One Piece 1111 Review: Home Run

One Piece, Chapter 1111: The Sun's Shield

The chapter starts off with St. Marcus Mars, the big bad monster bird, bursting through the Frontier Dome and just coiling into scene. It's Jinbe that reacts first to this, actually panicking at the sheer power radiating off of the Gorosei. And, mind you, Jinbe has been very dismissive of Big Mom before. 

And, rather impressively, Rob Lucci stands back up, all bloodied and cut up, but still willing to fight. Jinbe actually has to wrestle Zoro back to sanity, launches a Fishman Karate move to blast the surroundings, before he zooms off with Zoro in tow. This... this sequence really felt like a bit of a blue-ball, and I really did feel like just as Luffy/Kizaru was a bit truncated here and there, I kind of wanted something a bit more expansive in terms of this fight. But for what it's worth, it is inconclusive. I would still say that Zoro won the fight since he doesn't seem to be too injured, but I think people were expecting a one-shot or something. 

But screw that noise, what's cool is Marcus Mars, this giant demon bird, looming over Rob Lucci and demanding to know the location of York. This has some real strong 'legendary bird Pokemon' vibes, honestly, and that's a pretty cool panel. Lucci delivers a report with the efficiency of a 8.30 a.m. boardroom meeting, just rattling off everything about his foes, their locations, their numbers, their motivations, even the timeline. 

Mars praises Lucci... but it's made very abundantly clear that he views Lucci as being useful the way I would view the tablet that I'm writing this review on. It's nice that my tablet is working the way it should, but I'm not going out of the way to help it the way I would an actual human being. 

And while Mars praises Lucci, Lucci calls out and asks for a request -- spare his partner Kaku. Mars does reply, but it's such a badass villain line. "It's hard to spare a single insect when you're exterminating the hive."

Yeah, I do have the feeling that while it's a lot more abrupt that Kizaru's more gradual buildup, Rob Lucci might defect sooner rather than later. It's also really worth noting that we still haven't gotten a proper payoff for the "CP-9 Independent Report" cover story, which, I keep reminding people, ended with Lucci refusing to serve the government during the timeskip era. 

We get a short scene of Dorry and Brogy being all happy at being reunited with Luffy, and... I actually really like the subsequent lines of dialogue. We do start off with Dorry and Brogy fanboying a bit about Luffy's newfound Sun God status. Luffy is literally a god to these guys! Luffy, obviously, doesn't give a shit about it, but while Dorry and Brogy acknowledge it, they also state that their reason of showing up here is because it's Luffy, their buddy, not because he is the incarnation of the Sun God they worship. 

Dorry pulls out a damn warhorn and blows into it, signalling the retreat for the Giant Warriors. As one last bit of figurative middle finge, I absolutely love the comment made by one of the nameless Giant Warrior minions saying that it's not even worth the time to pillage Marine vessels since they don't have loot. 

Topman Warcury, Godhead of Justice and All Things Pork, decide to blow a warhorn of his own... and unleashes a booming, gigantic Conqueror's Haki infused scream that knocks out some random Marines in the ships nearby. In one of the more fun Gear Fifth moment, it knocks off all of Luffy's features other than his pants. This includes his scars, and there's a panel of him holding his chest scar and his face scar and pasting them back like stickers. 

Topman then, uh... spins around in the air and then slams down and clashes against Dorry and Brogy. Interestingly, his tusks turn into blades, which seems to be yet another 'weird' power, perhaps similar to Saturn's people-holding ability? Dorry and Brogy block it with a combo attack called Sun Shield Svalinn. This is also when Dorry and Brogy talk back to Topman, saying that they're helping Luffy for the simple reason that they're his buddies.  

They then bash Topman away with an attack called 'Split Skylda', knocking the piggy down. Saturn finally decides to attack again, unleashing a stream of poison bullet spits. 

And in the span of time that the high-pressure bullet spit-bombs were launched, Luffy recognizes what they are, and in one of the most Tom & Jerry moments, he grabs a tree, uses his teeth as a grinder to turn the palm tree into a fucking giant baseball bat, gets a paintbrush and a bucket to paint it black, gets a baseball cap, and whacks the bullets back towards the Gorosei. 

Remember when people were freaking out that Luffy can 'materialize' a pair of goggles? Apparently he's now capable of moving at the Speed of Comedy. The bullets get launched back towards the Gorosei, creating several miniature mushroom clouds and Luffy freaks out at this. I'm not sure if it's his toon force powers that turned the bullets destructive, or if Saturn has different kinds of poison? 

And as the three Gorosei glorp back and regenerate from the damage (Ju Peter's there, after being MIA the entire chapter), Luffy and the giants escape. Interestingly, the giants note that they've never heard of a race or ability that can grant people regeneration or immortality powers. 

We get a shot of all the different groups running towards the Giants' ship, but interestingly, Bonney and Franky's group are blocked by three Vice Admirals -- Pomsky (the otter guy), Red King (the chins guy) and Guillotine (who has a blade on his head). Franky, do something. You don't get any big lore moments in the Vegapunk arc, but at least take down one of the minor antagonists, man. 

Mars has found York, who's freaking out at the sight of the demon bird. Meanwhile, the other Marines gather around Kizaru and try and get him up, but he's just literally so emotionally damaged that he can't do so. It's a very interesting character journey we've had for the Admiral with the most unclear motivations, and knowing that he's killed Vegapunk seems to have affected him deeply. I am curious to see where this all leads at the end of the day. 

Also, the Iron Giant is finally moving. The Marines spot it, and it's mumbling 'forgive me, Joy Boy', but, uh... I have to confess that I don't really care all that much about this particular side-plot when everything else is so much more chaotic and fun. 

Random Notes:

• Leading up to this chapter, a lot of people have been hyping themselves up for 'Chapter 1111 is going to be the Zoro chapter' because of some number reasoning or other, and I'm actually happy that we get none of it. I thought that while it's cool whenever the numbers happen to land this way or that, it was kind of obvious at some points in the story when Oda is rushing or stretching things out to hit a 'milestone' number that's a mutiple of 50.
• Lucci surviving isn't the most out-there idea, and I don't even mind the fact that Rob Lucci and Zoro is around the same level of fighter. It's just that the portrayal jumps from "Luffy all but one-shots Lucci" to a mostly-offscreen fight against Zoro that I think makes the portrayal of Lucci's relative power level feel a bit off. 
• It does make you wonder just why Rob Lucci is able to identify Mars's itsumade demon bird form as his superior. Does he know what the Gorosei's beast modes look like? Is it just the voice?
• Interestingly, Dorry and Brogy don't actually recognize the Gorosei other than being "World Government big-shots", but it is understandable considering they're stuck in Little Garden for a while... and even discounting that, I don't think our two giant Viking warlords particularly care about reading the newspaper. 
• Small Hattori cameo! He gets to flap-flap around and gaze upon the wonder of the biggest bird of all. 
• Sanji apparently did an offscreen debriefing of Dorry and Brogy, telling them to tell Luffy about the retreat plan. 
• For what it's worth, Luffy is also intent on retreating, actually telling Dorry and Brogy that their main priority is to run. Which is surprisingly goal-oriented for Luffy, most of all Gear Fifth Luffy.
• Topman's piggy form has two pairs of tusks. Oink-oink. 
• Topman's Conqueror Haki is basically a confirmation that, yes, the Gorosei have Haki. I do really like this speculation game where the Gorosei is shown to be so different that we're spending some time trying to figure out what of the powers we normally take for granted in One Piece actually apply to them. 
• Svalinn in Nordic mythology is a giant shield placed in front of the sun by the Aesir gods to protect the world from the heat radiating from it. Skylda is a Nordic word meaning 'duty'. 
• The '56' on Luffy's baseball bat and helmet can be read as "Go-mu'. Also, apparently baseball exists in the One Piece world. 
• Is that how you make a black blade? Get someone with Sun God powers to produce bullshit magic paint buckets and paint your weapon? The more you know! 
• We're going on a rather massive 3-week break, but I'm super-busy in April so it lines up rather well for me.