One Piece 1130 Review: He Is Burdened With Glorious Purpose

One Piece, Chapter 1130: The Accursed Prince

This one is pretty great, too! Realistically it's slowing down after the little Road mini-arc, with some internal reviews and a brief shot of a new character, but the execution is pretty fun! 

We start of finally checking in with the rest of the crew that are with Dorry and Brogy. Franky talks about how they've exhausted all options, and the easiest thing to do is to go to Elbaf right now and since all the strongest Straw Hats are clumped together, they should be okay. It is admittedly a bit blasé, and our heroes aren't guaranteed to be all right, but the alternative would be to drag on their search in the ocean way longer than should be narratively necessary. It is all just a means to an end anyway to split characters up, and I guess Franky and company have been through this thing basically at the beginning of each arc. 

I really like that Luffy reacts to a huge 'regular' tree, which looks big compared to the Lego Yggdrasil we saw a while back. And then we pull back and see the real real Yggdrasil, which is like, so much bigger not just from the giant pine tree that Luffy reacted to, or the castle that dwarfs it, but to the fucking mountain range that the castle is perched upon. Pretty great looking shot, honestly, and the Legoland stuff really does help to build up Elbaf as being really big. 

We the get to see two more of Hajrudin's crew -- again, two more people who didn't show up in Dressrosa. The big dude Golberg and the hot chick Gerd walk up the gigantic rope bridge. Gerd really doesn't like Road, and I kind of get the feeling that Road probably acts like a total creep towards her too. Gerd has a cute owl called Piper! The two of them discuss some stuff about the current political landscape of Elbaf -- interlopers should be arrested by them, and they talk about how Loki is the 'shame of Elbaf', something reiterated by Brogy and Dorry later on. Oh, and Elder Jarl from the Big Mom flashbacks is still alive and still acting as the ruler. 

Hiding from the giants (which is a huge missed chance for them) our heroes slowly make their way across the rope bridge, which is giant, and they have to hop from one log to the next like ants. There are some nice short character moments like Usopp psyching himself up as this is a 'trial of Elbaf' and Sanji stopping Zoro from going on an adventure and getting lost. But Luffy realizes that there is a 'roar' from somewhere, and jumps off from the rope bridge to investigate. 

We cut away to the Great Eirik again, where, of course, the World Economic Journal has framed the Straw Hats and the Giant Pirates as being evil bastards that attacked Egghead and murdered Dr. Vegapunk. Also, the bounties for Dorry and Brogy have shot up from a couple hundred million to 1.8 billion each, which Robin attributes to a combination of inflation as well as the two of them being thought to be dead and/or inactive in the present day. It is interesting taking Little Garden to consideration (where, let's not forget, Mr. 3 nearly killed them... but it is a sneak attack) but it is also a nice nod to the early days of One Piece, where characters like Ace and Crocodile clearly had very small bounties compared to what they ended up being. 

I love the utterly shocked expressions on Dorry and Brogy's face, who absolutely did not plan on any of this and look horrified more than anything. Lilith and Franky get into a bit of a conversation about Luffy being blamed for Vegapunk's death, but then comes my favourite part of this sequence:

The X. 

The photograph of Gear Fifth Luffy looks blurry, and none of the Straw Hats can confirm that Luffy had the 'X' on his arm when he goes into that form. Being omniscient audience who's seen Gear Fifth in the manga and anime, this also obviously isn't the case. But Robin points out that the arm is blurry, but the X is very clear... so the obvious inference is that it was added on post-production, or Vivi tampered with the master copy. 

This is a 3D2Y-style sign form Vivi to inform the other Straw Hats that she's alive and that she's with Big News Morgans, and I absolutely love this. This is the reason that the Alabasta gang was taken out of the way (Robin's here, but she clearly doesn't remember the X-sign that well) to preserve this twist a bit longer. Notably, being a former Straw Hat, Vivi actually recognized that Luffy was doing something all the way back in the 3D2Y chapters, which might have inspired her. That's cool! 

And then we build up Elbaf a bit more, with Dorry and Brogy noting that Hajrudin, the son of the king. Which... feels super random, but with Hajrudin being an actual character and not a cipher like Road was, this felt a fair bit more significant. No one ever said that the King only had one son, and no one ever said that Hajrudin wasn't a prince. In fact, I remembered Hajrudin's giant pirates getting a weird treatment when Oda did the Straw Hat Grand Fleet cover story, where he's just sharing the members instead of giving any kind of context to who and what their characters and history are. 

The Giant Pirates tell the Straw Hats about the 'Accursed Prince' Loki, who is totally evil, killed the King of Elbaf for a Devil Fruit that was passed down the royal family, was sentenced to torture, and all the warriors of Elbaf was needed to subdue him. This is the shame of Elbaf... LOKI!

And we smash-cut to an almost two-page reveal of Loki, chained up and blindfolded, looking cool as hell. He looks like a modern biker-gang Viking! Luffy walks up to him. Luffy gives his usual 'Pirate King' spiel, and Loki gives a huge speech about how this is Warland Elbaf, and he is the Sun God that will bring the ruin of the world... as we cut to showcase just how massive the real Elbaf is. 

Love the nod to the mythology of how Loki is chained at the end of all the Norse myths to await Ragnarok, and his thrashing during this imprisonment is the Nordic myth cause of earthquakes -- something reflected by Luffy associating Loki with quakes. Now, I am curious to see if this is our huge introduction to our main villain (which I wouldn't be opposed to, it just feels a bit obvious) or if this is one of our allies for this arc, our Vivi or Momo or Rebecca or Lilith... the thing is, this is also one of the few arcs where we actually already have allies from prior to arriving. But honestly, I would be happy either way. Loki looks quute cool!

Random Notes:

• Bleach reviews are going to take a bit more time becuase of the sheer amount of changes to the episodes. They're exciting, but methinks I need to refresh my mind about that part of the source material to be really talking about them properly. 
• Yamato and the Inari Pilgrimage Cover Story: Finally, some semblance of plot happens as Yamato and Tama fall asleep, and some shadowy figure, presumably the villain that's been kidnapping maidens and carpenters, comes to steal the katana that Yamato is supposed to deliver to Yasuie's grave.
• The official translations use 'Road' instead of 'Rodo', and that's why I'm using that. The translations currently also use 'Elbaph' since it's what typed, but apparently it's not exactly finalized or something, since the typed fonts have been changed before? I think it's pretty much 99% confirmed that the spelling is going to be Elbaph instead of Elbaf, but thanks to Wicked I really don't think I'll ever get used to typing it that way. Just like Mary-Geoise and Mariejois, I will be using the terms interchangeably in my reviews. 
• Franky, for whatever reason, has a cowboy hat now. But does Franky of all people really need an excuse to put on a cowboy hat? I don't think so. 
• Iscat just disappears randomly after the first shot of Elbaf. Not that I really care about the cat, but still.
• The final member of Hajrudin's crew, Stansen, actually would recognize the Straw Hats and vice versa, since his first appearance was in the Sabaody slave auction. 
• Sanji, of course, gets all excited about seeing Road, while Luffy immediately recognizes them as nice guys and would've probably made friends with them if his crew didn't shush him up. 
• Hajrudin did note that he wanted to be 'King of the Giants' all the way back in Dressrosa, which I handwaved as him being able to earn it through a might-makes-right mentality, but I guess getting the Mera Mera Fruit would've given Hajrudin the advantage over his other siblings!
• I love that Oda just gives a big figurative middle finger to anyone who thinks that the structure of Elbaf is going to be patterned after the traditional Norse mythology with Odin, Thor, Loki, et cetera, just because the prince is called Loki. Oda's been taking naming inspirations from all sorts of historical and mythical characters, but none of them have ever been one-to-one adaptations. 
• There is a random giant sword sticking out of Yggdrasil-Elbaf. What is that? Who used that?