As brief as the first scene was, it reminded me that I love Kin’emon. He can be quite comical in how he reads like an open book while trying to preserve his bushido values, or in his forgetfulness or simplemindedness; “it’s a top knot hat”, “criminals should be arrested”. But he’s also the type to run into gas that should be his death on the chance that he powers through it for his son. He’s sincere, grateful and compassionate. Seeing him dive for Wicka and confirm she was okay was adorable, we saw him eat so Momonosuke would, he loves Kanjuro to death, and he showed so much respect to Sanji when he was proven wrong about him, now showing such loyalty to his friends. He’s absolutely not “badass” in a conventional sense, but he’s admirable and hilarious and sweet and, despite Law’s temporary joining of the crew overshadowing his, he’s a great addition!! The group split from the first scene once more, Kin’emon still looking for Kanjuro is heading for the Toy House along with Wicka. He should be able to help Franky out if he needs it.
From there Violet, Luffy, and Zoro continued heading forward and we finally had our first meeting of Pica! He’s continued his allure of mystery by not speaking at all but his power is obvious, he is a stone-stone man, essentially able to merge with and control the entire palace. That’s an unexpectedly strong power and for a moment I thought that, his lack of appearance, may have been because he is literally the castle. It ended up not being that crazy though. I presume they’ll need to find his actual body to harm him.
In the toy house Senor Pink made a stand against the navy. This should have been expected if I paid it more thought, the idea that Senor Pink believes in the honor of a man’s fight or something seeing that he showed some respect to Franky and refused to flank him. To be fair, it was already a 2v1 so that may be too charitable, but I like to think that there’s still some code in the Don Quixote family exclusively fighting him. I’d like to think that if the navy didn’t make a deal with Doflamingo then Senor Pink would have temporarily teamed up with Franky to fend them off, but he’s loyal to the young master and decided to do the Zoro-Tashigi, walk away and let them handle him. Sitting back allowed him to only further appreciate Franky as he refused to budge, fired missiles, and had a blast; going so far to do the Ivan and pretend he was dying while caught on fire. He was having so much fun, the robot voice and fixed hair and then the small hand to lure them in was like perfect Franky chaos.
We got to see more of Trebol and Sugar. I would assume Sugar was naive to the horrors of her actions but she should actually be old enough to understand the ramifications under her facade of youth. She must have no sympathy for the people she personally enslaved and that’s quite scary. Trebol is quite the disgusting guy, a literal sticky snail which has a recurrent gag that he has no concept of personal space and snot pouring out of his nose. Sugar kind of has the Miss Goldenweek thing where she’s always eating and has a kuudere demeanor. Ultimately Cavendish was turned into a toy and we were reminded that the fishman, and Sai amongst others were also down here. That means once the toys recover they could help out if things get tough. It also means we have Hakuba in the heat of the action to go insane.
Usopp actually has an army now as someone above mentioned, that’s beautiful. Anyways, him and Robin snuck into the executive tower and Leo has a plan, something akin to what Usopp would think of, to sneak her a spicy grape! I can’t imagine that will go well for narrative reasons, and I do feel we should probably expect at least one Straw Hat to turn into a toy, but Usopp could always sling shot a tabasco star in her mouth as if she was a zombie on Thriller Bark! This arc is quite intense, we have Pica attacking Luffy’s group, the navy swarming Franky, Usopp’s group nearing Trebol, the final round ongoing with Diamante, and Big Mam chasing Sanji’s group in the background. I don’t expect down time next episode. |