One Piece 49

Eiichiro Oda – Viz – 2010 – 58+ volumes

I loved the strategy here, where instead of having the crewmembers take on individual foes that matched their own strengths, they all teamed up to fight Oars. This was probably a bit too long (it was almost the entire volume), and a pretty typical “waste time before Luffy comes in to blow the bad guy away” strategy, but I have to admit that I was not at all tired of it. They kept trying individual strategies as well as group attacks, and there were so many different strategies, along with a huge number of dodges from Oars (especially when Gecko Moria joins this battle). For every special docking strategy, Oars is right behind them with the magical ability to make his body stretch like rubber.

The rubber Oars was my only real point of contention with this volume. There was an explanation that this was part of Gecko Moria’s shadow manipulation powers, but really, if Oars’ body isn’t made of rubber, wouldn’t that just destroy his bones and muscles? He doesn’t feel pain, but he shouldn’t be able to move around after that.

Part of me hopes that someone asks about it in a future SBS corner.

But seriously. The docking technique. Not only was that amazing by itself, but Robin was just so appalled. “Don’t you ever ask to ‘dock’ with me again.” Franky and Usopp were right, though, Luffy would have been disappointed. Another great bit was when Brook showed up and Usopp got mad when he claimed that drinking milk healed him instantly because calcium fixes broken bones.

There was a lot of other stuff here… Absalom’s wedding to Nami, Perona’s escape, Bartholomew Kuma, Nightmare Luffy… Even with most of the action stolen by Oars, lots of things are still playing out. Luffy’s end-game strategy involves absorbing 100 shadows to collect the abilities of all those people for ten minutes, which turns him into a scary monster on par with Oars. Bartholomew Kuma, another one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, shows up to warn Moria that the World Government won’t tolerate another Warlord defeated at the hands of Luffy. He also works some of his bizarre magic, something that will remain a mystery for a bit.

The final battle does the typical One Piece thing of ending, then having the bad guy stand back up, then ending again, then having yet another bad guy stand up and pull out an impossible-to-defeat trump card, something that needs to be taken care of in a matter of seconds or else everyone will be dissolved by the sunlight. I know and you know where this is going, but all the same, One Piece always makes it a fun ride.