One Piece 1193-1194 Review: The Bandana of the Conqueror

One Piece, Chapters 1193-1195

Chapter 1193: Still Practicing

We have a couple of chapters involving the Zoro vs. Summers fight, in a nice, rare case of modern One Piece being rather focused on a single fight for multiple chapters. And one that isn't actually just huge spectacles and hype moments either. 

1193 starts off with the aftermath of the triple-hit combo on Imu, with Gaban again wondering how Luffy is still able to manage what he's doing with all the wounds. I really do hope that there's more to it, still, beyond 'me main character, me determined' -- or at least, that we get some explanation about Haki to make this make sense. Luffy is at least wheezing and dropping out of the air and arguing with his own heart to stay in Gear Fifth, so I am somewhat hopeful that it's not going to be an asspull. 

Loki also transforms into his hybrid form, which is still silhouetted, so I don't really have anything to say here. 

There's a brief check-in with a bunch of other characters. Shuri/Gunko is starting to wake up. Biblo the Owl is starting to begin to speak to Chopper, telling his group that there's something important in a chest that they need to get out posthaste. 

And then we cut to the fight in the village, where a bunch of unnamed giants are having a philosophical debate with Jarul about whether the direction that Harald steered the country towards is good or bad for Elbaph as a whole... but then that line of thought gets interrupted by the epic arrival of Dorry and Brogy, who swings in and fights the giant rain god Zaza and yells about how if Elbaph can't fight back against a couple of demons, whatever the direction it had, it was going to be fated to die sooner or later. That's cool. We get a nice speech, and a very brief clash between Sanji and Killingham. 

But building up the next chapter is the final scene of 1194, where Summers is shooting random Omen fireballs and talking about how his sword Gram gets more powerful the more irritated he is. He's also covered Zoro with invisible thorn vines, and starts monologuing. He's just talking about the amount of pain and despair and all that stuff, and Zoro... just doesn't give a shit. 

Zoro is actually seeing the fight as a puzzle, thinking about everything that has been said to him about Conqueror's Haki, about the way to defeat these God's Knights, their iron heart, and generally just how to get about infusing his blades with Conqueror's Haki (versus Armament Haki). It is basically established here that Zoro has never been consciously infusing his weapons with Conqueror's Haki. Summers continues his monologue and goes for the kill, but Zoro just very casually slices up Summers' little thorn cage, stabs Summers in the chest... but fails to infuse his sword with Conqueror's Haki and it plinks off of his heart. He's "still practicing". Summers freaks the fuck out. 

Chapter 1194: All Things Are In Flux

Summers is freaking out even as his wounds are closing, and I love just how unbothered Zoro is by all of this. Summers didn't really feel like a threat, especially since we've already seen him get brutalized a couple of times before.... it's an interesting sequence because Zoro is really just using this fight as a way to practice his Conqueror's Haki infusion, and he just keeps doing it over and over again. The fight itself feels a bit more focused because we're not jumping around, and we get to see some more stuff that Summers can do -- like another appearance of his weird thorn hydra summon. This does make my review of this chapter a lot shorter than 1193, but there's a very nice pre-timeskip vibe to this fight that I've been missing from a lot of One Piece battles recently. 

Summers is just desperately trying to kill Zoro before he gets the hang of it, and Zoro is just doing a couple of fancy moves. He pulls out an obscure old attack (all the way from Enies' Lobby!) called Leopard Balls (heh); as well as the old classic 1080 Phoenix Pound Cannon. And Summers is doing a bunch of thorn attacks as well, like a shadowy thorn dragon skull thing... but that really isn't the focus here. The focus is a rare introspective Zoro moment where he really is treating this whole fight like a puzzle. Trying to understand just what Conqueror's Haki is, comparing it to when Luffy uses it to knock out people. 

And we get a flashback to Mihawk! At a time where Zoro hasn't lost one of his eyes! Mihawk tells Zoro that 'all things are in flux', but there's one thing that can resist all change... which is Conqueror's Haki. Mihawk tells Zoro that there is one thing that the Conquerors / Supreme Kings have that is unchanging... although we don't see Mihawk's answer, as good ol' Perona raises her hand and asks if it is 'beards'. 

Bless you, Perona. 

Mihawk tells Zoro that the Colour of the Supreme King is something so strong that the weak can't stand in its presence... it is 'a sense of self'. So yeah, the sheer identity and assuredness that people like Luffy have in themselves is what is giving him control over Conqueror's Haki. 

And I love that this Mihawk flashback is cut back and forth to a montage of Summers having all his limbs and head chopped and hacked apart. That's almost comedically hilarious... until at one point Summers starts bleeding, he tries to play it off and stick his dismembered hand back to the stump, but it falls back to the ground. 

Most importantly, Zoro finally puts his bandana on. Which means Summers, who is already fucked and kind of a joke ever since the battle started, is about to get double-fucked. Zoro's blades erupt with black lightning, and it really does seem like black lightning for a very cool final panel. So yeah, I expect the Zoro/Summers fight to be wrapped up next chapter, and maybe we'll get around 2-2.5 chapters of Sanji discovering his own Conqueror's Haki, and we'll get maybe an essay as to what Conqueror's is, and how it relates to the Luffy situation? 

Pretty fun stuff. Zoro has spent so much of post-timeskip just being 'the cool dude', without much in lieu of introspection of character development -- something that I had really wanted in Wano. But having him get a bit more to learn (while still being the cool dude) is definitely pretty cool. 

Chapter 1195: Veakness

And the Zoro stuff in 1195 is... it's hype stuff, to borrow the language of the youth, but I also felt like it's just a final nail in the coffin for the previous chapter. It really is very cool, and even if Summers isn't taken out here, he's basically out of the battle. We get to see Summers freaking out, Zoro lurking like a goddamn demon with black lightning bursting out of every blade, Zoro smirking, Summers trying to flash-step away, and Zoro chasing him with lightning bolts and a flaming eye and Summers crying like a doofus.

It's satisfying as hell, especially with how much of a cunt Summers has been, although we don't really see the battle get resolved. People are talking about pattern conventions of Sanji-Zoro-Luffy fights, but which is evidence that I hate with all my guts. But I also kind of feel like we haven't really seen Zoro kill anyone on-screen, so it would be interesting if Summers did die in this chapter (or shortly after). 

Far more interesting to me is the Brook/Shuri stuff, but I think it's quite clear that I am very invested in the Brook storyline. Shuri finally wakes up and Brook asks her name -- and she's clearly conflicted, going back and forth between seeing traumatic moments of the past, to seeing Brook (both as he once was, and as he is now). And among the flashbacks of the traumatic event in Esperia, we get a creepy scene of Shuri/Gunko on a slab asking "Lord Imu... I want to live!" so there is a missing puzzle piece there about a deal that Shuri potentially made to Imu. 

Brook basically says all the right things, tells Shuri/Gunko that he has figured things out, and even gets tears to flow out of Shuri's eyes. Brook tells Shuri that 'years can't be reduced to a few words', which is a heavy line, I feel. Brook then tells Shuri about his identity, reinforcing the things that Shuri doesn't want to acknowledge. Shuri keeps insisting that she is Gunko, presumably due to a combination of denial, guilt, or some combination of the two. She tells Brook to stay away, slashing the ground with her arrow-sword, but notably doesn't attack Brook himself, and she tries to run off. 

Oh yeah, this chapter also has another half-page with Team Chopper/Robin/Saul opening the owl's chest, and Chopper translating that a long time ago, Lili lived on this island. Nefertari Lili apparently moved to Elbaf after being exiled by Imu, I guess? I... I would be a bit more excited about this reveal if everything else about Zoro, Sanji and Brook isn't around it, and if the goddamn owl hasn't been dragged on for half a year now. 

Speaking of denial and guilt, we get a little series of headshots of the kids and parents that are still trapped by Zaza, which I felt wasn't the most necessary. Killingham isn't worried about Sanji at all, telling Sanji that it is futile. Sanji unleashes an Ifrit Jambe: Sky Table attack, which blows Killingham apart... and does another swirling 'Kick Course' attack that blenders Killingham into smoke. He does have the destructive power to kill or defeat Killingham, it's just that without Conqueror's Haki it's pointless. 

Killingham reforms, mocks Sanji the commoner, and unleashes a lightning blast with Longinus, telling us what that holy weapon does, at least. As Sanji gets tossed around by the Longinus blast, he falls down and flashes back to Gaban's words about him being burdened with uncertainty that's stopping him from having the qualities of a king. 

As Killingham looms over Sanji, he flashes back and introspects that he is 'basically torturing himself', and we get a couple of important flashbacks. Luffy telling Sanji that "you don't pay back someone by dying" from all the way back in Baratie. Sanji taking a shot from Enel to protect Nami and Usopp. Sanji trying to take the shot from Kuma in 'nothing happened'. And two shots from the Whole Cake Island arc where Sanji tried to sacrifice himself to 'solve everything', and breaking down after Luffy confronts him. 

And then as Killingham continues to beat up Sanji and have a brief mockery about surface-world food... Sanji flashes back to Ivankov, who tells Sanji that he has one hell of a serious weakness... and that it's some memories and advice that Sanji has suppressed. The Zoro stuff is really cool, but Sanji's character-driven development, particularly around Conqueror's Haki, is absolutely very welcome. I do hope that these two big character-driven power-up moments for Zoro and Sanji end up telling us a bit more about what Conqueror's Haki is, for sure! 

Random Notes:

• It is quite nice for my schedules, I suppose, that the One Piece manga is also beset with a couple of break weeks. This pair of chapters are not particularly dense either, and depending on whether 1195 is another focused action chapter or not, I might even re-publish this article with 1195 tacked on the bottom. Yeah, I did that.
• There was a not-insignificant amount of dialogue devoted to the fact that the Adam Tree has had chunks torn out of it by the impact of their attacks, so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the big spectacular things that would happen in this arc is the world tree collapsing.
• Gram is described to 'turn its wielder's wrath into strength', but Summers really doesn't seem to be a particularly angry man. Emotional and sadistic, sure. But not really angry. Wonder if Ju Peter would have a better go with the blade than he did?
• Oh, in the middle of the fight, Summers again fucks up by causing the ship to transport the children to get destroyed. The ship is leagues larger than a regular human ship, but with us having seen Zoro slice a ship a couple hundred chapters ago, it really doesn't feel like that much of a threat!
• We don't get an actual, black-on-white confirmation, but it does basically kind of mean that Mihawk also has Conqueror's Haki, doesn't it? And... and honestly, it's not really surprising. I'm not as crazy as a lot of the Mihawk fans out there, but I definitely am happy to see him finally getting some buildup after hanging around in the background for so long. 
• I do like that one of the musings Zoro has is also an assumption that a lot of the fandom, myself included, has had for a long time -- only captains can have Conqueror's Haki, right? Because they aren't subservient to another? But it seems that it isn't the case, and I do feel like the other assumption -- that you need to be born with it -- is likely to be proven false at some point as well. 
• I love Perona. I love that she's probably doing this wacky interruption for every time that Mihawk tries to seriously coach Zoro. "Beards!"
• So the wispy 'King of Hell' flames, which we've seen on Enma and some of Zoro's other swords, isn't an indicator of Conqueror's Haki, and it's still just the black lightning -- at the end of the 1194 chapter, Zoro's swords have both the wispy flames and the black lightning when Summers freaks out. 
• All of the surrounding Straw Hats -- Nami, Franky and Jinbe -- are ready to throw hands, but none of them make a move. Notably, the one that was the most trigger-happy about killing Gunko, Jinbe, was the close-up we have when Brook notices Shuri's tears. 
• The remaining children held by Zaza are the four that are really attached to important people -- Colon (Ripley/Gaban's kid), Ylva (Jarul's granddaughter), Bjorn (Rodo's brother) and Johanna, the orphan attached to the teacher ANnge.