One Piece 1175 Review: Lightning Dragon

One Piece, Chapter 1175: Niddhoggr

A pretty simple chapter, this one, due to the two-page spreads, and how a lot of this is chapter is action scenes. For the most part, the chapter takes care of just getting rid of Summers, but the last couple of chapters have been excellent at making Summers really hateable!

We start off with a brief recap on the 'B-team', with Sanji freeing Robin from her thorn bindings. It is a bit annoying that the rest of the Straw Hats haven't tried to do anything productive just yet, even though the tension is slowly winding down with how we're very quickly running out of threats not named Imu. 

We get a brief showcase of the giant children and their wounded parents recovering from the fall, while giant dragon Loki is going around chomping up the dream-monsters. Luffy and Zoro hvae a brief catch-up and note that they basically have things under control... until Summers shows up with several thorn-vine-dragons with cannons in their mouths, firing thorns at the wounded Oimo and other parents.

Summers rants and demands they give back his 'emotions'... but then the kids line up in front of their parents, ready to take the blows in their stead, and Summers essentially hate-gasms one more time as he realizes the kids dying is going to be as sadistic as he wants to. But Zoro zips in and knocks away the thorns, while Luffy does a badass pose of jumping into the sky and grabbing a lightning bolt, and we get a 'Gomu Gomu Dawn Thor Rifle', unleashing a gigantic lightning punch. 

Being an immortal enemy, we get a particularly brutal shot of Summer's head being torn in half with his teeth falling out. It's comical and brutal, and a very much needed shot after all the nonsense Summers has been pulling. Summers falls down... and gets swatted and stomped on by Loki almost like an afterthought. Ripley and the other giants react at Luffy's Nika form, and the thorns around the children falls off. 

Gaban gets a brief flashback as we learn about the fruit, which is the mythical Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Nidhoggr. Jarl explains to Gaban and Shanks that the mythical dragon fruit has a different maximum size depending on who eats it, explaining why an ancient giant is noted to be able to use it to its maximum potential. There's a nice little graph comparing the dragon sizes for a human, giant and ancient giant, too, which is cute. 

Jarl also gives some backstory about how this fruit was wielded by their Warrior God (which might just be the titular Elbaf himself) who wielded Ragnir and was accompanied by his ice squirrel Ratatoskr. Ratatoskr is from the real-world Norse mythology! Jarl notes that Ratatoskr chose to inhabit the Warrior God's weapon Ragnir, waiting for his return, and I'm not 100% sure if this is just the process that Vegapunk artificially embeds Devil Fruits, or if this is something completely different. 

We then continue on for a couple of large panels as Loki unleashes 'Thorheim', a gigantic lightning nuke that vaporizes all of the Mumas. Luffy and Ragnir celebrate... while Imu reacts, floating in Gunko's form but also 'seeing' the events from her room in Marie Geoise, recognizing Nidhoggr and narrowing her eyes. Yeah, I do think Imu might want to make Loki/Nidhoggr a deal he can't refuse, otherwise this arc really does feel like it's otherwise so overwhelmingly in the good guys' favour. 

Pretty nice action chapter with some context and explanations. Simple and sweet.

Random Notes:

• Will be traveling for the next couple of weeks, so no live One Piece updates. I have a bit of a backlog of D&D and Marvel-TV stuff to talk about, though. 
• Gear 5th Luffy is in his 'giant' form throughout all these scenes, something that I don't think really registered with me until this chapter. Loki is just so big that I keep forgetting the scale until we see Luffy looming above Zoro. 
• 'Thorheim' isn't a real realm from Norse mythology, so I guess Loki's realm attacks don't have to correspond to the Nine Realms of Nordic myth. 
• 'Nidhoggr' is written with the kanji for 'thunder dragon'. 
• The official translation parses it Niddhoggr, but I've been calling the mythical dragon 'Nidhogg' or 'Nidhoggr' for years now, so.
• This chapter also confirms that Imu's main body is still in Marie Geoise, and she/he didn't actually physically arrive in Elbaf.