#bliking pirates

[optreasurecruise]

[ouchpiece]

I find it really funny that Wapol’s huge submarine fulla pirates and soldiers has been searching for their own island for months now while meanwhile, Luffy’s band of dumbasses accidentally landed here the very next day without a navigator or any truly experienced sailors.

This also makes Wapol and his whole government look like even bigger idiots. They ruled this country and had at least some kind of local navy with a big weird submarine but were in such a rush to skedaddle that they didn’t bring a Log Pose? And despite Bliking the submarine being, you know, the best possible type of boat to just sail within spitting distance of the island and submerge until things clear up, they ran far enough away that they couldn’t find their way back after months of looking. This regime makes the Trump administration look like a bunch of Rhodes scholars.

[onebillionpieces]

[ouchpiece]

I really like Chess and Kuromarimo’s designs.

Chess has the weird lips and obvious chess motif with them skinny little legs and big Oda boots, plus while he is clearly an archer it’s shown here that he’s at least tough enough to take out Drum’s armed militia with his bare hands.

Kuromarimo’s name has black just like Captain Kuro and then marimo, which are these round moss balls formed by sea currents. In essence he is named for his afros, which he has on his facial hair, boxing gloves and hanging off his coat. He joins Luffy in the shorts in winter club and oh hey, another obviously black character!

This is the second afro guy following Gaimon, going up another degree because Oda really likes afros. It’s a good hair style, but it’s a bit off to make it this occasional running gag. Like the crossdressing gags and treatment of female fighters, this is the kind of thing where you can tell Oda means well and is a generally progressive guy for a 2000s mangaka, but you can tell this genre has issues with exoticizing foreigners. Kuromarimo and his boyfriend and his boss are all weirdos first and foremost, but in this case his weirdness mostly revolves around having Black hair. It’s still a good design, but I doubt we would see this as a motif in modern One Piece.

[ouchpiece]

How

Okay, so either Luffy stretched up half of his arm, bent at the elbow and then zooped the forearm and fist down at an extremely awkward angle or he just made the whole limb go noodly before letting the fist drop like a ball-in-a-cup. Either one sounds like the most inefficient way to bop someone on the head. what are you even doing luffy

[onebillionpieces]

[onebillionpieces]

[ouchpiece]

This is a weird hit because 1) Sanji is using a named attack against a complete rando, when usually they are reserved for more prominent enemies or groups and 2) I don’t recall ever seeing this attack before or after this chapter. I could be wrong, but this attack sure doesn’t seem to be one for the books. That’s a shame, cuz it’s a nice name and a fairly unique way to use a kick, both knocking your enemy over and using the ground for most of the actual damaging force.