One Piece 1157 Review: Baby Katakuri!!!

One Piece, Chapter 1157: The Legendary Bar

As we continue with the Rocks Pirates flashback, we start off with a short, fun scene of them robbing an island in the Foot Colony which is supposed to be the International Philanthropy Federation. It's another nice scene to toss in some more doubt about the morality of the Rocks Pirates. On one hand, it is a massive charity organization. On the other hand, turns out that after Big Mom called them out for 'keeping the money for yourselves', the IPF turns out to actually be ran by scammers, something that's unfortunately true about some real-world charity organizations. 

As this is going on, we also get a pretty fun scene of the in-fighting between the Rocks Pirates, albeit this one is a fair bit more comical than I thought. Shiki "coincidentally" forgot about a group of their crewmates on a lower level, and tosses a cartoon bomb that is meant to blow up Silver Ax. Unfortunately, also in the lower level is Whitebeard, who shows off his Gura Gura no Mi and starts tilting the whole terrain just like what he did in Marineford. That panel is really cool, and I do like the little character moment of a much younger Kaido impressed and wanting to get a powerful Devil Fruit. 

Absolutely love the trolling that Shiki does -- manga!Shiki has been mostly serious and jeering, but movie!Shiki had his first scene be him doing a whole-ass weird dance routine for no real reason, so it's nice to get some of the goofiness back. We get a montage of them fighting the Marines, and the implication from one of Whitebeard's lines is that they might have someone leaking information out... because of course there's a traitor. 

The narrator then goes through a long list of the Rocks' Pirates accomplishment, noting that despite the future Pirate King being active in this period of time, Rocks was the crew that truly dominated the world. 

Meanwhile, remembering that this is still supposed to be a Harald flashback, we go back to Harald... who has sailed up to one of the human nations that helped them during the famine a couple of chapters ago. Unfortunately, just like Wano and the kingdom that became God Valley, the World Government really doesn't give a shit about non-member nations. A Cipher Pol agent tries to strongarm Harald (who's trying to get in the good graces of the World Government) and straight-up even shoots a woman with a pistol to get him to leave. Harald,  of course, attacks the ship to save the humans that had helped him before... and in another running theme in One Piece, we've got the news twisting the action to 'Elbaph Monarch Sinks Innocent Battleship' and framing the giants' action as sinister. 

We cut away to Rocks and Harald meeting in Ida's Tavern. Rocks uses this government betrayal as proof that Harald should join his crew instead. Meanwhile, Harald is still insistent that he wants to join the World Government. He's also shaven his head bald as a gesture of repentance, although it's something that Rocks finds silly. Harald notes that while the Marines may have some corrupt individuals, as a whole they are trying to protect the world, and even notes how some individual giants like John Giant has joined the Marines. John Giant! One of the manga's first giant Marines, known for being one-shotted by Whitebeard!

Ida, meanwhile, gets a short little verbal stab at Rocks, telling Rocks that her advice to Harald would be to "choose your friends wisely". While this is going on, we see Loki, Hajrudin and Mato nearby. So it is nice to see that while Loki and Hajrudin clearly went through some conflict as children, they're not entirely estranged. 

We then cut away to the Marine Power Trio of Garp, Sengoku and Tsuru while they were young. Earlier dialogue has noted Garp and Harald to at least be on friendly speaking terms, and Garp complains about the hypocrisy of the World Government allowing giants to join the Marines but not grant membership to Elbaph. Tsuru is also concerned that if harald and Elbaph allies themselves with Rocks, it would mean massive problems for them. The Admiral at this time is Kong! Kong is one of those characters who is theoretically important, but I keep forgetting he exists due to the very minimal screentime he has had. He's basically fulfilling a bureaucratic role to oppose Team Garp's arguments. 

We finally cut away to Hachinosu. We get news that Shakky has quit being the leader of the Kuja Pirates, passing over the mantle to Tritoma. While the chapters didn't make it super explicit, it also meant that Gloriosa also quit her position as Kuja Captain to join the Rocks Pirates. Gloriosa is a little baffled reading these news while she's hanging out with Big Mom... who actually is a mom at this point! Cameoing in the background of this scene are baby Daifuku, baby Oven, and a tiny little baby Katakuri standing on his mom's shoulder! Baby Katakuri! That's adorable as shit. 

Gloriosa and Linlin get into a bit of a verbal spat with each other, with Linlin mocking Amazon Lily's "love always leads to ruin"  reputation, while Gloriosa gets prissy at Big Mom for not knowing what love is, 'cranking kids out like popcorn'. We also get a comedic little scene with Stussy basically yelling at Whitebeard to love him, and Whitebeard constantly denying it. So yeah, that's some nice little dynamics among the Rocks Pirates.  

Unexpectedly to everyone, Shakuyaku decides to arrive, stepping off the Kuja Pirate ship and causing all of the people around to be amazed at her arrival there. She thanks and bids Tritoma farewell. Shakuyaku says that she just wants to live in Pirate Island for a while, because apparently the Marines are hunting after her. She's not joining the Rocks Pirates specifically, but she's going to live in Hachinosu. All of the nameless minion pirates are, well, cartoonishly head-over-heels over Shakuyaku. 

This leads to the rest of the Rocks Pirates arriving on the scene to see what's going on, only to see Shakky's Rip-Off Bar opening in the location. And again, just with the generic pirates, Shakky gives a beaming smile and a lot of sparkles around her and this instantly causes all the male pirates to instantly go goo-goo over her. Including, we must say, Whitebeard! The chapter closes off with some very specific wording, with the narrator hyping up Shakky's arrival... and concludes that Shakky is the 'crown jewel' and 'treasure' of the island, and that treaasure is always the inevitable target of theft. 

The conclusion? The 'Treasure of Hachinosu' in God Valley isn't a Devil Fruit like everyone suspects it is, but... Shakky? 

This is a revelation that took the fandom by storm, I believe, because how dare the big badass pirates Gol D. Roger and Rocks D. Xebec mobilize their armies over a woman? Except the two most dramatic and well-regarded arcs of the manga have been rescue arcs -- Enies' Lobby happened because of Nico Robin, and Marineford happened because of Ace. While I do admit that the comedic cartoon love-eyeballs reactions from everyone was a bit overused, I do think this is a very 'One Piece' reason to set off a war for such emotional people.

Of course, throwing another wrench into this is the Gorosei meeting in their creepy meeting room, deciding to use Harald's desire to get Elbaph into the World Government as a way to get him to do something... kill Rocks. That sure is another fuel to the fire, and I wonder if this means Harald is involved in God Valley? Because all of this really looks like we're heading into fully exploring God Valley, and I am all for that. 

Random Notes:

• Yamato Cover Story: Yamato and company visit the grave of the still-unnamed hero. Neat, but not as neat as the absolutely adorable background event of Ulti and Page One creating a gigantic Kaido snowman. 
• Shiki is also confirmed to have his movie counterpart's Fuwa Fuwa no Mi in the main continuity, after Oda flip-flopped a couple of times in SBS-es about whether Shiki has it in the manga. I believe the last time Oda spoke about Shiki and the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi in an SBS, he noted that he didn't want to confuse the audience by giving Shiki a different (or no) Devil Fruit. 
• One absolutely underrated funny panel is Wang Zhi sheepishly pointing at Shiki when Whitebeard and company demanded to know who the fuck threw a bomb at them. 
• Not as exciting as Baby Katakuri and his siblings, but Zeus and Prometheus also make a couple of panels' cameo alongside the younger Big Mom. 
• I think people are agreeing that the top suspect of a traitor among the Rocks Pirates is Kyo due to his more elaborate introduction last chapter, but I also think a lot of people also want him to be canonized!Zephyr. I like Zephyr, but I don't know if it'll really fit the story? 
• In addition to the towns wiped off maps and violations of international law, it is interesting that among Rocks's feats is '25 criminal records quietly erased'. Whether this meant the records of Rocks's own crew being erased or not, I'm not really sure about. 
• Apparently some of the pirates in Hachinosu started piracy specifically because of Shakky. Not because they wanted to meet Shakky in the seas, but specifically to be attacked by Shakky's pirates, which is a new level of simping heretofore unseen in the world. 
• This does mean that the flashback scene where little Katakuri is being bullied in an island would take place in Hachinosu, which does kind of make a bit more sense why the children in that village would be so brutal if it's a pirate-paradise island. 
• Shakky's Rip-Off Bar looks, by the way, almost exactly the same as it did in Sabaody. The primary difference being that the Sabaody bar has a bubble-shaped structure on top of it, similar to the other Sabaody buildings. Whether it's just some precision carpentry or if the physical bar was moved from Hachinosu to Sabaody by any one of the many superpowers in the setting, we're not sure yet.