One Piece 1114 Review: The First Pirate

One Piece, Chapter 1114: The Wings of Icarus

This review came in a fair bit late, and... I'm just really busy, so there's not been much time for writing. I do have some older-written stuff that's been popping up here and there -- Jujutsu Kaisen season 1 anime reviews and some Pokemon content -- but things are going to be busy for the foreseeable future. 

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But we have One Piece!

And this chapter, if we summarize is, is honestly very simple. Vegapunk talks about a bunch of stuff in the background in his long-winded way. It's essentially a lot of building up hype to follow up on the whole 'the world will sink' stuff, with some notes about how he knew that the sea levels are going to rise... before finally dropping the big bombshell that he's going to talk about the Void Century and Joy Boy, the First Pirate.

But I love it. This is where world-building for 1114 chapters and twenty-five years or whatever pays off, becuase there's such a huge stable of random locations and characters that Oda draws from to show the different reactions to specific aspects of Vegapunk's message. 

We start off in Marine HQ, with a whole lot of Marines being in chaos, and a shot of Akainu in a rather rare moment of simmering pissed-off-ness instead of his usual boiling temper. And then we cut to Mock Town, Jaya, where just like how they reacted to Luffy or the monkey bros, the citizens of Mock Town are just laughing and mocking Vegapunk's message because they are a town with no imagination. We then cut to Water Seven, where the fandom has pointed out as a bit of a foreshadowing for the whole 'sinking world' thing, and we get to see Paulie getting confused because while Water Seven knows all about being flooded, it's not quite the same as the world sinking. 

And then we cut to perhaps everyone's favourite part of this chapter, Doflamingo and Magellan! Doflamingo is just laughing and mocking everyone, and Magellan notes how the sea level rising by just one meter had wreaked some havoc in some cells in Impel Down. Doflamingo notes how a mere five meters would've wiped out so many other cities in the world, before dropping the bombshell about how they should all move to "much higher ground", obviously a nod to how Marie Geoise, home of the Celestial Dragons, is located atop the giant mountain expanse of the Red Line. 

We get a very brief scene to another underwater location, the Ryugu Kingdom of Fishman Island, and everyone's just confused... 

Before we jump back to Egghead. The Marines are still kind of emboldened, yelling about how Vegapunk is lying and shit, but we get shots of the expressions of the Gorosei and I particularly love Ethan's super angry expression here. I like that at least two of them had human faces so we can really tell just how pissed off they are, and they've grown desperate, too, with one of them yelling about how they should just destroy all life-forms.

There's a brief short scene of York running around with like a bazooka or something, muttering about just how much information Stellapunk is going to tell them, before we cut away to Alabasta, and then again to a random shot of Charlotte Smoothie and Mont D'or from the Big Mom Pirates. It's just Vegapunk talking about the aforementioned prediction of the 'earthquake' and the sea-level rising after Lulusia got utterly atomized into nothingness. 

There's a shot of a flooded location which I don't actually know if it's somewhere we're supposed to recognize, but then we cut away to Tonjit! Tonjit from Long Ring Long Land, who's on stilts, and that is also an arc where we had to deal with tides causing huge rises in the ocean levels -- the whole reason Tonjit and his horse was stranded in one of the islands. We get a brief shot of Aokiji also looking pensive. 

And as Vegapunk's words goes into talking about how the earthquake isn't natural, how he only ever wanted peace... we get to see Saturn fighting against the Straw Hats. Lilith's joined in with a pair of guns, and holy fucking shit, Tony Tony Chopper! How tough is that Guard Point? He's clearly straining in that panel, but he's tanked at least two stabs from Saturn's spider-legs! That's just such a fun panel, with brook yohohoho-ing around and freezing part of Saturn's face, and Nami summoning a thunderbolt like a laser beam down on Saturn's face. Robin's even joining in the fight, using her spiderweb to grab her allies, and we get yet another shot of Chopper holding off like three or four legs. God damn, Chopper. 

But Saturn just blasts everyone else apart, it seems, because he scuttles off towards the power plant after a mental discussion with Mars. Vegapunk's narration talks about his 'first sin', about flying too close to the sun as he tries to look for a source of endless, eternal energy. 

As Saturn breaks into the main lab, we get to see the Mother Flame, which is... a giant sci-fi vault with what appears to be a small flame suspended in sci-fi liquid. It's all so fancy like an old comic book, and Saturn just scuttles in, reverts into his human mode and just bashes random computer around with his walking stick. It sure is a revelation, even if I personally think we lack any real context for me to be emotional. 

Oh, the Iron Giant is still being bombarded by the Marines, but it's not budging. Eh. I wouldn't be surprised if the broadcast snail is actually inside the giant, considering the focus we got with Stella Vegapunk interacting with it earlier in the arc. 

As Dorry, Broghy and Luffy escape from Topman... who's on fire and breathing fire for some reason, Vegapunk's message starts mentioning the Void Century, and we get a very ominous cutaway to Imu with the "..." which... yeah, I'm not sure what to make of this. As Vegapunk gives a random talk about the Void Century, the Celestial Dragons in Marie Geoise are yelling and complaining about the very bitch-basic revenge they will do to Vegapunk... but interestingly, attention is drawn on Charlos's sister Shalria for some reason. 

Vegapunk continues to talk about the Poneglyphs, and we get our first present-day appearance of Jaguar D. Saul, going al dereshishishi on some random forest in Elbaf or something. Rock on, Saul. We cut to Orange Town with a little girl reading the history of the world, while Mayor Boodle and the wonderful dog that is Chouchou is just playing around. We get a brief cut to the Kuja Pirates in Amazon Lily as Vegapunk continues to talk about how his second 'sin' was researching everything n the Poneglyphs. We get a shot to Robin also going "..." and a confirmation that all the Straw Hats with her are alive and well. Even Chopper, who isn't even injured or anything. Damn, Tony, that's a bigger feat, relative to my perception of you, compared to anything the Monster Trio's going to pull off in this arc. 

We get a page showing how Edison's did some kind of stuff with the sky cloud generator, extending the clouds so they could reach the seas. This little subplot hasn't really been super interesting with everything else that's going on, but okay, sure.

And we finally cut off to Vegapunk talking about the Void Century, with the disclaimer that he's not going to tell us the whole story (Oda needs something to tell in a Robin-focused chapter eventually, after all) and talks about how this story is about Joy Boy, the First Pirate, born in the Void Century. And we get the first real confirmation that Joy Boy and Nika isn't the same person, but just shared the same characteristics of a stretchy body. As all of this is going on, Luffy unleashes a Gear Fifth attack on Topman and his hand is wibbly-wobbling in pain, while the giants laugh at Luffy's antics, which I think is honestly just so Monkey D. Luffy where he doesn't really care about all the Lore Piece and Politics Piece. He just wants to protect his friends and have fun!

And... I'm not sure if we're going to go on a full Void Century flashback, I really don't. But I am really waiting to see just what we can get out of this. We're finally getting some payoffs to stuff built up for over a decade... and I honestly am just in for the ride!

Random Notes:

• I can't say I'm super invested in it, but the cover story has Kin'emon and Yamato discuss the route that Yamato is going to take through Wano, and she's apparently going to go and lay Yasuie's katana to rest. 
• It's an interesting bit of detail, but Mock Town was ruled by the Doflamingo Family, and the Den Den Mushi has a Doflamingo sigil on its shell. It's not something that's particularly important to anything going on, but kudos to Oda for still including this in a series of chapters that drew his attention to so many parts of his world. 
• I love Doflamingo as much as any One Piece fan, but I've always felt Magellan is underappreciated so seeing him in full really makes me happy!
• Also very convenient that we get to see members of the Big Mom Pirates, but they're in such a close-up that we don't even know where they are. Are they on a ship? Are they in Tottland? 
• I don't think I have the time or energy to review them, but I've been watching some of the Egghead episodes and the animations are super beautiful. 
• Obviously the title refers to the myth of Icarus and Daedalus from Greek mythology, but this gets a bit silly when you remember that we've got a random minor villain from Fishman Island called Ikaros Much, who is also a reference to that myth. But with squid puns, because ika = squid. 
• There are random bits written on the Mother Flame tank, like S-108 (108 being a number very commonly found in mythologies and religions; Zoro references 108 a lot) and A&Mu (some people think this is a reference to either Imu, the lost continent of Mu, or a wordplay on atom/atomu). 
• God bless Orange Town, I love that the pet shop has a giant straw hat on top of the roof, and that the Den Den Mushi has Chouchou's face on its shell. I love the Orange Town arc.