The first scene was the continuation of the news with Jimbei. The people of Whole Cake showed themselves to be quite the scum, mocking Jimbei and laughing at his apparent betrayal. After that, Pedro and Brook overheard Tamago stating that they know literally everything and this leads into a Dressrosa comparison I would like to make. Both kingdoms have fantastical elements such as living toys or living inanimate objects, and both seem too good to be true on the first appearance and both end up being ruled by a tyrannical and cruel leader with presumably some dark secrets. In both cases the crew arrived thinking they were there in secret when they were being kept track of the entire time. Further, I was assuming that Big Mom’s life drain was how they made the living objects, like how Sugar would transmute people into toys, I presumed Mom would implant the life she stole into whatever she wanted to bring to life. Now it appears her eldest son is the Sugar of this arc, he is a candy man who licks people to turn them into candy and can craft anything out of said candy.
As Tamago finished conversing he noted that he wanted Pekom's pardoned due to their long-standing relationship however he was not able to find Pekoms on the Sunny. Therefore, Mom or at the very least Tamago is not aware of what happened to him. Later in the episode we had Bege alongside his Charlotte wife and his baby which looked scarily like him as he showed how he can be a rather caring dad. That is, only to be contrasted with his dismissal over the ‘useless shit’ that is human empathy where he shot Pekoms into a shark infested abyss while his son continued to cry. It was nice to show both sides of Bege and where exactly his prominent characteristics lie and as Pekoms stood there with grit and manliness refusing to take the ‘chance’ Bege offered him, something became clear. Pekoms yelled that Bege is underestimating Big Mom before being potentially murdered. This and the chance he rejected and Tamago’s lack of knowledge regarding where Pekoms is suggests that Bege is doing something behind Mom’s back and if he could, he would have used Pekoms for his nefarious plot. This is what I gather at least. However, what hit the hardest was that two of my favorite characters of the recent two arcs have been put in such a brutal situation so soon after the last.
Beyond these two scenes which I particularly liked a lot, I was also fond of Caesar’s scene with Mom. It was hysterical to see him faced with the emperor he’s scammed, and cursed those which ripped him from the comfort of hiding behind Doflamingo and having as much women and alcohol as possible. He tried to play Mom like he played his people, feigning regret as his project was ripped away from him after countless hours of work, then she suggested not to worry because she recreated the laboratory for him to work in. In one fell swoop he dug a grave and has no excuse out of this. He has two weeks to live and he’s been taken hostage in the name of Big Mom’s goal… That is, well firstly to advance the dream humans have had for ages and create giants, but more importantly, her dream. Just as Whole Cake island is seen as a meeting ground for the many races of the One Piece world in harmony, she wants just that. Assuming this is true, we can gather from her relentless murdering and power expansion that her methods are questionable and perhaps the way she wants harmony is through ruling with an iron fist. She wants one big family, as if she wants the entire world to be a part of it. The moral of the story is we have begun the rescue Caesar mission! |