I'm very pleased to finally see full colour schemes for all the Vegapunks. Sure, we got a hint at their intended appearances with the vol 106 animated trailer, but I'm glad Oda found the chance to circle back around and give us his vision by his own hands, because there are some differences. Putting this next to the Strawhat outfits and environments on the vol 106 cover and you can see that Egghead is going to be a vibrant piece of work when the colour manga catches up to it a few years from now.
Despite the milestone colour spread, this is another transitional chapter plotwise, continuing to fill in the timeline as the present day looms. Maybe Oda really is just looking to show everything up to Sabaody and/or the present and is fine taking his time with it, but I can't shake the feeling that there's one last tragic twist to Kuma's story yet to be revealed. But even without immediate plot progression or huge reveals, this ends up being another emotionally impactful, as so much of this flashback has already managed to be.
Kuma's visit to Windmill Village ends up not being a huge deal in the long term, something done more to provide a cliffhanger than anything else. As expected, Kuma's orders have nothing to do with Luffy or Goa. But copout though it might be, it does give Oda the chance to show us a little more of Dragon's motivations and personality. I get it, the high stakes battle he's fighting, he can't afford to give the Government the leverage of using his child against him (as we saw with Roger and Ace, you don't even have to be alive for them to try it), and he obviously cares enough that he knows it would work.
What's interesting is that the conversation with Dragon happens in flashback, seemingly when they were in the area for the Grey Terminal fire. Interesting that Kuma has chosen, of his own volition, to check in on Luffy as he passes by. Does he see it as a favour to Dragon, who he can no longer contact, to check in on the kid while he has a chance? Does he feel the similarity between himself and the Revolutionary, both forced to keep a distance from their children, and visit Luffy as penance for not being able to see Bonney. And you would hope this development at least slightly dampens the number of people online memeing on Dragon for being a deadbeat or whatever. Probably not though. Memes are short and snappy and more fun to spread the nuance, even it becomes impossible to have serious discussions on places like Reddit because you can't tell what level of irony anyone's on when they seem to be experiencing the story purely through agenda and slander posting.
So, I initially thought I'd dedicate a section of this review to going back over Kuma's scenes in Thriller Bark and Sabaody and analysing his actions with what we know now. Obviously it was clear from the start that Kuma went into Sabaody intending to save the crew, but somehow I got it in my head over the years that Kuma's actions and intentions at Thriller Bark were more ambiguous, and that there was a chance he'd sincerely tried to take out the crew before learning more or changing his mind later. But then I rediscovered the scene right after Zoro's big moment where he says that Luffy has exceptional friends because "he's your son, after all... Dragon." So yeah, Kuma knew from the start. Oda knew Kuma knew from the start. There's no possible retcon or new motive to look closely at, just the same info we've actually had since 2008. I love these kinds of discoveries (or rediscoveries in my case); they're going to make the series so much fun to fully reread when it's done.
There are some things of note though. I feel very differently about Kuma asking Nami if Ace was really Luffy's brother having seen the conversation about Dragon's weakness in this chapter. Ivan would also mistakenly worry that there was a blood connection that would drive Dragon to do something rash when he heard they were brothers during the Impel Down arc.
Knowing that by this point on the timeline Bonney had already escaped does shed a little light on Kuma's willingness to toy with the crew and let them go, despite Moria deriding him as the only Warlord who follows orders a few chapters earlier. I wonder how differently things would have played out if he'd been put up against Luffy while the knife was still at his daughter's throat.
My main thought about Kuma at Sabaody is that Sentomaru doesn't seem like he's written to be as familiar with Kuma as we know he would be. "But no one knows if that's true," he says of the rumour that Kuma's powers send people flying for three days and nights, as if he couldn't have just asked at some point. When he calls Kuma out for attacking the Pacifista he calls him 'bear-man' instead of his name. But maybe the harshness is something he's putting on to distance himself, knowing what his boss is going to be forced to do to Kuma in the near future.
But getting back to the chapter at hand, I was caught off-guard by how upset I was when Kuma's letter was intercepted and destroyed. His message is simple but heartfelt, but you understand how much it would mean to a child still too young to understand why her dad isn't around and what's been done for her. Alpha's choice to destroy the communication is just so callous and unnecessary, far beyond what was needed to keep a hostage, and you can't help but empathising with how let down and abandoned the young Bonney must have felt. If anything, keeping her satisfied with the promise of going to the sea in the future in the letters must have made it easier to keep the girl under control. But Alpha, as the kind of person who'd take on this kind of assignment for the Government, just needs to be cruel.
I'm not sure what to make of Stussy's comment about free will. She's perhaps already gone into Government service, but she also gets to moonlight as an underworld boss, and obviously retains her loyalty to Vegapunk, given what's happened at present-day Egghead. What parts of this vibrant career did she choose, and which ones were expected of her as one of Vegapunk's successes?
It's heartwarming to see the locals and Conny come together to dupe the Government and facilitate Bonney's escape. The simple joy of getting to go outside for the first time in years is cathartic for Bonney as well. Similar to the fishmen trapped at the bottom of the ocean, Oda uses the absence of the sun as a symbol of oppression, and it didn't even occur to me how similar Bonney's indoors incarceration was until she was appreciating the sun in this sequence. No wonder she got so into her dad's stories about a liberating sun god. Whether you're a prisoner, a slave, an underclass, a hostage or just unwell, the sun is freedom; its absence, chains.
I actually don't love what Bonney is able to do with her fruit at the end. It feels too extreme. Ageing like a particular person? Fine. Getting super buff or anything else a human could reasonably achieve in a lifetime? Yeah, great. But I don't get what the power is drawing on to warp her appearance that much. And while she was kept conveniently unconscious (fainted because of bugs) for the Gear Five sequence in the lower lab and blasted away before the transformation in the upper one to keep her from recognising Nika, she did personally stop Luffy from using Gear Three against a Pacifista near the start of the arc, so you'd think there'd be some kind of conversation to be had there. Could be that she was just too distracted thinking about her dad to connect the dots at the time though.
But weird power-releated stuff aside, it is immensely satisfying to see Alpha cop it after what she's done. And to see Bonney win her freedom and take to the seas like she always dreamed.
I think the flashback is nearing its end as we close out the year and start exploring volume 109, but there's still this gut feeling that there's one last stinger or final bit of info we haven't been shown yet, maybe relating to the moment Kuma fully loses himself. But even if we're just taking it slow filling in the time up to the present with Kuma's perspective of Thriller Bark, Sabaody, protecting the Sunny and the Reverie, Oda's proven here that he can still make low-plot chapters tug on the heartstrings, cuing up a quick but effective combo of frustration followed by catharsis. Very much looking forward to all this pain and suffering and emotional build-up coming to a head when Kuma arrives at Egghead in the present, presumably in the new year.
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