Pudding gave us some seriously important information. Firstly, the Big Mom pirates mostly consist of genuine blood relatives. She has 39 daughters and 46 sons which were born from 43 husbands. This is a family of 129 siblings. This is quite fascinating because it means the Big Mom blood relatives could exist in the series for a long time to come scattered throughout, assuming most of them aren’t gone through in this one arc. As one genius in this thread pointed out, one may be Bonney! Further, the children of Big Mom are tools to her, used to strengthen her pirate crew through political marriage. You either give up and marry who Big Mom wants you to, or run away. This means two things. First, assuming Pudding is being truthful and doesn’t have an alter ego, the two centerpieces of this marriage are victims who want to rebel against it. Second, she mentioned her big sister went out to sea, running away from Mom and looking for love. We can probably assume this is Lola which is amazing because, no offense to the Big Mom family, but if you look like Mom, or Lola or her twin then I assume arranged political marriage is the best shot you got until someone gets to know you.
The moment in the Pudding scene where Pedro took Pudding hostage and later stated they had to silence her and couldn’t trust her made me realize the importance of Pedro and Pekoms in the party. Nami can be suspicious and intelligent, but overall Luffy is irresponsible, Chopper and Carrot are immature and naive, Nami is possibly too nice, and Brook can be too carefree. Because of this Pedro, who seems even more serious and hard than his younger bro Pekoms, can play the serious and at times cruel member of the crew. He can put his foot down at times when you’d expect Zoro or Law or Sanji to. And despite Pekoms seeming possibly kinder than Pedro on a surface level, he’s still shown that he can do some dirty work. Those two mink boys may be crucial in the succeeding of this mission and that immediately gives them more strength in the dynamic of this crew. A greater purpose. Speaking of Pekoms, he was gone when the crew returned to the ship with a message carved into the bathroom to turn back. The most obvious assumption here is that Big Mom, who knew Luffy arrived, targeted the ship. Only Pekoms remained and he bought some time and warned the crew to turn back because they could no longer do this in secret, before then going along with the family.
To go back to Pudding, I was seriously hoping she’d have some more going for her. I refuse to trust her because she'd be a great person to give an alter ego, but for now, the moe and compassionate waifu who easily gets flustered felt slightly forced to me. However, soon it showed that she has some guts and would give the Straw Hats a secret map and risk herself while doing it. This isn’t enough to make me love Pudding but it’s enough to assume she will add to the arc in an interesting way and I’m curious to see more of her and what comes of this betrayal. Her line about not worrying because she is the biological daughter of Mom freaked me out as this is not the first time we had someone say ‘we are related by blood, of course he’ll get pissed but he won’t kill me’ before being killed in One Piece. I also like the touch that despite being a sexy and cute woman who's a stereotypical perfect wife and also meshes with Sanji through being a cook, he apparently rejected her. He was put to the test in a situation where the crucial thing that stopped him from gleefully getting married was his loyalty to his friends, aside from Germa's involvement or disdain for Mom. We knew Sanji would die for the crew, but we also know that he would die to look at Shirahoshi in Fishman Island. So, although we could assume this would happen, it’s nice to see that Sanji’s loyalty for his friends trumps all! |