One Piece, Chapter 1144: A Time For Warriors
The opening scenes are another 'revelation', with Ripley showing Franky a particularly modern-looking building that's overgrown with plants. Some people describe it as a "robot-esque" building, though it could just be windows. Bonney and Lilith are also there, apparently having gotten lost off-screen. It's just some Ancient Kingdom technology shenanigans, or even technology way beyond it. The trope of the fantasy world actually being a post-apocalyptic remnants of a super-technologically-advanced world is one that's quite common in fantasy and one that I wouldn't be surprised is a 'big twist' we get later on, so I wasn't particularly surprised we get another foreshadowing here -- I just am waiting for what the connection to that epic mural is going to be.
Franky and Ripley, however, are assaulted by one of the MMAs, or Sleeptids, depending on the translation -- a giant lightning-storm. I like that Franky initially goes "oh, Elbaph is truly a land of wonder" while Ripley freaks out and yells that this isn't Elbaph's regular fantasy elements. To be fair to Franky, though, the Straw Hats do travel with Zeus, who is a smaller version of this giant lightning monster.
The giant burning skeleton, the Draugr, is stomping around. I like a brief foreshadowing of Dorry and Brogy being too drunk and MIA, and I absolutely love that Brook makes a brief gag about how he mistakes the Draugr as a giant version of him. The giants tell the Straw Hats, being guests, to stand back -- and Usopp tries to whisper-offer that they can fight too. Again, it's a running gag, but please let Usopp do something huge in this arc. Nami brings Jarul up offscreen about the existence of an evil Shanks-doppelganger, which is a nicely convenient way to avoid a "what, Shanks is evil?" plot for now.
After some exposition and recap, Team Nami still gets told to sit down and wait it out because of hospitality. They end up hitching a ride on Colon, who's very much willing to be a stupid dumb kid riding into battle on his little boat (which is just a regular boat for the humans). He's very happy to be on a great viking adventure, while the Straw Hats are humouring him by playing along with his kid games.
The most interesting scene to me is the continuation of the Gods' Knights' lunch. We see Gunko listening to music on a pair of earphones. Killingham and Sommers discuss this, noting it as Gunko's "post-meal ritual". Sommers immediately goes into some dipshit territory, and the writer really wants us to hate him -- he notes that he prefers a live musical performance... just so he can shoot whoever misses a note. Gunko, meanwhile, tells the other two that the song she is listening to is called "New World"...
And I completely missed it the first time I read this, but "New World" is one of the songs that Brook sang in his career as the Soul King! We also establish via Brook's time-skip that tone-dial earphones to sell music is a technology that was developed and marketed during the time-skip. Having Brook be a potential important player in Elbaf is nowhere close in my bingo card, but he's probably one of my favourite Straw Hats and having a potentially huge moment for him is definitely very interesting!
The scene concludes with Sommers kind of mocking Gunko a bit, asking (albeit not in an aggressive way) if she's got a problem with the world they currently live in, to which Killingham tells him to knock off and not bully Gunko's hobbies. And I know that we have to take this all with the knowledge that these are ultra-racist Celestial Dragons that are currently planning to kidnap children with the intention of using them as hostages and not batting an eye if they burn alive... but Oda is really trying to give Killingham and especially Gunko nice qualities.
Gunko, in particular, has had a lot of hints that she's originally not a Celestial Dragon. She doesn't have 'Saint' in her name, she's particularly offended at Loki for refusing the 'honour' of joining them, she was particularly excited about the high-quality salt last chapter... there's a lot of theories floating around Gunko and her potential origin stories (which range quite wildly) but I also kind of agree that she feels like one of those "evil but not too evil" kooky characters that might be a potential ally -- someone like Mr. 2, or Ulti, or Baby Five, or Hacchan... it's interesting. I do like that the Gods' Knights are not all one-dimensional asshats like Sommers or card-carrying villains like Shamrock, but I'm also not sure about having one of our first members be the one that potentially defects.
We cut away briefly to Saul using double-shields to stop the children and their thorn-vine auras, which fails miserably as the kids just pierce each other. It also confirms that they can't just whack the kids in their heads to wake them up. It is a bit silly that Robin and Chopper -- both with relatively versatile devil fruits -- have apparently been doing nothing but hang out in Saul's beard and offer the occasional commentary. At least Robin should be able to do something! Another MMA shows up, and it's Fenrir, so maybe the Straw Hats can fight. I wouldn't mind seeing Robin do something after sitting out last arc's combat bits.
The giants have, off-screen, taken down the Draugr -- but it seems that some of the giants have fallen in the process. But even more monsters show up! Nidhoggr, a lightning dragon, and a giant blobby ghost start attacking... and then promptly get one-shot by a HAKOKU SOVEREIGNTY attack. It's like our third time seeing Hakoku and it's admittedly losing its luster a bit, but it's also very cool to see Dorry and Brogy show up and be badasses, showing that the giants aren't always just there to be cannon fodder. The two of them have been going around vomiting out the alcohol to sober up (which is not how you sober up from being wasted, but okay) and they even have Scopper Gaban with them! Which is nice. The giant monsters are nice fodders to keep these secondary characters busy while the Straw Hats can deal with the actual named villains!
Random Notes:
- Yamato Cover Story: Yamato and company recover the kidnapped people, who are actually kidnapped by Who's Who. Right, that sure is a hanging plot thread. I think most people aren't particularly invested in this, and want to know more about what Yamato's going to do with the dino siblings.
- Typical 'author keeping the mystery from the audience' trope -- now that the audience knows Collun's dad is Scopper Gaban, he wastes no time announcing it every second sentence instead of yelling that 'my father is a pirate'.
- The mystery building is 3000 years old, placing it way beyond the Void Century and within one of the earliest periods in the Harley Text.
- I actually like that the one that points out that Usopp is saying "let us help too" in a smaller volume is Jinbe, who looks genuinely surprised. Poor team dad, he doesn't know Usopp's running gags yet.
- During the Jarul discussion, Jinbe quickly figures out that there are Devil Fruits at work here, and Brook also points out that there's likely to be more than two Devil Fruits at work with how weird things are. It's a nice bit of showcase that the older, more world-traveled members of the crew rightfully just handwave anything weird as 'Devil Fruit. Which is honestly a nice nod of the main source of weirdness in this world.
- I originally thought "New World" was just a wink-wink nod to One Piece: Film Red, where one of the insert songs by Uta (or real-world artist Ado) is a song with the English words "new world" in it. That song, however, was actually called "New Genesis"!
- One of the prevailing theory is that Gunko is somehow connected -- or will be connected -- to the Revolutionaries, due to sharing their fashion sense of having a hat with goggles on it.
- The ghost wears a cute little hat with horns. He just looks happy to be around.
- The Giant Pirates' ship, the Great Eirik, can apparently fly around as a Svarr if properly modified.
I get why Chopper amd Robin didnt do anything with the children. Robin's power reflects damage to her and Chopper would at most be able to stop one child in monster ppint and then be stuck as chibi chopper. They deserve better than that.
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