One Piece 1161 Review: Dark King

One Piece, Chapter 1161: A Love Ballad in a Hail of Arrows

Very fun chapter! This one covers a lot of the stuff we expected and guessed would happen in God Valley -- all of the action scenes are predictable but no less awesome for that. 

There is a lot of shots of various characters -- pirates, marines, celestial dragons -- reacting to the chaos going on. I don't think I really care to describe each and every one, but it's really fun to read through. Of interest is a lone shot of Rocks that is obsessed only about hunting down Teach and Eris, with Eris being presumably the name of his wife. We see nothing of Rocks throughout this chapter, which mostly gets through the heroic story with the rather predictable conclusion of Shakky's rescue involving the majority of the Rocks and Roger Pirates. I'm going to assume that next chapter will focus more on the Rocks side of the story. 

We follow Dragon running around with the two babies... but he gets laser-beamed through the shoulder by the tall God's Knight that everyone thought was Killingham's mom or sister. Turns out that she's not even from the same Celestial Dragon family, being named St. Maffey of the Satchels family. Killingham is from the Rimoshifu family. There could be some intermarriage thing going on, but it seems like for now, as written, she's completely disconnected from him. 

Dragon gets taken out with a blast through the shoulder, but St. Maffey doesn't seem to give a shit whether the Marine lives or dies. Apparently she was tasked to bring back Garling's children by someone we don't see over den den mushi -- presumably another Celestial Dragon if he/she can ask favours of a God's Knight like Maffey. Maffey manages to get one of the babies back, but is too busy talking to the other person on the phone about how weird it is for Garling to have a kid to finish Dragon off quickly. And as this is going on... she and the entire forest around her gets bisected. 

Of course she gets better afterwards, since we've seen characters like Summers recover from similar bisections, but it's still pretty damn cool. This is a glancing blow from Whitebeard, who strides into the battlefield alongside Big Mom, not even caring that they dealt a massive blow to a God's Knight. They're just arguing about Whitebeard's attacks almost hitting Big Mom, and I really love the panel of a regular Marine like Dragon just scrambling away while these two titanic figures walk in the background. 

Going back slightly about Monkey D. Dragon, it is notable that Dragon is basically just a regular Marine seemingly with no Haki or Rokushiki or Devil Fruit or any kind of powers here, but he did at least survive a laser beam! Despite having the Will of D., it's also interesting that despite being seemingly resigned to death, Dragon was not smiling. Interesting!

We get a badass panel of Whitebeard, Big Mom, Kaido and Shiki unleashing a massive attack that takes out an entire group of attacking pirates. This, of course, is the four future Yonko... with a bunch of ancillary material like 'chapter 0' or the Ace light novels often bringing Shiki up as an unofficial Yonko or perhaps even the one that Shanks deposed. 

Garp then arrives, leading to a hilarious off-screen yell of 'dad??' by Dragon. Garp doesn't seem to notice Dragon's presence, though, and he's just unleashing massive Haki punches. So terrifying is Monkey D. Garp that everyone runs away. Kaido protests about them not fighting back but he's following his older crewmates in running around. Most significantly, Whitebeard! Whitebeard is running away! Edward "he has never retreated from battle, his front side may be covered by a thousand scars but his back is unmolested by scars" Newgate, that Whitebeard, is straight up running away in retreat. 

Big Mom summons Prometheus and Zeus and unleashes a lightning-fire cannon called Lightning Fleur Blitz, and we get an absolutely badass scene of Garp in blackened silhouette with his eyes and mouth highlighted in white, with Garp giving the badass boast of 'this isn't enough to even cook a prime rib, Linlin!' God damn, Garp. 

We get more scenes of chaos here and there. Maffey and Dragon are separated with their respective Figarland babies... and it's tempting to say that Dragon got Shanks and Maffey got Shamrock, but there's really no way to tell, is it? That's the logical course of action but it's not confirmed. Anyway, all the pirates are converging on the center of the island where the prizes are. Unfortunately, the chaos causes them to fight each other, with a particular panel showing Roger and Whitebeard clashing. 

The focus of this scene is St. Summers, who walks up to where Shakky is imprisoned. He finds that Shakky has knocked out all the Marines assigned to guard her even though she's chained up, a nice showcase that she's not entirely harmless. Summers starts slapping Shakky around, blocks her attempt at kicking him, and stabs her in the leg. Summers then goes into a rant about what a clusterfuck this hunting competition has became, how Garling's going to claim Shakky anyway even if the Celestial Dragons manage to keep her... and Summers concludes that since he's not going to gain anything, might as well as kill Shakky right now. Summers shuts up the attendant, then goes into a monologue about how he's going to take his time to kill Shakky...

And then in another badass silhouetted scene, his glasses gleaming as he does a pose... is the Dark King, First Mate of the King of Pirates, and a very angry lover... Silvers Rayleigh!

Very badass entry, and he even gets a badass one-liner. "I'll send you to the darkest depths of the underworld!" He does a single strike that knocks Summers straight into a wall with his first named attack, Higanbana, leaving a Looney-Tunes-style impression. That's just what happens to Shepherd Summers, I guess, he keeps getting one-shot by senior members of the Roger Pirates. 

Rayleigh and Shakky get a moment of rescuer and rescuee, and they embrace... and it's a whole badass scene and everything. It's basically what we expected would happen, since we're already familiar and we know that Rayleigh and Shakky both survive and end up together. This whole chapter is just showing that sequence of events and showing how badass everyone involved is. And it's capped off with Roger and Gaban screaming at Rayleigh to save the lovey-dovey stuff for later with tears streaming down their faces.

So yeah, definitely an enjoyable chapter to read through, but I'm more interested to see what comes next after this -- where we see more stuff, hopefully, about Rocks and maybe Garling. 

Random Notes:

• Yamato's Cover Story: Yamato prays in front of a shrine with lanterns of all the people who gave their lives to the war. In addition to the obvious (Oden, Toki, Izo, Ashura Doji, Yasuie) we've got a couple more obscure characters (the three daimyo, Hyogoro's wife Taka, and even Pedro) and an interesting lantern that's cut off but reads 'Kuro-' above. Is that Kurozumi Kanjuro? Are they seriously honouring Kanjuro? 
  
• Eris is the goddess of discord in Greek mythology, so that's... that's an interesting name to give to Blackbeard's mother. 
• Having recently watched the scene of the Rocks pirates arriving on God Valley in the anime via Kuma's flashback, it really is telling just how much Oda foreshadowed in that scene, huh? Right up to the other pirates complaining that Rocks is 'losing sight' of their main goal. 
• St. Maffey's power is just a laser beam, which could mean that she is the previous holder of Kizaru's Pika Pika no Mi. It could just as well as be another fruit. If it is the Pika Pika no Mi, it does mean that Maffey has two options to reform after being sliced in half -- the God's Knight's regeneration powers or just regular Logia powers. 
• Associating Garp with steaks really does cause me to flash back to the scene in the live-action One Piece where we had a live-action-exclusive scene of Garp meeting Zeff. 
• Among the shot of the minor Rocks Pirates advancing, we get to see Captain John with a gigantic metal right arm. Previous scenes of him, and later scenes of him as a zombie, does not have this, so it's probably part of his power... is John the previous user of Kidd's Jiki Jiki no Mi?
• We also get a rare sighting of Gill Bastar, the four-armed gunslinger, although he is covered up in a way that makes it look like he's only got two. Or maybe his extra arms are part of a devil fruit power? 
• Notably, when Whitebeard and Roger clashes, their blades touch and don't create that Conqueror's Haki gap like it did in the Oden flashback, showing that they are still nowhere close to the veteran pirates we know and love them as. 
• The Red Flower Lily is the flower associated with death and the underworld, and it's the flower that's prominently featured in manga like Demon Slayer, Bleach and especially Tokyo Ghoul. Oh, I remember all the 'flower symbolism' discussions in Tokyo Ghoul!