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Bittman Presents - Chapter 555 Review
Introduction:
It’s your heart stopping as your friend does not believe in you…or because of the shockwave.
Hey Mangahelpers =D
I had a good bludge this weekend, and so I didn’t even start this until first thing Monday morning even though I had nothing better to do. Funny that. Didn’t get around to that second review either, perhaps this week I could be so lucky (lucky, lucky, lucky~). Review is kinda late, apologies. Added more images, but they’re all crap, thinking about making them better took more time than it should have. Apologies for that too.
In other manga related news: To-LOVE-Ru finished this week. I shall mourn thy loss of shameless ecchi and bitch about the manga-ka’s second finishing-arc failure in a row. Bleach again used 19 pages for 1 plot point and Naruto is making unimportant characters important. So I guess I’ll stick with One Piece which never goes limp on me.
Scan from Binktopia, who I used to always use when I downloaded them back in the day but the convenience of onemanga is too good to ignore. And anyone who puts Nami in a bikini in their credits page deserves to be looked at. Regardless, let’s get cracking shall we?
Chapter Breakdown:
Truly a face only a mother could love. A blind mother.
Again ignoring the cover arc this week…even though it has Nami on it...in short shorts. Maybe I should- no bad pervert! Focus!
So our chapter begins on a scale of epic proportions with giants and Oars-chan on the move. Amusing how Oars-chan is often titled as “Little Oars Junior” when there’s nothing little or junior about the monolithic demon that he is. As Oda’s caption states “A Giant among Giants!!”, and I’d love to know exactly what race Oars-chan hails from and who on Earth (or whatever planet they’re on) runs the sweatshop for their clothes. Probably China.
Little Oars-chan lifts a battleship to menace with his swollen eyebrows reminiscent of a boxer who’s taken too many to the face. Amusing, because nothing can really reach his face easily, let alone disfigure it in that way. His expressions and look is similar to the original Oars (Oz), but quite obviously includes a nose, both of his eyes and some more clothes. It’ll be a bit hard to compare the two, when one is a zombie without flashback, but they generally appear to keep the same demonic theme to them with upturned horns and a chain of three skulls on beads. The three skulls on beads interests me, because it would have been just as easy for Oda to put more or less skulls on Oz and not do it on beads. Perhaps it’s just him being lazy with character design, but perhaps it’s a defining trait of initiation for the whatever-the-hell-race they are from.
The Battle(ship) Axe! An everyman’s tool to communicating with lesser giants.
So Oars-chan uses the battleship as a temporary axe on the Giant Squad who are practically useless against the force with which the battleship was slammed against them. Even then, I’m reminded of Saul’s assault against a battleship during the Ohara buster call back in the day and feel that these giants just aren’t what they used to be and perhaps my misread of a Giant Squid would have been more interesting in the end. That said, who knows what rank these Giant Squad giants are, for the only known ranking giant as of now is John Giant who we’re yet to see attack alongside his fellow giants, which is a shame because he certainly appears to be a bright giant. That and his name is basically John Smith, making him the most generic generic since generic was genericed.
With Oars-chan’s full power on display, a rectangular blade in/on hand and some more stressed and sweating marines, Whitebeard and Oars-chan have a quick exchange whilst Whitebeard rushes his men to reinforce Oars’ position (Kamasutra #53). Partially shaven Santa Claus is no fool and his experience in many battles shines here in realising that Oars Jr is basically on a suicide run, but at the same time it’s not something he can really stop. This is part of what I expect will be the winning factor the World Government has over the Whitebeard armada: unity. Sure, Whitebeard has a massive crew and a ton of New World allies, but in the end they are a group of scattered pirate crews. The marines will hear an order and typically obey before they can blink. Some of the Whitebeard allies could flee if things turn bad, some may not listen to his words of warning and tactics and some might outright be there to stab him in the back. You can’t discount all this having a possibility of happening, we are talking pirates here, not Jack Sparrow and Will Turner clones. Honour is secondary to booty, and pirates love big booties.
…comment goes here…brain and hormones don’t work at same time, sorry…
So as tonnes of testosterone are on show via a giant demon, some lesser pirates try to overcompensate by flinging their testosterone at the one femininely dressed girl within the crowd. Because let’s face it, the Oars Junior’s Junior needs to compensate for nothing when even compared to the puny giants as they fail to deflect his overhead slash. So a pirate has to compensate elsewhere, such as displaying some trophy booty they plundered and purloined. Hahaha~ Loins! Quite clearly these are pirates where a sexy time with Hancock is in the back of their mind, though doubtfully non-existent. With a vibrant display of her Mero Mero powers combined with the famous Kuja archery skills and a great display of her long, salacious, smooth, athletic legs…sorry I lost my train of thought. Man those are some great legs. Curses to the cursed man who blocks further view of those great legs.
Oh no matter, we get a full page of her legs on the next double spread. So it appears Hancock’s attitude has not changed at all, I actually expected her to be a bit more fearful of the ever increasing power of the world government’s pimp hand as the leader of the Kuja nation and ex-Tenryuubito slave, but it appears other than Luffy she has undergone no real change concerning her view of men. Interestingly, her views are fairly typical of an abuse victim in the lack of trust for men, seeing them all as her enemy; but at the same time she still thinks of herself as grand and above all of them as opposed to losing their sense of self worth as you may argue her sisters have done with their dramatic change in appearance from the flashback. That said, I still expect some sort of moment either now (or in the future) where she sheds an amount of sweat and obeys without question. Fear is a powerful tool; I will be surprised if the World Government doesn’t throw a Tenryuubito warning at her sometime in the future to stop her in her tracks.
Still, moving on from her personality, we see some more of her attacking repertoire here. We could have assumed that perhaps she could simply do her typical Merrow Merrow Merrow (Mellow Meadow) attack and have more stoners than Amsterdam in an instant, but instead she unleashes a Slave Arrow and some great kicks (I’ll focus this time, I swear). Firstly, things to note about the Slave Arrow attack are that she was not only able to fully and partially stone people, but she was also able to petrify cannonballs fired in her direction. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, cannonballs have no lust of which to speak of, yet here they are petrified. Secondly, Hancock is a kicker by nature; so I snicker thinking of Okama Sanji v Hancock. Her Perfume Femur (which translates to something like…Smelly Leg Bone?) reminded me of Sanji’s Party Table attack. And finally about her four pages of power display, we are yet to see a fraction of her King’s Haki or the snake. Couldn’t care less about the Haki honestly, but the Snake makes me want to make a pun about her fear of the dreaded one-eyed snake. Oh wait, I just made the pun.
Kuma explodes onto the scene!
KABOOM! Oh dear god Kuma passes the greatest amount of wind seen since the World Heavyweight Farting Championships. Yeah, I’m not above a fart joke…not much I am above really except everyone reading this. Especially you George! (happy to know I’m freaking out all the George’s out there). So out of nowhere Kuma appears, he does like appearing out of nowhere, but if you can teleport why wouldn’t you. You’d never be late for anything, what’s to hold you up when you can be anywhere in an instant? Still, Ursus Shock hey? How did the Strawhat’s live that again? Right here I’ve just seen an attack so great it basically went through the largest being in the One Piece world, destroyed tons of ice and sent shockwaves for kilometres around. Sure, unlike the other Shichibukai we’ve seen this attack before and so Kuma’s not being original here, but by lord why would he need to be original when there’s actually a target large enough to take half the brunt of his compressed air bomb? Against the Strawhat’s it practically knocked out everyone save Zoro and Sanji (and Brook, but I don’t know if skeletons can be concussed…). The more I look at it the more I think “My god, is this an unstoppable attack?” Love to hear a single theory of what exactly could tank this attack and still feasibly battle against Teddy Bear.
As you can all see, Oars Jnr is the newest Strawhat pirate.
What follows is a testament to Oda’s greatness. With a soft thud the strawhat of Oars Junior lands beside him, torn from his broken body by the force of Kuma’s blast. With a dazed glance towards the fallen conical straw hat as he feels his consciousness fade, Oars-chan remembers a young pirate captain passing him the large hat. Ace’s kindness parallels our airheaded protagonist’s as Oars junior enjoys shade from the heavy sun that only clouds used to be able to provide. It’s no small hat Ace made, even more of a feat when he is made of fire, and no reward to his kindness was required. Even as the weather changes with rain and snow falling over Oars-chan, he remains safe under his hat of friendship.
So what, that is the most simple story of friendship I’ve ever seen Oda do and I may be called gay for this (but that’s ok, I can’t be insulted), but this is what makes One Piece great. So the girls are sexy? So the attacks are unbelievably awesome? So the comedy is good? That all matters (especially the girls), but it would just be some emotionless manga about shinigami without this. In a total of one page of flashbacks, scattered amongst the struggles of Oars-chan, we are made to feel sorry for this character. You don’t need to know any more of his backstory, heck he didn’t even need a sad backstory. Yet here we are all with a tear in our eye (well if I am, you should all be ShamWOW’ing your tears) as Oars-chan’s chances of success falter before his very swollen eyes.
An extra note of Oda awesome: Ace learned to make this in the Wano Country. Samurai Ryuuma. Thanks for playing.
Doflamingo’s manly coat proves to all that being evil is fashionable.
Our beloved Little Oars-chan Junior takes a few cannon fodder cannons in his dazed state as he becomes nothing more than the biggest target on the whole battlefield. Resolving himself to his fate, Oars smartly decides that so long as he can help the battle in the long run others should be able to wipe his ass and save the friend who, with so little, gave him so much. Ok, enough soppy words, time to imagine the size of the toilet paper required to wipe Oars-chan’s ass. Because right here he decides that taking out a Shichibukai would be a good idea, and he picks on my new favourite bad guy.
Doflamingo looks to take an attack which makes any of Luffy’s 3rd gear attacks a total joke, yet the crafty Doflamingo orchestrates his escape by…flying? He then laughs…and cuts off the leg of Oars-chan? Honestly speaking, we’ve just seen Doflamingo’s power on display for the third time in this manga series, yet we can only guess. No-one has run through the manga for so long with an ability still unexplained. I can predict, like many others, that Doflamingo is a puppeteer who uses strings to both control bodies and slice. If he was a puppeteer we could also hypothesise that he simply threw some strings onto Oars-chan’s horns and pulled himself up and over the giant with a Herculean pole vault effort. Though I’m with the group that believes it’s a string devil fruit, there’s nothing to say that he doesn’t just use strings as a weapon or they’re not haki related. Heck, there’s really no evidence to tie it to strings other than string/wire often being used in much popular culture as an attacking tool whilst often associated as the tool which allows a puppeteer to orchestrate his puppets.
Oda is definitely going out of his to make Doflamingo a bad guy. If you don’t believe me, let’s go back to the 7,000+ view review I did way back in the day and look at his ownership of the Slave House. Let’s go further back and look at his punishment of Bellamy for his failure. Let’s go even further to his first appearance where he shows no fear threatening high ranking marine officers or even Sengoku himself. Doflamingo is quite possibly one of the last few remaining long-term “EVIL” guys in One Piece. Right now the only other character on the Evil Knights of the Round Table is Blackbeard and his crew. Most other enemies in One Piece that the Strawhat’s will most likely come across have either already been defeated (Croc / Moria), have a nice or honourable side (Kuma / Mihawk / Shanks) or are actually on the “good guys” side (Smoker / Admirals). Doflamingo on the other hand is undefeated, fight’s for nobody other than himself and is a major prick. Heck, right now Doflamingo is the quite possibly the most evil character in One Piece with Blackbeard being more greedy than unnecessarily evil. Blackbeard is just as likely to fight for justice as he is to kill someone for no reason, but Doflamingo is definitely something else. What I’m trying to get at here is that when you combine Doflamingo’s evil laugh with his evil ways and his gay fashion sense, you get a bad guy. And as all us good guys know, Bad guys always win.
If only Oars had Haki. Then he could knock out everyone, punch logias and make a nutella sandwich in five minutes.
Little Stumpy Junior takes a final desperate lunge at his friend Ace-Gun (not to be confused with aces from Top Gun) but is impeded by the final Shichibukai who had not taken action. Gecko Moria returns in style with his shadow powers on proper display and to give all the people who think Luffy can K.O him any time of the week a big middle finger. Moria’s giant penis extension penetrates Oars through the chest, but not through the heart like some predicted (heart’s on the other side of the body. I passed 8th grade Science~ And you didn’t~ Please don’t hurt me~). Not much to say about Moria that I haven’t already said before, though I suppose a few people have suddenly gone “Oh right, he is actually quite strong” whereas before they probably thought Franky could beat him. Moria is a mid-long range fighter typically, as his shadow powers can easily give him range on things, yet against Luffy he was typically close range via Oars-ojisan and Shadows Asgard. Perhaps some of you will finally realise that Shadows Asgard was not a good move in the same way that me not trying to hit on the drunk chick in Prague was not a good move.
So the chapter closes with the Tsuno Tokage, a blade of shadow and lizard, and the final look Oars and Ace share as their star-crossed love story comes to a tearful close. I just wanted to make a final note about Moria’s attitude, in that I’m a bit disappointed that he didn’t suddenly turn from his zombie ways after losing Thriller Bark. I guessed his loss to Luffy was also a blow to his delusion that an army of zombies could have helped him and that he no longer needed a close array of nakama. I sort of feel sorry for Moria knowing he’ll never have friends again, but then I remember how ugly he is.
Nevertheless you can’t help but feel for Beer Belly Jnr, even though his contribution will in no way be forgotten as he was able to provide the push that granted the Whitebeard pirates entry to the plaza and New World pirates to the bay. He does look pretty dead though, and will doubtfully participate in the rest of the battle other than to serve as a jumping castle for Mihawk, who is thus far useless to the entire battle (funny really, since he’s probably the strongest Shichibukai there). Its possible Oars-chan will somehow live passed this battle with a stump thrown on his leg to make him more pirate than Crocodile. Then maybe Oars-chan will join the Strawhat’s, but betray them when he realises that Blackbeard’s master plan was to bring back the last female Oars. And then maybe Oars and Oarsette will betray Blackbeard, have tons of babies, conquer the world and adopt Marco as his talking parrot.
Main Chapter Points:
- There’s a race of Oars’s somewhere, he’s not just an unplanned pregnancy gone wrong.
- Little Oars-chan Junior~! T__T
- OhmygodHancock’slegsaregreatIwishIhadlegslikethose
- Doflamingo: A bad guy? In my One Piece?
Summary and Rating:
This chapter was chock-a-block with goodness, and the first chapter in a while that actually featured all 18 pages, even though 8 (*2 = 16) of them were doubles. The chapter gave an unparalleled focus to a sub character we all know as Little Oars Junior, but I fondly know as Oars-chan, for him only to be fodder to the Shichibukai’s powers. We get some more flashbacks of Ace’s road as a Spade Pirate and his kindness to a giant stranger whose motivation was simple yet evident to all. We got Whitebeard being tactical and we got a great display of the Shichibukai’s powers.
So what do I give this chapter?
10/10
“Whoa? Full marks?” I hear you exclaim whilst wondering exactly how the chapter was that good. To this I ask you, where is the chapter’s fault? Sure, it’s not exactly about the death of Going Merry. Sure, it doesn’t have the suspense and drama of Robin’s betrayal. Sure, it doesn’t have the energy and passion behind Luffy’s defeat of Crocodile. But I’ll be damned if, for a chapter that’s goal was nothing more than “Show off the Shichibukai”, you can find anything that could be done better. And if you can, I don’t care; I’m probably damned for the sin of lust anyway.
Predictions:
Oars-chan~ I shall miss making puns about your large growths.
Well I actually somewhat predicted this week, though I didn’t think it would feature Oars-chan as heavily, we did get a rare display of Doflamingo’s power and some general grandstanding from the Shichibukai.
Next week is a little more difficult though, but in general I suppose Whitebeard will personally feel responsible for Oars’ loss and take centre stage in the battle whilst more of the general chaos erupts around him with marines and pirates going at it far closer to Ace’s podium than anyone probably expected thanks to Oars’ push. Since Mihawk hasn’t gotten as much screentime as others, he’ll probably get some, though Oda might save it for later chapters. There’s also a definite lack of admirals and lesser marines this chapter. But in short, I expect next week’s cliffhanger to be either Whitebeard taking centre stage or the Jailbreak League’s arrival on the outskirts.
