"We pretended not to see this warped grudge … we were busy worrying about progress."
Rereading this chapter, I can't help but be amazed not only by the pitch-perfect pacing (especially with the flashbacks) – but also by the writing. Fukaboshi's narration is the highlight of this chapter for me, and I haven't even dug up Aohige's translation from the spoiler section yet -- but when I do that, I'm sure will make the words even more resonant. Looking forward to Stephen's translation as well.
according to Aohige it should be Red Hawk, not hook
Nice. Where I live, there's a large number of red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks, and I once had the opportunity to see a red-shoulder kill and eat a mouse from only a few feet away. It was an intense, bloody experience that I won't forget any time soon. Luffy's new move is well-named.
It feels like the story is really moving now.
Agreed. We're on solid ground finally, and it hasn't been this firm since before the time-skip.
I'm finally looking forward again to future chapters with the same impatience I had just before the timeskip.
I'm not sure how well the KKK comparison works though.. FishandMer folks are very much oppressed in very obvious ways by the people they're hating. It's hard to argue the same for the KKK, especially in the beginning of their existance.
Good point.
Wow, when I started reading OP I sure as hell wasn't expecting something this profound from a shonen manga.
Agreed.
To Oda's credit, OP has had many more moments of depth and thoughtfulness in past arcs than many other shonen manga – but this chapter is at a different level entirely.
and there is a type of gun called redhawk, we could speculate his new attacks by working out other weapons with animal based names :P.
Ah! thanks for enlightening us about the redhawk gun. That's pretty funny. So it looks like this will be similar to Zoro's habit of naming his attacks after sushi.
Wow, I kinda hope that's the end for Hodi cause that would make for a great climax to the fight! Better still, it was preceded by a nice flashback. I liked the look into Hodi's character. He's a pitiful bastard, but it's nice to see that how he came to be that way.
I agree – this would be the perfect moment to make Hodi finally go away. (and I'm not saying that simply because I've been saying that for the last, oh, ten chapters or so,:ninja: -- I'm saying it now because I truly agree with you onemoment: that this feels like the perfect time, story-wise, plot-wise, emotion-wise, etc, to have Hodi say goodbye.