One Piece 1187-1190 Review: Sword Collection

One Piece, Chapters 1187-1190

Been a while since I did a One Piece review. Again, I'm doing this as a little catch-up while I juggle some IRL stuff that has been making it slow for me to blog anything in real-time...

Chapter 1187: The Root of the Problem

This one picks up where 1186 left off, with Luffy punching Imu, and there's a brief bit of macho posturing from Loki before Imu zips back up and uses the ringing Omen black flames to summon a gigantic extending black sword, "Stigma, Blade of Hatred", to stab Loki through the shoulder. This is an interesting ability and the fact that Imu has been naming his abilities based on swords becomes a bit more relevant in subsequent chapters. 

Regardless, the wounded Loki gets thrown across the battlefield, landing to where Gunko is frozen in ice next to most of the other Straw Hats. The Ragnir hammer conks down on the ice cube and starts to melt it, although Gunko/Shuri doesn't come to in any of these chapters. 

Luffy and Imu have their 1v1, with Imu doing the same 'Stigma' ability that uses bell-shaped flames to create little flame buddies that latch onto Luffy, and giant blades and pillars of black flame try to track where Luffy is jumping around. The chapter cuts away to Zoro and Sanji below, but the final shot is Gear Fifth Luffy facing off against Imu, and Imu calling him 'Joy Boy' and Luffy not giving a shit about that. 

This chapter also spends half its runtime with two battle setups, which is always cool. Zoro confronts Saint Summers, and both have their own nice one-liners. Summers is confident about Omen, while Zoro says that Sanji's going to kill the other God's Knight. Sanji, meanwhile, goes through a bit of a brief crisis because this giant avatar of Rain God Zaza is in the shape of a woman and he can't kick it... so he'll settle with beating up Killingham. 

It's a bit of a longer scene and a nice spotlight for Sanji's own complexes, but essentially we flash back to the moment where Sanji and Scopper were talking about Conqueror's Haki earlier in the arc, and Scopper says what everyone probably expected -- Sanji has the traits of being a king, or the potential to have it, but has a 'streak of masochistic instability'. So Sanji's going to get a moment in this arc as well where he's going to unlock Conqueror's Haki, and it's actually tied to his character. That's absolutely going to be welcome. 

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Chapter 1188: Vohu

1188 starts off with a strange flashback of what appears to be a phone call between Imu and Joy Boy, which might be their first encounter... although we don't really get much context about that. 

Imu and Luffy fight across these couple of chapters and it's just a nice sequence of fight scenes -- which honestly has became a bit of a rarity in One Piece these days. Imu's abilities continue to vary, with him opening up with an attack that resembles Luffy's own Snakeman with an extending fiery arm that changes direction mid-air. Imu continues to barrage Luffy with his little fireball imps, and Luffy randomly transforms into "Gomu Gomu Genie".... which is unexpected? Not sure what this form really ended up doing other than being a bit bigger than usual.  

There's a nice comedic scene where Luffy insists that "Loki's death will not be in vain", while Loki complains that he's still alive. There's a couple of shorter moments, like Jinbe protecting Loki from stray attacks (and Ragnir fawning over Jinbe); Brook speculating on the identity of Imu (as the head of the God's Knights) -- and Imu even actually recognizing Brook's identity from Esperia.

After another sequence of Luffy dodging Imu's fire balls, Imu then summons "Blade of Nothingness: Vohu" and this curved blade causes the plants all around Imu to dry up and to clear Luffy's hiding spots... and Imu charges in and stabs Luffy through the chest. "Joy Boy is not that weak!"

It's a pretty neat sequence that sets up the next couple of chapters. Luffy has been playing around a bit too much, and while I don't want Luffy to be an emo serious protagonist, I do like that we're acknowledging a little bit that Luffy hasn't really been taking stuff seriously in the New World, and he's starting to hit a bit of a Sabaody-esque ceiling. I get that Gear Fifth is something that runs on joy and comedy, but it being properly challenged like this is neat! Nice shades of Alabasta, too, with Crocodile impaling Luffy on his hook. 

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Chapter 1189: King of the World

We continue with Imu brutalizing Luffy, with Imu impaling Luffy and stabbing him against a tree with Vohu. And turns out that Imu's powers, as we find out in this chapter, is essentially something that people have been comparing to an inventory select screen. Imu has access to the 19 blades of the founding families of the World Government, and Stigma and Vohu are some of them. 

We cut away to other scenes, but Imu does a speech about Monkey D. Luffy and his hateful brothers, summoning "Blade of the Sea: Fragarach" (which seems to draw moisture from plants?) and the Axe of Xingtian. All of these are weapons based on mythologies in the real world, and we get some other weapon names being dropped by Summers and Killingham, whose Omen power-up also grants them access to these weapons. Shepherd summons his own family's sword, Gram, which we've seen briefly in the Loki/Imu battle. Killingham, meanwhile, summons the Rimoshifu family's spear, Longinus. We also get 'Tohu' and 'Muramasa' name-dropped. That's cool, and a neat little twist for the fights against the God's Knights that would otherwise be a bit repetitive. The chapter ends with Scopper swooping in to save Luffy from Imu in a very epic clash.

With the rest of the Straw Hats, however, Usopp finally does something, activating Observation Haki for the first time in a decade of real-world publication. Luffy and Imu's fight is far away, but Usopp is realizing that something isn't right. With moments given to multiple other Straw Hats like Brook, Robin, Luffy and soon Sanji, it is nice that Usopp is apparently not forgotten by the writer. There is a bit of a conversation between Brook and an angry Ragnir about Shuri, with Ragnir seeing Shuri as a threat, and Brook confirming that he sees Shuri as his daughter. 

Things are interrupted when Hajrudin, Gerd and Chopper arrive and accidentally slam down a whole-ass ship down on the already-wounded Loki. Hajrudin gets a brief flashback to Elder Jarl telling him to go where he needs to go. Loki also gets a flashback to a conversation he had right after Harald's death with Scopper and Shanks. Shanks tells Loki about Imu's status as the king of the world, and essentially tells Loki that he just isn't powerful to take down the King of the World... and the time isn't right to do so anyway. 

In the present day Loki tells this to Hajrudin, who gets a nice brotherly moment. But more importantly, this information about the King of the World has been given to our heroes. Robin also has a little cameo with Saul, calling Chopper in to presumably talk to the owl.

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Chapter 1190: Those Whose Death Brings Celebration

1190 is an unexpected Imu vs Scopper fight, following up from the previous chapter. It's a snappy one to read, mostly just showcasing some more cool abilities from Imu and Scopper. And again, the chapter moves quite quickly through the battle scene, but it is regardless still quite entertaining.

The clash that ended 1189 frees Luffy and slices up the branch that he was impaled into. And Scopper just continues to talk shit to a rather confused Imu, telling him that he is someone who 'knows the world'. 

Scopper then picks up Luffy and starts yelling at him -- saying a lot of the same commentary that was the intended audience reaction from 1188 and 1189. It is interesting considering Oda made a huge point about wanting to make Gear Fifth a 'fun to draw' form, but the depiction of Gear Fifth has been quite an unserious and wacky form that steamrolls a lot of Luffy's opponents. Scopper tells Luffy that he should be ashamed for having to be rescued by a wounded old man, and starts yelling at Luffy for getting full of himself after Gear Fifth and being crowned a Yonko. This shakes Luffy into realizing that he wouldn't be able to protect his friends if he fails here. Scopper then name-drops the chapter title, saying that getting to the Pirate King isn't a walk in the park, and it's a title "whose death brings celebration". 

Scopper then tosses Luffy away, leaving him to stew in frustration while also recover a bit of stamina. Scopper charges in with some 'mantis axe style' rotation, before mocking Imu for being reminded so much about Joy Boy. Imu is not pleased, summoning a katana called Honebami Toshiro, a bit irritated (and maybe freaked out?) that Scopper knows all of these things. Again, a nice bit that really does quite a bit in establishing Imu as an individual character.

Scopper Gaban then notes that he really doesn't care about the words of someone he's never met before... but he will make his captain's dreams come true. His captain? King of the Pirates, Gol D. Roger. That has to be my favourite panel from this whole sequence. 

Gaban then tells Imu that the sheer vehemence that he and his minions have been trying to eliminate Luffy makes it clear that Luffy is the guy they've been waiting for, and we get a multi-panel shot of other members of Roger's crew. Crocus, Rayleigh, Shanks, Oden and Whitebeard, all of whom bet on the future in different ways. 

Imu then sends another fireball imp thing at the fallen Luffy, but then Gaban leaps into the air, leading to a cool almost-two-page-spread as he unleashes 'Gate of God', launching gigantic blasts of lightning at Imu and the area around him. He's literally weaponizing Conqueror's Haki! This breaks apart the giant tree and sends the branches falling into the ground, and Gaban unleashes 'Yachi Takeru' (8000 instead of 80 Takeru, which is the skill he used against Luffy and Zoro). But Imu's Honebami attack sneaks up and slices into Gaban's arm, and as the smoke clears, Luffy wakes up to see Gaban defeated with an arm sliced off. 

That's a cool exit for Gaban, with the chapter just being quite cool in general, and a nice exit for Gaban, while also giving Luffy some much-needed character development. Excited to see where this is going to go!