#one piece chapter review

[gregmikaels]

One Piece Chapter 1130 | Loki Appears In One Piece! The World’s Destroyer?! And A Sun God?!

[petrichal]

One Piece 1132 talk, my heart is full (and I'm freaking out again)

Can I just take a moment to comment on how this reminds me of, firstly, the first episode of Vicky the Viking, and simultaneously also, Luffy in Fuschia with Shanks?

It almost feels like an homage, it's super cute.

But BOY was this chapter so damn whimsical and exciting. It feels like a long time since the Strawhats have entered an island where there's no enemy (aware to them) that they're about to defeat; They're planning for a feast and it's a good time, it feels like a breather from all the chaos happening to the rest of the world lol

This spread is crazy btw

Elbaf feels like the fantasy land for me. A rainbow bridge where you can ride on (which, you can ride on rainbows this entire time and only the giants knew?? wild), island clouds in between levels, a whole village built on a tree with medieval architecture, waterfalls flowing down into the Underworld, just the sheer scale of it; It's SO good. I'm always in awe whenever they just pan over to an island's first look, and it was the whole island first with Yggdrasil and now this??? If you count Legoland then we have like 3 showings of Elbaf so far, and they just don't miss, they're so stunning.

Also this

This can make a grown man cry.

Usopp and Luffy, as they look on Elbaf, are thinking of the same thing. They both remember making this declaration, of someday going to Elbaf, a dream made by two boys just fresh out of East Blue and only on their second island in the Grand Line. And they made it. Usopp's dream is realized in this moment, and it's heartwarming that Luffy understands how important this was to Usopp as well.

(In a way, we as readers made it too. and yeah I cried a little lmao what of it)

And as if that's not enough, the narration starts, and halfway in the last page, as the narrator says "my account" that made me wonder "?? Is this someone actually talking?", in the last panel, with a ドン!！as it introduces a familiar name:

LOUIS ARNOT. LOUIS ARNOT, THE GUY WHO WROTE THE BOOK ABOUT LITTLE GARDEN, THE BOOK THAT NAMI OWNED THAT WAS ON THE MERRY BEFORE???? HUH????

I fully freaked out LMFAO because I've always been fascinated with the fact that explorers exist in the world of One Piece and they just have books annotating their experiences of the islands they go to and Louis Arnot is the only explorer we know of ever that's published a book about his expeditions, and the name drop just caught me off guard it's RIDICULOUS

The way we got introduced with Louis Arnot in Little Garden was with Nami remembering that she had read a book mentioning the island's name, and it was natural that we then got an excerpt from the book in the style of the usual One Piece narration, but here, this was so sudden (no segue, just appeared on a spread) that it makes the last panel with the all black background mentioning 'Louis Arnot' stand out.

I'm not saying that he's gonna appear as a character but hmMMMaybe??? (not likely lol) It's either that or I'm spouting nonsense and this is just a call back to when we first heard of Louis Arnot in Little Garden (which was on the last panel as well!). I still really like the idea of this faceless storyteller warning people of the islands he'd visited.

It also got me curious about Elbaf as an island?? What do you mean "Do not overstay your welcome"??? "Lost time"??? Do people lose track of time on Elbaf, and that's why giants experience time differently??? (👀 I like this theory I'm locking it in)

All in all, I feel like a kid again with this chapter, it truly feels nostalgic in the most magical way TvT

(edit: cause I totally missed this silhouette the first time ive read it, and he has been appearing (assuming this is the same person who was drinking sake when the Strawhats were approaching Elbaf just a few chapters back), but I believe this is. probably Shiki?? the kasa hat is totally hiding his dumb wheel chicken head???? maybe???

Like I know that's the common theory on this guy but the thing that makes me hesitate is idk what Shiki can bring story-wise, unless he's been disillusioned from being in Elbaf due to this thing Louis Arnot mentioned, or maybe there's just more to unpack from him than what we already know 🤔 curious)

[discjude]

guess my favourite sge chapter challenge (impossible edition). yes i think aric shouldve had long hair he was in that cave for nine whole ass years leave me alone

[every-sanji]

[strawhatdyke]

Chapter 1103

Kuma finally showing up at egghead now his backstory is complete is sick, can't wait to see him go hard at Saturn.

Kizaru definitely the one who got food to Luffy. Which means we could see all 3 go against Saturn but I feel Kizaru may just help from the background for a while longer.

Dragon showing up and meeting luffy could be on the cards too but I think if he did show up its likely they wouldn't get the reunion and he would play a part in helping the Straw Hats escape and finishing off whoever is left - maybe alongside Kizaru?

Last panel of chapter is great, really hoping 1104 kicks off with Saturn getting Charlos'd into oblivion.

[anonymoussong]

The Warrior Cats are like the One Piece of children's books

1) Longer than should be allowed (affectionate)

2) Most people don't get the hype but those who are into it are INTO it

3) The character names are fuckin bonkers in the best ways

4) Has been going for like 20-25 years with no ending in sight (OP started in '97, WC in '03)

5) Has over a million words (OP at around 1.7, WC at like 3.9+)

6) Will rewire your brain

[choppersbongreviews]

One Piece Chapter 1100 Thoughts!

I wanted to start making things that aren't shitposts (and I don't have anyone to talk about them with) so I'm gonna start posting my thoughts and what I like about the new chapter each week! Obviously, chapter 1100 spoilers below...

I don't think I'll ever get over how damn silly Vegapunk looks before he sets up his brain antenna. I giggle every time i see him, it's so goofy. Also, Kuma's bounty here being about the same as Luffy's when they fatefully meet is interesting to me. I love how bounties in OP don't care about powerscaling. And Kizaru needs to lose the fedora. He looks greasy.

Chapter after chapter Kuma is only becoming more likeable to me. Like obviously he would only care about Bonney being cured, but seeing it is still very moving.

Man, Saint Saturn better have a serious ass-kicking coming his way. As good as this flashback is, I can't wait to get back to the present to see what happens (and to probably get emotionally devastated considering Kuma's current day actions).

Lmao get fucked Senomaru.

Seeing these five enjoying their time together while Kuma and Bonney go through their treatments is super interesting to me. We've already seen Sentomaru siding with Vegapunk against the WG and this helps us see why. Now I'm wondering if Kizaru will have a change of heart... idk!

👀 Kizaru, you better hope the bosses don't see this.

Damn you Oda.

Its cool to see everyone's reaction to Kuma becoming a Warlord, but I'm just thinking of how much I miss the cowboy hat...

Wait...

HIS FLAG IS HER DRAWING????? COME ON! 😭

I would've never guessed that we'd end up here this chapter ngl. I can't wait to see what Kuma does at Foosha Village. Does he know about Luffy eating the Nika fruit? Is it a coincidence? I guess we'll find out in next week's chapter!

[luckyrave]

One Piece Chapters 1104-1105 Livestream Discussion/Review: Thank You Daddy & The Height of Folly!!

A buster call has been ordered upon Egghead Island as Luffy, Nami, and The Straw Hats attempt to escape off to Elbaf while Kuma has stepped into the picture to take on Saint Jay Garcia after saving Bonney and Vegapunk. Now it's only a matter of time before we discover what shocking incident occurs that will leave the whole world in total shock.

[originaljiraiyan]

One Piece Episode 1095 Review: The Shocking Truth About Egghead Island!

[therealsoulking]

One Piece Chapter 1089

It's Been Two Weeks, and Everything's Fucked!

I'm so glad to see the construction of a new Enies Lobby Branch out here in the New World!

And glad to see Oda incorporating current events into the story 😬

Also, time to add Dragon to the list of potential fathers of Makino's baby

Anyways, we're getting a well-needed recap of what's going on on the Future Island, culminating in a call from York to the Gorosei Room of Autority™️, outlining York's betrayal and plot to trade control of the mysterious Mother Flame

Despite York's haughtiness and the battle raging outside, the Straw Hats, Bonney and Vegapunk have a slight advantage over the Gorosei.

Ah. Things have happened while we were looking at the rest of the Grand Line. Welp, I guess that's what we'll see next chapter, from the crew split up fighting Seraphim, to everyone reunited and holding York prisoner.

[gregmikaels]

"Sorry, Joyboy..." What does the giant armor mean by that?

[petrichal]

One Piece 1133 talk: Praise Me for Living

i just wanted to open this with I WANT TO PELT SPANDINE AND THAT FUCKING SON OF HIS WITH ROCKS SO BAD OH MY GODDDD

"I'll never forget the sounds of the screams that emerged from the fire" THOSE WERE CIVILLIANS. ON THE ISLAND YOU ORDERED A BUSTER CALL ON. I HOPE YOU CHOKED IN YOUR GRAVE AND SUFFER IN HELL I HATE YOU

(kind of a moot point but one other thing i wanna say when I was reading through the raws was that Spandine says “ガキの皮を被った悪魔だ”/"That's a demon wearing the skin of a child" here which - to me - felt more visceral than the translation. still an insane thing to say about a child though, obviously.

edit: I was thinking how fucked up it was that literally everyone around her believed that she truly was the devil's child, but with descriptions like that (+ rumors spreading about how she can use "freakish sorcery" [-> devil fruits not being common in the Blues?], she'd "slit your throat in the night", and "no human emotions", like she's not human at all) you can see how easy it was for people to get brainwashed into this wrong idea of her when she was young. Government manipulation in, i guess, the entirety of West Blue at the time, ran deep. anyways)

With that outta the way, this chapter is masterful. Im gonna cry. Ive cried already throughout a third of my reading for this chapter, it's just so good. Nico Robin I love you so much

Though its unfortunate that we have to see Spandine again, Oda knows what he's doing bringing back Robin's tragedy at the start of the chapter. We know her story, we've seen her flashback, but it's an entire other thing to see it again in Elbaf, the arc where we know the context of, that Saul is alive, and it gives us a clue that that is where the chapter is heading towards.

Also isn't it crazy that when the dialogue frames Robin as this "dangerous", "unfeeling" person with no heart, the visual we're presented with is her crying as she sifts through garbage to search for food, and then sharing it with a dog?? Hello??? And the panels before that goes "The government won't go into detail about the story" for fear that "the truth" might "traumatize the children", which is CRAZY when slapped upon an image of cipher pol agents with guns actively hunting down a child??? The juxtaposition of Spandine's dialogue and the images that are shown is very telling, it's just so well done.

TW: discussions of suicide (for this part)

We know that Robin was ostracized as a child. We know this. Doesn't make it hurt any less, though. Especially (and especially) when it's shown on the pages clearly of how it affected her.

What got me thinking when I saw this again was that all of West Blue was probably fed this lie from the World Government. Every island she went to knew who she was, literally everyone was warned to look out for her, that she was dangerous and should be turned in. And it's not like travelling out of West Blue was safe, nor was it probably an option that existed for Robin back then- like, she was eight!! How was she supposed to go across the Red Line, the Calm Belt?? She was truly boxed in. She must've felt that there was no other way out. Of course she'd turn to suicide.

That panel of her at the cliff honestly broke me. It's not like it wasn't implied at all back when her flashback was first shown; Her circumstances were difficult for her and it wouldn't be out of left field to think that she might have considered dying. To have it drawn on a page that she considered it, looked down from a cliff, and the fact that the only thing keeping her from jumping was her mother's words and Saul's promise was genuinely heartbreaking. She was so strong to have gone through all of that, she deserves the whole world and more actually

Cut back to the present and she lived through it all and here she is with her family, a place where she belongs aaaaaa 🥲 I love that Luffy gets all huffy (hah) over Robin saying that she can go alone, saying that a captain needs to pay their respects to those who have helped their crew, that it's the honorable thing to do. Sounds like a certain someone, ey? (Ace & Shanks lol, he remembers Makino's lessons from all those years ago too ;v;).

Then they all insist to go with her and it's so cute and I was like oh when did she change her clothes and $@!#>}! ITS THE SAME FIT SHE WORE WHEN SHE MET SAUL FOR THE FIRST TIME!! SAUL'S "FALLEN AND WON'T GET UP" IS BECAUSE HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO GREET HER SO HE DECIDED TO JUST FACEPLANT ON THE BEACH BECAUSE THATS HOW HE MET HER FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! ITS SO SILLY BUT I STARTED TEARING UP??? WHAT????AND THEN THE PARALLELS:

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

my heart...... my heart.....augghjkjsdh..... (speechless)

The fact that the first thing he tells her was about how Ohara's sacrifice wasn't in vain, that traces of them still remain, like Robin, did you hear Vegapunk's message?? That was the message from the people of Ohara, their voices are still being heard!! was so goddang wholesome.

And Robin hears this, and she hears about how Saul survived and the things he heard other people call her, and he's getting angry on behalf of her again but all she wanted (and perhaps, what she truly needed this whole time) was something else;

For Saul to praise her for having survived.

(The Viz translation isn't ~wrong~ with Robin's line here, but I wanted to point out how it was put originally; Instead of "I want to hear nice things about how I survived!", the raws read “生きたこと… 褒めてほしい！”, which, as I understood it, "I want you to praise me... for being alive/having survived!". The chapter title has it as "Nice Things" but the original was “褒めてほしい”/ "I want you to praise (me)". And this probably seemed self-conceited in english?? and that's why it's translated like that idk, i just thought its nicer in jp)

But the fact that Robin is asking this of Saul and the fact that she's able to make that request in the first place is where I sobbed because this is what Robin wants to hear!!! It's a childish, selfish request, and it's something she wasn't able to wish for / doesn't allow herself to wish for before because she thought Saul/anyone she loved from her past was dead this whole time or that she didn't deserve it, but Saul is alive, and it's the first step she needs to take to truly heal!! Her changing her clothes and cutting her hair to seem more like herself when she was younger is a deliberate choice, this is the part of her that needs closure, the part of her that went through all the trauma the world had given her, and she's healing her inner child!! She needed to hear this from Saul!! She deserves this so much!!! (im rambly if this doesnt make any sense im sorry khfdjk)

And Saul laughs, and says of course!/“勿論だ！”, no questions asked, and the unconditional love just broke me down man i cant

Note that Robin was smiling this entire time (maybe from the start of the arc? or at least since she cut her hair) and leading up to the last page was when she finally started breaking down. They're crying, the crew's crying, Luffy looking on so fondly, happy for her, and I'm crying. I love One Piece so much, I love these dorks. I don't think I'll forget this last page for my life, it's one of the best moments in this series to date.... Truly the Robin chapter of all time <3

bonus: lmfao?? maybe they'll let him down once they get back for the festivities but rip bozo

[cutepuppiespizza]

One Piece chapter 1122 video review part 2 part 1 seemed to have been CBLDF complained for some reason.

[the-music-keeper]

Objectives #11, #13, and #18 are all done! I didn't finish everything I wanted to while I was at work and right afterwards, but to be fair I did finish a lot of it.

[every-sanji]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers "mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs" and laugh at "the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review":

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.

They wanted to asset-strip the company, in other words ("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

Starboard didn't have enough money to force the sale, but they had recently engineered the CEO's ouster. The giant slide-deck making fun of Olive Garden's food was just a PR campaign to help it sell the bust-out by creating a narrative that they were being activists* to save this badly managed disaster of a restaurant chain.

*assholes

Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/

They had forced Darden to sell off another of its holdings, Red Lobster, to a hedge-fund called Golden Gate Capital. Golden Gate flogged all of Red Lobster's real estate holdings for $2.1 billion the same day, then pissed it all away on dividends to its shareholders, including Starboard. The new landlords, a Real Estate Investment Trust, proceeded to charge so much for rent on those buildings Red Lobster just flogged that the company's net earnings immediately dropped by half.

Dayen ends his piece with these prophetic words:

Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?

Flash forward a decade. Today, Dayen is editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, one of the best sources of news about private equity looting in the world. Writing for the Prospect, Luke Goldstein picks up Dayen's story, ten years on:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten years hasn't changed much; the same kind of snark that was deployed at the news of Olive Garden's imminent demise is now being hurled at Red Lobster.

Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.

Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer? Are they just good-hearted slobs? Can't they do math?

Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?

Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.

Red Lobster rose to success – 700 restaurants nationwide at its peak – by combining no-frills dining with powerful buying power, which it used to force discounts from seafood suppliers. In response, the seafood industry consolidated through a wave of mergers, turning into a cozy cartel that could resist the buyer power of Red Lobster and other major customers.

This was facilitated by conservation efforts that limited the total volume of biomass that fishers were allowed to extract, and allocated quotas to existing companies and individual fishermen. The costs of complying with this "catch management" system were high, punishingly so for small independents, bearably so for large conglomerates.

Competition from overseas fisheries drove consolidation further, as countries in the global south were blocked from implementing their own conservation efforts. US fisheries merged further, seeking economies of scale that would let them compete, largely by shafting fishermen and other suppliers. Today's Alaskan crab fishery is dominated by a four-company cartel; in the Pacific Northwest, most fish goes through a single intermediary, Pacific Seafood.

These dominant actors entered into illegal collusive arrangements with one another to rig their markets and further immiserate their suppliers, who filed antitrust suits accusing the companies of operating a monopsony (a market with a powerful buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with a powerful seller):

https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster in the midst of these fish wars, promising to right its ship. As Goldstein points out, that's the same promise they made when they bought Payless shoes, just before they destroyed the company and flogged it off to Alden Capital, the hedge fund that bought and destroyed dozens of America's most beloved newspapers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Under Golden Gate's management, Red Lobster saw its staffing levels slashed, so diners endured longer wait times to be seated and served. Then, in 2020, they sold the company to Thai Union, the company's largest supplier (a transaction Goldstein likens to a Walmart buyout of Procter and Gamble).

Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group. That brings us to today, with Thai Union having moved a gigantic amount of its own product through a failing, debt-loaded subsidiary, even as it lobbies for deregulation of American fisheries, which would let it and its lobbying partners drain American waters of the last of its depleted fish stocks.

Dayen's 2020 must-read book Monopolized describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

After deregulation allowed the pharma sector to consolidate, it acquired pricing power of hospitals, who found themselves gouged to the edge of bankruptcy on drug prices. Hospitals then merged into regional monopolies, which allowed them to resist pharma pricing power – and gouge health insurance companies, who saw the price of routine care explode. So the insurance companies gobbled each other up, too, leaving most of us with two or fewer choices for health insurance – even as insurance prices skyrocketed, and our benefits shrank.

Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions. That's because, lacking a regulator to consolidate patients' interests, and strong unions to consolidate workers' interests, patients and workers are easy pickings for those consolidated links in the health supply-chain.

That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain. Everything that hasn't consolidated is defenseless: diners, restaurant workers, fishermen, and the environment. We're all fucked.

Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices. These places are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society – and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places' failures as a kind of comeuppance that's all that's due to tacky joints that serve the working class.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates