#op ch126

[salteytakesonmanga]

Robin is petting the giant bananawani! She has a weird threshold for cuteness, so I could totally see her treating Crocodile’s guard animals like pets.

[salteytakesonmanga]

This scene of Crocodile desiccating a lily is excellent villain antics. This is the sort of gradual reveal that a Bond villain would get, so it’s a perfect compliment to the spies theme with Baroque Works. This is the first hint we get about his powers, and it’s both very revealing and potentially equally misleading.

But it also implies that Crocodile consumes the liquid that he absorbs. He poured himself a drink and then took the flower out of its vase to, apparently, use it like a straw.

[salteytakesonmanga]

This is a cool move from Sanji. It’s technically not a kick but some kind of almost headlock move. We still haven’t seen too much variety from his fighting techniques, but he has some of the most fun and interesting moves of anyone on the crew.

[salteytakesonmanga]

I remain so very curious about the backstory on the Unluckies.

I know, I know, it’s One Piece. Don’t think about it too much. But listen, this blog is literally all about thinking too much about One Piece so it will happen again.

Who recruited these two? Were they wild animals? Were they pets? Were they recruited because they could do stuff like this or were they trained specifically for this purpose? They can apparently communicate with humans, since they ratted out their former colleagues to the Marines at one point.

Where do you even get clam shell blades like that??

[salteytakesonmanga]

You have to admire his nerve here. He looks perfectly relaxed as he effortlessly bluffs through this conversation. Despite knowing nothing about Mister 3, or Mister 0, or any details about how Baroque Works actually operates, he’s just going for it.

[salteytakesonmanga]

It’s fun to see Sanji putting this all together in what feels like real time. The way Oda draws out this conversation really heightens the tension, especially as Crocodile asks more and more probing questions.

It’s a great suspenseful scene because Sanji is smart enough to realize what an opportunity this is. If he pulls this off, he could save the day. If he screws up, he could make this situation immeasurably worse.

[salteytakesonmanga]

I love when Oda slips a character wordlessly laughing into the corner of his panels like Luffy is here. The deadpan reactions to jokes are obviously great, but I also really like when the characters themselves also see the the same humor that we do as the audience.

[salteytakesonmanga]

I like that Oda provided a somewhat plausible reason for how Dorry managed to survive. Not every implied death gets an explanation, and there are some that really stretch my credulity.

On the whole, I’m fine with Oda saving more characters than he kills. It suits the mood of the story he wants to tell, which is ultimately optimistic and joyful, and it certainly suits his main cast of characters. While there are certainly some choices of his I disagree with, both in who died and also how that death was handled, I think One Piece is still managing to hang onto a decent balance between the joy at the core of his story and an emotionally sincere reaction to death.