. This is either a Rumble Ball or something similar, but Bepo transforms into a monstrous Sulong form. A surprise but not entirely unexpected combination of several different long-running theories about how the Rumble Ball relates to Sulong or Zoan Awakenings. 

Bepo's rampage manages to distract the Blackbeard Pirates enough to grab Law and escape via sea, but despite Law's begging Bepo explicitly does leave the rest of the Heart Pirates behind. We get the same 'the Heart Pirates are annihilated' message that we got for the Kid Pirates a while back.

Man, what a chapter, huh? I'm honestly, again, far more interested in all that's happening in non-Egghead-related locations. Very interested to see what Oda's going to do with Blackbeard, honestly, and see how he's going to interact with everyone else. 

Random Notes:

• A lot of people probably died off-screen from Garp's Galaxy Impact.
• Interestingly, and it's something that I missed in my first read-through, Koby explicitly identifies Tashigi as a non-SWORD member. Interesting! Everyone always considers Tashigi and Smoker as a package deal, so I'm sure this means Smoker isn't part of SWORD either, but... hmm. I'm not sure why. Smoker is also conspicuously absent from all shots of Garp's crew, which makes me think he's gone off to Egghead. 
• By way of elimination, the ship heading to Egghead contains the infiltration duo of Laffitte and Catarina Devon. 
• Apologies for the slow update schedule recently. Lots of IRL stuff over this month and the previous one, which means that I end up just focusing a lot on the pre-planned articles like the Pokemon and Persona monster reviews and not much else .