#chapter 1165

[onepiecedorayaki]

(spoiler for chapter 1165)

i don't think anyone present could have imagined how fucking serious dragon was when he said "BRING IT ON!!"

[idreaminmugiwara]

One of the hardest panels Oda has ever drawn

[quinloki]

Okay, I gotta talk about Marco.

I have GOT to talk this out or I'm going to lose my fucking mind 😅

Since I'm going to be talking about very recent manga chapters though, I'm tossing this all under the cut just in case people want to avoid spoilers - but I'm not going to talk about anyone not directly related to Marco, so take that as you need.

OKAY SO

Chapter 1162 give us this:

Okay, so either that's just a filler background character that has Marco's hair style for laughs, or it's a new character, OR it's a glimmer of "proof" that the Phoenix DF just resurrects it's owner, and it's been Marco the whole time.

Alas, it can't really be that last one.

As best as we know, The God Valley Incident happened 38 years ago (taking the timeskip into consideration), and Marco is 45 years old.

So he was 6 turning 7 years old during the God Valley Incident.

Alright, so brother/father or maybe there's like a Clan Thing going on, who knows? The possibilities are pretty wild cause we are talking about Oda.

BUT THEN

Then we get chapter 1165 - AND THIS MFER RIGHT HERE:

Okay, let me just say, Marco's dad is not a bad looker. Sorry sir, I am completely head over heels for your son, but thank you for passing on the good genes.

Okay.

Okay, so - jesus h christmas, is he really Marco Polo? I wouldn't be telling people my last name either (okay, but also that does give me like really bad(good) one shot ideas, MOVING ON).

So, it's quite possible that Mr. Polo here is just offering Newgate a lift off the island because he is actually a fan, and hey, Newgate needs a lift. He's also stupidly strong, and it's way smarter to offer the man a ride on your ship, than it would be to have the man just take your ship over. I can see a lot of reasons for making this move.

But also

If your young son has been kidnapped by celestials and you need help getting him back, you couldn't do better than a powerhouse like Newgate. Even if steering him toward what you want of him might be a bit of a lift.

Now, I'm assuming a bit of good natured-ness on Graham's part. And it could be a LOT LESS COMPLICATED than that. It could be that Marco is just a young boy on his father's ship and that's how he gets to know Edward Newgate, and after the crew falls to something else it's just Newgate and Marco.

But Oda rarely gives people a backstory so... gentle, honestly.

It's more likely that Marco was either enslaved, and his father died trying to rescue him, OR that Graham himself is a bad man and abuses Marco who ate the Phoenix fruit, and Newgate gets him away from that, OR it can be some complicated mix of who knows what.

There's still space in this lore for my headcanon that Marco was abandoned (or left for safety reasons) on an island much like Luffy and Usopp were left behind by their fathers for similar reasons. Marco's a bit of a pariah, especially after eating the fruit, and the islanders don't treat him well.

Graham tells Newgate about his son while they're sailing, and Newgate goes to find the boy after something goes wrong with Graham's crew and finds Marco about to be sacrificed or whatever by a mob of angry islanders and decides to save him.

IN THE END

There's a lot of room for a lot of possibilities as things are right now, but honestly that we're getting Marco Lore crumbs at this stage of the story makes me feel like we're going to see Marco back into the thick of things.

I'm not complaining - let that man retire, honestly, he deserves a lot of peace and quiet - but also I'm not going to complain about more Marco. He's kind of "cursed" to survive everything, so I don't think the last battle will be his last battle, whenever that grand finale of a fight happens, but my man has suffered enough T-T

Still though, eeeeeee <3 <3 <3 Marco Lore <3 <3<3 aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh \lol/

[fallensnowfan]

One Piece chapter 1165 first thoughts!

I like the visual contrast between Roger and Garp here. Dark coat, light shirt, and dark pants, and light coat, dark shirt, and light pants.

Shanks is in one of those treasure chests! And I love Gloriosa being all "this place is going to hell and my captain is doomed, can I get a ride?" She probably also wants to support Shakky emotionally after all of this, but she's to stubborn to say that out loud

Linlin and Kaido stupid sibling argument to the end ahahaha, I love it.

I believe this is Gill Bastar with what seems to be Perona's devil fruit! He's a zombie during Thriller Bark and appears in one of Oda's one shots. Really neat connections continue to happen here.

I've been waiting for more of Marco's first meeting with Whitebeard for years, since about the time we saw King and Kaido's first meeting, and this seems to be leading up to that. This is the highlight of the chapter for me. I'm really happy and kinda emotional right now.

Bonus points because it includes both a Marco Polo pun and a hologram pun.

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Do You Know? Do You Know?

Abandon you name, abandon your wits...bet it all on a single strike.

You know, two things I shoulda caught before became clear sitting with this. First, I really should have noticed the whole Ringo cover thing that started with this flashback was in essence restoring an "abandoned" name for Moria. Which is pertinent when Kiku's the one who introduced that thread and "abandoned" in this context is super close to the Japanese equivalent of a "dead" name. But also that while it wasn't so much for Luffy, that concept is where Kid/Law had to finally realize to put Big Mom down for good too. They fell behind Luffy because they needed to learn the lessons of the samurai. Like Luffy did early on with a whole thing about reading what words and faces can't say.

Not that the latter was relevant here or anything, of course. But in essence, this is why I look at Wano the way I do and why the title here is a nod to Utena's iconic Shadow Plays. Luffy's story condenses the "kingdom savior" narrative that's taken up the majority of the series into its purest, distilled form while we watch a play setting up why this all matters. Bonney will kinda do the same thing in Egghead. Remember, Onigashima is already kinda Luffy's God Valley. No one really knows what happened there, just vague shit that sounds crazy like half of the Worst Generation, Kaido, Linlin, and even some shit like CP0 and Whitebeard remnants and a famous Marine like Drake all throwing down in a mysterious closed-off land.

Wano did so much to teach this core lesson, that changing the world often comes down to one planned surgical strike with everything you've got. Even someone frail like Otohime can pull it off. You caught snippets with Katakuri, the pretty samurai showed you how to get away with it in broad daylight...scalping Urashima may as well have been slugging a Celestial Dragon, Luffy applies it in Udon. But his awakening disrupted that, can you still keep that cool head even while going max silly? You've realized the gravity of what you can do, you know how sorely it's needed...but can you contain all of that? Can you hold onto so many shadows now?

I know this fight was at the end more than anything but I wanted to lead with it. There was also something cool out of Garp about the fight itself. It reminded me a little of the last hurrah Luffy gave before awakening. How there's these very clean, simple ideas of Luffy using the Gum-Gum powers like he always have. I like that touch of simple things saved so long. Garp has a little here too, I liked slipping over Rocks to sweep the leg.

This is the other big thread of the chapter, setting up the fate of the Rocks Pirates. And I do get the feeling it's setting us up for the rest of this flashback. We can go back up these layers we've gone through, likely continuing to expand on some of these known figures. Fill in the gaps. Oden and Moria and Toki are all on the table for that too. So here's Whitekichi's, and I love it. It's funny his first guy is kinda like Kin'emon and just tags along.

Of course Marco's family name is Polo. Of course it is, I mean that legitimately so many characters in this series take names from real pirates/explorers. Graham is also kinda funny because that's a designer who makes polo-style men's shirts. Neat. I can dig it, implies Marco's probably something like an Ulti/Page One situation. Cool mirror to Roger walking away with Shanks from this. FWIW, Marco should already be born by now. Remember this is contemporaneous with when Oden's not just started his story...it's around the time they've resolved to build Kuri.

Daww, it's cute because they ended up being buddies again when it happened. Sure, that probably made half the alliance shit their pants in terror and all but like, cute they made up.

I also can't help seeing Big Mom here and not thinking of Riley Freeman running around talking about how Santa was "gonna pay what he owe." God I love The Boondocks...

Hell yeah Dragon, no notes. You've been on fire this flashback.

[onepiecedorayaki]

(spoiler for chapter 1165)

i knew it i knew it i knew it. well not exactly what he said out loud but rather how he said it. i think a piece of garp died at god valley and what survived from then on is just a shell of the man he used to be. a shell empty of hope.

[quinloki]

[naye-et-cetera]

(Panels pasted right to left.)

Me, reading this, dictionary in hand:

..."eisu"... Ace...???

Okay, first of all: 火之迦具土 is apparently the Japanese God of Fire, which I will freely admit I did not know!

And there's no way Roger could've known that his son would end up with a Fire Logia. (Or is there?) But.

His attack. It's called 慧士, which I am failing to find as a dictionary word, so assume Oda-sensei has made up which makes sense, because then he could choose to write it out えいす; eisu.

From what I can tell - and this is N1 stuff, so above my Japanese certification for sure - 慧 means "wisdom" or "enlightenment", also in the Buddhist sense of prajñā. Meanwhile 士 is literally "samurai" or "man". So the name of the attack is something like Enlightened Warrior which is very interesting in light of all of the "Roger could hear all things" thing that we don't know much about at this point.

It's also interesting because えいす sounds a lot like エース.

I dunno. It might not be anything! But while we see Rogue say Roger decided on the name エース for their child (ch 551)... we don't see him say it was "Ace" rather than "慧士".