One Piece 1169-1170 Review: Ratatoskr

One Piece, Chapter 1169: My Death Cannot Come Soon Enough; 1170: Contradictions

I couldn't get the review to 1169 in time, but to be honest it's just a bit of a remix of chapter 1152 (where we saw the event from Loki and Jarul's POV). 1169 tells it more from Shanks/Gyaban and Harald's perspectives respectively. 

It starts off with Shanks and Gyaban discussing the existence of Portgas D. Ace, so they at least knew that Roger's son exists... but Gyaban also notes that Ace and Buggy were 'more' of the Roger Pirates' children than the bloodline son. And it's a nice nod to the themes explored with Ace, with Gyaban telling Shanks that the King of Pirates isn't a position tied to bloodline. It's a nice little nod, even if Gyaban's line about those who have greatness expected of them fail to achieve that expectation. 

Harald spends a couple of pages reflecting on the Deep Sea Covenant, even as he slowly loses his mind to it... and also falls into despair as he realizes that a huge chunk of his life is now essentially all for nothing as every sacrifice he has made is doomed to go down the drain as he is soon to be nothing but Imu's mindless puppet. He keeps yelling and asking the guards to kill him, and for their credit the guards actually do -- it's the scene we see in 1152 with like twenty guards impaling Harald... but Harald just regenerates, and bashes all the guards aside with his swords, alternating between yelling for help and fully being transformed into Imu's minion. It's less mind-control and more 'mind-warping', since Harald ends up being turned into an evil version of himself instead of merely being a mindless zombie or an extension of Imu. 

While all of this is going on, Shanks explains to Gyaban about the contracts. Apparently at some point Shanks did talk to Harald away from Marie Geoise, because the Shallow-Sea Covenant is something that only has real effect when one is close to Imu... while each succeeding covenant giving powers. Shanks confirms that the second level, Deep-Sea, gives the superhuman strength, the undying body and the ability to use the Abyss teleportation... at the exchange of being able to hear Imu's voice over distances. 

Ultimately, this is when Shanks and Gyaban feels the giant Conqueror's Haki clashes from the castle as Loki and Harald clash. Loki and Jarul are completely confused, while guards are being slain (and we do know they die) left and right. Harald, in the throes of lucidity, tells Loki and Jarul to inform everyone in Elbaph about what has happened in the royal throne room, essentially happy to take the blame for everything and go down as the worst king in Elbaph history, one who nearly sold the giants to the World Government as slaves. Of course, we know how the story goes in the present day and this particular official stance of history was never written down, so it's curious whether Jarul and especially Loki decided to keep 'Harald as the wise old king' story willingly or unwillingly. 

Harald asks Loki to eat the sacred devil fruit of Elbaph, and to kill him and take the throne. The only thing that matters to Harald is Elbaph's future, not his own reputation. Some really great artwork of Loki's expressions as he considers the lengths that his father would go for Elbaph... and a particularly great panel as Harald breaks free and starts tossing guards around. Harald starts killing guards and regenerating and we get some really nice action panels. In the midst of this, Jarul fights Harald but gets overpowered and has his own sword stuck into his head (as we know was going to happen) while Loki runs off, confused at everything that's going on -- particularly Harald's sudden change in personality. 

As Harald goes to pursue Loki... Shanks and Gyaban swoop in and start slashing Harald, drawing blood and delaying Harald for a bit. Shanks and Gyaban quickly figure out what's going on and connect the dots. 1169 ends with Loki reaching the treasure room, seeing the treasure chest with the legendary devil fruit... and get attacked by a flying hammer!
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1170 has Loki confront the hammer... which, of course, is sentient and is the true form of Ragnir; Loki's present-day hammer that Harald was yelling at Loki to 'wield'. Ragnir, like the hammer Mjolnir from real-world mythology-Thor, is a flying hammer and one that can move around independently. In the One Piece world, of course, this means that Ragnir... is an object that has consumed a devil fruit. In this case, it turns into a squirrel!

This squirrel, by the way, is a homage to one of my favourite aspects of Nordic mythology, Ratatoskr, the squirrel that runs up and down the World Tree Yggdrasil in Nordic mythology, ferrying gossip between the eagles on top of the tree and the dragon-serpent in the roots. Now whether the actual devil fruit consumed by Ragnir is a legendary fruit or just a 'regular' squirrel-squirrel fruit... or if Ragnir is a squirrel that consumed a legendary hammer fruit, I don't exactly know... but he sure is a cute squirrel!

Ragnir in hammer mode also has some powers of its own, and dialogue from Harald in 1169 implies that Ragnir itself is a different kind of treasure, and as Loki tries to figure out what's going on, Ragnir as a hammer embedded on the floor is able to cause the floor around it to crack. Harald claims that Ragnir is a being that 'deems people worthy' on whether they could eat the fruit or not, which by implication also includes him. 

Gyaban and Shanks continue to attack Harald, dismembering his leg mid-monologue, and Gyaban notes that people with regenerative powers are weak to Conqueror's Haki Coating. It is kind of a random bit of revelation from Gyaban, but apparently the Knights of God did fight and harass the Roger Pirates, specifically to hunt down Shanks. Gyaban notes that they would just simply 'cut them up' and send them packing. It's... it's a bit of an interesting revelation, but I suppose having a bunch of off-screen fights would explain why the Celestial Dragons apparently just never made a move to get Child Shanks back, particularly with the amount of information network that they have. It's not the cleanest retcon, but it does make sense. Shanks and Gyaban talk a bit about 'fate' as they dodge around Harald's attacks. Apparently, Gyaban finds it particularly difficult to fight a Knight of God that has Conqueror's Haki, which is an interesting wrinkle. 

Loki, meanwhile, gets chased around by Ragnir before standing up to face off against Ragnir, slamming his previous hammer onto the sentient Ragnir and shattering it. The clash wounds Ragnir enough to force it to turn into its squirrel mode, where he cries... and nods and acknowledges Loki. 

Loki eats the fruit... and it seems to be some kind of Zoan? His fingers turn into claws, and we see spikes grow out of his hair or something... but we don't see the full form... but it's implied to be something vaguely wolf-like, making it probably the Fenrir fruit, if we're going by Nordic mythology again? We see the giant glowing eyes of Loki's beast mode, before he charges in and starts fighting Harald, although we never see the full transformed form of Loki with his new devil fruit, as he just goes into blur-lines and clashes with Harald and keeps rending chunks off of his father as Harald continues to regenerate. There's a panel where he seems to be a wolf-man... but then Loki reverts to his giant form. 

When the part of his arm with the Deep-Sea Mark is blown off, Harald comes back to his senses long enough to acknowledge Loki's Conqueror's Haki. Loki begs at Harald to reconsider, but Harald says that he's not being controlled, but that the mark is starting to influence his thoughts as he considered himself a god. As the flesh around his left arm starts reforming, Harald starts telling Loki to get along better with his brother, that he has the ability to lead Elbaph... and Loki starts yelling at Harald for being 'the worst', forcing a son to take his father's life, about being 'forced to do the dirty work. Raging and crying in grief, Loki swings the hammer and a thunderbolt slams down onto the castle and also strikes Harald. 

And as Loki swings it, Harald thanks Loki for being a good son to Ida... and to him. We get a gloriously-drawn scene of Loki slamming the hammer and shattering Harald like a ripped-apart glass painting, and Loki cries through his bandages and screams in rage. And so ends the reign of King Harald, the 'worst king of Elbaph', the 'best king of Elbaph'. One of the more fascinating characters in One Piece and one that ties very well to Loki's story while also being a commentary about so many things. Good intentions. Preserving tradition versus boldly changing the direction of culture. Being roped into a religion, a cause, a cult without realizing the full extent of it. Lots of things to talk about Harald... but also interesting in how it relates to poor, poor Loki. His relationship with his father might not be the best, and 'estranged' is probably a nice word to describe it... but he doesn't hate his father. And he most certainly did respect him. And being forced to end his father and to see everything Harald worked to far get perverted by his enemies... yeah, I'm looking forward to see what Loki does in the present day. 

Random Notes:

• 1169 came with a two-page colour spread of the entire Rocks Pirates as we know them, with all their official colour schemes. My favourite detail is Wang Zhi flipping off Barbell. 
• When Shanks actually did meet Ace for the first time in the Ace novel, Shanks treats Ace fully as his own person -- the position that he introduced himself as: 'Luffy's brother'; not 'Roger's son'. 
• There has been discussion about how Shanks had met Harald away from the Knights of God prior to this, but never warned Harald about the demonic contract... but with how gullible and desperate Harald is, I don't really think that it's something that he would've listened to anyway, since he didn't listen to Rocks either. 
• Also people are angry at Shanks for taking time lazing about and taking a bath at Gyaban's house, but to be fair to Shanks... while he was urgent, he didn't know it was 'drop everything right now' urgent until he sensed the Haki explosions from the castle. 
• Jarul isn't unconscious, neither did he get amnesia from the sword in his head. He's conscious enough to talk to Shanks and Gyaban and remember that they need to stop Harald from reaching Loki... so in the present day, there is a high likelihood that Jarul, in fact, is in cahoots with Loki. In 1170, we even get a couple of panels where Jarul explicitly summons more soldiers to attack Harald and slow him down to buy time for Loki.  
• I know Ratatoskr from Nordic myths, but also from Magic: The Gathering and Marvel comics where Ratatoskr hails from the 'Thor' corner of that universe... but menaces the superheroine Squirrel Girl. Which is genius and kind of hilarious. 
• It's in these clashes that Gyaban and Summers presumably clashed with each other, and Gyaban notes that the Knights of God are surprisingly good fighters despite being Celestial Dragons... the same sentiment that most of the fandom made when we first found out about the Knights of Gods' existence.