One Piece, Chapter 1156: With Pride
A late review for me due to work and travel, but there's a break week for One Piece so it's good for me.
Finally, the manga remembers that good old Franky exists, and he reacts in confusion at all the explosions going on with the Mumas and giant Loki dragon causing explosions and shit. And rather randomly, Lillith opens up the massive sci-fi briefcase containing Vegapunk-prime's body... and reveals a bunch of upgrades for Franky. These 'Omni-Drain Converters' is an upgrade for Franky. Lilith uses the ODC to absorb the heat from the burning school, and converts them into 'Super Vega Cola', and she says that Franky's body is actually more advanced than the Pacifistas... and he's just gimping himself by only using cola to power himself. 'Fuel is passion', Lilith says, and the converters will help that.
This is a rather low-key and random upgrade for Franky that, to be honest, feels like it should've been given to him in at the end of Egghead -- an arc where Franky, despite being the science guy in the science arc, did... next to nothing. Giving Franky this upgrade rather randomly at this point feels rather strange, but I suppose it is better late than never.
Team Nami, meanwhile, is going around trying to fix the burning school. Usopp disappointingly does nothing but panic throughout the chapter. Nami and Zeus summon a gigantic rain to put out the fire, which seems to work for a bit... until Killingham appears with a gigantic worm-like dragon called the Lindworm that chomps down on Zeus. Fortunately, it's at this point that Lilith/Franky's little ODC drones swoop in and just absorb so much heat that the entire school ends up being frozen.
Killingham then just unleashes the Lindworm on the library, yelling about how history will be ended and ranting about how the new world will come around. Killingham also reacts at Jinbe's presence, taking the extra line to go 'oh my god, a fishman, I'm disgusted, thank god my mask keeps my air pure'. This ticks off Sanji, who decides to zero in on Killingham for the crime of being ignorant of a Shichibukai, and also insulting his crewmate.
All of this leads to a three-way combo move as Jinbe unleashes a Vagabond Drill on the Lindworm's stomach; Franky flies up and unleashes a new move called Strong Dexter on the Lindwom's head, and Sanji slams down with an Ifrit Jambe: Concasser on Killingham. The combo move annihilates the Lindworm, and appears to have taken Killingham at least temporarily out of the battle.
Which... it is cool to see Sanji and Jinbe do stuff. Nami and Lilith, too. It is even more cool to see Franky show off a power-up! But at this point beating up the sleep demons is really starting to lose its luster, and having Killingham just be taken out in one shot without even much of a back-to-back betwen him and any of the Straw Hats feels a bit anticlimactic.
The back half of this chapter deals with the Domi Reversi'd giants. The demonic Brogy and Dorry have finally reached where Jarul is, and their regneeration is giving the generic giants some trouble. And... and rather suddenly, Brogy and Dorry manage to struggle and get back a bit of their personality. It really would've been cool if this was more explicitly tied to the clash that Zoro caused them to do a couple chapters ago, or if the 'struggling from within' trope was actually highlighted a bit earlier in the arc... but this really does feel like it came out of nowhere.
And Brogy and Dorry decide to be in agreement, and then charge at each other and cut each other's heads off with the thought of how warriors of Elbaf must die with pride. It is cool to see decapitation in One Piece... but as the two bodies fall, the Domi Reversi swaps around and restores Brogy and Dorry to their normal state.
Which is a bit of a cop-out, I feel.
Right, the chapter ends up with Zoro standing in front of Dorry, Brogy, Hajrudin and Stansen as they face of against the army of Domi Reversi'd giants, realizing that all they have to do is to cut off all their heads or run them through the heart, dealing fatal damage... and the giants all grin as they all say that it's totally a shame that they are so forced to go all-out against their comrades, being a joke about their war-happy mentality.
But again, I still feel like this resolution is a cop-out, and not done especially well. There is a world where the exact same plot twist is done and I would've liked it, and that would either have this reverse-the-reversi plot twist be actually foreshadowed. That either the personas of Brogy and Dorry are fighting from within; or that there's even a way to spin them around. Or you could go the dramatic way, and have the clash with Zoro (or Hajrudin, or Jarul, or Luffy, or anyone else) actually shake them and be the catalyst to remind them of their true selves. As it is, we've got the confused clash a couple chapters back that you might squint and look at them remembering their history of being battle partners for years... but it really does come so sudden.
And it's not a particularly exciting plot twist since ever since Loki and Luffy arrived (alongside Zoro and Sanji), we kind of lost most of our tension against the bad guys -- the good guys are so overwhelmingly in the advantageous position that it's not really even funny anymore, and with the very first things they did is to instantly give us the solution for the two separate hostage groups (the kids and the mind-controlled giants) it's not the best. I really get the feeling like they're just rapidly trying to wrap up Elbaf after the God Valley arc went a bit long.
Random Notes:
- I will review the live-action Netflix second season... eventually. A lot on my plate at the moment, and I'm still trying to tidy up some of the outstanding articles that I haven't finished yet. But it will come at some point. Maybe mid-year or something. I think it's a bit too late for me to try and catch that 'wave' of attracting new readers, and that's exhausting anyway.
- It is interesting that Killingham is the only one of the God's Knights so far to actually wear the astronaut bubble suit. Gunko's weird, sure, but it is interesting that the Gorosei, Shamrock and even Shepherd doesn't care enough to be all disgusted by the lower folk and wear the masks.
- Oh, Brogy's left arm is still gone, so injuries sustained outside of Domi Reversi isn't restored. Kind of a Bleach-y handwave, though, using amputation as a substitute towards actual lasting death. I do like that Brogy later straps a shield to the stump of his hand.
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