One Piece 1117 Review: Fastball Special

One Piece, Chapter 1117: A-

Due to some scheduling issues and me wanting to give this chapter some time to breathe in my head, I ended up waiting until the official Viz translations come out due to the very... interesting cliffhanger to this chapter. It features worldplay, but is it English wordplay or Japanese wordplay or is it just a random sentence particle? I decided that everyone and their mother had some kind of idea on what this 'mo' could be, which, just like the 'D', could basically be anything and everything and nothing at all. So I will acknowledge that it's exciting that we get another literal breadcrumb of something related to the greater meta-plot of One Piece, but otherwise that's mostly what I'm going to say about the enigmatic "Mo".

The VIZ official translation goes for the 'sentence particle' theory instead, and has it be an interrupted "a-" instead of the beginning of an a actual word. Which... okay, that's where we're going with, and it really could be anything like "within you there is a traitor" or "within you there is a saviour" or a sun god or a leader or a pirate king or whatever it is. I'm really not going to speculate too much of this, other thana mentioning that we probably should be working under the assumption of the accuracy of the Viz translation where this is concerned.

We start off in Pirate Island, which... allow me to indulge myself and go on a tangent here. We get a reaction of people reacting to getting treasure from under the sea, which is all fine and good... but eagle-eyed viewers looked at a strangely-dressed man in the background and... holy shit, that's Pearl. Pearl of the Krieg pirates, just hanging out in the background exactly like his brief cameo in the Netflix show. And shit, that's Gin! Gin, but he's traded his tonfas for a sword! And next to him is... well, he doesn't look like Don Krieg, not with that super-long chin and long hair, but the armour does match! 

That's a cameo I didn't expect, and truthfully I wouldn't even expect. With the obvious exception of Buggy, Oda's been very elusive at showing the villains of the East Blue Saga ever since we moved into the Grand Line, with Arlong and Kuro both still being MIA ever since their respective arcs, and Morgan only showing up in cover stories. 

There is a small segment of the fandom that is super invested in Gin in particular coming back and getting some resolution to his character arc. I've always thought that this wasn't necessary since I felt like Gin's story was wrapped up quite well in the Baratie arc, but it is always nice to see cameos from older characters. I do find it interesting that they've found their way into the Grand Line, and apparently from what the panel implies they've thrown their lot in with the Blackbeard Pirates. I doubt that Don Krieg and company would be particularly a threat to our heroes, but it's nice to have some named pirates on the side of the enemy for whenever we have a big-scale war. Don Krieg could fight like, Leo or Ideo or someone, y'know? It's neat. 

We then cut away to the Saruyama Alliance from the Jaya arc, with Montblanc Cricket and the two monkey brothers being quite excited about the prospect of diving down, exploring and finding a whole ton of treasure. God bless the Saruyama Alliance, I do really like that their random role as divers makes them rather suitable to react to this. 

We get to see the Marines' GS hospital, where Koby, Hibari, Helmeppo, Prince Grus and Kujaku are kind of discussing the sheer amount of information overload they have. They're also all injured but alive, and we... randomly cut away to X-Drake, who actually didn't die like that last scene implied in Wano. Unlike other death copouts such as Pell or Pound, though, I actually do think Drake's story hasn't properly gotten a satisfying conclusion. While I highly doubt Drake would win in the competition against around 300 other secondary characters in terms of screentime, it's nice that he at least might have a chance to complete his character arc. 

Also, we finally, FINALLY see Smoker after Tashigi and the rest of the prominent Marines have shown up. I think this marks the last major character that needs to be reacting to this message? Smoker's on his wacky smoke-ATV-bike thing, and is just on top of some unspecified sea with the caption mentioning that he's in the 'New World' and nothing else. That's... you know what? I'm just glad he shows up. 

We take a break from the rest of the world to cut back to Egghead. The rest of the Straw Hats on board the Thousand Sunny comment about how they are about to launch the ship, and just need the rest of their teammates to gather. Jinbei and Zoro are almost there... but they're at the heels of a monster horse. A skeleton monster horse. A skeleton samurai Gandhi monster horse. 

It doesn't really feel quite as apparent as the sandworm or the demon bird, but yeah, seeing Jinbei and Zoro next to Ethanbaron's Bakotsu beast mode really highlights the size... especially when Ethanbaron prepares to slice the Thousand Sunny in half. He's almost bigger than the ship! 

And then we get what every Zoro fan and their mother has been demanding... a clash between Zoro and Ethanbaron! Swordsman versus swordsman! Jinbei pulls off what we in the X-Men fandom call the 'Fastball Special', using a Fishman Jujutsu attack to launch Zoro before he unleashes the post-timeskip version of the attack he used to slice the sea train in half (the second-coolest Zoro moment pre-timeskip for me, only really beat by nothing happened)... Nitoryu: Rashomon. It's called the Restful Paradise: Rashomon. 

And as Zoro's two swords clashes with Ethanbaron's single sword, the two warriors react to each other's blades and realize that it's a Kitetsu sword. This has been a fan theory far longer than honestly almost anything in the series, but it's finally all but confirmed that Ethanbaron's sword is the Shodai Kitetsu!

The clash knocks both warriors away from each other, without much of a conclusion. The scene ends with Jinbei catching Zoro, and Zoro yelling for the ship to cast off. 

We've got a bunch of the Vice Admirals like Hound and Urban yelling at the Marines to continue attacking the 'fossil pirates' that are the Giant Warriors, but then they start fighting back -- one giant is dual-wielding flintlock pistols and I find that hilarious but awesome. And just as much as I love the original entrance of Dorry and Brogy into this arc, I love the quasi-dual-page spread of the generic giant warriors just bursting out of their own ship and attacking the Marines. One of them is eating a hunk of meat, another one seems like he's rising out of the ocean like some kind of a sea demon...

And surprisingly, we get some fight-back from the Marines. Bluegrass arrives with the Ride Ride Fruit'd cyborg sea monster and laser-beams a hole into the giants' ship. Doll, who has been MIA for a while, jumps in and unleashes a Haki attack called "Rock and Roll" that one-shots a giant that I think is Oimo?

Luffy, Dorry and Brogy are still running away from Topman, but then they realize that the giant demon pig is gone. They discuss this for a brief moment before they continue to run again. And... we get a pretty cool panel of four of the Gorosei looming in their beast or half-beast modes around the Iron Giant.

Vegapunk, who has been recapping a bit of his message, finally ends it with "to those around the world who bear the Will of D, among you there is a-" before this gets cut by giant piggy-pig Topman rushing in and knocking the Iron Giant away, seemingly cutting off the transmission. We get some shots of some of the bearers of the will of D, as well as those connected to them. We get Monkey D. Dragon going "...", which seems to be the only thing Dragon can do. Sabo notes his brothers, Portgas D. Ace and Monkey D. Luffy. Koby thinking of the two Monkey D's, Luffy and Garp. Marshall D. Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard, reacts to it. Bepo, right-hand bear of Trafalgar D. Water Law, also calls for his captain. And lastly, Nefertari D. Vivi, who might not know that she's a D, also yells as the transmission cuts out. 

And... well, the manga is kind of ambiguous whether it's the act of Topman attacking the Iron Giant or the random shot of York seemingly shutting something down in the office being the cause. I... I obviously still want a bit more, the more we can get the better, but I also wouldn't mind if this is the end of Vegapunk's message. Over the past couple of chapters we've got a lot... and more importantly, the world in-universe got a lot of stuff that we as readers either already know or have taken for granted, but are world-breaking news to the populace.

Pretty good chapter. I wanted to wait and I did wait, and I think it's a bit nicer to review it without a shred of ambiguity. 

Random Notes:

• I intentionally took a bit longer to write this chapter because I wanted to calm down about the "Mo" speculation and, well, basically end up at some conclusion, even if that conclusion is "no one can guess what this is, there's too many possibilities over multiple languages". 
• Cover story: Yamato's journey through the whatsits and whatnots... she visits Nekomamushi and Hyogoro, who's taken over the yakuza. Okay, neat. 
• Yes, Don Krieg gets the Treasure Cruise art. Whenever possible, I want to use random characters who most likely won't get the chance for me to ever use in a relevant way. 
• Other speculations that I actually do find probably when "mo-" was thought to be the word was "monster" and "monkey"... which is immediately disproven due to the particle 'mo' being written with hiragana instead of katakana (which is used for loanwords).
• Pandaman alert! Of course you need to have Pandaman listen in. He's one of the background characters right next to Kujaku's arm. 
• How's the logistics that Drake managed to get out of Wano and to the Marines? I guess he ultimately sided with the good guys, so he wouldn't be tossed into prison like King, Queen and the rest of the Beast Pirates, but all the Marines (the fleet that Zunesha scared; CP-0; Aramaki) left before there was any convenient time to pick Drake up. So...
• RASHOMON! I love Rashomon. 
• Doll's attack is called "Rock and Roll Blaster", probably because 'doll' and 'roll' rhymes. 
• Within the Gorosei's discussion, Topman is the one that specifically recognizes the Iron Giant that attacks Marie Geoise, which might lend some credence that the Mercury-Venus-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn might be the order of their ranking, with Topman being first and Saturn being last. This might really lend credence since Saturn seems to be the least impressive in physical combat (or that might just be bias since we saw more of him) but Ju Peter also has a weirdly non-real-life-mythological beast mode. 
• It's understated, and I don't think it will really come as a surprise, but Law and Bepo survived their encounter with Blackbeard and are taking refuge somewhere.