One Piece, Chapter 1087: Battleship Bags
We do get the titular 'battleship bags' on the first page, where we see a bunch of minor pirates -- Brannew (the bounty guy), plus the welcome return of Jango and Fullbody. Always had a soft spot for Jango! But they discuss that Garp -- and later Kuzan -- trained by using battleships in a scrapyard as sandbags -- hence, battleship bags. I do really love that Brannew emphasizes that their strength wasn't something they were 'born with', or as early fan-translations used, 'innate'. The power that Garp honed is by sweat, blood and a lot of training, and that's such a cooler message than being some boring child of destiny.
The fight itself really isn't anything super special other than seeing the novelty of these characters fighting mostly for the first time. But I'm not complaining, because we do get to see a lot! The chapter even opens with San Juan Wolf, this giant among giants, get literally punched all the way off the coast of Pirate Island into the ocean. A deep enough part of the ocean that he's in danger of drowning. Vasco Shot unleashes a ball of flame called 'Drunken Spitfire' and Garp just casually picks up a bunch of helpless goons, uses them as shields, and co-opts them into his next attack as 'Pirate Fireballs'. That's Garp! He's a badass!
While all of this is going on, everyone else have evacuated to Garp's ship, with Hibari being thawed out. Garp is fighting on the island with Koby, Prince Grus and his giant clay mace... and fucking snotty-nosed Helmeppo, who's still waving around his kukri knives in Yonko territory. Say what you want about the little shit, but he is impressive just by staying there!
It's at this point that Kuzan walks up of the Blue Hole that Garp tossed him into, and Garp just wants to set a retreat for him and the three boys. Poor Koby, however, poor naive old Koby, sees a lady being menaced by pirates and immediately assumes she's a civilian. It's some Oden-gets-distracted-by-Momonosuke dirty tricks, except this random stranger lady is just a pirate. Koby gets distracted enough for an invisible man with a sword to charge in, forcing Garp to jump in the way and take a giant black katana through his gut.
And... it's honestly the type of dirty, underhanded tactic that someone in the Blackbeard Pirates would use, and it does track with their record. Garp grabs the invisible Shiryu and then body-slams him to the ground, hitting him so hard he coughs up blood. This actually seems to take out Shiryu for the time being, and... Garp is all cool and unbothered by it, claiming that Shiryu was aiming for him the entire time. This is a great morale boost for the random goons, who start to charge in, but I completely believe Kuzan that a bound-up Garp could still take out all of these random fodder.
We get a flashback to young Kuzan, who continues to bug Garp to become his teacher, and we get the full context of the 'battleship bags', where the two of them use it as training without Devil Fruits and Haki. And we get to see Garp from being pissed off and not giving a shit about Kuzan to telling him all about his son and grandson; to the sound of Kuzan's punches catching up to Garp, and it's a nice full circle where Garp is now the laid-back one who wants Kuzan to hang out with him.
It's very heartwarming within the scope of slightly more than a page, and I absolutely love that we cut immediately to the two of them punching each other in the face, sending shockwaves rippling out.
The final double-page spread is Avalo Pizarro talking a lot of smack as he rants about how Blackbeard's been so famous in the news and the Titanic Captains have been overshadowed, and Avalo rattles off a super-long news title as he transforms the island to sprout many, many spider-like hands (the ones in the background are particularly creepy) as he's about to smash a literal island-sized hand down on top of Garp's warship. Garp's response to Koby is... 'don't panic, justice will prevail'.
And... well, I really don't think this is how Garp dies. There's no part of me that believes it. Now I'm still 50/50 on whether Garp survives Pirate Island alive, but I really didn't feel the full weight of this chapter mostly because... well, of the narrative tropes, I guess. If Garp has to go out, he's going to need to be taken out by someone major. Literally either Blackbeard or Kuzan. The backstory between Garp and Kuzan really seems to hint at something huge that's going to happen in the next chapter, which is either Kuzan killing Garp or betraying the Blackbeard pirates into letting Garp get away. Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty exciting action chapter, but literally all of these Blackbeard Pirate goons are such ciphers that it'd feel cheap if a long-running supporting character like Garp dies to them instead of Blackbeard, y'know?
Anyway, good to be back.
Random Notes:
- The Battleship Bags are located near G-1, which would be the old-school Marineford in pre-timeskip era. Which makes sense, since the Chapter 0 Shiki special showed Garp and Sengoku stationed there.
- Vasco kind of just... disappears after he does his Drunken Spitfire attack. Actually, I'm still not exactly clear how his Glug-Glug fruit really works. Does it allow him to manipulate alcohol and flame? Change the alcohol and manipulate it as he wants? Change the water he's drinking into alcohol? Eh.
- I do really like the background detail of Avalo Pizarro, literally being the background with his buggy eyes on the giant Pirate Island skull looking at what's going on.
- Prince Grus is still a cipher but he gets a nice little short line being all insecure and asking Garp if the 'future of the Marines' also included him.
- Shiryu has a lot of fans on the sole basis that 'he's going to be Zoro's final opponent'! And I do believe that, it's just that Shiryu himself doesn't really have much of a personality beyond 'sadistic' and much of a backstory beyond 'he had a confrontation with Magellan that one time'. I'm not saying I dislike Shiryu, I'm saying I need to see more from him before I care for him.
- Garp and the Admirals' Cross Guild bounty is Yonko-level of 3 billion. Okay!
- Aokiji gets to use a brand-new move called 'Ice Glove', but it just him encasing his fist in ice to punch-to-punch with Garp.
Excited to see what happens next chapter. Like you said Garp isn't going to die to frikin Shiryu and Pizarro. Either the old monkey has trick up his sleeve, or maybe a smoke cloud will show up in time
ReplyDeleteSmoker HAS been conspicuously absent, right? He should be nearby if Tashigi's around, right?
DeleteI am unconvinced that Kuzan's going to straight-up kill Garp, although I am buying that he's basically doing 'his own thing' separate from the Marines. I do still hold on to Kuzan's conversation with Smoker in the Dressrosa arc where he affirms that he's still "himself".
Now I don't know how far this goes. He could still be part of SWORD and create a massive explosion to allow Garp and company to escape and go all 'darn!' afterwards. He could capture Garp or Koby or someone, stopping the others from killing them while also keeping them alive for a potential rescue mission arc. I've seen people speculating that saving Garp, a Marine, from a pirate base is a nice reversal from saving Ace, a pirate, from a Marine base. I'd actually like that!
And also, speaking of the potential of Luffy coming in to rescue Garp, it's also honestly rather bad, narratively, if Garp dies and Luffy isn't there to witness it for angst, right?