One Piece 1104 Review: One Punch

One Piece, Chapter 1104: Thank You, Daddy

Bit of a shorter chapter, thanks to the two-page spreads, but it's very effective. Mostly due to the sheer catharsis of seeing that punk Saturn get punched in the face. The first page is kind of filled with a recap and that's a bit unfortunate, I think, but in real life there has been a multi-week break between 1103 and 1104. Not sure if the flashback panels would just look egregious in tankobon format, though. 

There is a rather bizarre bit where time seems to be frozen in the moment that Kuma is jumping up and punching Saturn in the face, with Saturn managing to rattle off three whole sentences about how he's activated the contingency plan. But we get a badass zoom-in to Kuma's ungodly pissed-off face, before his Haki-covered fits slams down onto Saturn in a glorious quasi-two-page spread. 

I mean, in lieu of my usual video game art to make my reviews not a block of text, have this:

Look at that. Glorious.

I'm not sure which panel I like more. Sataurn's face caving in, the badass punch itself, or Kuma's angry gritted-teeth face a page ago. It's all badass. 

And Saturn gets sent flying all the way through some buildings. People panic, and i think this is meant to be a parallel to arguably one of Kuma's biggest roles pre-timeskip, which is the Sabaody archipelago arc... which features an epic punch between Luffy and a Celestial Dragon. 

The pirates there can all move again, and the Straw Hats move to help Bonney. And... I really feel like if there's one thing I wished was done a bit better in these chapters, is the handling of Vegapunk's explanations. Apparently Vegapunk didn't install a bomb, but he did install a self-destruct mechanism, before thinking about it could be "it", a certain quality of the Buccaneer race that Vegapunk doesn't deign to tell the audience. At this point I really don't care if they just went and called it the 'power of love' and Vegapunk sarcastically actually does do that, but... I'm honestly kind of uninvested in this self-destruct bomb thing that I kind of wished it was already handwaved away. 

Far more invested is the shot of Bonney shrinking back to her true age, hugging the pupil-less, mindless but certainly not soulless Bartholomew Kuma, who robotically reaches down to hug him. It's not quite the happy ending goodbye that would be ideal in this scenario, but it's still rather emotional, I think -- she gets to say to the silent, statue-like Kuma about how good of a dad he is, how she saw all the letters, and everything. 

There's an interesting moment where Kizaru mumbles "it's over, isn't it?" which isn't super notable if not for the fact that throughout this whole chapter, his allegiances remain gloriously and frustratingly opaque, fitting with his whole moniker of 'unclear justice'. 

Oh, and Luffy somehow disappeared, in the middle of Saturn yelling "oi, put some cuffs on him" and this megaton punch. Again... IMO not the best way to handle this. 

Saturn stomps back up, missing his right hand and his left horn, and goes full-on Wolverine or something as smoke or miasma or ether of some sort just glorps and swirls around and regenerates his wound. And it's... it's interesting. I think I this kind of Wolverine-style rapid regeneration could be irritating if the story relies on it a bit too much for bullshittery purposes, but if it's limited to just the Gorosei, I wouldn't mind? 

Saturn goes in to pierce Kuma with one of his spider legs, and Sanji zips in and kicks the shit out of that leg away. Franky then zooms in, and unleashes a Franky Radical Beam through Kuma's chest. Gotta love Franky. Saturn just regenerates right after this, and Kizaru finally gets moving and lightspeed-kicks Franky into a building, but it's a pretty cool moment of resistance while it lasts. 

And I suppose Kizaru finally deciding to (maybe) take a stand (perhaps) is the big cliffhanger of this episode. I really find it interesting just how much Kizaru spotlight we got in this arc, and he seems to have picked the side of the government, telling Vegapunk something along the lines of "I should've worn darker sunglasses" when Vegapunk calls him out on his loyalty to the government. It's far, far cooler and more interesting to see where Kizaru's allegiances truly lie, since there's enough hints that he's either losing faith in the government, or at least willing to help his friends (Vegapunk, Bonney and Sentomaru) escape. 

In contrast, the final page is Saturn demanding a Buster Call to completely annihilate the island. And... it's a super Buster Call, and I'm not saying it's not badass, but at the moment it's Saturn and Kizaru that I really do want to see do something, not a rain of cannonballs. 

Random Notes:

• My schedule's still very messy, so other reviews are going to be pretty... slow. I do promise to try and get the Pokemon DLC done before the end of February. I will probably get some 'Review Em All' Pokemon articles up. It mostly is just watching TV and playing games that is a huge time sink that I am not able to really do at the moment. 
• A huge question that I probably would've spent a couple of paragraphs talking about in the main body of the review: Where is the Giant Robot? What about Blackbeard's crew? What about Caribou? What about Robin, who's still MIA? Any or none of these could've accounted for Luffy's random disappearance.
• For how so many people expected Franky to get the spotlight in this arc and got disappointed... at least he got to laser-beam a Gorosei in the face. 
• There is something to be said about how Saturn's influence to keep Sanji and Franky down seems to have disappeared after Kuma hit him. Is it not a Haki power, but maybe something more akin to Doflamingo's strings?