One Piece 44

Eiichiro Oda – Viz – 2010 – 57+ volumes

YES.  The end of Water 7.  Most of this volume is the Buster Call and the fight between Rob Lucci and Luffy.

The Rob/Luffy fight was more interesting in this volume, but it still wasn’t one of the better final fights in the series.  I think the only thing that made it really interesting was Luffy’s use of Gear 2 and Gear 3, but other than that, there was just a lot of dodging, hitting, and trash talking.  Rob Lucci’s devil fruit power is that he turns into a cheetahman, which doesn’t lend itself well to anything aside from a straightforward fight.  Most of the highlights were the various ways their “battle arena” kept getting destroyed, whether it was from flooding or the Buster Call, and also the parts where the Marines discussed their complete faith in Rob Lucci and also when the Straw Hats (including Usopp, who magically wound up in Enies Lobby) cheered Luffy on to victory.  There was no question about the outcome, so it was mostly just a waiting game.

Luckily, we have the Buster Call to keep our attention.  I thought there would be a little more of the Straw Hats and company (Galley-La and the Franky Family) engaging the ships and Marines.  One of the ships is destroyed, but that’s due to the actions of Luffy and Rob Lucci (and the Marines, disturbingly enough).  There’s a brief scene where the Straw Hats engage the Captains and the Lieutenants aboard the 7 battle ships, but not much is made of this fight, either.  It’s a melee to buy time while Luffy finishes, and other than a few mentions that the opponents are tough (as tough as Smoke, since they have the same ranks), that’s about all we see.

Oh.  Also, I think one of them is the main character from Kochi-Kame, the longest manga in history.  Oda points that out in the next volume.  That’s pretty cool.

The Buster Call is pretty cool, and that kept me flipping the pages all the way through.  But this volume is a real classic because of what happens at the end.  There’s a crew member that steps in to save the Straw Hat pirates when they are truly chased into a corner and have their backs against the wall.  As corny as it was, it was a pretty happy sight in the context of the story.  This is followed by one of the saddest scenes in the entire series for the final chapter of this volume.  I couldn’t even believe how much it got to me.  It was a little stupid, and I felt bad for letting it affect me as much as I did… but dammit, I’ve been reading this series forever, it’s really good, and this was really sad.  All the characters thought it was sad, too.

Also, Kokoro.  Am I the only one that felt bad about laughing at those jokes over and over and over again?  I knew that she was, and I was wondering how it would come up, because I remember it being referenced later by the characters (in hilarious scenes where all thoughts of Kokoro simply vanish from their memory).  But it made me laugh so hard here.  I felt bad, because that’s like a fifth grade joke.  But still.  It was funny.