One Piece, Chapter 1174: The Strongest Thing in the World
This is a really good chapter, though, all jokes aside. And a good chunk of it has to do with the giant children, which is not something I expected to write in this story. But the matter of the fact is, even though Colon is the only character to really have any significant amount of time, the random little quirks that Oda has given to the little cluster of kidnapped children every time we cut to them did do enough to make each of them somewhat distinct that when Oda ends up pulling on the foreshadowing triggers, it works.
We start off where we left off with Summers briefly panicking that he destroyed the ship... but then we get Summers going absolutely ballistic with being delighted at realizing that he's about to witness a lot of misery and suffering as the children walk off to their deaths right in front of their parents. I'm not going to belabor the point, but god damn, Oda did a great job at making Summers' face really, really despicable as he laughs in what's essentially an orgasmic face as he sees the desperation among the giants.
Summers starts speaking and taunting everyone over a megaphone, and we get to see some of the interactions between the parents and the children. Oimo, good old Oimo, tries his best to rescue his granddaughter the way that Saul and Robin did, but gets his hand impaled for his trouble, and dragged on the ground. The kids continue to cry and think that they're being punished, or that this is karma for disobeying their parents, while the parents are panicking and trying their best to save the kids.
We've got some typical misbehaviour, but Colon gets a neat moment where Ripley scolds him for bullying another child; and Oimo's grandson is angry at Oimo for being part of the 'barbaric pirates'. Nice little moments. Colon tries his best to hold his composure... but he is still just a kid and breaks down crying at the end of the pier. Ripley kneels down in front of him and hugs him, and we get a scene of all the thorns piercing through Ripley's body but without a shred of showcase of pain in her face.
And Ripley is just there with a smile, knowing that there's not a thing she could do to save her son... but she is going to be there, to be calm with her son, to make sure that he doesn't die alone. ALL the parents (or grandparents) do this. We get a nice short moment from Ronja (the Pollyanna kid) whose father praises her for being so brave, and Bent (the kid whose greatest fear is his mom) apologizes to his mother... who is happy to be treated as 'scary' if she can keep her son safe. The orphan Johanna is jealous for a bit... before Ange, the teacher, rushes in to hug her.
Oh, and Bjorn, Rodo's younger brother, regrets being ashamed of his nerdy brother, right as Rodo jumps in to grab him and fall alongside the rest of the children.
Again, all of these built up on nice little lines here and there of foreshadowing for minor characters, and the juxtaposition with Summers' nasty laughing face is genuinely well done.
...of course, Oda's not going to kill a bunch of children like that. But the buildup is great. They fall on a white layer on a black landscape, which seems to be intentionally drawn to look disorienting and confusing. The white layer is evidently Luffy, who boasts about this being his 'Gum Gum Tummy Cracker' or whatever, and we get a conversation between Luffy in his Nika form with an angry eyeball that is clearly Loki. Loki insists that he is The Destroyer, who wants everyone off his back to not hinder his fighting.
And we build up, of course, to the reveal of Loki's true devil fruit form. It starts snowing. Lightning and thunder rock the land. Far away, Elder Jarl and his bodyguards hear the Nika drumbeat, and Jarl starts talking about a prophecy about the arrival of Sun God Nika... and we get a glorious two-page spread of a jet-black dragon with glowing eyes, bursting through the canopy and knocking away the giant Mumas. Luffy and Ragnir are standing on his head, dwarfed by the sheer size of Loki in his beast mode, and... and Mumas are just being thrown around like dolls. The sheer scope of Loki is just insane, since we've seen that the Mumas are already giants to the giants.
So yeah, after a bit of teasing, we finally get to see Loki's beast form. It's not Fenrir! It's not a serpent, a squirrel or an eagle either, and I am quite happy that we're playing Loki's monster form completely straight. Just a cool, badass, monster dragon... and the size, too! Very excited to see what's going to come out of this.
Random Notes:
- In his flashback, Colon has... an Emet toy? I... what?
- This, by the way, isn't the first Emet toy to have appeared in the story, as Wapol, of all people, made an Emet toy in his cover story during his rise to prominence as a materials producer mogul. What!
- As per how I understand it, Gunko's arrow arrow fruit terminates at the docks, and since the children have walked all the way to the end and fell, they should be free from the Arrow Arrow Fruit, if not the Thorn fruit.
- One of the mothers tries to bite off the thorny vines, bless her.
- Killingham gets a brief cameo reacting to Summers's nonsense, but he doesn't really do anything.
- Summers' reaction about how 'oh, I can pawn off the mistake on the Great One!' is an interesting one. Is it just Summers that's a bit of a moron, or are the God's Knights actually chafing under Imu somewhat?
- Loki's draconic devil fruit name isn't told to us yet, but with Nidhogg being identified as the name of one of the Muma dragons, chances are that's the one, isn't it?
- Rodo/Road, Colon/Collun... yeah, I'm pretty sure I mix up which romanization a lot of times.
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