One Piece, Chapter 1119: Emeth
So yeah, this is an... interesting chapter? We start off with a page just developing the Stussy/Kaku arc. A freed Kaku is doing something straight out of Lassie, telling Stussy a bunch of mean stuff in the hopes that she'd bug off and leave him... but the expression on Kaku's face has him clearly conflicted about all the hateful stuff he's throwing at Stussy. Kaku notes that Rob Lucci is so much of a professional psychopath that he won't be forgiving of Stussy for her previous betrayal, and would kill Stussy with no remorse.
We don't really dwell on this for too long, though, because we cut back to Luffy and Bonney's zany goofiness in their Nika forms. The Marines panic, the Giants rejoice, and Saint Marcus Mars describes it as a 'facsimile created with age-age powers'. And... I'm not the biggest fan of the subsequent action scene mostly because I don't really follow the logic ('real' logic or toon-force logic) behind it. Luffy notes, rightfully, that Mars can't be hurt with normal means, so he wants his friends to attack him and he'll rebound everything at Mars at full force? I guess the whole point wasn't that "Gear Fifth can damage the Gorosei", but he really just wants to knock Mars away? It's a bit weird.
Luffy turns into his giant balloon form to block Mars's flamethrower, and there's a deliciously demonic panel as an on-fire balloon-Luffy's arms stretch out and grab onto Mars in his itsumade form. We get a triple combo attack as Sanji combines Ifrit Jambe and Hell Memories; Franky unleashes an 'Impactful' Strong Right, and Bonney mimics an Elephant Gun with Giant Nika Punch. We've seen little Bonney do this with the Cipher Pol agent in her backstory, but this time it's clear that the ends of Bonney's balloon arm is tinged with armament haki. Which... she's a kid, but she's also a Supernova and she's also very, very determined thanks to all the trauma in her life. I don't really mind Bonney having haki, honestly.
Speaking of people having haki, Luffy notes how the triple attack hurts him, because 'you guys' are using haki. Which... the art is a bit zoomed out so it's hard to see. Sanji is definitely using haki, since it's Sanji. Bonney visually can be shown to be using haki. Does 'you guys' also include Franky? I mean... yeah, yeah, why the hell not? I've always found it weird why not more of the Straw Hats are able to use haki or learned about them, and I really don't think it's too far of a stretch for the secondary physical combatants (Franky, Robin and Brook) to have learned some rudimentary forms of armament haki at this point. Honestly, until an SBS comes out and says otherwise, I will always maintain that Robin's Demonio form is some sort of Armament Haki.
Anyway, Luffy presses Mars against his belly, and unleashes a Dawn Balloon by reflecting the force of the attacks that Sanji, Franky and Bonney is doing on his back. And... again, I'm not really understanding what's going on, but I guess not all Gear Fifth visual gag jokes can land on me.
Mars twinkling into the sky like Team Rocket's blasting off again is hilarious, though.
With Mars gone, our heroes try to figure out how to rendezvous with Nami's squad, and Atlas seems to want to go check up with Lilith over their telepathic network, with her being aware that York is able to monitor them. I don't know if the panel of Atlas running is her actually jumping off of the ship to run to where Lilith is (which would be stupid and a gigantic death flag) or if it's just to show her doing something.
Interestingly, we backpedal on something that seemed to be concluded last chapter, because Vegapunk's broadcast starts up again. The snail wasn't killed when the Iron Giant was assaulted by the swine Topman, it's just knocked around a bit and it's now back up and broadcasting again. Other than the skipped bits that are intentional between 1117 and 1118, Vegapunk's message continues on but it seems like he's just rambling at this point, talking about some will, some inheritance, something about the voice reaching people.
We get more cameos, of course, this time with Katakuri and some of the Charlotte siblings watching it; a shot of Vivi and Morgans; and, hilariously and gloriously, good ol' box-meme-man Gaimon and his new wife Sarfunkel. Does Gaimon even have a den-den mushi to hear the transmission? I don't think so. I think Oda just wants to draw Gaimon, and that's it.
After being MIA for a month, Ju Peter the giant Dune sandworm shows up again and he's... spitting out the Cipher Pol agents? They (and the Seraphim) are raining down all over the battlefields into the Marine ships, and I'm just kind of confused what Ju Peter's game plan is here. Originally I thought he's just sucking them up to recover resources (the Seraphim, at least, if not the Cipher Pol humans) but now he's using them as... weapons? As a rain to drop on the pirates? Or is he just exhaling before he does the big vacuum-wave inhaling attack?
Luffy gets into some physical combat and punches Ju Peter, but while he's engaged with the giant worm, Topman charges in. We get a cool panel of Topman about to attack the giants' ship (and it's a nice showcase of how fucking huge the piggy is)... and then the Iron Giant rises up from the depths of the ocean and PUNCHES THE SHIT out of Topman. One of the tusks breaks, which doesn't mean anything since we've seen Saturn and Ju Peter regenerate from worse. Everyone is shocked at the giant robot, Luffy is excited about the giant robot, and... two other things also happen in this scene.
The first is a nice confirmation about Bonney's limits. One of my biggest gut reaction to Bonney being able to go Gear Fifth is similar to why I really didn't like the Buu saga in Dragon Ball Z -- random people can just go Super Saiyan, ignoring the gigantic amount of work and trauma that Goku and Gohan put through in their own respective arcs. But between Bonney being relegated into a supporting role alongside Franky and Sanji in this chapter really does show that he's nowhere near approaching Luffy's power, and he gets conked out straight into her child form after just bouncing around a little and throwing a punch. So it's just the potential to become as powerful as Gear Fifth Luffy, and a representation of how she's found true freedom, which I like a bit more than how it was presented in 1118.
And the second is... some internal monologue on the Iron Giant's part, which seems to be Joyboy's voice telling him "listen up, Emeth, the time is at hand". Finally, we get a bit more from the Iron Giant instead of him just saying the one thing, Joyboy, over and over again. It is a nice little confirmation of the Iron Giant's name, but more importantly, I think his sentience. A lot of the background plot of this chapter has been talking about the nature of life. Are clones alive, are robots alive, are robot clones alive, are humans turned into machines alive? And that's not getting into how the Gorosei view humans. And as a technically sci-fi based arc, one of the most significant and often-repeated story tropes has been a robot or an artificial intelligence of sorts questioning whether they are alive, so I'm happy to explore a bit more of Emeth's backstory.
And mostly, I'm just happy that I don't have to refer to him as the Iron Giant over and over again and I can call him by his name!
Random Notes:
- Yamato Cover Story: Yamato gets stoned by a bunch of kids who hate Kaido. Finally we're getting somewhere. I guess if the idea is for Yamato to break the cycle of hatred and make it clear that the children don't bear the sins of the parents... I really did wish that this is something that should have been broached in an epilogue chapter or two in the Wano-kuni arc proper, but at least we're doing something.
- There is a fun little moment where Dorry and Brogy yell at the generic giants in their crew to stop dancing and start putting out the fires, such unprofessional louts that they are... ignoring the fact that the two co-captains have also been dancing.
- Hell Memories was last seen in New Fishman Island!
- Okay, okay, is that a representation of everyone in canon One Piece having shown up to hear the message? No, wait, we still haven't had Skypiea. I would say that it's not relevant since they probably won't get the broadcasts, but Gaimon's here, so.
- Gaimon got married to a lady in a barrel, Sarfunkel, in a cover story. Yes, it's a Simon & Garfunkel joke. Oda's a gigantic dork and we love him.
- People are super excited about how Topman is charging towards the ship in an arc that would lead him sinking into the ocean, which people take as 'proof' that the Gorosei aren't encumbered by regular Devil Fruit weaknesses. We'll see if this theory holds true.
- It goes by a bit quickly, but the giants note that Ju Peter's attack stops them from using sails, and they need to use the oars. I guess some of the Gorosei are just adapted to screwing over people on boats, if the "they're not weak to Devil Fruit weaknesses because they're demons" theory holds true.
- If we count Marcus Mars being tossed into the air Team Rocket style, I guess we only have Ethanbaron left as the only Gorosei member that hasn't been given an epic 'takedown' at any point in this arc.
- Franky hasn't seen the giant robot, right? I wonder if he has anything to say about that.
- Emeth is the spelling that fan-translators picked for the romanization of it, because in Jewish mythology, 'Emeth' is the word drawn on the golem with gave it life; and taking out the first letter (turning it into 'Meth') turns the word into death, which was the way that the rabbi managed to cause the golem to stop.
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