One Piece 1123 Review: Amnesia Solves Everything

One Piece, Chapter 1123: The Void Fortnight

So this is kind of the aftermath of the previous chapter, and... it's a bit of a breather. The Straw Hats and their allies sail away, and apparently the Haki blast also managed to knock out vice admirals... at least Doll and Pomsky are out. Interestingly, S-Snake isn't knocked out and she's yelling at the Marines to wake up. Luffy says goodbye to the Iron Giant (who's like, burned out), and our heroes set sail. 

We get a very nice (non-dialogue) shot of Usopp getting super excited and reuniting with Brogy and Dorry, and... I thought I would be upset that it's not voiced, but I actually do think that having it be unvoiced and just be there is good enough. Luffy also shrivels up into a mummy, and interestingly, Sanji walks up to Vegapunk and gives a cool monologue and questions Vegapunk why he was so willing to die. 

And... we flashback to 2 weeks prior, before Lulusia got destroyed, and it's basically the bit of a tie-up on how Vegapunk has all of this planned out, but York doesn't know anything. I'll preface all of this by saying that I really don't like this explanation. I really don't. It makes sense on paper, yes, but as a narrative tool I just really feel like amnesia and memory erasure is one of my least-favourite plot devices. This isn't as bad as the Big Mom amnesia last arc, but I still don't like it. 

Basically, Vegapunk, Shaka and Pythagoras find out that someone is siphoning power away from the Mother Flame, and decide to do their own investigation on it.

Throughout all of this, I do like the little running gag that Stella constantly goes "it's Lilith, isn't it?" before quickly apologizing when it's not Lilith. I felt like this joke would've landed a bit better (and the whole red herring in general) if Lilith was a bit more comically over-the-top Saturday Morning Cartoon villain levels of evil in the scenes we see her in prior to the York revelation. 

This leads to the three (now-dead) Vegapunks to formulate a plan against York and the World Government, and they enact a plan particularly when Lulusia is destroyed by Imu. Vegapunk notes that apprehending York at that point is kind of pointless (is it, though?), and Vegapunk decides that instead of running away and be hunted down for the rest of their lives, they would instead use this as an opportunity to spread their voice to the world as far as they can. Not the smartest thing to do, admittedly, but this one at least is nicely rooted in characterization. 

Vegapunk gives this line about "if I must die, I will sell my life dearly", which is a nice tie-in to the theme about Vegapunk being a bit too accepting of death as Sanji mentioned earlier in this chapter. They continue to act 'normal' around York, and later on we find out that they have not been uploading their memories to Punk Records as well (like York), and... it just feels like that's such a random, gigantic design flaw with Punk Records. And that while it's not impossible since she's kind of a lunatic, the fact that York didn't see this specific fact of "the other Punks didn't upload memories" as suspicious is a bit... hard to believe. And let's not get into the fact that Atlas, Lilith and Edison also didn't find that four Vegapunks not uploading their memories to Punk Records is also not suspicious? Eh.

We get to see the recording, and then Vegapunk, Pythagoras and Shaka decide to erase their memories selectively, just leaving behind a handwritten note that basically says "hi, future me, I have a plan that has wiped out my/your/our memory, just trust me and die". Again, there's a nice tie-in to the theme in this chapter of Vegapunk accepting death, but I just find it all kind of convoluted and not in the best way. It's all right, but I would be lying if I said I liked it, y'know? 

I do like how Vegapunk is basically going "whaaaaaat?!!!" five times in a row. All of the bombshells, leading to the nonsense as all the parties gather on Egghead. 

And then we get an unseen scene as Stella Vegapunk tells Sanji and Franky to leave him behind, with the addendum that he knows he's going to die and that his death will set things into motion. And, of course, he wants the Straw Hats to find the One Piece. 

And the 'main' part of Egghead draws to a close as we cut to the present with the Giants and the Straw Hats toasting to their new journey to Elbaf... with a cute little detail of Luffy still stuck in his 'half-dead' withered form and he's complaining about it. 

And... again, it's not my favourite plot development. I still rate Egghead quite highly, but I do think that this chapter could've either been restructured or foreshadowed a bit better? Again, nothing in this arc exactly ruins this for me, but the amount of logic leaps and the  selective-amnesia machine feels kind of forced. I don't know. Ultimately Egghead had a lot more good than bad, and I'm still rating it pretty highly among the arcs, but I did feel like the plot developments in this and the previous chapter could've been done better. 

Oh well, Elbaf time, I suppose. 

Random Notes:

• Yamato cover story: Yamato's eating some dinner with Denjiro and the asshole kids. Okay. I really don't want to be hard on cover stories, but I also really can't muster any excitement for anything that's going on here. 
• So I guess that time between Shaka being shot and the Straw Hats winning off-screen and tying up York is not going to be covered at all, huh? Just handwaved aside? I don't mind skipping it while we were telling the story, but it is really weird that we didn't have a quick montage showing some events that happened there or something. 
• I can't tell if Stussy is on board with the Straw Hats or not? It could really go either way, honestly, and she certainly has the Rokushiki capabilities to get onto the Sunny at any point after Kaku shoos her away. 
• Since S-Snake isn't knocked out, there are a lot of discussion on whether she isn't knocked out becuase she's a Pacifista (and therefore part robot), a Lunarian (special race), a clone (with the power of the original), or specifically because she's a clone of Hancock becuase Hancock has Conqueror's Haki. Notably we don't see S-Shark or S-Hawk yet. 
• There's a lot of discussion on how the different translation teams translate Brogy and Dorry's dialogue comparing Joy Boy's Haki to Shanks', which some terms that apparently could go either way. I really don't give a shit. Not really caring about powerscaling aside, we also have no information if the Haki of Joy Boy that's stored either decays over time (like nuclear half-life) or gets stronger over time (like wine).
• We also get essentially the confirmation that the World Government has an Ancient Weapon, and is powering it with the Mother Flame fragment that York stole and gave to them. 
• It is really weird that the World Government doesn't just demand the Mother Flame, especially considering how easy it has been to manipulate Vegapunk and enforce their demands on him. 
• Vegapunk also notes that they need to safeguard the cloud-loft technology, which is a nice point that it's useful if the world ever gets flooded again. Presumably that's the cargo Vegapunk put into the Thousand Sunny.