One Piece 1108 Review: Flatline

One Piece, Chapter 1108: Attention, World

What an eventful chapter!

We start off by following up on Caribou's meeting with Van Augur and Catarina Devon. Van Augur very sensibly doesn't trust the creepy swamp-man that came out of nowhere, though it is worth noting that Augur actually knows who 'Wet-Haired' Caribou is. Caribou rapid-fire claims that he's got very valuable information for Blackbeard, but he's also smart enough not to tell Augur and Catarina outright. Maybe mentioning something about the Ancient Weapons but not revealing them outright would've guaranteed you a passage there, Caribou my man. 

We get to see a bit more of the Marines fighting against the Pacifistas, some of which start using the Bubble Shields (which I completely forgot about), and I do like how conflicted some of the Vice Admirals are. Going back to how the Vice Admirals were portrayed in Enies' Lobby and Marineford, where everyone is an interchangeable stern-faced, stoic badass who's there to do orders, I do like that the Vice Admirals that show up here are actually portrayed as people. Some of them are being stern professionals, but some are questioning what's going on. 

After Red King last chapter, and Doll being a recurring character over the early Egghead island chapters, we also get names for all of the Vice Admirals that arrived on Egghead, which... I'm a big enough dork to care about, and because this is my review, this means you guys get to see me geek out about Vice Admirals! So here's a listing of all the Vice Admirals name-dropped in this chapter...

• Bluegrass, the old lady with the Ride-Ride Fruit. She's a bit more pragmatic, not wanting to hurt Marine forces by wiping out the Pacifistas (which she mentions she could wipe out by 'cutting loose).
• Hound, the most boring-looking Vice Admiral design-wise, who's a pretty-boy with great lipstick game and fancy glasses. Hound is perhaps the most vocal about going against orders, asking if they could stop the Buster Call with all the chaos going on. 
• Guillotine, the guy with the super-long beard and like a sickle attached to his head, rants about how Vegapunk has betrayed them and there's no way they can stop now. I think he's shown throwing around that crescent-knife on his head before. 
• Doberman is a character we've seen a couple of times before. He was bloodthirsty in Enies' Lobby, and he showed up a fair bit in the background in Marineford. And, rather naturally, he takes the lead here in demanding all Vice Admirals in hunting down and murdering the shit out of Jewelry Bonney. 
• Tosa is the big guy who mentioned Rokushiki in chapter 1090... and appropriately enough, he attempts to use a Shigan technique to murder Bonney. More on him later. 
• Urban is the guy with Oars-looing tusks. Nothing much to note here other than the fact that his name, in fact, doesn't have anything to do with Oars.
• Pomsky is the guy with a gigantic butt-chin and mustache that would make The Tick proud. He's the otter Zoan that briefly showed off his powers in 1094. He's a bit unperturbed with Tosa's line going dead, and is heading to the island next. 

Anyway, Tosa is the first to move in to attack on Doberman's orders, about to use a Haki'd-up 'Ten Barrel Shigan' to attack Bonney and Franky. And... I really would've liked to see the other Straw Hats do something against the Vice Admirals, I really do. Even if Franky doesn't defeat Tosa, I really wished he had done like a Strong Right or a Radical Beam against Tosa. Characters like Franky, Robin, Brook and Chopper so very rarely get a proper, nice showcase of their abilities, and with Franky specifically I really am kind of disappointed at how minimal his involvement is in the Egghead Island arc. 

But instead, I almost like the alternative, where a giant axe just slams and one-shots Tosa onto the ground. 

And here comes Dorry and Brogy! I love the little nod to Oda's own running joke about bounty postesr. Apparently, Dorry and Brogy actually did try to look up other members of the Straw Hats that had joined ever since Little Garden... and all of Franky's posters hasn't shown his current body. Franky's first poster showed his pre-timeskip design; his next poster showed the Franky Shogun; and his current poster for some reason shows the Thousand Sunny. 

Franky asks Dorry and Brogy if they've got a grudge against his captain, but the giants only have gratitude for Luffy. Bonney name-dropping Luffy and Sanji's name causes the giants to get all happy and supportive and shit. And... you know, I just... I just really like Dorry and Brogy. They've got such a cheerful, happy energy that just carries you along, y'know? It feels like such a 'One Piece' thing, too, that all these giants are just walking around with giant smiles on their faces. Dorry and Brogy go on to help Luffy and company, while the other giant goons carry Franky's group to the ship. It's at this point that Franky recognizes Dorry and Brogy as the 'masters' that Usopp keep talking about. 

While all of this is going on, Vice Admirals Urban and Pomsky react to Tosa's line going dead, while Bluegrass uses the Ride-Ride Fruit to subjugate one of the mecha Sea Beasts and head on to press the attack with Doll doing a cool, badass-character standing pose on top of the giraffe-serpent. Doll also very casually drops the fact that her old commanding officer was a giant, which Bluegrass immediately recognizes as Saul. 

Luffy and Sanji argue with Vegapunk, who keeps claiming that he can't be moved, while Saint Jaygarcia Saturn scuttles into view... and good god, they made him look scary. I think he's gone into a full beast-mode form or something, because he's much larger than before and at no point in this chapter do we see his usual humanoid hands or his cane. And -- the chapter also points out -- his eyes. 

Throughout all of Saturn's appearances, his eyes have always been dismissive, arrogant, focused. But here? Especially in the two panels where he looms in the distance over Sanji and Luffy? His eyes are dilated and the lines around his eyes are darkened and monstrous. 

Even more creepy is that Saturn has just... stopped talking. With how chatty he was when talking to Vegapunk, Bonney, and the Blackbeard Pirates before, Saturn's just completely silent now. He doesn't even offer any "..." or "!" reactions. He's just entirely silent as he scuttles in and attacks our heroes. Sanji also mentions that Saturn has "given up all pretense of pretending to look human", mentioning how strange his eyes look, and how his spider legs are coated in poison. It's acidic anime poison, too, and Saturn demonstrates this by literally dissolving a tree by poking it with a spider leg. 

I'm not sure if this is part of Saturn's powers or if it's just stylistic, but the way that Saturn's giant spider legs are shooting and demolishing the ground where Luffy, Sanji and Vegapunk are at looks almost as if they were made of rubber. 

Anyway, as they dodge Saturn's assault, Kizaru (who's MIA for the last 2 pages) just zips in, sucker-kicks Sanji in the chin, and then stabs the shit out of Vegapunk's abdomen with his lightsaber. It's... it's actually a rather terrifying expression on Vegapunk's face. Between Saturn, Vegapunk and Luffy later on, Oda's firing on all cylinders with drawing facial expressions this chapter. It is unfortunate for Sanji, who was kind of set up to fight Kizaru last chapter, but between the Zoro/Lucci nonsense it really did feel like the Egghead arc isn't particularly big on setting up proper fights.

And we get one of the most badass moments that Gear Fifth Luffy has ever gotten, as he goes gigant form and holds back Saturn and Kizaru. He grabs Kizaru like he's King Kong or something, crushing the poor admiral so hard that he's coughing blood, while Saturn's being held in place like someone stopping a large dog. We do get a nice zoom-in on Saturn's eyes right before a panel showing Luffy's lunatic grinning face... but the coolest panel has to be the serious Gear Fifth Luffy, with his face downcast and in shadow with pursed lips. That's badass. One of the biggest complains is that Gear Fifth does make a lot of the tension leak out of these action scenes, but I am willing to give Gear Fifth the benefit of the doubt if Oda can give us moments like this -- and perhaps extend it a bit further -- where Luffy can feel a bit more unsettling with his Gear Fifth expressions. 

Meanwhile, the final page is... is rather interesting. Sanji tells Vegapunk not to 'die on him', and then mentions that he's 'smiling' about something... which, as Oden and Kuma and Roger and Whitebeard and Ace have shown us, smiling upon facing death is a very Will of D. thing to do. 

And I do believe Stella Vegapunk have died this chapter. There might be arguments and I might be proven wrong next week, but we do see a monitor going to a flatline, and what seemed to be a dead man's switch to happen as Vegapunk's recorded message starts being broadcasted, seemingly to the entire world, as he, the Greatest and Most Humble Scientific Genius, is ready to tell everyone about the Truth of the World.

Whatever that truth of the world is, I am very excited to find out what it's all about. The Gorosei's true nature? The Ancient Kingdom? Devil Fruits? The golem? The Void Century? Imu? Whatever it is, it's going to be a combination of Whitebeard's "The One Piece is Real" and I can totally see this as something huge that shook the world as the narrator have promised us.

Honestly, this has been a great chapter. I want Vegapunk to die, because throughout the flashbacks I really do think that he's got a great character arc, going from someone who callously rejects Dragon for not having the funds to hire him, to someone who's openly defying the government for all the shit they've put him, Kuma and Bonney through. I am always of the proponent of having meaningful deaths in these late-series arcs, so I'm definitely waiting excitedly for what Vegapunk's final message would be!

Random Notes:

• How terrible is Caribou's epithet, on a side-note? He could've had such a cool serial-killer name, like "Caribou of the Living Burials" or "Swamp King" Caribou or "Death Tongue" Caribou or "Human Trafficker" Caribou. But no, the most notable thing about him, apparently, is his fucking wet hair. 
• People have pointed out that Caribou's whole 'swamp dimension' thing might actually be based on Blackbeard's Black Vortex attack, in the same way that Bartolomeo homages Luffy. 
• I do really like that we've got Doberman as a consistent character archetype between both Egghead and our previous Buster Call, Enies' Lobby. 
• Between Doberman, Tosa, Hound and Pomsky (a pomeranian/husky hybrid) and Dalmatian (who's not here) there are a bunch of Vice Admirals named after dogs, huh?
• Apparently, Dorry and Brogy are very stealthy, considering neither Tosa nor Franky's group realized that there were even giants running around. 
• Dorry mentions of hearing the name Vegapunk from 'that scholar'. People speculate that this is an Oharan survivor, either Clover or Robin's parents or whoever, but I honestly think the simplest answer is the right one and it's just another reference to Saul -- who I assume would have became a scholar after recovering so many books from Ohara. 
• The giants are a bit familiar with Sky Islands, too, mistaking Franky's comment about them being 'above us' as them being on a Sky Island. It's been so long, but during the Skypiea arc, there was a mention of a 'proper' way to get to the Sky Islands without using the insanity that is the Knock-Up Stream. 
• Is Uta on the cover page because her movie also features a (much more malign) plot to broadcast something all over the world?
• Vegapunk does mention a reason as to why he didn't tell Bonney about the whole command override thing -- he wanted to keep it a secret until Bonney's a bit older, since she'll be a target for the rest of her life. That... that doesn't really mean Vegapunk couldn't have told Bonney like, right after the Marines took control of the Pacifistas!
• There is a theory, apparently, that Kizaru's not actually evil and he's 'cauterizing' Vegapunk's wound... but between the flatline and his willingness to murder Bonney and Kuma together last chapter, I really don't think the 'good Kizaru' theories are going to pan out. Which is a shame. There is admittedly some long-shots about this, but I do rather enjoy all the discussions about where Kizaru's "Unclear Justice" is taking him. 
• No real idea about why Saturn's super-silent. Does Saturn have some sort of an imperfect awakening, like the Awakened Jailer Beasts, or Monster Point Chopper? 
• There is some great Kamen Rider Build energy with how Vegapunk identifies himself both as the 'greatest' but also 'most humble' scientist in the world.