The rescue/factory team has become almost completely separated and all of them are pursuing their own goals now! Kin’emon is continuing to look for Kanjuro, Sanji has fallen in love and is following a beautiful dancer’s wishes, Zoro is chasing a fairy, and Luffy and Franky are entering the Colosseum. If this is the case, how will they find the factory? Assuming the cast will have their ears open, perhaps this wasn’t so bad. By splitting up they’re all going to wildly different areas, meeting new friends, and overall I’m sure all of them will end up doing things central to their mission. Violet and that fairy will probably be key, and the Colosseum, Don Quixote territory where no police or navy can step, is going to be a hotspot. Kin’emon being trailed has ought to get him close to this all too, I presume everyone will have an insane and exciting and hilarious adventure and it’ll all come together eventually. We also got confirmation about how devil fruits reproduce. Does that mean Blackbeard just went inside a tent with Whitebeard’s body, bringing an apple so it transferred over, and then ate it? That would be a little anticlimactic wouldn’t it?
To speak specifics, Dressrosa is giving me a deep love for the Luffy/Franky duo that I didn’t have before. First, I choked up at the beautiful way the episode opened. Franky recognized that Luffy was serious about Ace’s devil fruit despite not having known Ace well at all, and Luffy even wanted Franky to have it. Already that, to ask his friend to take his late brother’s power, is incredibly touching. But Franky said he didn’t want to lose his ability to swim, perhaps that’s as simple as it is, or perhaps he thought it wasn’t his place to take the power. Regardless, Franky knowing what it meant to Luffy, decided that even if it’s an obvious trap by Doflamingo that one thing was certain, they had to go and leave no regrets, to live resolutely perhaps. This scene and later when they reached the Colosseum is what sold me the Franky/Luffy dynamic. Franky does totally feel like the big brother he says he is. He can be as much of a kid as Luffy is and have a total blast with him, yet when it’s time to be serious and reliable he can do that and be the guide Luffy needs, while also choosing to do the seemingly impossible for Luffy’s sake. It’s totally sweet. And, I must mention here, the one legged toy soldier is one cute dude. What if he has like a sad past and a strong resolve or something. I get that feeling from him.
Then we have Sanji meeting the beautiful Violet, quite comically too by telling Zoro he’s wasting his time by chasing a sword and then getting completely absorbed by her. When she embraced Sanji as to avoid the police I was already coincidentally thinking about how evil Sanji could be if he was working under a beautiful but cruel female captain. That kind of scenario would explore him pretty well, he can be ruthless, but he obviously cares about people and will even put himself on the line for their sake. Yet he’s willing to do anything for a beautiful woman, he’ll even gladly get stabbed by her. And then she asked Sanji to escort her to the next town and KILL SOMEONE, as if Oda read my mind. We’ve been using the “kill” word a lot recently for One Piece standards, the plan to “kill” Kaido, or “kill” this person. Anyways, I don’t know how to feel about her trustwise. She’s hard to pin down. Perhaps she is as passionate a person as they say, even comparable to Sanji with her tears and ability to easily fall in love, and likewise her inclination to stab people. As for what she gets out of Sanji, I love it. Sanji’s ability to be this concoction of a protective and reliable brother figure, a perverse and hopeless romantic, an explosion of screaming emotions, a complete brat, and yet also be an insanely cool guy and resolved guy, sometimes all at the same time is just, quality writing. As women do, Violet is able to get his super cool and explosive sides out as a near constant.
Sanji’s love of this passionate, loving island was nicely contrasted with Zoro furiously saying he hated this island full of puppets and fairies, along with a nice line about the sword being important, not because it’s some national treasure, but because it’s a dang great sword and a gift from the remnants of a legendary samurai. Out of respect he needs to keep it. Remember when he had that delicate farewell to the sword that he got from the shop along with his cursed blade because of its past owners dreams? The ship itself may be a crewmember but Zoro’s swords are like his own little crew as well, in my mind at least. |