@Nubtro:
I liked:
- how the Tontatta got piracy completely wrong and instead of destroying and plundering they´re re-building stuff
- Stussy nonchalantly dropping the Tamate boom information; I wish Morgan was witnessing the BM scenes to report about it later, but then I remembered he couldn´t fly
I don't know what to make of that whole Tamatebako reveal. What was inside of it before the New Fishman Pirates stole it and filled it with Energy Steroids? Was it supposed to be something valuable and they are supposed to think that the explosion destroyed its contents? I get if they thought it was something that is now lost forever because of it, but surely they would have mentioned that, not just that the Tamatebako exploded. Is she, as a government secret agent, attempting to incite a war between Big Mom and Fishman Island, to foment political unrest or destroy a potential threat to the WG status quo? Let Big Mom kill those nasty non-humans and don't let the Marines get their hands dirty and remain totally oblivious and with a clean conscience…seems like Cipher Pol thinking to me, all right.
- BM pirates trying to sabotage the duel by sniping Luffy
- that we (finally) got some more pretty intense and quite satisfactory fighting scenes of Luffy vs Kata (in particular the face->shoulder->shoulder part was great), not just talk and commentaries from bystanders;
- how Luffy does Goku´s "calm like water" training but actually in the middle of a life and death fight against a seemingly superior oponent
- monster Chopper attempting to go all out, he seems to be burned which would imply he tried to block FireBallFace
- grand FireBallFace with BM on top of it, just majestic
Ditto. I'm actually a little surprised Katakuri isn't blocking the shots so that he can have the victory all to himself. Even if he's a punk, he still seems like the type to have a non-interference policy when it comes to battling. I'm wondering if Luffy is going to end up with an edge over Katakuri, and to the point where he's the one that can't be touched, and Katakuri is totally broken down by this development. It happens in Dragonball Z a couple of times, where someone's speed alone makes it so that a stronger opponent ends up having to surrender because they just can't land a hit. Luffy can still take down an unguarded Katakuri with strength alone, he just needs to be able to avoid being hit himself, and be able to catch Katakuri off-guard without any Haki defense. I know Luffy said he wanted to beat him at his best, but unless we got an indication of him getting his Armament Haki boosted as well, it doesn't seem like that'll be possible.
I disliked:
- another random BM kid commentator out of nowhere getting a 2-3 page intro during the climax of the three story lines, it feels out of place and given there´s only so many pages per chapter, she steals too much space that could´ve been given to Chopper or another significant character
I liked her only because she looked like Franky doing a Coup de Boo and at the time that was the funniest damn thing ever.
- BM pirates chilling and waiting for Kata to win instead of simply ganging up on Luffy, that sniping from trash underlings was funny but half-assed
I'm surprised they're even doing that, seems like getting in Katakuri's way right now is suicidal. No one lives knowing what he really looks like under that wrap, and I'm pretty sure if he's got his eye on a target, the rest better not try to rob him of the pleasure of annihilating it.
- Sanji, too much of a poser this chapter for my liking, doesn´t feel like he put his life on the line to create the cake compared to Luffy and Jimbei+Nami+Brook+Chopper+Carrot who stood at death´s doorstep all this time; the cake is apparently complete yet we haven´t seen him do anything to create it (from the baking process), it´s just there
- monster Chopper lacking an actual action panel, just talk
Yeah, that more than anything felt like the waste of time we're all getting sick of but now that they're within sight of the one looking for their food delivery, hopefully we're getting to the end, but with Luffy's fight still going on, who knows. Every other plan has failed so far, why not this one?
- that Jimbei didn´t try some kind of 1000 water pillar gattling to destroy FireBallFace
Could have been a bad translation on Mangastream, but someone said something like that there 'wasn't enough water in the ocean' or somethign to that effect, so it wouldn't have worked regardless. But I'm not one to turn down an opportunity for Jimbei to be his badass self kicking ass and taking names, so even if futile, it would have looked cool. But yeah, seems like we were spared some filler by not even trying to quell the unstoppable force.