One Piece 1148-1149 Review: Fathers

One Piece, Chapter 1148: Ronja; Chapter 1149: One Second

We are kinda-sorta back! The posts have been coming up, but I've actually been MIA for the last month and a half -- a bunch of pre-written articles had been lined up to be published on the blog, and basically whether I'm actively posting or not is something you guys can see on whether my One Piece coverage is up to date or not. And it isn't! I missed around a month's worth of chapters, and what a series of chapters they were! Figures, of all the times that Oda decided not to take a break, right? And the content in these chapters! The revelations! All the fancy potentially endgame stuff going on!

I had wanted to do chapter 1148 all the way to 1151, but I realized halfway through that it's going to take quite a bit of writing, particularly with the latter two chapters. So around a month late, have my reviews for chapter 1148 and 1149. Sorry!

And again, keeping in mind that the chapter's been out for a while, I'm going to skim through some of the less important parts.

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Chapter 1148, 'Ronja', focuses on the seemingly unshakable little Elbaf girl Ronja as she is held hostage by the God's Knights, and forced to essentially walk the plank as the children's panicking is broadcasted all over Elbaf. It's horrible in and of itself, of course, and poor little Ronja devolves from being 'it's okay, I can handle this', to giving a terrified but resolute speech of 'I shouldn't cause trouble for everyone! Let me die!' to 'I'm so sorry I'm being a burden to Elbaf'... which is really sad. It's not clear to me on the first read, but forcing a child to bear such burdens? No wonder Nico Robin, 'Devil Child', whose entire backstory involves her being gaslit by the World Government and Marines into thinking she is a blight upon the world, gets so emotional. 

While all of Elbaf argues about whether to give in to the terrorist's demands, and the importance of saving a life versus preserving something more abstract, Nico Robin decides to move. As Sommers continues to blather on about the conditions about burning down the library, Nico Robin creates a gigantic 'Cien Fleurs: Craspedia'. The art focuses more on the impact as the larger panel, but I really love the middle panel of hundreds of Robin's conjured arms coiling together like a bunch of vines that form the massive arm that palm-strikes Sommers in the chin. 

Robin then immediately goes for the kill, doing a very painful-looking 'Clutch' attack that seems to snap Sommer's neck or back. Now, in One Piece's history, Robin's actually deadly-looking attacks don't tend to really kill people (she just has an implied body count prior to joining the Straw Hats), but with these immortal characters, I totally believe that Sommers got dealt a fatal blow.

Sommers, of course, just cracks his head back into place and nonchalantly continues the countdown. I like how panicked or cautious all the Straw Hats are, but Robin is just on fire, going full in action mode. She leaps and pushes Sommers off of the giant branch they're on, also immobilizing Sommers with her many extra arms. The intention is to get Sommers away far enough of the range of his devil fruit powers, which is very cool -- and when Sommers unleashes a bunch of thorns to tear Robin apart, it turns out to just be a shadow flower clone, similar to what Robin displayed in Wano. 

Sommers, of course, isn't taken out that easily. But that's really besides the point, isn't it? Robin has been quite a passive participant post timeskip, even taken out offscreen in Egghead. After her impressive Demonio showcase in Wano, this is a sequence of assassination and strategic techniques that really felt awesome, and with so much tie-in to Ohara and her trying to protect what she thought she had lost, I felt really happy for Robin. If only she had been able to free the rest of the Straw Hats from Gunko's abnormally powerful arrows, they might've turned the battle. 

Alas, Sommers manages to get up and entangle Robin in his thorny vines, and we get a whole sequence where Ronja gives a tearful speech and Jarul decides to burn down the library. And in this darkest hour... in a badass sequence, Scopper Gaban swoops in, and with a massive Haki-empowered axe slash, slices off Sommers's  hand, draws blood across his chest, and looks mother fucking badass. 

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And that's where we pick up in 1149, which gives us a badass action scene between Gaban and Sommers. Again, to not bloat up these multi-chapter reviews, I'll just acknowledge how great a lot of the artwork is -- my favourite being Gaban's intense expression as he grips his axe on page two. The Straw Hats get a bit of a recap as Nami tells them of their meeting with Gaban; and Jinbe identifies his identity as Left Arm of Gold Roger. 

We get a bunch of named attacks from both characters, with Sommers just creating loads and loads of thorn attacks all over the place. But while Sommers is hamming it up, Gaban just seems gloriously in control, muttering about how he's "rusty", and casually unleashing an attack called Futenraku (translated as 'Axe Symphony' or 'Axe Heavenly Music') that very awesomely bisects Sommers like a cake across the torso. 

That is insanely badass. Sommers himself makes it a point to note that Gaban's attacks are preventing him from regenerating (probably some Haki stuff) and I honestly wouldn't have minded if Sommers actually got disposed off here. He isn't, of course, but for a huge chunk of 1149 it feels like he has been. Which is awesome!

While all of this is going on, Chopper finally pops out of Saul's beard, realizing that Gaban knows the way to defeat these immortal, regenerating enemies, and heads off to try to investigate. Again, good on you, Chopper! His moments are a bit smaller compared to Robin's, but I feel like the arc has been trying to make a point to show off the secondary Straw Hats and give them moments -- Robin, Brook, Chopper and Franky all got moments of varying sizes. Is this going to be what finally builds up to the Usopp character moment we all want in Elbaf? Hopefully. 

The new library of Ohara, however, is burning -- Anje was forced to do it, before Killingham pulls out a bow and starts shooting fiery arrows into the other buildings. It really showcases just how much the God's Knights want to really break Elbaf's spirits. It's not enough that they want the library and the books to burn, they want the giants to make that decision. Killingham could've burned the library at any point during that standoff, the giraffe bastard. 

We get the Ronja crying moment I alluded in the previous chapter in this one, as Robin and Saul cry while they're immobilized and forced to see Ohara burn a second time. but then Gaban charges in towards Gunko, ready to engage. And... and Gaban thinks in his head and hopes that his son would be quiet just a bit longer... but these are children. These are panicking children (and a scene earlier in 1146 or 1147 where Collun talks big before being scared by a Muma is a nice build-up to this) and of course Collun's first instinct is to go 'daddy! Thank god you're here!'

For his credit, Gaban almost hits Gunko before she zips away on her arrow skateboard, and she points a massive arrow needle on Collun's neck. 

Gaban gets a bit of an internal monologue, realizing that this is his last chance. It's an all-or-nothing gambit; where he could save the kids, save the library... but Collun's life is what he's gambling. And he's willing to make that gamble, for a moment. He tells Collun to hang on for the titular 'one second'. Collun is a child of Elbaph, and the kid psyches himself up... at which point Gunko ominously notes that 'a life once lost can never return'. Gaban gets a flashback to him and Ripley raising Collun up, and we get a badass panel of Gaban covered in rage and Haki...

And then we cut to the next page to see Collun DIE. Sure, it's Future Sight. Sure, Collun becomes a bit more cartoony and silhouetted. But it's still a panel of a child being brutally stabbed through the neck while he cries, and... and Scopper Gaban can't do it. When he realizes that it's not a chance, it's not a matter of endurance, but a matter of his son will die for sure, he just... drops his axe, a tear in his eye, and yields.

It's honestly a more brutal version of how Oden lost his fight with Kaido, because there's no treacherous shapeshifter involved here, no. Gaban actually has to see his actual son held hostage with a spear on his neck, and actually see him die via future sight. Gunko then casually just points her rapier at Gaban, launches three arrows through his chest, and drops him down to the Underworld. Chopper jumps after Gaban (which is resolved in 1151, although I actually missed this tiny panel when reading through this for the first time), but it seems to be the darkest hour for Elbaph. The Straw Hats are incapacitated, the Giant Pirates are disorganized, the enemies are immortal, the library is burning and the only person that can near-effortlessly beat the enemies, Scopper Gaban, just got taken out. 

That would've been, in and of itself, a great cliffhanger for the Monster Trio (and Loki, and Hajrudin) to show up and save the day. That would've been nice -- I don't dislike Scopper Gaban, but I felt like thematically I don't really like a random old lurking legend to show up and steal the thunder from our heroes. This is a very nice compromise, I feel, for showing the (many, many) Scopper Gaban fans a really badass moment that shows off how cool he can be, and taking him out it a way that... it doesn't feel as cheap since there's an actual reason, and the story implicitly acknowledges that Gaban could've basically ended the crisis then and there. 

But that's not the cliffhanger, no. In the midst of all of this, Gunko starts getting flashes of memory (and she's confused by the memories) of what appears to be her younger self, yelling for 'father'...  and then a shot of a what's presumably a younger her with what's unmistakably a younger Brook, with an afro and singing yohoho and talking about his dream to be a pirate. We cut away to Brook himself, who mutters about 'the resemblance is uncanny', and Gunko starts dashing towards Brook, demanding to know the Soul King's real name. 

The implication, the shocking implication -- which honestly is still the biggest revelation for me in these four megaton-bomb chapters, is that Gunko is Brook's daughter. If not his daughter, then a young girl that seems to view Brook as a father figure or something equivalent to that -- and this adds so much speculation to what the real relationship between Brook and Gunko are. Gunko herself has been set  up as the most interesting among the God's Knights with the lack of 'Saint' in her name and her love for Soul King music. And the potential daughter connection on top of that?

But wait, that's not all. 

Because randomly, Gunko's eyes glow, and in something that's familiar in many other fictional media but not exactly One Piece, she gets taken over by Imu. Very randomly! Everyone was already hyped by the God's Knights, but Haki starts roiling out of Gunko's form, her eyes go into that multi-irised Rinnegan-looking eyes, as an ominous voice stars coming out of Gunko. Imu/Gunko notes that the 'Holy Land is a sea of fire' (which is a whole can of worms to unpack. Dragon seems to be the popular consensus), that Imu demands reinforcements, and 'Mu' is about to show the world the 'Dominance of God' as she fully takes over Gunko's body. 

Which... yeah. Insane! I don't think Imu showing up on Elbaph was in anyone's bingo card. Her (and I'm calling Imu a 'her' until further notice) being involved in some degree? Sure. Her actually playing up the many devil motifs she has been hinted as having and actually possessing one of her minions? That's insane! And just as we were about to get some answers about Gunko and Brook's relationship as well. That's awesome! Of course, I still have two more chapters to discuss what Imu-Gunko actually did, so I won't belabor the point, but man, 1149 just keeps giving us 'cliffhanger-possible' moments one after the other. Very cool!

Random Notes:

• Hopefully I'll get 1150-1151 up by next week!
• Blog-wise, I've got a couple of Magic: The Gathering reviews lined up, but that's about as far as I got for Elden Ring at the moment so that series will probably be on a slight hiatus. I might be able to get some Dungeons & Dragons content out, but no promises. 
  
• Yamato Cover Story: 1148 has Yamato leaving Udon, with Ulti and Page-One in tow as her new retainers. Raizou, you're... you're not a very useful Daimyo to let all of this happen under your watch, huh?
• I like the little detail that in the Robin-focused 1148,  Brook is wrapped up from head to toe like a mummy, preventing him from giving us any more clues or interaction before Oda is ready to give us the strange implications on 1149. 
• Sommers has been ranting about 'love' quite a bit, and while he's more on a 'card-carrying hostage-holding terrorist' in these chapters, there's a nice little bit of him asking Robin if pushing him off is something she did because she's 'in love' with him. It is worth noting that this seems to be in a nice opposition with Scopper Gaban's self-declared 'Missionary of Love' epithet, although the two don't really acknowledge it when they clash. 
• All of Sommers' attacks are puns on iba (Japanese for 'thorn'), like 'ibaria' (between iba and baria/barrier), but those are all lost in English. 
• Most notably, one of Sommers' attacks is called 'Crimson Lotus Hell', mirroring one of the levels in Impel Down -- even the effects being tied to thorns jutting out of the ground is quite on point. What implication this has, particularly with a bunch of hell stuff in the next couple of chapters,  remains to be seen. 
• 'A life once lost will never return'... except for Brook. Get it? 
• I guess it makes sense, too, that Brook did not mention anything about Gunko's panties if she truly is his daughter (or daughter-figure). 
• Oh, and Gunko has previously been shown to use rapiers, like Brook, and all the way in Thriller Bark, Brook notes that his signature skill was usually known by another name until he became the undisputed master and renamed it the Arrow-Notch Slash. I'll say it again, the ARROW Notch Slash. 
• Brook's wanted poster does have him as 'Soul King Brook', but I guess Gunko was more engaged with looking at Soul King marketing instead of the Soul King's wanted posters? 
• Let's not even begin to unpack the fact that a lot of times, the Oda-penned movies tend to foreshadow some aspect of the upcoming/concurrently-written antagonist; with parallels drawn between Gild Tesoro and Doflamingo; Douglas Bullet and Kaido... people have been noting a lot of potential similarities between Uta and Gunko, not just based on their design, but potentially by their estranged connections with their respective missing fathers, who abandoned them 'for a good reason'...