SET FUCKING SAIL

ONE PIECE CHAPTER REVIEWS

Huge spoilers from here on out

CHAPTER 1145

just fantastic chapter through and through, very action-heavy so i don't have too much to say

gay

All of this really just has me feeling bad for loki. Poor guy doesn't deserve to get soup on his wounds no matter what he did, he's not absalom ToT Also LMAO is that zoro eating off of enma? if thats sandai kitetsu i feel like he's done that before but eating meat right off of oden's sword is CRAZY.

SUPER interesting little mini flashback. Gives more characterization to xebec than we've seen so far, he seems like a much more volatile person than almost any other pirate we've seen. The only one that seems even close is kaido, and that's because kaido is Kaido. Also, seeing loki say he was born in the wrong era gives SO much insight into how loki sees himself in the world, he clearly sees himself as someone destined for greatness due to his royal blood. He feels like he's been done dirty by the entire world, even time itself, and that he deserves greatness beyond what he's truly capable of. He's only in his first century of life, his childhood dreams(?) thrown away by the people with more power than him (and if i could speculate a little, i think that was a part of loki's conflict with harald. Harald wanted elbaf to enter a new era of "peace" where even the existence of a physical feature like natural horns is seen as distasteful and out of date. Loki's whole life seems to be dedicated to being a Great Warrior of the sea, perhaps?, and the idol that he grew up building up in his mind beat the shit out of and stabbed him when he was just a child.) This line feels more genuine than anything he's said before. It feels like this is a core memory and feeling to his life, that these feelings of being left out, abused and treated like shit color his whole perception of the world and himself.

Adoring saul so so so so so much this arc. He has my entire heart, poor guy cares so so deeply about his students and if it weren't for the strawhats, this event would have haunted him (and the rest of elbaf) for his entire life.

come the fuck on lady put on some pants. the ultimate showdown: the woman who refuses to wear a shirt (nami) and the woman who refuses to wear pants! I'm really hoping brook gets to take the spotlight here, it really wouldn't make sense to me for anyone but him to take the stage against her. Her stoic and straightforward nature, with a morbid appreciation of death, plus her youth just contrast with brook SO well. Plus she's a fan of his music, so of COURSE it's gotta be brook. please. please let brook be the star for once he had nothing to do in egghead T~T
Either way, this is setting up what's almost definitely gonna be a great fight. Get her ass away from collun NOW she should not be around children at all.

CHAPTER 1144

This one's really fun, but felt kinda meatless to me. lets just get into it !!

Franky and bonney interacting is always SUPER cute. franky's big brother instincts + his being a cyborg like her dad is cute. universal big bro

I really wasn't expecting to love ripley so much. She's super knowledgeable without just being an exposition machine, and her dynamic with franky is just delightful.

I'm so so so so excited to see what happens with collun. He's a very straightforward parallel of usopp, insisting on being "the captain", being the son of a famous pirate, his precociousness. It feels like he exists specifically to give usopp a character that represents a younger version of himself for him to work off of and with to get usopp where he needs to be for elbaf.

average celestial dragon activity

couple things abt these panels:

ohh so that WAS the ghost xP

loving how much more proactive gaban seems to be compared to rayleigh. rayleigh waited until the last second to show himself on sabaody, vs gaban who as SOON as there were freaky monsters he was like alright gotta lock in. Gaban seems like a much happier person than rayleigh, which we saw in the oden flashback too, but it feels like rayleigh's been taking the cascade of major world events every month a lot harder than gaban has. i understand it rayleigh, ur boyfriend died and life is sad, i hope this time the sake makes you feel something.

CHAPTER 1143

I have a lot to say about this one, so first things first flying fish!! i bet i know who gave them those hehe

cute chopper <3

first of all, pretty damn good panel. also, this is gonna sound weird but i've always loved how like for lack of a better word, ugly saul is. just really adds a lot of like, soft kindness and likeability in his design.

mark my FUCKING words. usopp is gonna sober up in roughly 10 chapters and he's gonna lock in

hey wait a second. ive seen this one before

(obv i dont think its gonna go like that, this is a whole different beast but like. lol krieg.)

he's so fucking funny and it bothers me. why are the god knights so like... cute. they all seem to get along and even be like, friends. which is WEIRD for anyone involved that high up in the WG.

similarly, she's so fucking cute. it's like, evil. she's literally like an IDF catgirl istg.

RESIST IT ....... SHE'S LIKE SUPER ULTRA EVIL ..........

"this is a baby game for babies" is officially a one piece quote now. i dont know how to feel about this.

aww so she knows... that makes that last chapter's final panel a lot less funny. sigh.

i just HAVE to assume that elbaf does not have rubber. because if they do have rubber it's embarrassing that hajrudin didnt think about that, frankly. you were fighting with him in dressrosa!! you know what his deal is!! that said, i do think luffy being immune to electricity is a fun like, i would almost call it a running gag.

WHAT IS ZORO ON THIS ARC LMAO. dude you just kicked the shit out of him not 5 minutes ago! what is your deal!!!

ohhh man. i fucking love this sort of stupid royal politics. absolutely classic setup here, not much i have to say. love loki's design SO much too. glad to know hes just like that and its not like "he lost his eyes in his fight with shanks...."

rad ending. love the way that both of them are framed in their respective panels, loki entirely vulnerable, his sincerity absolute aside from the slight tilt in his lip. Hajrudin from below, his mustache and upper lip indistinguishable, the helmet hiding eyebrows. Allowing absolutely no emotion other than disdain and distrust on his face. both of them have cross bandages on the same side of their face, symbolizing their shared pain for and with eachother. Hajrudin's chin emphasized as a strong, defense from below, almost as if a shield to defend himself from his brother, loki's chin shown jutting up to speak from a lying position, as if he's trying and failing to look down on hajrudin. kind of reminds me of boa hancock's facade. idk, maybe im just spitting nonsense but this panel really captivated me. fantastic chapter.

CHAPTER 1142

Took a while for me to write a review to this chapter, i got in a bit of a funk (ᵕ—ᴗ—). Great chapter, it took a while for my feelings and thoughts to sort of solidify.

Starting off strong with a quick show of what the teachers of the school are capable of, and of course saul being the best ever. "Mid-term Ex-slam" is probably my favorite attack name in the series now.

Holy shit. Terrifying. Loving how the little bits of information we're getting about what's going on is enough to understand that something horrible is going on, but not enough to know what's going to happen next. The suspense for the holy knight's sick game has been phenomenal. Also, interesting how the threat that robin's closest to right now is also a situation where she must not touch any of the people who need help, rendering her devil fruit power significantly hindered. Also HOLY SHIT !!! These people have CAESAR CLOWN levels of holy-shit-do-not-let-these-people-near-children syndrome.

I've gotta show the whole 2 pages for this. I'm assuming that the lightning is part of ragnir's whole deal, and not loki specifically doing it. Because that would mean that loki can summon lightning where he strikes, WHILE shackled by sea prism stone. But i mean either way holy SHIT. Although, thinking for a moment, if loki was doing as much of this shit as how people talking about him makes it seem while he was free, elbaph would be in significantly worse shape right now. And the way he teases everyone about how weak elbaph is to fire and lightning? he's just showing everyone that he's serious, and that they better fucking let him out of that chain. I think that loki IS going to destroy elbaph, in some way, working with luffy. Also, I have a hunch that loki is gonna be the guy who FINALLY explains nika to luffy, so he can stop being confused that everyone keeps calling him that.

Despite loki putting a dent into adam, THIS is the big panel of the chapter. Holy Mackerel where to even start. From the right we've got niddhogr, a bear with a helmet, a giant fucked up bird (hræsvelgr?), loki, fenrir, evil zeus (it's supposed to represent "storms"), a kraken, a ghost, nika, a draugr, one that I'm truly not sure about (general bogeyman?), and that one kid's mom. and I am LOVING this, assumedly this was killinham's work, and just WOW. That's certainly one way to immediately raise the stakes by like 500%. Also i'm adoring how much the story is focusing on the owl library and the school, it's the perfect group of characters to give the insight into elbaph this arc needs.

Also...

I KNEW THAT LINE WOULD BE MORE IMPORTANT

Also also that final panel. lmfao.

One of my favorite chapters in the whole series i think.

CHAPTER 1141

it's peam

Oh usopp, if only you knew about imu. also god, i dont think we've seen a character this drunk other than kaido. I think this is gonna have greater implications, with him being passed out for a while and waking up with a hangover, taking him out of the action of the arc until later when he's better.

I will always maintain that zoro is at least a little bit stupider than luffy, because WHAT?? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??? Luffy decided to free loki because of a dumb promise, which i can at least understand but ???? why would he kick loki THAT HARD? did he need to fucking do that? poor guy got beat up by shanks, chained up, beat up by gunko, almost killed by shank's racist brother, THEN GOT KICKED BY ZORO. What does this accomplish?? you just angered the guy who THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF GIANTS are terrified of. im starting to think that really is moss feeding on his stupid four-sword-style green kaido brain.

dude what did any of these people do to you. i get you're pissed you didnt get to finish off lucci but you cant be taking that out on random motherfuckers youve never met before like this ToT

this is the big couple of panels for me, for a couple reasons. Love to get hajrudin's take on the situation, he seems to be the only one that might actually just say what happened with him in plain english instead of in a thousand riddles.

if you ever see this face, you know you're FUCKED.

but this is the big line that im paying the most attention to, for what should be obvious reasons. thats what everyone said about robin, and i don't think that parallel is a coincidence. I'm super in the camp of loki being wrongfully imprisoned for doing the right thing killing harald. I know i'm probably wrong but look at his cute little face!! how could i ever hate him O^O

I don't have much to say, this is just a sick as fuck panel. I wonder if loki's gonna break the seastone with ragnir, because that would be CRAZY. also if zoro gets squashed like a bug its totally deserved. marimo. ( • ε ((( )y-°° ° °°

CHAPTER 1140

(I havent said anything about it really, but i do really enjoy that we're getting more with yamato and the former tobiroppo)
We got another great one with a lot of stuff to speculate on, so buckle up ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

lol this guy rules. but as always with roger pirates, he's gotta be cryptic and weird and not tell anyone anything >_>
Gotta love how luffy is so defensive about shanks. His relationship to shanks is totally different than shanks' relationship to roger and i think that's really interesting. Roger took shanks onto his crew, while shanks absolutely refused to let luffy come onto his ship, giving the hat to him as a promise to keep rather than strictly a passing of the torch. Luffy didn't see shanks 24/7 all day every day for years like shanks did with roger, of course he's going to be so defensive of his childhood idol. He wants meeting shanks to be as big a moment as he's built it up in his head, and i'm worried for luffy that it won't be like that.

crocus moment

Okay we got two new freaks. an ugly old hairy old bastard descendant of the fuckass sand worm guy, and the only holy knight so far that has a celestial dragon-like bubble. Sommers' tattoo is preseumably the mark that allows him to travel through the abyss (i think this is the first mention of the abyss by name? idk its gotta be some weird imu sea void shit), and killingham seems to have a devil fruit that I (im probably wrong) want to say is a kirin or qilin mythical zoan. I'm no scholar, so i won't speculate on the symbolic meaning of a kirin appearing at elbaph, but i think it's fair to say there's no way its a good thing for elbaph.

I just fucking knew shamrock was too much of a big important guy to be in this already very chaotic arc. always makes me feel good when i hear about how badly mary geoise is doing. Also, i think with this second recent mention of "orders from above", instead of imu i think this time it's garling's call. Theres no way the holy knights don't know about imu but i think that imu wouldn't bother with that. Elbaph isn't one of imu's personal grudges, so its unlikely anything is going to come from the very top for them.
Also I take back anything positive i ever said or thought about harald. what the fuck kind of person gets their grave visited by celestial dragons, that's immediately like. he was super evil and im glad loki killed him. This is NOT an otohime situation, there's ZERO benefit for elbaph's people to join the world government.

This fucking page. First time i've felt such genuine dread in one piece since we saw bonney in saturn's nasty ass hands (god egghead was fucking amazing i gotta reread it once im done rereading skypeia). I think this plotline has reintroduced bonney & kuma to the important role i assumed they would have in elbaph. This is a direct mirror of god valley.

CHAPTER 1139

This whole chapter is clearly a big hyped up reveal of yar-san, who we ALREADY DEFINITELY KNEW WHO HE WAS. It's super cool to get more info on him though ig :3

Luffy having seen the magic circle before is the best, whenever luffy's trying to remember something it always gets me. his brain is working at 200% effort and he still has zero clue and immediately starts fucking around

Nami of ALL PEOPLE should know how men in the one piece world are. How is she surprised by this, girl you met an invisible lion sex predator and a guy who brought a woman back to life to make her lick the floor. NOTHING should surprise you anymore.

This is the big panel for me. what the FUCK is a dosundada. Buccaneers were mixed human/giants? does that mean collun is a buccaneer??? does T~T does that mean kuma isn't completely alone in that way
I do have a couple ideas about dosundadas, so one of them is bound to be right obviously
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Half tontatta and half giant is what ive seen people assume, mostly because it's funny to think about a tontatta flying their freaky bug eggs into the womb (joking). But imo, the most likely is human and tontatta. More physically possible, and relatively normal lol. But the one i'm hoping for is half fishman and half tontatta. my rationale is that theres a character named dosun in fishman island, and dada sounds kinda like tontata. I'm hoping this because OH MY GOD LITTLE SEA FAIRIES WOULD JUST BE SOOO GODDAMN CUTE ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

but yeah uh. scopper's here. cool good for him. he seems a lot more stable than rayleigh's drunk ass was the last time we saw him. I'm excited to see his fight with luffy though >:) its been a while since we've seen a friendly fight between two characters since everything's been so high stakes, especially in egghead.

CHAPTER 1138

This chapter is WILD but before I get ahead of myself...

Oh my GOD i love loki. He's a type of character (im refraining from saying villain about him, just in case) that we haven't seen since oden. Someone so utterly driven that there's nothing you can do to break their spirit, someone that imposes themself on the world around them in a way that will never fade.
Not much I have to say, but I ADORE this panel.

...... ծ_Ô

Loving luffy's reaction to hearing about what "red hair" did lol, everyone was talking about like "oh man i wonder how luffy is gonna react to learning about or meeting evil shanks etc etc" and he's just like yeah that's gotta be his brother or something idk that aint him.
Anyway. hold him gentle like hamburger

Another big reveal this chapter, this time its the entire world myth. There's some already pretty agreed upon parts (serpent of hellfire is the red line, and the storm of the sea god is the grand line), but here are a couple of my interpretations:

Either way, this is HUGE. The things I'm most intrigued by are the smokestacks on the right, and the presence of the ark maxim. I'm gonna be totally honest I thought that was just enel being on his bullshit but, that's clearly either the ark maxim (or uranus, but I just don't buy that tbh.) Also, I can't help but notice two giants on the left, one with horns and one without. I sure do wonder who the one with horns could be (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

But despite everything else in this chapter, even with saul doing the nika dance and with the tree carving, i think this is my favorite panel. With the world ripley's grown up in, with her knowledge, it makes total sense she would say that. Because even if it was just a child's dream, that child dreamt of the races of the world uniting and a new dawn breaking. It doesn't need to be anything more than that. We've already seen how a child's dream can change the world.
This is one of the best chapters in one piece.

A quick addendum to my chapter 1137 review

I was very blindsided by shamrock's official reveal because of my unwillingness to believe it, so I was working mostly on just that surprise and confusion. Thinking about it in hindsight, this chapter was great. Shamrock's introduction is a fantastic one as always, immediately showing what his deal is. When a character declares their intentions so plainly and with such conviction you know they're gonna be scary as FUCK. I really love the way that the figarlands are like, celestial dragon rising stars, father and son recently promoted as part of Imu's desperate attempt to get things in line, especially after Egghead. Plus I think his design works great, he looks almost as racist and evil as his dad.

I'll be waiting for the official translation from now on, both so I can let my thoughts on the chapter marinate for a bit, and so I don't have any mistranslations.

CHAPTER 1137

LUFFY IS SO FUCKING CUTE IN THIS ARC AAAAAAAA (♡ˊ͈ ꒳ ˋ͈)

I fucking love when one piece does stuff like this with acts of symbolic self-mutilation like the sun pirates' marks, or nami at arlong park. Even the way luffy burns away his lifespan for the people he cares about through the gears. I could go into it more but, idk. I'm a major sucker for it.
plus, more romance dawn trio stuff is ALWAYS appreciated

I'm SO happy that the new giant pirates are getting so much love in this arc so far. I was really expecting them to just sort of be kept by the wayside, if not totally forgotten about. Leaving dressrosa I was so worried that we wouldn't ever get more of these characters and I am SO glad that I was wrong. Rodo sucks ass in a way that i think works in a way a lot of other "creep" characters dont. He isn't actively offensively awful every second he's on screen, which is a low bar, but hey. it's something.

gunko girl you gotta stop he's already been through enough today DAMN

Okay. It's time to talk about the elephant in the room.

First things first. SHAMROCK?? The motherfucking mcdonalds family. mac tonight and his son shamrock shake are here to colonize your island.

Jokes aside, I have some pretty strong thoughts and feelings about this. Shanks has a secret brother who works for the world government. Okay, I guess. Not the end of the world but like that opens up SO many questions, both in-universe and out. Did oda plan this from the start?? if not when was this plotline cooked up??? when he had shanks talk to the gorosei did he know that wasnt shanks but was fucking shamrock?? I just need to know if this was oda going fucking nuts out of nowhere of if this was premeditated.
I'd also like to formally apologize to shanks. I was fully in the camp of it being him doing all that shit until like, THIS chapter lol. I've called him a drunken failure and a disappointment and a coward (that one's still true. never forget what he did to buggy) but like. Damn. If my dad was like, one of the most evil guys ever and my brother was chill with that AND my father figure was dead AND my closest friend is a deadbeat dad who left his kid before he was even born I'd drink a lot and be flippant and disinterested too.
Well, either way, this chapter was a mixed bag for me. I'm sure I'll have more clear feelings about the whole shamrock thing but right now I'm still kind of processing this one, and the last couple chapters. I'm not gonna stop thinking about the harley texts.