One Piece 1094 Review: Summoned Spider Yokai

One Piece, Chapter 1094: St. Jaygarcia Saturn, the Godhead of Science and Defense

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What a chapter! After a break week, we return with the grand entrance of one of the potential endgame villains of the series. Some of the earlier parts of the chapter does feel a bit like fluff. On paper, I do enjoy the constant switching back-and-forth of the Pacifista units, but it also happens so quickly that I don't really care all that much since all of what they're doing is just shoot a bunch of generic Marines. It does help to give the conflict a nice sense of scale, for sure. 

Anyway, Atlas manages to take over the Pacifistas at the beginning of the chapter to briefly turn the favour in our guys' favour. We get to see a bit of the Vegatank team discuss about how they're going to rescue Bonney... when Sanji just instantly is able to pinpoint where Bonney is. Sanji is confident in his "lady radar", and I absolutely love the response line from Vegapunk about how it's not scientific at all, but he has faith in Sanji. The hilarious thing is that the 'serious' explanation here is Sanji's usage of his Observation Haki, just spun in a more comedic direction. 

Bonney isn't completely helpless, however. She's assaulted by a bunch of Marines, including a Vice Admiral wielding a gigantic spear tipped with a giant scallop. The weapon of Vice Admiral Scallopspearman (no name given) kind of reminds me of Don Krieg's impractical giant spear-with-a-minitank weapon. Bonney uses an attack called "Near Death Experience", which... causes the Marines to seemingly turn into a skeleton for a single panel before freaking out. Presumably Bonney uses her age-age fruit to briefly show a living person the sensation of their ultimate future when we're all dust and bones? That's frankly rather terrifying, and another fun, creative usage of Bonney's power. 

Vice Admiral Scallopspearman doesn't get named, but the tiny old lady is given a name -- Bluegrass -- and she's revealed to be the user of the Ride-Ride Fruit, able to control any single vehicle she's "riding". This is ridiculous, completely bizarre, and... it reminds me of one of my favourite moments in Enies' Lobby where a bunch of random Marines with Devil Fruits (Very Good, Sharinguru, Shuu) show up one after the other. I love that while these Vice Admirals remain mostly unnamed and one-note, they're showing off random Devil Fruit powers and wacky weapons. 

Bonney freees up a bit at the sight of a Pacifista attacking her, but she gets rescued by Sanji, who rescues Bonney away from the Pacifista as well as the giant Shell-Spear Vice Admiral. 

We cut to Luffy and Kizaru fighting in the Labostratum, and it's kind of interesting that the two are starting to pant. I don't think any of them have the decisive upper hand exactly, but they're starting to lose steam. It's a bigger problem for Luffy, who always had 'cooldown' drawbacks to his super forms. 

Suddenly... everyone reacts. Kizaru, Luffy, Zoro, Lucci, Jinbe, and even some of the Vice Admirals realize that there's an ominous presence arriving. And we get to see the silhoetted form of Jaygarcia Saturn make an announcement that takes control of all the Pacifista units. The Vegapunks get confused and baffled, since only the Gorosei has a higher authority power over the Pacifistas than them. But that must mean...

...and, yes, St. Jaygarcia Saturn arrives.

And he arrives not by walking into the battlefield, or jumping into the battlefield. No, a giant fucking magical circle straight out of Full Metal Alchemist or Doctor Strange just manifests in the ground, crackling lightning. An announcement makes it clear to all the Marines that one of the Gorosei is about to arrive... and all low-ranking Marines have to avert their gaze from the Gorosei on pain of death. 

So that kind of confirms that while most of the world knows that the Gorosei exist, they don't know what they look like. The Gorosei isn't completely secluded from the world since Kizaru and Doberman were conversing in the same room with Saturn, but it's still very interseting to see that there's some measure to this secrecy. One of the Marines still tries to see what's going on, and we get to see a brief shot of Saturn's eyes before that Marine's head just fucking explodes. 

I love this panel where the Vegatank is just rising up the cloud-road while the fiery flames of the summoning circle rage in the background like someone just opened a portal to hell.

And stepping out of the summoning circle is the Highest Authority of the World Government, member of the Five Elder Planets, Defence Science Warrior God... St. Jaygarcia Saturn. 

And he's a big kaiju monster. He's got the massive horns poking out of his head, which we can already see in the silhouette back in the Sabo flashback. His arms are knobbly and gnarled as he puts them above his cane, and he's got the awakened Zoan fire-ribbons around him. His facial hair is rippling somewhat similarly to Gear Fifth Luffy. But the most striking part of the design was when I realize that he's got spider-legs!

So yeah, putting aside all discussion of what powers he might have, he's most certainly an awakened mythical Zoan. The biggest consensus is that he's an ushi-oni, also known as a gyuki, a monstrous oni/yokai with the head of a bull and the body of a spider. I would totally love these Gorosei to be based on a whole lot of more obscure powerful mythical beasts from all over the world!

It's a great debut, by the way, showing everyone reacting to it. Kizaru pew-pew-pews with laser beams and blows up the cloud road. Luffy runs in from the air, buffs up his muscle. Kizaru shoots a beam that spins Luffy around with the momentum, but Luffy just spins around like a goddamn top before unleashing a gigantic punch called the "Gomu Gomu White Star Gun", which took me a while to realize what's going on. Luffy's done the 'seemingly punch through someone's head' that he did to Kaido, only this is a sideways punch. Kizaru actually seems to finally be hurt and is staggering from this, with whited-out eyes and a monologue of 'this isn't good'. But Luffy also disengages from Gear Fifth, so it's a bit of a draw?

And it would've been a badass moment if... well, if the main focus of this chapter isn't building up Jaygarcia Saturn and his demon spider-bull monster form. Saturn watches and internally thinks about 'Nika' as Luffy falls out of the sky. 

The rest of the Bonney rescue team fall to the ground with Vegatank #08 destroyed, and the giant spidery form of Saturn is just looming in the background behind them. Stella Vegapunk and Saturn exchange some words. But then the focus goes to Bonney, who seems to have a flashback to words that were exchanged between Saturn and Vegapunk when Kuma was given the order to be turned into an unfeeling robot. This, presumably, is from the enforced flashback that Bonney saw from Kuma's bubble. And so Bonney grabs a katana, jumps onto Saturn's giant form and just impales him in the chest beard. Cliffhanger!

And... of course Saturn's fine. Bonney hasn't dealt a mortal blow. But what an entry! I'm excited not just to see what St. Saturn can do in a fight, what powers he has... but also what the Egghead incident would turn out to be, and how it relates to Saturn. I do wonder if this is going to be Sabaody Mark 2 with our heroes decimated, or if our heroes would finally bring the wrath of the World Government down on them by killing/severely hurting Saturn? I'm pretty excited!

Random Notes:

• It really is kind of unfortunate for poor Sentomaru that no one seems to care to pick up his charred and battered body, or really even question his status or if he's still alive or not. But everyone wants to rescue Bonney. 
• There is some technobabble I like that Vegapunk casually says about how the 'Vega-tires' of the Vegatank are able to stick to the cloud roads. Love the random explanation, and of course I love the silliness of Vegapunk naming basically everything he has there with Vega-something. 
• I do like that the 'Lady Radar' of Sanji is something that he has been shown doing on-and-off, mostly for comedic effect... but he did manage to come upon the random geishas in trouble in the Wano arc. Sanji's supposed mastery of Observation Haki has always been kind of a 'as you know' informed attribute, unlike Zoro (who uses Armament Haki a lot) and Luffy (who gets to show off all three). Even if it's a backhanded gag, I do like that it has some basis in Sanji's powerset. 
• While Near-Death Experience is presumably just all in the mind... can Bonney actually wind the aging of her targets all the way to the point of death? Is it a limitation of the fruit powers, or just Bonney's own restraint?
• When I saw the magic circle, I thought it was a nautical compass at first, but we get a clearer look at it in later panels. It's not quite the standard 'a bunch of interlocking circles' design seen a lot in shows and movies like Dr. Strange, Full Metal Alchemist or even Fairy Tail, though. 
• Saturn does mention that this is the first time he's 'out in the surface' for a while. I'm not sure what this means, since he's in that Marine ship for the past couple of days. I guess he doesn't count being hidden in a room in a Marine ship as part of the mortal realm?
• Another monstrous giant spider yokai that's a candidate for Saturn's Devil Fruit is the Tsuchigumo, which I remembered in the Nurarihyon no Mago manga as being one of the most supremely powerful yokai in that series. 
• I have to acknowledge that I completely missed the fact that scallop spear conch guy actually transformed into a half-otter state, marking him as another Devil Fruit user in the marines with an otter Zoan fruit.