One Piece, Chapter 1126: Settling the Score
I'm a little late to this party, mostly because I was traveling around a lot and I didn't realize the chapter was out. Oops!
And... for the most part, the chapter is a pretty simple 'arc bridging' chapter. The chapter is bookended with the Straw Hats and the giants on the Red Erik, with the first bunch of pages having everyone involved partying hard, while the last bunch of pages having the typical 'oh noes, what wacky nonsense have our friends gotten themselves into this time'? Which... all things considered, Elbaf might be the last time we get this before we ratchet things up with plot-heavy storylines? I highly doubt that, but there's a non-zero chance.
We get a quick brief recap of how Dorry and Brogy are now back sailing with the pirates. Basically, their fight isn't over yet, but Oimo and Kashi basically got them to put it on hold while they go back to Elbaf to get new weapons... and somehow, here they are. There's a fun little moment of Usopp and Nami's completely polar opposites on this aspect of giant culture, with just a random detail of one of the giants mentioning something about the giants' alcohol, absinthe, which can make you hallucinate.
Oh, and in the middle of it all, there are three short panels of Bonney and the damaged Kuma just bonding, while Bonney notes that they can finally see the horizon. Is Kuma smiling? The art is ambiguous enough with all the smudges on Kuma's face. It's genuinely surprising to see that Kuma didn't do one final heroic sacrifice, but I am very happy that for all my bitching about the Vegapunk satellites surviving, that Kuma remained... well, not dead, but damaged. Damaged-with-some-vague-hope-of-being-repaired-in-the-future. That, I think, is how you do stakes without being depressing.
And when we next check back with the Straw Hats and the Giants at the end of the chapter, part of the crew is missing! Everyone was apparently knocked out for a while, but the Thousand Sunny and some of the crew are MIA. And then we cut to Nami in a sexy viking outfit being woken up in what appears to be a Lego house. Which... okay, yeah, sure. There are a lot of theories running around, apparently, ranging from a giants' dollhouse to something super-ridiculous like moon abductions, but... I just think this is simply just the first weird thing we're going to see in Elbaf, just like the random octopus in the beginning of Wano or whatnot. Elbaf is here, and I'm quite excited!
Two other huge things happen in this chapter, too, and one big one ties to Shanks. Remember that cover story showing the random happenings of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet? One of the events that happened was Bartolomeo going around like the lunatic he is, hawking Straw Hat merchandise on a random Shanks-controlled island. He burned that flag, and we're all quite confused... until the end of the Wano arc, when Shanks and his crew discuss going down and confronting Bartolomeo about it. And now we get the follow-up to it, with a flashback to an event that happened a month ago.
Bartolomeo is, rather understandably, beaten up by Shanks and his crew. And he's held in the town square with all the Red-Haired Pirates around him, noting how this blatant disrespect of the flag cannot go unpunished, for the sake of Shanks' other territories as well. This scene, I think, is really meant to be contrasted with that of Eustass Kid! They're both thugs, but Bartolomeo actually probably didn't harm too many people since we know he's ultimately a good guy. He bows his head deeply and apologizes for everything that he's done.
And... Bartolomeo gets given a sadistic choice by Hongo, the Red-Haired crew's doctor, who gives a bottle of poison to Bartolomeo and tells him to give the deadly poison (which will cause 'heavy hemorrhaging and a painful death') to Luffy within the month. Now obviously this is fake. Even if the Red-Haired Crew is the type of losers that would resort to such trickery, they wouldn't be opposed to Luffy, at least not without reason. But Bartolomeo doesn't know that. Bartolomeo knows nothing about Luffy's relationship with Shanks.
But without hesitation, Bartolomeo chomps down on the bottle of poison and gulps the whole thing. The absolute balls on this punk! We get a whole panel of a tear-soaked Bartolomeo crying and screaming about how he's okay with dying, because by god he's not going to involve Monkey D. Luffy in the mistakes of some loser like him. He's just 'some common thug that stands up to an Emperor and gets slaughtered for it', before lamenting about how he really would've like to see Luffy be the King of Pirates.
...and then he burps, almost with comedic timing, because of course Shanks didn't give Bartolomeo actual poison.
And things proceed almost gloriously simply -- everyone is a nakama, friendship is the mightiest, all that jazz, as Bartolomeo sails away from the island. And I do really love how the story manages to trick us into this nice sense of security, because after all the audience loves both Shanks and Bartolomeo! And we even get a nice shot of Shanks laughing in happiness that Luffy's grown to a degree that he's starting to inspire the people around him.
...and then Yasopp kind of pushes Shanks aside, takes aim and BLOWS THE FUCK UP OUT OF BARTOLOMEO'S SHIP.
The narration says some nonsense about how the Barto Club has 'status unknown' (and earlier fan translations use the word of 'no survivors are known')... but we all know that just like Kid and Law, Bartolomeo has survived.
But it's still a surprising swerve from Shanks being all-understanding to them going 'nah, gotta teach them a lesson'. I do wonder if this is a similar sequence of events as the famous Luffy/Zoro/Usopp conflict in Water Seven, with Luffy/Shanks wanting to let someone disrespectful off easy but Yasopp (paralleling Zoro in that arc) noting that some things can't be left unavenged, essentially. Again, it's going to really be kind of different whether Yasopp is doing this independently or if this is something Shanks explicitly or implicitly ordered, but I do find it interesting that we finally have a nice reason for the Straw Hats and Red-Haired Pirates to actually go to war for a conflict. It also nicely makes Shanks a somewhat more complex character than what everyone thought he would be, which I, again, delightfully appreciate -- his role as Emperor of the Sea and Luffy's mentor are not mutually exclusive, and one aspect of him sometimes takes over the other aspect. It happens.
And the shot of the Going Luffy's mast on fire and falling into the ocean is a nice shot of yet another sunken dream in the Grand Line, which... again, I really do like Bartolomeo, and I think he's chosen for this role specifically because he's probably the one Grand Fleet Member most readers cares about the most. I really don't think people would have the same reaction if Shanks ended the career of Jeet or Orlumbus.
We also get some scenes from the Blackbeard pirates, which... to be honest, feels to mostly be just recap (and the confirmation that Garp is alive and in chains, but it's not a huge surprise), but we also get to see the dynamic of the Blackbeard Pirates together which feels, again, Straw-Hat-esque by design. There's some goofiness going around, like Blackbeard arguing with Pizarro, or Sanjuan Wolf trying to fix the buildings of Hachinosu by moving them around like toys. We get a quick rundown of everything they've gotten in the past arc -- Blackbeard captured Pudding; Kuzan captured Garp; and we are getting caught up with Devon and Augur bringing Caribou in.
A little more interesting is Marie Geoise, where Lafitte is stationed. He's watching the Umit Shipping Company (one of the underworld figures from the Big Mom Tea Party, which I had to look up!) and how they've constantly been foiled by the Revolutionaries, who keep blowing up the food supplies that are being sent up to Marie Geoise. Now this feels more like a siege, and we get a nice little diagram showing how the Revolutionaries not only cut off the supply chain from nearby islands, but also the transport mechanism up to Marie Geoise itself.
Again, there are admittedly some questions about this situation... who's doing all this bondola-attacking? Like, it can't be Sabo, Karasu and the gang, right? We saw them in Kamabaka Island. But if it's not them, why hasn't Akainu gone down and lava-fisted the Revolutionaries? It's not like the Kuma situation where he can't pursue him in time.
But... overall, a fun chapter. I like the check-in with Blackbeard and especially the Shanks/Bartolomeo thing. But I do feel like we're probably going to leave them behind for now and focus almost entirely on the Straw Hats in Elbaf at least for the next couple of chapters, and I'm actually kind of excited for that!
Random Notes:
- Cover Story: Yamato finds out that there's a string of kidnapping in Wano, but mostly women. Uh-huh? So I guess someone's kidnapped the carpenter alongside the women?
- I've drank absinthe. I didn't hallucinate, but it is really strong and bitter.
- I love the little detail of little Bonney, now allowed to actually act like a child, grabbing onto Jinbe's sleeve. I love that she just latches on to the most 'dad' of all the people around.
- Again, this is going to be proven or disproven later on, but by process of elimination, the Straw Hats that are missing appear to be the first six Straw Hats -- Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Nami, Sanji and Chopper. Or, at the very least, we can confirm Luffy and Nami are MIA; the other four might be (though is unlikely to be) offscreen).
- Some of the theories about why this happens range from the six of them being the youngest; the earliest to join; the six Straw Hats that would recognize Vivi (which is kinda suspect since Robin remained on the Great Erik)...
- Honestly, I think Oda just wants to have fun with his original set of characters after being involved so much with the One Piece Netflix live-action.
- The chronology is a bit confusing, but Shanks' journey goes like this: Shanks arrives at Wano and scares the shit out of Ryokugyu > Shanks bullies Bartolomeo > Shanks goes back to Elbaf and bullies Kid > Shanks leaves Elbaf. We just saw things out of order.
- Yeah, Blackbeard holding Pudding is very uncomfortable-looking. He's not being perverted or anything, but really, someone get Pudding away from these dirty pirates.
- I like the visual image of Avalo Pizarro's island form picking up the ship just to get it an express audience with Teach.
- We also find out that Moria escaped, which is kind of anticlimactic. I really would've liked to see a panel or two of this during the Sabo chapters if they're not going to do much about it. Presumably, they've joined Cross Guild since there really isn't anywhere else they could realistically go to.
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