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One Piece chapter 1081 review
We get another banger of a chapter to lead into Golden Week here, and I’m thrilled to finally be learning a little more about Kuzan’s motivations and movements in the past couple of years. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to Egghead though.
The colour spread is gorgeous with some wonderful colour choices. It’s low-hanging fruit that everyone on the internet’s been picking since the spoilers dropped, but I have to laugh at Sanji’s COCKING book. But I also love the one squirrel that’s wrapped itself up in Brook’s afro to sleep. It’s a real cute one.
We pick up right where the previous chapter left off, with Garp being a truly loveable badass. Whether he means it or not that he’s lost his edge, it makes a statement just to suggest it. And it’s a clever touch for Gruz to use his clay to cushion the warship’s landing. I get the impression this might be a practiced maneuver. I think the ring of fire around these early scenes is curious just from a staging perspective. By all accounts, Garp’s Galaxy Fist was just a shockwave attack, not a combustible one. We can see some things exploding among the rubble on that first page after the spread, but would that be enough for the all-sides inferno in the following shots? I’m not assigning any significance to this, we’re not claiming a portion of Lunarian blood running through the Monkey family’s veins called forth the fire, it’s just an interesting detail.
Kuzan makes a very cool (heh) entrance and brings us straight into a perspective-changing flashback. I think the general consensus on the guy up to this point was that he was a rogue agent for justice, possibly a top-level SWORD agent. His interactions with Smoker at the end of Punk Hazard could be read to support this impression, and I’m sure Film Z played a part in it as well, despite not being canon, but I get a slightly different vibe from the version we see in this chapter. Kuzan is genuinely commiserating his break with the Marines and didn’t seek Blackbeard out. He obviously shot first and asked later when he first encountered Blackbeard’s men and is quick to start doing it again when he thinks they’re after his fruit. But Blackbeard has a particular charisma to him, a dark mirror of Luffy’s apparent “most dangerous ability” to get people on his side.
I think the banter in this chapter is stronger than it’s been for a long time. Gruz and Kujaku commentating on Garp and Koby’s relationship, and then Kuzan’s hangout with the Blackbeard Pirates in the flashback, alternating between genuine exposition and mocking Sakazuki. Seeing a leg gone and asking if he took an arm in exchange. Kuzan joking that he’s actually burned man. Shiryu’s idle conspiracy theorising. In a series full of explosive reactions and face faults (and there are still more than enough of those here) these scenes of marginally more grounded and naturalistic character interaction really stand out.
The man with the burn scar is a tantalising plot hook. I was never really on board with it being Saul, as many suspected after he was revealed to be alive, and this seems to confirm it’s not him. There’s not a lot here to say who else it might be though. Dragon is compelling, but his ship’s official colours aren’t as pitch black as the monochrome art implies. Plus where would he get the time to sail around sinking Poneglyph hunters in his busy schedule as a Revolutionary leader?
I hope it’s the dude who was drinking with Crokus. No reason. No evidence. It’s just been up in the air so damn long I want to see it wrapped up.
So after all of this it really doesn’t seem like Kuzan joined as a spy. That doesn’t mean he won’t decide to follow his own justice and betray Blackbeard eventually, but it opens a lot of questions about when and how. I think it’s noting that Kuzan definitely wasn’t recruited as the tenth captain he is now. In fact, I’d venture to say that promotion was a recent development – on Punk Hazard Doflamingo says he’s heard some “nasty rumours” about Kuzan’s current allegiances, implying they aren’t public knowledge, and then on Dressrosa the call between Blackbeard and Burgess that Luffy overhears has Burgess saying he still doesn’t fully trust Kuzan while Blackbeard tries to reassure him that the same goes for Shiryu. Maybe this conversation was literally about Kuzan being promoted to the status of captain in the group despite his past Government allegiance (the most obvious thing that would go for him and Shiryu but no one else in the group). It’s not like he showed up to Punk Hazard on a Blackbeard ship, so it could even be that the decision was made even as recently as that. But does that mean there was another tenth captain that preceded him in the role? Or am I totally wrong, he’s had the position for a year, and Doflamingo was just being vague on purpose?
(Also is it just me, or is anyone else getting increasingly certain that the term “Titanic Captain” was a bit of flavour and exaggeration on the part of Corridia Colosseum commentator Gyats in introducing Burgess? Kuzan’s info box doesn’t use it, he’s just a Ship Captain, and looking back over the post timeskip reintroductions of the Blackbeard crew, none of those use the title either. Have we actually seen anyone other than Gyats use the term ‘Titanic’? I think it’s been very mistakenly taken as official when it wasn’t supposed to be.)
I didn’t think we’d be leaving Fullalead with Garp having the upper hand, but his attack on Kuzan makes for a commanding transition back to Law’s fight, and just like what happened to Kid, I feel particularly bad about seeing the end of his ship. The Polar Tang was another great vessel design that you hate to see lost like this. I maybe feel worse about the ship than the actual battle loss. People in One Piece usually survive. Sunk ships generally stay sunk.
I think it’s a really cool connection to have Bepo’s sulong come out thanks to Chopper’s medicine. Can you imagine if they’d unveiled this drug back at Wano though? I remember a big point against Carrot’s inclusion on the crew was the need to for the plot to engineer a full moon in every single future arc for her to reach her combat potential. A handwave solution to that would have thrown the debates into overdrive. And as much as I roll my eyes at the crewmate back and forth and so many other weird fandom things we get into, there’s a part of me that secretly loves the drama.
There’s a few things to take note of here. One is the Rocky Port victims still being alive. I would have figured the Government shoveled those hearts into a furnace or something to get rid of them, but they must be in storage somewhere. The second is the absence of confirmation whether Blackbeard recovered Law’s Poneglyphs or not. With all his officers having Devil Fruits now it won’t be easy to get them back from the wreckage of the Polar Tang. And I also think it speaks to Law’s character that he wants to go back for his crew, despite everything.
The past three chapters from outside Egghead have been a tour de force of worldbuilding, characterisation and dramatic confrontations that threw things into a ridiculous overdrive gear at a point where the main story was still in its building stage. Hopefully there’s not too much whiplash going back to Egghead with an evening to kill before the grand finale. But then, if the Egghead Incident is going to be one of these cutaway clashes written out in long form, it’s going to be well worth the wait.
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What Black Sails took from Treasure Island
This essay was originally posted to Reddit in July 2022.
It had been about a decade since I last read the original 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island, but after last month finishing for the first time and loving Black Sails, the 2014 – 2017 TV series that positions itself as a prequel to the novel and Long John Silver origin story, I moved the old book into the next available spot in my reading list to see how the two flowed together.
At first, I was harsh on Black Sails’ aspirations to be a prequel. Memorable book characters who obstinately share a past with Silver, such as Blind Pew and Black Dog, were nowhere to be seen in the show, and the opening chapters really only work if the reader assumes everyone from Billy Bones to the two aforementioned pirates and Silver himself is lying through their teeth about their relationship and history with Flint. That isn’t a huge stretch of the imagination, given how much of a theme self-aggrandizing lies were in the show, but having to fill in that headcanon at all still feels like a black mark.
And I do still think the Silver from the end of the show seemed too out of the game to return to the sea and piracy and Flint’s treasure so readily in Treasure Island. There’s a missing chapter in that man’s life no matter how you look at it. Silver’s dialogue in the book also has a very different flavour from the eloquence of the show version, even accounting for the ways the 130-year-old novel’s writing has aged. Try as I might in my head, I couldn’t quite get the book’s dialogue coming out show Silver’s mouth.
But once the novel reaches Skeleton Island, the details click into place. Black Sails may have eschewed 1:1 continuity for the bit part pirates of the opening, but it is a loving tribute to all the best part’s of the adventure’s climax.
Long John Silver stands out from other literary villains for walking a fine line between mentor and antagonist, a character charismatic enough that you want to like him, even when you’re sure you can’t trust him. The kinship, betrayal, and alliance of convenience rekindling the kinship between Silver and Jim is everything surrounding Flint in the show writ small. When Jim blunders into the pirate camp and, with his back against the wall, spins his series of lucky breaks and failures of impulse control into a tale that plays him as the mastermind that sabotaged Silver’s whole operation, that’s what Black Sails was looking at. Silver says around that point that he sees a young version of himself in Jim, and I couldn’t help grinning when I read that, because I’d already been thinking it. Black Sails adds layers to Silver choosing to defend Jim against the pirates because you can see how genuine the resemblance between them is and understand where that sympathy comes from.
And the risks facing Silver, of the mutineers turning on him and voting him out, are of course reflected in everything Black Sails had to say about crew politics and the difficulties of power and leadership. Both stories show captains on a knife’s edge between keeping their pirates in line and keeping in their favour. That whole desperate section, where Jim observes Silver “keeping the mutineers together with one hand and grasping with the other after every means, possible and impossible, to make his peace and save his miserable life” is the connecting tissue between the novel and the show. It’s here in the middle and at the end, rather than from the beginning, that the two works find their unbroken line.
Given its target audience, it wouldn’t be totally out of line to call Treasure Island a young adult novel, though the classification obviously didn’t exist in its time. In that respect, I’d been expecting more of a difference in tone between in and the adult-oriented show. But Treasure Island pulls few punches in building its tension, especially in the pirate siege of the stockade and Jim’s fight with Israel Hands on the adrift Hisapniola. It doesn’t describe the violence in quite the same level of detail Black Sails chose to put onscreen, but the battles and death are starkly present. Combined with the above tale-telling, mentor-enemy dynamics and life or death politicing, I was pleasantly surprised by how natural a fit the two works turned out to be. Particularly after the continuity glitches from the opening set my expectations low.
I would love to see a Treasure Island adaptation, be it movie or miniseries, in Black Sails’ continuity, with at the very least Luke Arnold returning for Silver. While the dialogue is too aged to be used verbatim, the actions of and relationships forged by the book’s Silver are a perfect fit as an extension of the show’s version. I’m now hungry for Arnold’s take on John Silver realising he’s becoming to Jim as in many ways Flint was to him, and grappling with that fact as he tries to keep them both alive, but also weighing that objective against his original and far more selfish goal. I want this not just to have more Black Sails for its own sake, but because so much of the original novel’s core really is there in the show, and it would be a shame never to see those creators and actors cover that point of inception.
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One Piece chapter 1080 review
Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here!
We are really spending some time away from the main plot of the arc here, aren’t we? I was talking after the last chapter about how weird it is structurally, and getting this whole other full chapter with nothing to do with the Strawhats while they’re all fighting makes it weirder still. But when this is what we get outside the main plot I’m sure as hell not complaining. The longer this goes on though, the more I’m wondering if we’ll switch back to Egghead exactly where it left off, or if things are going to have continued developing while we weren’t looking at them.
Blackbeard’s pirate island feels like an appropriately chaotic Nassau or Tortuga of the One Piece world, now that we’re seeing a tad more of it. Like Jaya amped up to a hundred, which is fitting, given that it’s where we first met the guy. I’m definitely in the camp that’s a tad skeptical of his crew’s new powers though. I think I wrote when the first lot were revealed, back during the start of Law’s fight, that they felt like abilities Oda had decided on early in the series and stuck to his guns on, even as Devil Fruits got more and more abstract and extreme. Pizarro having such an obvious copy of Pica’s power feels especially egregious. I can only hope that having all that time to brew means that the final battles against these powers are going to be next level.
Now, I’m not one to speculate too hard on battle matchups, but it seems to me you could make a case for Zoro being pitted against a number of Blackbeard Pirates. Shiryu because he normally fights a swordsman (though that one’s got a fruit that would draw Sanji’s ire), Burgess because he usually fights the captain’s apparent right hand, and now – I think – it would be interesting to see him as the crew’s heaviest and most regular drinker pitted against Vasco Shot. It could be another “natural enemy” situation. Shot uses his booze-related powers to try and throw Zoro’s swordsmanship off, Zoro declares that he was already drunk. Cue Enel face.
What really has my attention is Blacbkeard trying to make Fullalead into a legitimised nation. I can only guess that it’s a scheme to gain access to Mariejoa at a Reverie or something, the same way he used the Warlord title to access Impel Down. It feels unlikely the Government would fall for it twice, especially given his current reputation. But then again, Shanks shows us that it’s not out of the question for an Emperor of the Sea to get in one way or another.
Interesting that SWORD basically gets to operate as Schrodinger’s Marines, both in and out of the Navy as the Government’s politics require. I can see where the idea came from, offering Marine resources to these kinds of hotheads to keep them close and useful for as long as possible without restricting them so much they just go off on their own as vigilantes, while being able to instantly absolve all responsibility for their actions when it’s convenient. Whether this would actually be a good or smart system to implement in a real military remains in doubt. You’d have to keep it relatively secret and invite-only to avoid the name being thrown around to excuse premeditated insubordination and desertion. Can’t have the rank and file thinking that’s an option. And whether it’s in-character for Sakazuki to accept this kind of insubordination, even if it is planned for, is equally questionable.
Curiously, Kuzan is fully knowledgeable of it. Which could mean SWORD predates Sakazuki’s instatement as Fleet Admiral. Or it could mean that Kuzan still has contacts feeding him intel. Or it’s just because he’s a part of it.
We also, early on, get to see a Cross Guild bounty poster closer up. Hope we get more of these while the series has time to do it, but given that the bounties seem to be based mostly on rank (with exceptions for popular figures) there isn’t the same hype and mystery as the pirate posters. I also appreciate that the rewards are in treasure chests with only an approximate value – it adds a roughness in contrast to the Government’s precise figures. I wonder, though, if the Cross Guild members borrowed their star-based bounty system from a certain former co-worker…?
We actually saw already a small, sketchy preview of the posters in Cross Guild’s introductory chapter, although there seems to be at least one other symbol also being used there. Potentially a crown or a set of big top tents like Buggy’s base. But what does that mean? Something beyond the star rankings, or maybe something less, for ranks below Captain.
And a final thing from early in the chapter, Pizarro implies that Rocky Port is part of Fullalead. And we know that the Rocky Port Incident was masterminded by Law and kept from being a complete disaster by the hero Koby. I know that the Supernovas and plenty of others swept into the New World right after Marineford instead of taking time to train like the Strawhats, but there’s something genuinely strange to me about learning how far ahead of Luffy’s group they’ve all been already. Like, it would make no sense for Law to have just waited around Punk Hazard for two years, but it never crossed my mind while he was travelling with the crew that he might have been on his second or third lap of the New World already.
Perona’s cameo is a welcome surprise, I’m a pretty big fan of her character. Weird that the chapter doesn’t make it clear if Koby was actually able to follow through and free Moria though. I guess he wanted to find his own escape route and Perona went with him.
The G-14 Marines and new SWORD additions continue to be appealing designs with some interesting new powers to go with them. And it’s cool to see Vegapunk’s GP Flowers making a main story appearance as well. What was it I wrote during the cover story? They seem more like a weapon of sabotage than a true tool of peace, and that is exactly how the government is using them. I wonder if that sours the Mobel Prize somewhat.
So we all remember that Prince Gruz and his squad, including the newly named Kujaku made early cameos in Bege’s cover story, but it’s easy to forget that that was far enough back that the colour manga has covered it already.
Not often we get official colours for characters too minor for a volume cover this long before the anime gets near them.
And then there’s Garp. This old guy is actually one of my favourite One Piece characters. The conflict he feels between his career and his adopted family is genuine, and while I’m generally critical of the morality of characters who make themselves complicit in the World Government’s evil, Garp carries enough clout to make genuine efforts to follow his heart over his orders and speak out against the worst of his superiors. He’s still contributing to a very evil organisation, but it helps his case a ton. He’s layered, his conflicts are believable, and you just can’t help liking the way he flies in on his dog-themed ship (with cute little doghouse crows nests, how charming) and levels half the town from above. Brilliant moment to end a chapter on, and the panel of his ship flying over the city is gorgeously drawn.
In fact, if you look close at that panel, you can even see the gouges in the ground from Kujaku shifting buildings around.
Can’t overstate how much I love that kind of attention to detail!
Despite how long we’ve spent away from Egghead already, I don’t think this sequence is quite done yet. Maybe another half chapter to tie up loose ends (like where Moria and Perona ended up, and if Smoker is there alongside Tashigi, and if Boggard is still at Garp’s right hand) and set up a real cliffhanger of Garp and co clashing directly with the Blackbeard pirates before cutting away. And then we can get back to what the Strawhats are up to. Or hell, why not another cutaway? Still haven’t seen Dragon’s powers, since we’re apparently revealing all the heavyweight players right now. The breaks around this Golden Week time of year can be rough, but it’s hard to be too upset when we’re getting chapters like these.
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Rhythm of War review
This text was originally posted to Reddit shortly after the book’s release in 2020, and contains full book spoilers for Rhythm of War and all preceding volumes of The Stormlight Archive.
The good:
The whole central plot thread of Urithiru being occupied was fantastic and great fun throughout. Kaladin as a character benefited enormously from being put in circumstances that forced him to rely on different powers, different tactics and different members of his squad. During the preview chapters, I’d been worried he would grow stale with the same battles and sadness combo that took him through the first three books, but my fears were quickly put to rest. A pettier review might point out how arbitrary it was for the imperfect Radiant suppression to knock out exactly the things Kaladin had to learn to do without to be interesting, but the results were good enough that I didn’t care at all.
Navani was an unexpected standout after not having a huge role in previous books. I loved the scientific elements being applied to the magic systems and the process of discovering new uses for the fundamental concepts. A really novel approach to magic I would absolutely go for more of in the future.
Another surprise favourite was Raboniel, a fascinating antagonist/rival to Navani. I wasn’t expecting to see this kind of layered humanity in the Fused – at least not this soon. She’ll definitely go down as one of the series’ more memorable supporting characters.
The scenes on the Emuli offensive were thinner than I thought they’d be, but every single one was absolutely carried by Jasnah. Everything she’s doing as queen is fantastic and I could watch her do it forever.
Kaladin finally figuring out the fourth ideal. Sweet catharsis after such a long wait.
I really liked how the Cosmere crossovers were handled in this one. The characters are being introduced to the idea of other populated worlds as this stuff comes to the forefront, which seems like it should make it accessible for non-Cosmere aware readers (though I’ve read everything else, so I can’t really talk). The unique uses and interactions of offworld objects like the Seon and the Taldian sand were a lot of fun.
The Stormfather and Eshonai’s moment together. Really did not see that coming, but it was lovely.
And of course, the final set of twists ending in Taravangian’s ascension. Of all the ways for things to play out I hadn’t for a second considered that as an option. Setting a ten day time limit on the next book is another bold move, and I cannot wait to see how it all plays out.
Oh, and that epilogue! While there are a few different possible readings of it, just being able to even float the possibility that Hoid has been caught off-guard by the latest developments speaks to how immense they are.
The inconclusive
A few lingering questions I may have missed the answers to: How did the Parshendi get Navani’s authentication codes? How exactly did Raboniel listen in on Navani and the Sibling’s chats? Where did Zahel go when the tower was invaded? Just little nitpicks that could probably have been resolved with one throwaway line.
I wanted to see more fallout from Shallan’s revelation about her past. How does this change her relationship with Pattern? Will she try to reconcile with Testament’s deadeye now that she knows both that it exists and such a thing is possible? I’m sure we’ll get this kind of thing in the next book, I definitely felt left hanging by it. Shallan’s flashback was two whole books ago now and we still don’t know her full history! How much longer can this go on for? I’m reserving judgement on this until it’s a complete story/character arc, if it ever is.
The bits that didn’t work
In some Stormlight books, the flashback sequence is the backbone of the novel’s themeing and central character arc, past and present harmonising to deepen our understanding of the story. Rhythm of War is not one of those books. Venli and Eshonai’s flashbacks weren’t awful to read, but they definitely didn’t feel in sync with the rest of the novel. They retreaded so many moments we already knew about with not quite enough information to justify breaking away from the more interesting things happening in the present.
The pivotal moment of Adolin’s storyline felt like it was missing an ingredient. I’m at a loss to say what exactly, but I think his and Maya’s relationship needed like one more scene of development to make the ending feel earned. Perhaps part of it was how predictable it was as an outcome the moment they started talking about the trial being witness-driven. We needed some more pressure on the scene, some reason to wonder if it wouldn’t go that way. The reveal of Kelek is treated like an shocking, stakes-raising development (and for Shallan at least, it was) but it didn’t do much for Adolin’s story.
On the topic of the Shadesmar expedition, a lot of time is spent eliminating members of Shallan’s team from the spy hunt, even though it’s painfully obvious to the reader it’s not going to be one of them. Especially because Brando likes to use this kind of subversive-answer whodunnit as an inciting plot thread and has done so a few times in Stormlight already.
Playing with my feelings over Lift so much! Teasing that she might go on the Shadesmar expedition, then cutting that idea off before it starts. Okay, she’s staying with the group in the tower. Oh, she was probably knocked out with the rest of the Radiants. Hell yeah, she’s still awake! Lift Die Hard. Oh no, she’s been caught already and is going to jail. Just me read about her, Brando!
I would also say that this was one of the weaker Sanderlanches of the series. Where previous finales have combined a big, unexpected explosion of plot with long-anticipated character development breakthroughs, RoW separates the two parts. The climactic battle is all the character stuff I’d been waiting to happen (and it’s all good stuff) but never really caught me off-guard as a result. And then the plot twists come in what would be the wind-down after the fighting is done. I’m sure there was a reason for the structural change, like the plot developments needing room to breathe to set up the next book properly, and it was by no means a dealbreaker for the book’s ending, but it definitely didn’t feel like it reached as high or hit as hard as previous entries.
The conclusion
I had a great time with Rhythm of War, even if it definitely wasn’t the best of the Stormlight Archive. The lacking flashback sequence was a big factor in it not feeling as complete and in sync with itself as Way of Kings or Oathbringer. Still, the good outweighs the bad by a significant margin, and its set a strong foundation for the fifth book. The ten day timer is probably going to force some pacing/structural changes, the status quo is altered massively, but in a way the main characters aren’t aware of or able to plan around, and a Kaladin and Szeth tag team mission sound absolutely fantastic. My hype for book 5 is now enormous, and that alone is enough to consider Rhythm of War a success.
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One Piece chapter 1079 review
Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here.
Well. I don’t think anyone really saw this coming. Not Kid getting annihilated, that was a foregone conclusion, but taking almost a full chapter to show it here and now. We’re around two chapters into a new volume, so it’s not a cliffhanger cutaway or a cold open. I think we’re eventually going to see a small timeskip in the Egghead Arc, given that it’s still daytime and the infamous Egghead Incident isn’t slated until tomorrow, and that would be an ideal place for a big cutaway, but the story isn’t at a point where we can just leave things overnight and assume we’re not missing anything important. There’s no real structural lead-in for this sequence, we just get it, out of nowhere. You can never be too sure what to expect with this series.
But we do still start out on Egghead, following up last chapter’s York reveal. Oda fills in her taking control of the Seraphim and setting up the S-Snake deception. Personally, I’d rather have seen how the Frontier Dome sabotage was pulled off, I thought the stuff we’re seeing here fell into place pretty easily after the reveal, but I do have to remember that the manga’s core readerbase isn’t overanalysing this story the way I am.
Although speaking of overanalysing, there’s a continuity glitch in this scene – Building C is damaged at the top, which shouldn’t happen until after Pythagoras is attacked by these hijacked Seraphim. Only building B should be hit at this point in the timeline. I do appreciate, however, that we’re now close enough to see the damage to the entry ramp’s tubing, which is something that makes sense to have happened in the first Seraphim attack, back when they were in Cipher Pol’s hands.
We’ll see if the volume release fixes building C, I guess, but these things sometimes slip through the cracks even then.
Interesting that York has a counterplay already in mind for the government turning on her. And that it still involves killing everyone. Plenty of us talked about the obvious flaws in her plan and the high chance of this happening last week, so I’m curious about her contingencies.
The lab assistants are very lucky they still have a ship to leave on. And now, I could be reaching here, but I think if you put the Egghead ship, the MADS ship, and the ship Franky made himself a cyborg on all side by side, it’s definitely not unreasonable to take them as iterations on the same vessel. I’m struggling to find a match those prominent rows of large, close-together portholes on any other ship I could think to look up. I’d love to see the decks of either the MADS or Egghead ship to see if there’s any overlap with the machines on Franky’s one.
There’s nothing earthshattering in this, if Franky got his original tech from abandoned MADS gear or if it was a random ship, but it’d be cool to have it confirmed one way or another. And another good reason to let Franky and Vegapunk talk more, damn it!
And finally, in the real wildcard development of the chapter, we see a Blackbeard Pirates ship bearing down on Egghead. Which basically turfs every assumption about what the Egghead Incident could be and how it’ll play out. We don’t even know who to expect to be on this ship – we know Blackbeard has multiple more or less identical ones, so it doesn’t have to be the group that was fighting Law earlier. But imagine if it was, so soon after seeing the apparent end of Kid. But I could also see it only being a lesser Titanic Captain or non-Titanic officer like Kuzan to give us a taste and give Luffy the chance to throw down the gauntlet against Blackbeard in advance of the final battle. But if it does turn out to be the man himself, the hype has just gone up to eleven!
And curious to have him show up in the same chapter that we learn Shanks was keeping tabs on him and expecting an appearance at Wano. I guess in the past two years of being an Emperor alongside him Shanks got pretty used to Blackbeard’s brand of opportunism. The question is, does he know Luffy is at Egghead, or is there something else he wants there?
For just some random spitballing, if we’re doing Ohara parallels, is there a danger of the Blackbeard pirates firing on the evacuation ship for a shocking waste of human life that lets Blackbeard match Sakazuki in terms of evil? I can’t see what he’d gain from doing that though. How about the question of where Blackbeard is keeping his prisoners? Pudding was still in the brig for the fight with Law, so which other recent conquests are riding along for this battle? Koby, maybe? Which would in turn bring Garp and his rescue mission toward Egghead. It’s way too soon to get attached to any one possibility, but the ship’s presence alone opens so many of them up.
And finally we see Shanks and Kid. I stand by what I said for chapter 1076 that the odds of this working out were never in his favour. But I expected to cut back to the result in the post-arc era of Egghead, not so soon and so onscreen. It’s a great sequence with some incredible spread pages and tantalising details about Shanks and his organisation that leave hungry for more. It’s a shame to see the Victoria Punk go at the end, she was a great design. But I’m a big fan of a detailed cross section, and the amount of effort Oda put into showing her interior as she’s cut in two makes that last spread my favourite of the chapter.
I loved seeing the dynamic of Shank’s crew and fleet. It creates a great contrast with Kaido’s military mindset and Big Mom’s twisted family that he just picks up people he likes, regardless of strength, and uses his title to protect them. Not to mention the parallel it makes with Luffy’s own philosophies.
I could be overthinking things, but the chapter seems to be ambiguous about whether Shanks accepts Kid’s Poneglyph rubbings or not. I mean, he probably does, but there’s room to read into it. At a glance I thought they were handing him a stack of four, but given the amount of folding a sheet that large would take, it’s probably only two. I don’t recall if he was specifically offered a copy of Big Mom’s or not, but it would make sense given his role in her defeat. Even the dialogue is deliberately ambiguous about how many rubbings he’s really handing over.
Also I don’t know if I think it’s more fun to picture Shanks flying all the way from shore to the Victoria Punk in a single jump or to have him leapfrogging ship to ship across his fleet. Quite a journey however he did it.
Some parts of the fanbase seem to be reacting to this development like Shanks is being too cruel in his treatment of Kid and his crew. Like it’s somehow out of character compared to the peacekeeper pirate we know he has a way of being at times. And to that, I honestly just say to reread chapter one. And refresh yourself on Kid’s reputation. Whatever you think of Shanks’s morals, he’s absolutely consistent, and thinking outside the perspective of someone who got to enjoy his screen presence on Wano, I totally understand not taking any chances with Kid and his crew.
And you do have to wonder how many of the people who think Shanks or Dory and Brogy or whoever kicked Kid’s crew while they were down by sinking them at the end have previously nitpicked the plot armour in past villains not finishing off Luffy when they had the chance, only to throw him in some prison or labour camp or so on. Did Shanks see in the news that Kaido annihilated Kid, Hawkins and Apoo’s alliance only to taken out by a group with a still-alive Kid as a ringleader a month later?
They’re sure as hell not dead though. The ocean hates Devil Fruit users, but it’s spat them back ashore from further away than where Kid goes down here. Hell, Luffy and Big Mom getting thrown into the sea of Wano from atop the falls looked less survivable.
I also, just personally, think it’s good to see Kid’s attack on Elbaf come to a quick end. I really want to see an actual Wano arc, so if he’d had too much to do there I might’ve started feeling like he was stealing it from Luffy. As it is, we might have a washed up Kid in the supporting cast for Elbaf, but the place remain’s Luffy’s to explore.
This has been a killer chapter to go into a break from. I’m going to be turning these events over in my mind for the whole downtime, I’m sure, and expecting big things when we come back in two weeks.
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One Piece chapter 1078 review
Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here.
For a short chapter it sure as hell feels like a lot happened this week, and Oda’s building up Egghead to be a much more pivotal arc than I think anyone expected it to be.
With the flashback over, it feels like the cover story should be moving toward an ending soon. It’s already added more to the main plot than most ever do, and I’m interested to see other parts of the world. Beast Pirates? Wano? Kaido and Big Mom? Jump backward and do the Doflamingo Family one that was conspicuously absent? There’s a lot of options.
The opening scene feels like an extension of Sentomaru’s bit in the last chapter, with not much new to say about it. An anime adaptation that wasn’t doing half a chapter per episode might even just run the two scenes together to streamline things and save the back and forth cuts. What a world that would be.
But wait, weren’t Cipher Pol talking about destroying all the ships on the island earlier? Hopefully the good guys got control back before they finished with that or this situation gets dicey real quick. The Sunny runs a skeleton crew (yohohoho) by real sailing ship standards, but I still don’t think there’s room left on it to move the population of a whole island.
One thing I’m not clear on in the S-Snake scene is what exactly explodes for that dramatic ending. It’s not really Pythagoras, is it? Oda has not convinced me he’s staying dead. And what happens with Franky now – too petrified to fight but too conscious to be left alone…
It’s going to take some time, I think, to pin down exactly how much Sanji’s personality changes when his eyebrow flips and his exoskeleton comes back (and I think this chapter makes it perfectly clear that it is back), because the bit about the power of love isn’t something I can see the other emotionless and cruel Vinsmoke kids saying, and it’s hard to say how much of his bloodlust last week was Vinsmoke blood and how much was just the way he gets over an attack on Nami.
One of the big perils of critiquing a series week by week is going on a whole talk about a story element that isn’t feeling right only to have it immediately addressed. Here, it seems the Seraphim are deliberately keeping their flames on and not giving the pirate-CP0 alliance an opportunity to do real damage, as we were all saying they would do if they were smart. We haven’t necessarily solved the issues with the fire system yet, but it’s a step in the right direction and evidence that Oda’s got a plan to make the fight all make sense.
Luffy calling Kaku Usopp and assigning him to babysit Zoro was a great laugh.
So, the Egghead Incident. An attempted repeat of Ohara against an armed nation. A war between the Navy and the science of Egghead crashed by pure chance by the fledgling Emperor Luffy. My question is what exactly is going to make this a battle that shocks the world? Will it just be the magnitude of the people involved – Emperors, Admirals and one of the Five Elders clashing directly? Luffy’s win here would be a huge blow to the World Government’s military and morale in a time of global uprising, which would be a pretty big deal, but things could escalate further still if the narrator actually means the unleashing of ancient knowledge and weapons, perhaps the reactivation of the ancient robot. I don’t want to get my hopes too high, but there are so many exciting possibilities here.
Have we seen the dude with the white stripe in his hair in the Navy officer lineup before? I like his look. Oda finds a way to put memorable character designs in the most random of places.
And we close on the shock reveal of the enemy inside the lab – the traitorous Vegaclone York! So when it comes to writing mysteries, you can do ones where the reveal makes everything slide into place and leave clues that make sense in hindsight. These are generally solvable in advance by design. Kanjuro was this kind of mystery foe. His birds flying away after arriving in the future, his tendency to comically impede his allies and the whole lefthandedness thing gave us what we needed to figure him out. But you can also play your mystery as a straight up twist. No real clues, just something to take the audience totally off-guard. York is that kind of mystery.
And while most (myself included) will say they prefer the first kind of mystery, there’s nothing inherently wrong with keeping readers on their toes with a twist villain every once in a while. Provided it at least doesn’t outright contradict what’s been shown previously.
And I think York mostly passes that bar. The Vegaclone designed for indulgence wants the lifestyle of the most decadent people in the world, I can buy that. S-Snake forcing the others off the walkway immediately after petrifying her and Oda never showing us the top again is a fun misdirect, looking back. Unfortunately, it’s coming out that she was present in the control room at the time the Frontier Dome went down. Did she set something in the system for a timed outage, or did Oda just slip?
And I definitely remember thinking the timing window for the traitor was the hijacking of the Seraphim to start the death game was very tight for a Vegapunk to get away with. There’s something like a 14 page span between the Seraphim being taken out of CP0’s command and asked to stand down and the Vegapunks all being present again in the control room, getting ready to depart. And unlike the Frontier Dome with who knows what kind of wifi or remote terminal access, you have to do the Seraphim in person. But looking at that control room scene, York is on her feet, Sanji is reacting to her like she’s just arrived, and she’s yawning like she just came from a nap. It actually tracks with her going off to do something nefarious. I wouldn’t call it a clue, you’d never catch it on a first reading, but it keeps the continuity in check.
I’m interested to see where we go from here. The vacant expression and cutsey way she talks, even about killing Shaka, makes it easy to forget that York has that Vegapunk intellect. That contradiction should give her a unique stage presence among One Piece villains, if nothing else. But will her deal with the Elders really work out like she hopes? Doflamingo had the blood, similar forbidden knowledge leverage and a whole nation’s military might and was never reinstated. Maybe a big disillusionment here will be key to York turning back to the crew’s side and ordering Usopp and Franky unpetrified. Maybe we get a York redemption where she holds back the Navy so the crew can escape in the style of Flim Z’s final scenes, but that’s getting way ahead of things. We’ll just wait and see how things develop.
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One Piece chapter 1077 review
Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.
Ugh, I read the title and assumed it was pointing toward an enemy reveal. Oda played the hell out of me on this one. Not that I can be too upset, with the reveal set to happen next week and the Labophase Death Game hurtling towards its conclusion with around four characters taken out of the competition in one fell swoop.
The opening scene takes the time to show us in certain terms that the lab assistants are regular people, something we never really got the chance to establish in Oda’s haste to introduce the Vegapunks and setup the horror scenario in the upper lab. Sentomaru is proving increasingly likable in this arc as he lets them all know what they’re up against and gives them the chance to run.
Bit of an odd place for an Ohara refresher though, right? Wouldn’t this have been best done a dozen chapters ago, before we were flashing back to Dragon and Vegapunk picking through the rubble and showing Saul alive? Strange choice.
Well, I said for the last chapter I wanted the Seraphim fights to have gone a little longer and I sure got my wish. Another thing I’ve said in the past is that the Lunarian defence-speed tradeoff was an undercooked mechanic for Zoro’s fight with King on Wano, but I noted at the time that it could be forgiven if longterm it ended up being a primer for understanding future Lunarian battles. It’s back here and… I still think Oda hasn’t quite worked out what he’s doing with this thing. The Lunarians don’t seem to be inconvenienced at all by their flame being on. Sure, they’re faster without it, but they’ve never been so slow they can’t keep up while it’s on. There’s no apparent drawback to keep them from being, as Zoro says here, “basically invincible” all of the time. Oda needs to give the heroes a way to force the mode switch, or the Lunarians a compelling reason to do it, or every fight against these guys is going to end up feeling like a videogame boss doing that one attack that exposes its weakpoint, just for the player’s benefit, even though you know it could have won if it just stopped using that move.
These battles are ongoing though, so we’ll see where Oda takes it.
And the joke the chapter gets its title from did get a laugh out of me. That’s a great little Zoro moment.
It’s interesting how the Seraphim challenge the crew through their perception of what they are rather than their real purpose, even now that the crew know it. Nami hesitates to attack what is visually a child and sends her apologies to Jinbei. Franky reflexively apologises. Even Bonney, earlier in the arc, despite probably knowing better, can’t stand to see damage done to the Pacifista built in her father’s image. We know that these are obediant killing machines wearing cloned flesh. The characters know it too. But appearances are powerful. What was it Atlas said near the start of the arc? “Whether it’s real or not is for you to decide.”
Let’s hope the crew starts making better decisions while they’ve got the chance!
Sanji was pretty active in the first clash with S-Shark and now he gets to fight him solo. I have a weird feeling this might give Sanji a chance to let off some steam over his bounty issue Jinbei. But I actually wouldn’t be a fan of that happening. When it’s Sanji and Zoro that’s an established rapport with a long history of back and forth. But if he’s getting that petty toward Jinbei you know it’s going to be one-sided, and it’s going to feel a lot meaner of him as a result.
It’s very cool seeing the eyebrow switch and a crueler side of him coming out again though. Look at Sanji actually getting some compelling characterisation lately!
The bubble gun weapon that Lilith tries is pretty cool. Long have fans asked why seastone bullets aren’t more of a thing for devil fruit enemies, so a tool like this is a logical thing to bring into the world. And it gives the Seraphim another weakness besides the hit and miss Lunarian fire game.
We aren’t shown explicitly if Franky is fully petrified at the end of this sequence (though Usopp’s dialogue implies that he is). I hope he’s not. There needs to be more between him and Vegapunk and the tech! Plus there’s going to be no one to fight S-Snake if he’s not still kicking. We do get a clue about how the arc will end in Usopp’s petrification though. The crew’s not getting overwhelmed and barely escaping while the Government seizes the island, they have to sort out this enemy situation and get control of the Seraphim back or there’s no more Usopp. The enemy can’t win. They also can’t really stay an enemy, if the authority rules hold.
With all this in mind, the final scene with Shaka seems to build toward the big reveal. He takes quite a brutal hit, even more than Atlas’s face being smashed earlier. But as with Atlas before, and York, and Lilith, there’s no way this sticks. They’ll fix him one way or another.
So the enemy. With every Seraphim accounted for and more likely to use a laser weapon anyway, it has to be the actual bad guy who shot Shaka. Short of a big red herring like Caribou making his move. I’ve been a vocal advocate of a rogue Punk Hazard, but that doesn’t fit with what’s been shown. That theory always had to compete with the requirement that orders be given to the Seraphim in person. I thought the system might use holograms of the Vegapunks to give its orders, with the Seraphim not being sophisticated enough to tell the difference and that theme of perception making reality coming back. The footsteps on the stairs aren’t very hologram-y, and weilding a physical gun is certainly not hologram behaviour.
You could maybe outfit a gun’s handle and trigger with the stuff from Atlas’s gloves that physically interacts with light, but that’s a stretch. And if the answer is that convoluted we were probably never meant to guess it in the first place.
So it’s a human being. Or at least has pulled a physical humanoid body from somewhere. Has to pass for a Vegapunk or someone of higher authority. Has to not be busy or petrified elsewhere right now. The suspect pool is dwindling rapidly and I really don’t have any guess left I would feel confident in.
It’s a real mystery, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes together (hopefully) for the solution next week.
And it’s a good enough mystery that I’m not dwelling too hard on the things in the chapter that don’t sit the best with me, from the Lunarian mechanics still not feeling fleshed out, to S-Snake and people’s reactions to her still giving off a weird vibe, even accepting that her fruit responds to emotions other than lust, or Oda’s weird extreme of horniness in this arc culminating in Nami’s super blatant ass shot in the middle of her fight. It also wouldn’t shock me, now that this chapter’s out, if volume 106 turns out to have 11 chapters, and this is the start of 107. Gives the previous volume a Shanks cliffhanger and lets a new one open on Sentomaru’s little recap.
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Tress of the Emerald Sea review
Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.
Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first of Brandon Sanderson’s four secret project novels and the latest release in his Cosmere fantasy universe. It follows a young woman who pursues the man she loves out to sea to rescue him from the clutches of an evil sorceress.
This review will be spoiler light until the end, and I’ll give fair warning when there are serious plot details coming up for discussion. Light meaning I will talk about a lot of things you wouldn’t know from the blurb and would otherwise be learning over time, but no earth-shattering endgame revelations. I am assuming you’ve read the rest of the Cosmere though.
So right off the bat, this book is delightful. I have my nits to pick, but delightful is overall the best word for it. I had a smile on my face the whole way through. All the more because I slotted it in as a palate cleanser between volumes of the dark and heavy Malazan Book of the Fallen, a role it turned out to be perfectly suited for in all of its enthusiasm and whimsy. I loved it.
In a similar sense to Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, the world itself is as much a main character as any of the people you’ll be reading about. And this is probably his most evocative setting since Stormlight.
The oceans of Lumar aren’t liquid but instead a desert of deadly spores, undergoing fluidisation (look that up) thanks to undersea air vents. If moisturised in any way, the spores explode into various things, based on the colour, with the eponymous emerald sea becoming strangling vines, blue as bursts of air, red as crystalline spikes, and so on. The spores are dropped from the planet’s 12 moons, that hold a low geosynchronous orbit. Here’s a fanart depiction of that, if you’re having trouble getting a clear mental image off that sci fi mouthful.
Source: radiant-shalesnail on tumblr I love this. It’s so imaginative. The book explores almost every reasonable question you could have about how life adapted to that kind of environment. Where do they get their water from? What happens when it rains? What happens if spores get in your mouth? What happens if you’re sailing and the airflow cuts off? What does warfare look like with spores involved? It’s this kind of exploration of the idea to its fullest potential that made me fall in love with Brando’s worldbuilding and magic systems in the first place.
And my god, some of the imagery it creates. This early scene of a ship being pulled down into the spores by tendrils generated from a splash of water around it is so striking. This is one of the coolest things that’s happened in a book in years.
A worldbuilding nitpick though. What do ships do with the crew’s waste? In real world vessels of the type, the head drained directly into the sea. Men would pee over the side if they had to go while on duty. This is obviously not an option on the spore seas. The results would be inconvenient at best and deadly at worst. So what do they do with it. Do ships have septic tanks in the bilges? That’s a lot of ballast, and how would you drain it?
I don’t think it’s out of line to ask this. We joke in this fanbase about people coming up with bizarre sexual applications of the magic systems like shard dildos and Brandon acting appalled before reluctantly admitting it would be possible. But there’s a lot of shit in this book. There was that whole chapter about the tosher. Conversations about human by-products are clearly on the table here.
Actually, even on the islands it’s a question. You can’t just have sewers draining into the sea, or into rivers that flow to the sea. I know historically people would chuck chamber pots out the windows into the streets, but this is a world where regular rainfall should get all that flowing toward the ocean. I don’t think the people on the Rock would bury it either. Their only source of water is a single underground aquifer. If an underground waste pit starts leaking into that they’re almost literally up shit creek.
We need to spring this one on him in a livestream or something.
Getting back on topic though.
The actual human characters were fun too. Not enough to gush about the same way I just did for the setting, there’s not really anyone who’s going to stick with you the way some Stormlight and Mistborn characters do, but they’re charming to the last and the story makes sure, with mechanical precision, that each one has a satisfying conclusive moment for their role on the crew and their relationship with Tress.
Tress as a protagonist is well written to serve the story’s themes and messages about stepping outside your comfort zone, thinking outside the box to solve problems rather than just blundering through, and having compassion for and a willingness to help the people you find around you, even when it might be more pragmatic or outright safe to leave them behind. The narration even jokes about her pausing to do something as uncharacteristic for a fantasy protagonist as carefully considering her situation before making a big decision. I don’t know if she’ll ever top Cosmere hero tier lists, but she’s hard not to like, and you have to appreciate how her portrayal is hopeful the best of humankind’s abilities to grow, to care and to solve problems.
The book also has exactly the number of characters it needs, but I think the Dougs bit the narration does is a great way to keep the larger crew out of the main cast’s way without dehumanising them entirely.
Which brings us to the narrator, longtime Cosmere man of mystery Hoid. You know how fantasy novels will sometimes do a section where an in-universe storyteller just gets an extended bit of dialogue to spin a tale, often interacting with their audience directly, opining on events, and leaning on their tale’s fourth wall? Brandon’s done it with Hoid a couple of times already. Rothfuss loves doing it. Tress is a whole book of that. It’s fun, it’s often funny. Hoid’s interjections are sometimes even thought-provoking. If you like The Princess Bride and Good Omens, at least one of which Brando namedrops directly in the afterword, you’ll like this too.
I don’t think it always works. Someone here, either narrator Hoid or author Brandon, isn’t always as funny and witty as he thinks he is. There are some jokes that fall flat. Some wordplays that feel like a strenuous reach. Some of the stuff that Hoid says and does because of his curse comes across as a very basic brand of quirky. A bit 2010 internet idea of random. Oh crazy Hoid put socks on under his sandals the absolute madlad.
It’s never on the level of cringe of Shallan’s cleverness at the start of the Way of Kings, but there are moments.
But there are gems too. Some actual laughs. Some lines that really get you going oh. I really liked the one on the first night Tress spends sleeping on the deck, talking about the two abysses of the sky overhead and the sea underneath, and how the sea was somehow deeper and darker. You might have noticed the ill-fated ocean liner over my head. I’ve got kind of a passing interest in maritime travel and disasters and shipwrecks, and that line has stayed with me.
The book has some interesting Cosmere connections, hinting at the futures of a few familiar worlds, but it doesn’t lean on these things, they’re more like easter eggs. I imagine a new reader could safely go through it without feeling isolated by the references – they fit right in with Hoid’s other flights of fancy. I think it would have been ideal if this book had come out before The Lost Metal. One part of that book that didn’t reach its full potential was the Ghostbloods subplot, bringing together magic users from a number of different worlds. That arc hinted at a lot but didn’t really give us the time to explore all those overlapping systems in the kind of detail I would have liked.
In that sequence, on top of all the familiar stuff you’re trying to keep up with, there’s a character using an aether, which is the same thing the spores of Tress are. And without the explanations this book gives, it really feels like he’s just able to create a lot something from nothing at all, which felt so out of line with how magic in these stories is usually handled. I think if I’d read Tress first and knew before I saw that section the materials required and limits placed on Aether materials I would have had a much easier time accepting it.
And I guess while we’re on the magic, I’m really disappointed by the lack of the usual Ars Arcanum at the back. We get what, five out of 12 aether colours outlined in the text. I want to know the rest of them, Brando. I’m desperate to know these things. I hope I don’t have to wait.
I think that’s everything I can get through spoiler free. Click here to skip over the spoiler section.
I think the confrontation with the dragon outshines the book’s actual finale, but that’s not a real complaint. It’s more about how good the dragon bit is than any major weakness in the ending.
The one thing I was hoping for a bit more from was Huck and Charlie. When Huck was introduced, from page one, my first thought was ‘oh, it’s Charlie.’ I never entertained a single other option. And there was the talk of curses leading back to him, and the way Tress would ask something like ‘are there other talking rats’ and he would tell an obvious white lie like ‘my whole family can talk just like I can,’ carefully never saying directly that his family are rats too.
It was so obvious and took so long to come out I started hoping I was being set up for some kind of twist or subversion. There was validation in the narrator going “about time” when Tress finally gets it, but not enough for how long I’d been sitting on the answer.
Obviously Brandon expected readers to figure it out at least a little way ahead of time, but I’d be curious to know exactly when he expected them to twig.
But look, one slight misfire of a reveal isn’t enough to take the lustre off an ending that is otherwise as delightful as the rest of the book.
End spoilers.
Just as we wrap up I want to talk presentation. It’s not a big thing for a lot of readers, but hey, I paid a lot of money for this book. Cover design is gorgeous. Some of the foil here is misaligned by a factor of milimeters, but you have to look really close to notice it, so I don’t mind that. I appreciate that it matches the height and depth of the Dragonsteel edition leatherbounds, but it would have been nice if the spine format was the same.
I love these little flourishes around the chapter numbers that grow chapter by chapter, and I especially love that when the adventure moves between seas their colour and style change to match. These kinds of details warm my heart.
The illustrations throughout are lovely and capture the style and atmosphere of the story fantastically, but some of them have questionable placement. The pieces Crow Revealed and a Battle of Wits are both inserted before the moments they depict, both kinda giving the game away pages in advance. I know that structurally there are often certain limitations on where colour inserts can be bound into a book, but I wish a little more had been done to make them work with the flow of the story. A few pages late is far preferable to a few early.
There’s not much to say in conclusion that wouldn’t be repeating myself. The blemishes on this book, both in story and presentation, are few and far between and pale in comparison to all it gets right. It is a delightful adventure and worthy addition to the Cosmere. My hopes for the rest of these secret projects are sky high. Mostly sky high. I’m lowering them a smidge for the second one, which is to be non-Cosmere and just doesn’t sound as much up my alley from the campaign’s summary of it. But projects three and four. Sky high.
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One Piece chapter 1076 review
Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.
Our colour pages this week feel like a return to familiar territory. After a long run of both colour spreads and Jump covers being taken up by Film Red promos or Gear Five, we finally get some current-arc outfits on the cover and a more traditional colour spread that looks great, despite the lack of animals. The magazine clipping angle is a new and novel one that came out a treat. Hopefully Oda’s been building up some more unique ideas like this while he was doing all the promotional ones. Hang on though, is Sanji wearing a Garfield shirt? Honestly I could see the off-brand Garf with the ill-fitting slogn going the distance in a round of Jackbox Tee K.O.
This chapter is either the first of volume 107 or the eleventh of 106, and I could see the argument going either way. The opening page reiterating Cipher Pol’s offer is a good note to bring returning readers in on, but a big Shanks appearance makes for a very strong ending note. We might not know this one for sure until we get the next volume’s pagecount.
I really like the interactions between the crew and Cipher Pol at the start of the chapter. Luffy being too trusting and Lucci being too blunt while their partners berate them is really fun stuff. How did Lucci manage to stay undercover for so many years with that big mouth though? Or does Luffy just put him that on-edge.
I think it’s interesting that neither Cipher Pol nor Shaka contradict Zoro when he says there must be four Seraphim on the loose. Presumably because he’s right and S-Crocodile, S-Bat and S-Flamingo are being used elsewhere. No more surprise extra clones. But it means we have to wait to see the younger Crocodile, which I’m a little curious about, given the theories about him.
S-Bear does some serious damage to the lab here. This probably won’t be a super protracted conflict then, given that basically every move so far has caused noticable and lasting damage to the structure. It won’t last through much more! Although we can see the two small buildings by the entry ramp looking mostly unharmed here, so what did the Seraphim’s opening volley even hit?
Would have been nice to see more of the different fighting styles here working in tandem, but it also makes sense that big double hits from fighters on this level would be too much for even the mighty seraphim. Not that it’s confirmed that these two are down for good, of course…
Luffy’s coat managing to fit around him in Gear Four makes it all the more egregious that it magically disappeared and returned when he fought Lucci in Gear Give down below.
The scene deep within the lab certainly changes some things. I really was a believer that the Vegapunks were vanishing Cipher Pol ships to keep news of their illegal research getting back to the Government for as long as possible, but we see here that the Stella at least had no knowledge of it. Who or whatever the enemy is though, what goal are they trying to achieve by keeping all these captured agents alive? And what is the enemy’s motive anyway, seeing as they’ve attacked Vegapunk, the Strawhats and Government operatives all, as well as drawing the Government’s suspicion in the first place? Bonney hasn’t been attacked since reaching the upper lab, it’s worth noting, and may even have been led to Kuma’s memories by the enemy making a machine beep at the right time. But she was attacked directly by the PX III cop that conveniently chased Luffy’s group to the Ancient Robot before, so I’m not convinced the local machines are on her side either.
And then we get some Shanks scenes, which is truly unexpected so soon after his end of Wano cameo. Hey, how many kids in bars has he mentored over the years? Dude’s been planting seeds all over the place. It’s cool that we’re getting to see Shanks having a larger fleet and more Emperor-appropriate organisation structure as well. One of those ships seems to have a Bepo figurehead. Distant relatives maybe? The spread of the Red Haired Crew and the giants is one of the cleanest we’ve had in years. I don’t mind busy pages, but it is nice to see a big picture getting to breathe a little more. And ah, the nostalgia of Dory, Broggy, Oimo and Kashii all being there!
Kid’s showing a lot of confidence challenging Shanks directly with his whole fleet there and the giants willing to back him up. I would probably not bet in his favour.
I’m hoping after the break we’re due for at least one solid clue toward the enemy’s identity or nature, but I’m not holding my breath for an update on Shanks and Kid. Whatever Oda puts in the chapter, if he keeps cooking with the same ingredients he’s been using for the last couple, I’m gonna be happy.
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One Piece chapter 1075 review
Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.
I can’t say I saw this one coming at all. I’ve been setting myself up for a siege arc, first trying to defend the beaches from Borsalino’s fleet, the struggling to hold the lab as the Pacifista and Seraphim are turned by Saturn. Instead, all of those battle lines are being used to pen the crew in for an Among Us style manhunt in the upper lab, which I think is a tremendously fun direction to take it.
The choice to silhouette the Five Elders on the cover is definitely worth taking note of. Is it to hide that they haven’t aged in the 20ish years since this flashback? Or does it instead mislead us from the fact that they have.
Early on in the chapter we get a map for the lab, and there’s nothing I love more than a map. Already what I think is interesting is tracking the damage to the structure over the past few chapters. Look at how most of the Seraphim aim low in the first attack,
presumably destroying the two small structures on either side of the entrance ramp,
but the top of Tower C is smashed open in the next chapter.
Despite the first thought that they took another shot between chapters or Oda retconned what he wanted damaged, I think the falling section of roof slashed by S-Hawk did that. (It gets hit again later when S-Shark tries to shoot Edison, but only in the already-damaged area, so there’s no cosmetic change.) And you can see that Tower B remains untouched until the explosion around Pythagoras last week, which has now blow it open.
I can’t stress enough how great it is when these details are kept track of.
I also think the floors are pretty big. See how many levels of walkways are included in “floor 3” in this establishing shot, and the scale of the crew, the entry ramp and the building as a whole.
So Usopp, Franky and Lilith are probably going to still be considered on floor 3 when we get back to them next week. Probably. It wouldn’t be unlike Oda to play fast and loose with proportions.
While light on story progression, there’s a lot of fun character moments in the different groups wandering around. Nami and Robin were great. Sanji sure is being Sanji, but at least he’s decent enough to remember she was at his wedding. Maybe this is Jojo fan levels of reference reaching, but something about a desperate guy getting called a dog by an icy government woman makes me think Chainsaw Man.
I feel like it’s a missed opportunity that Franky seems to be actually looking for Vegapunk instead of getting distracted by the tech like everyone else. Maybe he just wants it all direct from the source instead.
Pythagoras lives. No one is shocked.
York gives me something I’ve been wanting since that first awful scene with the Cipher Pol goons – an unambiguously innocent interaction with S-Snake that still leads to petrification. I look forward to the SBS where Oda outlines the new emotional triggers now that it’s not just “impure thoughts” like Hancock originally explained.
There are some definite mysteries afoot with the Seraphim turn though. We’re running short on Vegaclones that haven’t either been attacked or been in the control room at every opportunity to take control. Atlas was absent for a long time for her repairs, but one of the others probably would have said something if they took longer than they should have. And interestingly, S-Snake and S-Bear attacked Lucci and Kaku, so the enemy here isn’t in league with the government. The theory I like most is Punk Records itself achieving some kind of sentience and entering a HAL 9000/Skynet phase. It’s a fun sci fi trope, and it solves the problem of what happens to Punk Records after Vegapunk flees.
While it’s not a traditional cliffhanger, I can see Oda leaving volume readers on the question of whether Lucci and Kaku really do get freed to fight alongside the Strawhats. I hope it happens. It’s a great setup likely to lead to bickering and competition and no one being too careful about throwing attacks near their so-called allies. Next chapter could be a really fun one, especially after this one proved surprisingly satisfying for just 15 pages.
I hope we’re due a normal colour spread though. If you go over the last few lots of colour pages we’ve got… a Film Red promo, a Film Red promo, an update of an old poster, a Film Red promo, the Four Emperors, and an Odyssey promo. Give me the crew playing with animals in a whimsical new setting, Oda, please! It’s been like ten months!
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