I haven't posted one of these in a while, but I have more time lately and I really liked this chapter so…
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Kuzan! I definitely expected Jinbe, but I'm not complaining. Hopefully Oda taking any suggestion he likes regardless of which character it is is a permanent thing now, because this one is hilarious.
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I thought Sabo's plan to get the fruit was handled pretty well. He layered chaos on top of chaos in order to snag it while nobody was in a position to stop him. And I thought Oda managed this without marginalizing any of the characters in the finals, since it appeared that any of them could easily go for another 12 rounds. They just got tricked. It happens. Even after eating Sabo's fire fist, Burgess and Diamante don't seem all that worse for wear.
Despite the concerns about it being overly cliche, I've figured Sabo would wind up with the fruit since he appeared with that motive. And I can't say I really buy into the concerns about him becoming Ace 2.0 either (in regards to power). Before eating the fruit, he started with a very high tier haki moveset that was vastly different from anything Ace ever did. And apart from the most basic of fire attacks like fire fist, I don't even expect him to copy hardly any fire abilities either. There will probably be a bunch of fire dragon type stuff, which isn't the way Ace utilized it. On the other hand, had Burgess won it, he'd absolutely have been Ace 2.0 with it. He would have copied all of Ace's moves just to twist the metaphorical knife in Luffy and the readers, since that'd be the entire reason for him to win in the first place.
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Thank god Koala showed up to bring Sabo his clothes. I dunno what we'd do without her. I've been hoping against hope that she'd actually do something cool, but I guess this is it now that she's teamed up with Sabo. Maybe she can at least relate to Robin, who's right around the corner at this point. They can be like... the sisters of unfulfilled potential.
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Speaking of which, lol at Oda teasing us with more Robin vs Trebol. I won't fall for it this time! It's cool to see her attempt to stand and 1v1 him though, even if nothing comes of it, so I suppose I'll take what I can get. I don't really know who was responsible for blocking Trebol's attack with that boulder. The chapter was hugely unclear on whether it was Hajrudin or Robin that managed it. Robin's hands do suggest that she was responsible, but the timing of Hajrudin's interruption is very suspect. I know people want to talk about the movement lines of the boulder, but I'm sorry, there are movement lines on both sides. They tell nothing, and probably just represent the thing vibrating from either landing in place or getting hit by Trebol's attack.
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Messiah Usopp killed me. Especially the way Hajrudin was holding him up by both arms (it almost looked like he was going to rip them off). The fact that even guys like Don Chinjao were getting into it cracks me up. It's a shame that the "I will lead you" gag was pretty much lost in translation and I had to look at a raw before I really understood what was going on there, but I can't exactly blame Oda for that one. I will admit that I was initially slightly miffed about the striking similarities to Buggy-sama's messiah gag. But I got over it pretty quickly after thinking about it, since everything Usopp did was entirely legit, unlike Buggy-sama's trickery. He legitimately won all these people their freedom by facing impossible odds, and he legitimately attempted to stop their praising of him initially. Gag aside, it's probably the most accurate depiction of a real messiah that the manga has produced so far.
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It's funny how in the matter of one chapter it went from all the tournament losers dogpiling Trebol to all the tournament losers dogpiling Diamante. Poor guy can't catch a break. Well, he has been the least impressive of the executive officers so far, so this is actually a good opportunity for him to redeem himself a bit. And I have no idea why the image of him making a flag out of himself makes me smile so much. Trebol and Burgess seem like huge wild cards right now. It's hard to say whether Trebol will prioritize Robin or the factory, and it's even harder to say what Burgess will decide to do with his newly found rage at losing the fire fruit.
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Sabo does seem to have quite a bit of Coby in his design, but whatever. Nice touch to see him having some difficulty controlling his new powers. It's a happy medium between combat breaking and learning too easily. I like that he had a good reason for being in the country beyond simply coming to acquire his dead brother's power. The weapons factory that Caribou sank is probably what Sabo is referring to, but I don't think that's all there is to it. My guess is that there are multiple weapons factories, and that was just one of them.
Sabo being #2 didn't really surprise me at all. I guessed that he would've actually been part of some elite group, like the revolutionaries version of the 3 admirals (not necessarily as strong, but the same idea), but this is fine. I can't really fathom what people who are trumpeting Iva are thinking, since he should've lost to Sanji towards the end of the timeskip. And Sabo is certainly better than that. I can accept that he's Dragon's version of an admiral level fighter, especially after eating the fire fruit. Marco, Ace, and Jozu were matching up with admirals two years ago with varying success rates. And Sabo, who was once equal with Ace, now has the same power, two extra years, and potentially many more years of focused haki training than Ace had. There have to be characters in the series who can match up with the admirals, and Sabo seems like as good a bet as any. That doesn't mean that I think he'll just start running off and fighting admirals, though. I don't really see any reason for him to butt heads with Fujitora, for starters. But he might fight Trebol, sadly.
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I was worried that Kyros going up against Doflamingo right away was just going to get him punked before he could do much of anything, but I'm glad that's not the case. The guy has really been able to show off quite a bit in only a few pages since returning to his human form. It was nice of Buffalo to sacrifice his body for the sake of team Kyros. I'm sold on the guy. He's awesome. It's going to be a bitch when Doflamingo makes him fight Luffy.
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Thanks Law. I was worried that maybe you wouldn't be annoying about all of this. What is it with Oda making his damsels in distress have some irrational hatred of rescue.
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Pica showing up is pretty cool, and Bird Cage is very difficult to speculate on. I think I'm most curious about whether it's what's keeping Doflamingo alive or not. Even if it is, it almost certainly goes beyond that.
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I like how, despite how dire things may seem to be for Doflamingo, his crew is still pretty well off on the whole. Vergo and Monet got taken out on PH, Sugar got scared unconscious, and Buffalo just got worked by Kyros. Baby 5, Jora, and Senor Pink have all taken some scrapes but should be good to go for round 2 whenever. Pica, Trebol, and Diamante haven't had it easy by any means, yet I'm not sure any of them have even been scratched to this point. The real fights may not have even started yet.
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Zoro was left alone to figure out where to go for himself, making him the biggest wild card ever. It's anyone's guess where he'll wind up. And with so many other wild cards wandering around like Fujitora, Sabo, and Burgess, it's really hard to get a feel for where this arc is heading.