One Piece 1053 Review: Feng Shui

One Piece, Chapter 1153: The Birth of Loki

So this chapter is an interesting one, taking place entirely via flashbacks-within-flashbacks. We get some backstory on King Harald, establishing him as a contemporary of Dorry and Brogy, and he grew up kind of spoiled -- a lot of people pointed out the similarities that Harald has to Oden in being a man-child who didn't discover more noble qualities until later in both their lives, except Harald was a lot worse as a child. 

And as a teenager, he goes around raiding with pirates. Things come to a head on Bunt Kingdom, where Harald shows that he at least has some values -- seeing a female giant stuck in a cage and seemingly forced to act as a sideshow, Harald and his warriors go in and absolutely raid the village. Except turns out that it's a huge misunderstanding. I... I can understand Harald overreacting at what he thought was slavery on his people, though! But while he's clearly there for somewhat good reasons, the female giant Ida slaps the shit out of King Harald, giving us an epic reaction shot. This is clearly the first time Harald's ever been slapped by someone, least of all someone who thinks would be thanking him for a rescue. 

Turns out Ida was rescued by the villagers, and she's just acting as a circus employee to repay them. We also get a really great facial expression of a crying Ida as she gives a speech to Harald about how arrogant he's being just because he happened to be born big and strong. She also drops a line about how all other giants are given the unfair, terrifying reputation of the Elbaph pirates because of the behaviour of people like him. What leads after this is another great expression from Harald as he semi-pouts and semi-reflects, and eventually yells at his minions to help Ida rebuild the 'little town'. 

Throughout this process, even the unnamed giant minions began to understand and do a bit of a trade of knowledge in regards to cloth and construction, while we get Harald slowly learning to appreciate humans -- even doing what appears to be the Nika dance with a bunch of little humans. It is a bit of a fast heel-face-turn, but I appreciate this -- Harald isn't the only main character we need a flashback for, after all. It's Loki's story, damn it! And Harald is young and impressionable enough that I kind of believe that meeting a giant who upends his way of thinking multiple times over is kind of... believable enough, I suppose.

We learn some more giant culture from the subsequent conversations. Ida comes from Sawamanai (literally 'not cold') in South Blue, and Harald notes that she has passed the 'serpent of blood' -- which seems to be Brogy and Dorry's term for the Red Line, printed more than a decade ago in the Little Garden arc. Ida's even getting her own preconceptions changed, realizing that Elbaph aren't just simple barbarians like she thought they all were. 

We cut slightly a bit into the future, where Harald starts to yell out a lot of his attempts to turn Elbaph around from a raiding nation to something that's more suited to the global stage. We also get a nice, clever bit of nod to Brogy and Dorry being active Giant Pirates throughout this period, but Harald also handwaves this aside by saying that Brogy and Dorry were always weirdly respectful of humans even since they were young. Which, honestly, seeing how they reacted to the Straw Hats in Little Garden? I totally buy this explanation. Harald wants to send diplomats, establish relations, and whatnot with a bunch of other countries. 

And then, 81 years before the present day, Ida gives birth to baby Hajrudin. However, a bunch of shady old giants -- presumably the leaders of the villages -- prevent Harald and Ida from marrying. Which we knew happened. It is kind of weird that Harald would actually listen to this, admittedly, considering how headstrong he's shown to be as a youth and how he's in the process of upending giant culture, but perhaps it's precisely because he's trying to upend Elbaph culture that he can't afford to be selfish? It's a bit odd. But Ida stays in the Fishermen Village, and seems content that she and Hajrudin would at least be close to Harald. 

The wife that the shadowy elder council picks for Harald is a super-hot lady called Estrid, with a 'pure and ancient' blood, and she introduces herself as a practitioner of what's translated as 'Geomancy' in the official translation, but is the art of 'Wind-Earth' in the original Japanese. It's an obvious nod to feng shui, which literally translates to wind-water in Mandarin. Feng shui is a Chinese art meant to harmonize the flow of chi in a house and environment based on sources of energy and balance. 

It's tradition and inherently harmless, but Estrid shows off an utter lack of compromise to Harald. It's a nice contrast to how Ida and Harald were both willing to learn and understand each other's perspectives, but Estrid just goes around and throws around her geomancy superstition immediately, giving out orders about mirrors and furniture and how they have to dine on silver and a lot of other stuff... while the second words out of her mouth is to tell Harald to forget about that 'woman and her bastard child'. She also gifts Harald the eight-legged horse Sleipnir Asla, which we know from previous chapters would die and his death be blamed on one of the bad lucks caused by the Cursed Child Loki. 

While King Harald is out meeting other people and being frustrated at being blocked at all turns by the World Government, 63 years ago we get to see the birth of Loki... and what's under those bandages. Baby Loki is positively demonic, with the little horn nubs being there since birth, but also horrifying, serpentine, demonic eyes. And he does look demonic... but that doesn't excuse what Estrid decides to do next. She immediately goes to hysterics, calling it a monster and yelling at everyone to say that it's a stillbirth. Even the midwives and guards are horrified. The narrator notes with a very sad line -- "The Prince of Elbaph grasped for the empty air, but no hands reached out to envelop his own. The most unfortunate of all living creatures is the one whose very existence is denied by its mother in the moment of its birth."

Because despite the protest of everyone else, Queen Estrid just picks Loki up and yeets him off Yggdrassil. A little dot that gets chucked all the way down into the Underworld. 

And as Estrid yells and tries to get back home, and screams about the prophecy of King Harald being killed by his own son (the wording makes it ambiguous whether the prophecy existed before, or if Estrid "remembered", a.k.a. made it up on the spot). But what immediately grabs everyone's attention is the shot of Baby Loki, still a baby, climbing up the World Tree while encrusted in frost and crying, driven by instinct. Holy fuck, he's still a baby, how is he doing this? A haunting image, an utterly wretched, sad image. 

And as Estrid continues to be a piece of filth and screams around about prophecies, we get a nice shot of Ida and young Hajrudin. Ida doesn't even seem to mind that Harald fathered a son with another woman, while Hajrudin acts a bit bratty. Yeah, Ida's a really, really nice person. Estrid isn't, but at least we know that she dies very quickly into Loki's childhood. But just like a lot of other themes in One Piece, we get to see how Loki's reputation was essentially decided the moment he was born -- all out of unfairness and prejudice over his eyes. Brings to mind a parallel to Ida's line earlier in the chapter -- "just because you're born big". I am definitely excited to see what little young Loki is going to get up to. 

Random Notes:

• Yamato Cover Story: Yamato's still continuing with the pilgrimage, this time meeting Kiku, who's become the Daimyo of Ringo. Okay! Yamato gets to be the Treasure Cruise art for this chapter, I suppose!
  
• Dang, baby Brogy looks like a Minion. 
• One of the establishing shots of teenaged Harald has him pick a booger and flick it so hard it causes an explosion in an ocean that tosses around a poor shark. Surprisingly, this isn't the first time a character in One Piece has weaponized boogers.
• A lot of people have pointed out how different Ida's design looks compared to Oda's traditional way of drawing a young woman, the way he'd draw Nami or Robin or Vivi or Hancock or Ginny or Lilith. Which makes it even more jarring when a traditionally hourglass-figure lady like Estrid shows up and acts super-vile. 
• Estrid (or Astrid) is a pretty common Nordic name, but Ida is presumably a reference to Norse goddess Idunn. 
• We get some nice cameos of Wano, Fishman Island and what appears to be Shandora throughout the montage. In one of the conversations, Harald notes the birth of the royal fishman Neptune, and how the Sea Kings were celebrating. 
• Asla is, of course, a reference to mythological Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir. The katakana used can also be read as 'Asura', which might just be a coincidence with Zoro's Asura... or maybe not. Sleipnir/Asla does have extra limbs, after all. 
• Also noted briefly is that the giants do also have their own knowledge to trade, with Harald teaching sailors about the 'Pole Star'. While most people navigate with Log Poses in the One Piece world, navigating with stars have been mentioned a couple of times in the early arcs. 
• I missed it during my first readthrough, but baby Loki just very casually beheaded a bear. Even chad-baby Oden had to wait until he was a single-digit child of four before he killed a bear!
• Yeah, I can see why Loki grew such a prickly exterior when everyone in his life from Estrid to the Elbaph villagers to Hajrudin to even Lola rejected him.