One Piece 1089 Review: The Hole in the Ocean

One Piece, Chapter 1089: Under Siege

Finally, we return to Egghead! In a fashion, anyway. This one is a pretty interesting way to return to the 'main' plot after, well, basically everything in the Reverie and Hachinosu have eclipsed the whole Egghead plot in terms of hype. I don't necessarily think that the Egghead arc is badly written or whatever, but it is admittedly going to be kind of a downgrade to return immediately to just Luffy and co. fighting York and a couple of Seraphims. So I thought it's actually a great way to just resolve all the conflict offscreen, time-jump for 24 hours, and explain how the Straw Hats got out of the pickle in smaller flashbacks over the next couple of chapters. That's neat! 

We check in with charactesr all over the world reacting to the news about Garp, including a nice little check-in to Foosha Village with Woopslap, Makino, Makino's still-unnamed baby and even the bandits. I do like that all of these characters have such an attachment to Garp that they're actually worried, even if Woopslap is pretty certain that Garp can get his way out of the pickle because he's a living legend. 

We then cut away to multiple other islands all over the world, in the four blues. I don't recognize any of the characters here other than the Kano Kingdom in West Blue. We then check in with a lot of other characters -- Laboon in the Grand Line, Iceburg in Water Seven, Hina in a random marine base, and what I think is Momonosuke in Wano.  But they're all reacting to a gigantic earthquake and the arrival of a bunch of tidal waves hitting things all over the world, causing lots of havoc and causing the sea level to rise by 1 meter all over the world. As someone who lives basically near the seashore and experience quasi-annual flooding, one meter of sea level might not sound a lot, but trust me -- a one-meter flood to people living in coastlines matter a lot. 

And we cut away to the remnants of Lulusia, which was atomized six days before... and we get to see that the entire island is now a giant, gaping hole that's inexplicably not closing. This, of course, makes absolutely no sense in terms of physics, because the water would fill in the gap... but apparently the force of Mother Frame/Flame caused there to just be a hole there, and I guess it pushes out the water outwards to the rest of the world, causing the aforementioned sea level rising?

And as anyone who's a geek about the series could tell you... we already have seen a giant inexplicable gaping hole before in Enies' Lobby, where there is a gigantic yawning hole in the middle of the ocean where the judiciary buildings were build on top of an island of.

Now the timelines don't exactly match, since Enies Lobby has existed for quite some time, while Mother Frame was implied to be created relatively recently, but the idea that we can draw is that the original Uranus (or whatever Mother Frame is based on) created Enies' Lobby, and Mother Frame is based on it. Or something!

Whatever the case, it raises a lot of questions about the nature of Enies Lobby and Mother Frame, all the while we see a lot of chaos going on in the world. 

And then we cut back to Egghead, where it's being surrounded by a bunch of Marine vessels. One of the cyborg sea beasts attacks the ships, only to get one-shotted with a laser beam from Kizaru. We get a shot of a lot of vice admirals, before we cut to Kizaru eating a bowl of noodles and arguing with Sentomaru on the phone. Sentomaru is clearly trying to use his familiarity with Kizaru to leverage some kind of understanding, but Kizaru is adamant that he has to follow the orders of the government, and refuses to surrender -- though he's not a dick about it. He's like a slightly tired uncle or dad who points out that 'hey, man, you sped on the road, you gotta pay the fine, man'. Except substitute speeding on the road with researching forbidden knowledge, and paying the fine with getting bombarded off the face of the planet. 

Saint Jay Garcia Saturn is also there, of course, and is being debriefed by Vice Admiral Doberman about the situation. We get to hear the Morgans-written piece of propaganda about Luffy storming Egghead to take Vegapunk hostage, while the Marines discuss with Saturn about the reality of the situation and the inferences they are making about CP-0 cutting contact as well as Sentomaru being able to resist. This is a clever way to recap who is on the island and with what faction they're allied with, since this would've been a whole volume away from when we last saw the Straw Hats on Egghead!

And, again, they discuss about how it's been a day since the last time we saw the Straw Hats. Saturn is informed about the researchers and workers that evacuated under the order of Atlas earlier, and... Saturn just very casually orders them to be sunk and killed, just like Ohara. I... I don't think they'll survive since all the good guys are still holed up Egghead?

We then get a call between York and the Gorosei in Mary Geoise, which Kizaru and Saturn also manage to sit in on thanks to a black Den-Den Mushi. York basically confronts the Gorosei for trying to kill her off alongside the other Vegapunks, and she kind of blows in holes in their assumption that she's "also Vegapunk" because it would've been suicide if she also had any kind of interest in the Void Century and tattles about it to the Gorosei themselves.

It still is a dumb thing for York to do to call up the Gorosei and seemingly trust their next words, which is "okay, we'll let you be a Celestial Dragon this time", but it makes sense considering what we learn about York's situation later on.

Ju Peter seems to be in a negotiating mood, talking about a 'request' that they've changed their mind on. Imu really likes the giant orbital death laser, I guess, which is why they're changing their mind about keeping York alive. York and the Gorosei seem to make a deal... and then York goes into full tears and yells at the Gorosei to 'save me, waaaaah!' because she's literally being held at sword-point by Zoro.

And we get a fun dobule-page spread of most of the Straw Hats victorious over a fallen York, actually just hanging out while Zoro holds a sword at York's throat and Usopp holds the Den Den Mushi to force York to talk to the Gorosei. This seems to be kind of a way for them to really confirm the allegiances of York and the Gorosei, with Vegapunk going 'so that's how it is'. Notably, Bonney and Lucci are also both there. Luffy, of course, really doesn't give a shit and is busy eating meat, but the other Straw Hats are starting to get an idea of what's going on. Most excitingly, I am waiting for a potential scene where Luffy picks up the phone and finally confronts the Gorosei impudently the way he did Big Mom so many hundreds of chapters ago during the Fishman Island arc!

I have no doubts that the next couple of chapters will probably be a flashback to how we got here, though I honestly don't think it's too much of a surprise to say 'oh, the Straw Hats and CP-0 combined beat up all the Seraphims and York', and everyone in dange -- Stella Vegapunk and the petrified Franky and co. -- are all restored. A fun way to get back to the swing of things in Egghead for sure. 

Random Notes:

• There has been a lot of hype about the One Piece Netflix adaptation, and I think I'll be watching it eventually? I'm undecided whether I'll do episodic reviews or just do the entire season in a single go. 
• I do adore the little shot of Makino's baby recognizing 'big bro' Luffy! 
• I do find it funny that while in other islands people are panicking about the high tide or sharks entering people's houses, one of Ivankov's okama is complaining that they can't run on the beach. 
• We get to see Doll and the minor character Doberman among the vice-admirals, but everyone else there is new, I think. One of them looks like Oars!
• Doberman is not to be confused with fellow vice admiral Dalmatian. Both are named after dog breeds starting with 'D', but Dalmatian actually has a Zoan and turns into a Dalmatian!
• I do really like that Kizaru points out that everything the Marines destroy is a net loss for the government/Marines, which is technically true. They're there to seize the facility, not detroy it. 
• I do like that Sentomaru, Kizaru and even Saturn are eating during this terse conversation. Saturn is eating a sausage or a long piece of bread stabbed on a knife. I guess he's not as picky as the rest of the Tenryubito about the kind of food he eats?Unless this is one of those Marie Geoise foodstuff. 
• It is weird that Saturn notes that they have 'no more use' for Bonney since she's a 'little girl'. Is Bonney's default age actually much younger than we thought? It is kind of strange that Saturn would say that since he's so gung-ho about murdering civilians who maybe have some knowledge about the Void Century, but Bonney's like "oh well, sucks if we can't kill her I guess". 
• Love that Kizaru's like an old man with a new piece of technology, and some random Marine has to explain to him what the Black Den-Den Mushi strapped to his wrist can do. 
• Robin's the only Straw Hat missing from the two-page spread. She's not the only character missing (Kaku, Stussy and any surviving satellites are also MIA) but since the last time we got all panicky about Robin being missing in a huge celebration chapter was Wano and it amounted to Robin just going around studying history, I doubt she got kidnapped off-screen or whatever. 
• So I guess the mysterious shadow that attacked... Edison? Pythagoras? One of the robot 'Punks, anyway... I guess that's not Saturn and was just York or Caribou or someone.