It’s easy to ride this episode off as being a waste of time, and I think that’s fair, but I don’t personally feel like I can judge that because I watch this anime every day and a big recap of the many players in this game after we got weeks away from it in airing time means it may not have been so bad for them. But even if this was largely a reminder of what was going on, it still brought up some interesting ideas.
Firstly, the Law and Doflamingo stuff. Doflamingo tried to make everything Corazon did futile by telling Law that he never made him truly free, that he was always owned by him. But, Law ended up saying something quite touching, that the last thing that stopped him from being free was Corazon’s ambition. He may have escaped terminal illness and had been saved from a life like Doflamingo, but he had one more thing weighing him down this entire time, and that was to stop Doffy for Corazon’s sake. The weight of Cora never left. Further, after knowing about how Law too is a “D.” we knew the reveal would come. Law telling Doffy after all this time something that Corazon knew, that two D.’s have come to kick the Dragon blood out of his veins was a nice moment. With an angry Doflamingo being hit by two cool tricks, the shambles with the rock and later that injection as Doflamingo got close enough it made for some cool stuff. And overall, I’m glad the emotional weight of this fight has culminated like this, there were times before where I wasn’t all that invested, but now I am undeniably so. Love everyone involved in this fate deciding fight.
The other interesting thing for me involved Dellinger and Senor Pink. Dellinger, after seeing his fin and wearing his fish hats and sharing a look like the fighting fish with his horns and all has been confirmed as a half fighting fish fish-man. This gave him some depth if you think about it. We saw him join the Don Quixote family in the North Blue when he looked like he was around 4 years old. He was tiny. One must ask why and how such a child joined and why it was accepted. However, if we take into account this was a half fishman hybrid of whomst people have been notoriously racist of, seeing him as a freak, and the implicit idea he was alone at such a young age in the North Blue, it creates a story. I bet he had a hard life and I wouldn’t be surprised he harnessed some of that hatred Doflamingo sees as potential. The Don Quixote family may be a toxic environment, but I’m glad Doflamingo took him in. He has a family.
As for Senor Pink, having another gag of him being a good guy who takes care of kittens and granny’s, one has to ask why he is part of this family. I think it was suggested that Doflamingo refused Bellamy from joining his family because being he didn’t share the same goal of destroying the world. As it has been expanded, this is a statement of destroying everything the Celestial Dragons govern over, and if that’s the case, then I presume everyone in his family shares that ambition to some degree. Further, he has shown great interest in hatred being within his family. Senor Pink is kind of a Hachi, as in he works with a horrendous leader who enslaves and kills while not endorsing that personally but not stopping it. He cares for these people but he lets Doflamingo reign terror over them. It makes me wonder if he does what he can, but also has an end justifies the means goal in mind, one to end the Celestial Dragons and thus he views the misdeeds of Doflamingo as necessary evils. That or typical mafioso stuff, that he acts on his moral code when he is free too, but ultimately the word of the Don is absolute.
Apart from that, Luffy is not being controlled by strings and nor is Law and Luffy hasn’t figured out how to save Bellamy yet so more of that stuff’s going on. Trebol is formed again, and Bartolomeo and Cavendish stayed back while letting Robin head to Rebecca’s side. Rebecca and Kyros are dealing with Diamante turning the entire sunflower field into a rippling flag which is incredibly awesome. Baby 5 is even more in love with Sai and those battles aren’t looking great. Lastly, Leo seems to be heading to Mansherry without much issue, I wonder what her power will be and how it’ll shake things up. |