The fight with Katakuri this time made me realize that I was only thinking about observational haki’s necessary composure in regards to cracking Katakuri, I have never thought about it in regards to Luffy. We have an emotional main character who often fights at his best when he is devastated and furious. If Luffy were to better master his observational haki that could actually be some serious character growth. He’d be controlling his emotions more than he ever has. Just imagining Luffy going from irate to zen within a breath before doing some crazy future reading prediction is already making me foam at the mouth.
That said, we are back at the ground of Luffy being unable to win his fight until, presumably, the end of the arc so we're going to make him fight in little, mostly redundant, bursts until we can time his victory for the climax. I particularly remember this being a bit of an issue in Water 7 with Lucci and Thriller Bark with Moria. It's one way to get around the ‘get Luffy stuck somewhere and out of commission and only free him at the end’ formula but dang does it come off as far more irritating to watch. Perhaps there was a time I preferred this format because it felt less contrived but in practice I have come around no longer feel that way. There are very promising aspects to this battle but seeing ‘you can't win’, ‘yes I can’, Luffy gets beat trying to learn how to win, cut to other people isn't exactly thrilling storytelling. I do acknowledge that I think the manga is typically not as bad because they show it in far shorter bursts so this is likely an anime only complaint.
The Big Mom versus the Sunny crew sequence was far more engaging. Everyone gave their all and it was another highlight for Jimbei. The man has proven himself as an amazing stand in captain time and time again. I may be forgetting but it started with what I think is the first time he has used armament haki to block Big Mom’s attack. Following that, we saw exactly why a fishman is such a strong crewmate, our man lives in the water. That's his natural habitat so knocking him in there is only making him stronger, he can watch out for all of his devil fruit crew members better than anyone else; although contending with Sanji, and we saw why he is a deadly weapon against devil fruit users while on the sea. My man splashed water all over Big Mom which should have weakened her unless it is candy water, but regardless if not, it still emulates how that would work in a real situation. Our man can splash water all over their enemy, weaken them, and then gang up on them. Like, he punched an emperor off of the Sunny! Bro!!! Anything the characters do to defend against an emperor is inherently super cool, the guard point, cutting Zeus in half, whatever it may be. But that was the coolest.
Now to speak on the smaller aspects. Brook’s ‘panties’ line was pretty funny, I really like how Jimbei was speechless to contrast the shocked screaming from everyone else. And speaking about a shock, the Zeus joke was so multi-layered I was thoroughly impressed. I had assumed that Zeus coming back into the picture would actually serve as an advantage for the Straw Hats because Nami could manipulate him again. The manipulation began and I thought it was an inevitable aspect of the scene, but that was subverted and Zeus played me like a fiddle as if he was screaming at me personally ‘do you think I'm that dumb?!’ This was enough to be a great joke, but to then have Brook shocked in the place of Nami while I was already distracted by the subversion, making the obvious disguised as a joke within a joke in quick succession, I was played twice, props for that Oda. I am also fond of Mom’s transformation because sometimes transformations can feel like they were shoehorned in to make the final boss feel scarier, but in this case the way her transformation worked was largely due to a different use of her three Homies. By using elements that have always been there in a way that feels organic, the transformation feels a lot less cheap for me personally.
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