sahugani's One Piece Review 453

[sahugani]

Sahugani’s One Piece Review 453

I would have liked to see Brooke cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean​

I’ve been excited about this chapter for a while. The spoilers for this chapter instilled in me a happiness that is hard to describe. In addition, I’ve been getting more and more excited about One Piece lately as I’ve finally gotten my roommate to start the series and now have someone else here to enjoy it with. I generally use Franky House/Ichiban scans for my reviews, but I think they are currently busy on other projects, so this week I’m using Crayola’s scan for my pics. And as promised a while back, I am using artwork by MH’s Smoker for my cover WP in celebration of our favorite skeleton’s return.

Also, I apologize for my reviews being a bit late. There were a number of issues that forced writing these reviews into the background for a while, but I got it done eventually

Lunar Expedition

science means nothing in the face of tiny robots​

Well, as it seemed inevitable last week, Spacey and his siblings decided to find their own way to reach the moon and investigate the explosion. Their method however seems to scream Winney the Pooh (I loved it as a kid). Although riding balloons into space seems to defy more laws of physics than I care to think about, since when has Oda seriously paid ant attention to scientific facts? Still, the balloons do give their journey an air of innocence that just makes them all the more lovable and their later struggle all the more noble. If Enel doesn’t save the little robots, I’d like nothing more than to have him killed by the space pirates.

Insubordination

i kinda want him to actually meet Sanji​

We went all of last week without returning to the trio and the Sanji penguin, now officially named Dogpen. Although he is only a wild zombie, he fights with the strength of the general zombies as he quickly dispatches his allies who attack Nami. Afterwards he continues to spout Sanji originals and shows no hesitation in attacking Usopp and Chopper. On this front, we don’t receive much more of a clue as to the process that created him, Ryuuma, or Jigoroh, except from the comment about Dogpen’s strength. As he is simply a creature zombie, his strength should not enter the realm of the generals. I can only assume that this increase in power was due to the fact that his shadow base (assuming the shadow theory is true) far exceeded those of the regular creature zombies. This, as in the case of Jigoroh, calls into question the issue of zombies getting strength and abilities from their shadow bases, which makes the case of Ryuuma and Brooke extremely suspicious.

Beauty and the Beasts

i wonder why Ab-sama doesn't like her​

Dogpen’s friendly fire gets cut short by a rampaging Lola and Absalom in hot pursuit. Lola is just too hilarious to keep out of the story for long. As she promised, she came right to Nami with the intent to slay her, despite the fact that Nami is completely clueless as to the identity of Ab-sama, the man she is supposedly keeping from Lola’s affection. We have been expecting a confrontation of some sort since we met our beast bride and it came surprisingly quick. What I find amusing is Nami’s reaction to Lola’s description of her. Oda really plays all variations of the term thief cat at the same time. Lola says it because Nami is “stealing her man,” Nami responds to it assuming that she was blamed for an actual theft (which is actually her future plan) but the whole thing stems from the fact that that is her bounty title. Anyways, between the Warthog’s axe and Nami’s face stands Dogpen, who saves Nami by breaking Lola’s weapon. The curious thing about this is that even after shielding Nami, he doesn’t fight back when Lola attacks him in retaliation. His chivalry extends to all women no matter how hideous. The closest Sanji has come to this was shielding Dr. Kureha (then again, he hasn’t been put in this kind of situation before). Usopp and Chopper even applaud Dogpen for recognizing that Lola was a woman, which they apparently did not initially realize.

Seeing the Offender

i think there is a bigger concern right behind him​

While Dogpen has Lola distracted, Absalom takes his opportunity to save Nami from the angry hog’s wrath. However, Nami recognizes him as her invisible attacker from before. Lets just say she is not all to happy being held by the guy who pinned her naked body to the wall and almost had his way with her. This time though, Absalom reveals his appearance to her as if that would make her all of a sudden appreciate what he is doing for her at the moment. He chose Nami because she seemed weaker than Robin and while that is true, she now has access to her Perfect Clima-tact and gives Ab-sama a jolt big enough to make him let go. Normally this would be taken as evidence that she is not the weak woman he had envisioned, but Absalom once again displays his utter cluelessness when it comes to interpretation of love. Since when has being electrocuted been misconstrued as love and since when has a person been thankful to be in the arms of a sexual predator?

Power of Fear

the force is strong with this one​

After our trio escapes and Lola begins chase again, Absalom clashes with the wild zombies over their orders. While the wild zombies are under Perona’s orders, Absalom warns them not to hurt Nami. When they decline, he reminds them of how powerful he is and it seems to work pretty effectively…except for Dogpen. Ironically, the only two zombies there who wish to protect Nami stand in each other’s way. The end to the staring contest gives us a brief look at Absalom’s abilities. In addition to his invisibility, Absalom seems to be a powerful telekinetic or something to that effect. With a simple motion of his hand, he creates a blast of invisible energy that hurls Dogpen backwards with immense force. I doubt he’ll be getting any more complaints from Perona’s wild zombies. There is a lot of explaining to do about this island. The zombies we can at least theorize about (the shadow theory being my choice) but we are still utterly clueless as to how Absalom has these mystic powers or what the hell the Perona ghosts are.

Monkey Mischief

insult him all you want in a soft voice and he won't hear you​

We finally get back to Franky and Robin, who are without a doubt the highlight of this chapter. First of all, it is confirmed that Zoro and Sanji were taken to the same area as Luffy (though it was pretty damn easy to assume anyways). I doubt we’ll see a Luffy zombie or if we do it will be very brief. Now that we have this confirmation, Luffy’s capture will be more for the purpose of witnessing what exactly goes on in the procedure. In addition, we also get a bit of an explanation of the Spider Monkey. As I said last week, he seems to be the one responsible for the spider webs that trapped the ships on the island’s coast. Robin also makes the assumption that his large ears enhance his hearing, but I’m not so certain. I think the poor hearing that Franky took as a joke may actually be legitimate. When it comes to spying on the Strawhats and similar actions, Perona’s ghosts would be more useful thanan enhanced hearing, so it’s not like it would be needed normally as Robin assumed. Also, remember back to when we first met Cerberus. Despite having three dog noses, his sense of smell was atrocious. I wouldn’t be surprised if the zombies here have problems with perception of some senses. We know the zombies don’t exactly care about pain much, so I don’t doubt that Spider Monkey actually has hearing issues. This sensory problem is likely to be exploited in one or more fights in the future.

Earthly Angel

i am seriously considering converting to the Church of Nico Robin​

Being pinned between a giant crossbred freak and an army of general zombies, Robin and Franky display surprising teamwork in an attempt to escape. While Franky blasts the floor to bits with a Coup de Vent, Robin reveals the most extensive and creative use of her power we have yet seen. By interlocking her multiplied arms, she creates huge angel wings, but can only hold it for 5 seconds while carrying Franky. The short time limit doesn’t surprise me in the least as Franky’s steel body can’t be very light and her arms are much denser than a bird’s wing, so each of her wings must be incredibly heavy to begin with. Despite this, it is one of the coolest devil fruit applications I have yet seen and though I doubt it will happen, hope to see a modified version in the future that is more efficient. Luckily, Franky’s Strong Right is able to get them across to Luffy’s room as Robin’s wings vanish. After that though, the teamwork seems to vanish as Robin jumps to the ledge and leaves Franky to hit the wall by himself. Due to his metal body’s durability I can assume that of any Strawhat (besides Luffy) Franky will be the one that will take physical damage for the sake of comedy.

Skeleton Humor

if his head came off on impact, would he be unaffected?​

As if Robin’s angelic power wasn’t enough, Oda also decided to bless us with the reappearance of the lovable afro skeleton, Brooke. Even when falling from a height that would kill most, he still is cracking bone jokes. Unfortunately, he has fallen right into the middle of the general zombies and Spider Monkey rather than somewhere that could allow Franky and Robin to save him easily. The attention paid to the Spider Monkey in the time directly before and during Brooke’s fall makes me think we may see some interaction between the two next week. While I still don’t think Brooke will be joining the crew, I don’t think he is completely useless in combat either. He confidently returned to Thriller Bark to retrieve his shadow so I don’t think he would do that if he was completely weak. Also, with the associations between Dogpen/Sanji and Jigoroh/Zoro, I wonder if there is any correlation in abilities between Ryuuma and Brooke. In any case, when Franky and Robin come down to see Brooke, we may very well see that he has taken down the mutant Spider Monkey.

Overall​

Whew! Once again I apologize for this taking so long to get out. I guess part of the reason is because the end was so good that reviewing the beginning got me impatient and easily distractible. All in all, the chapter was fantastic as we got to see a lot of the separate groups start to merge and interact (the best being the return of Brooke). Now I simply can’t wait for some advanced colorings of Robin’s angel wing ability cause it is just so beautiful.

 

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