One Piece Multi-Piece #3: Sky Island & The Foxy Pirates

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets

I have nothing clever to say, nothing personal to share, and I'm on a crunch because I've been sleeping almost as much as Zoro and Luffy combined, now that I don't have any academic responsibilities other than eventually paying back my loans. So let's continue our search for the One Piece and set sail for this issue by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and joining my Crew on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest snail transmissions of news on my content.

There was an entire season of filler after the Baroque Works and Alabasta material, but the story proper resumes with the Straw Hat Crew having fled from the Marines and getting lost when Nami's wrist-mounted Log Pose begins pointing straight up, as if the next island on their journey through the Grand Line is in the sky. Things get even stranger when a wrecked ship almost lands on the Going Merry--from out of the sky--and they have to outsmart and fight a monkey-man and his crew for salvage rights. A successful stealth salvage operation later (if you don't count the three strongest characters and the monkey-captain getting eaten by a giant turtle), the Straw Hats head to the nearby pirate haven, Mock Town, on the island of Jaya, where Luffy, Zoro, and Nami show admirable restraint despite being ridiculed and physically abused (because Mock Town, get it?) for their current ambition to find the Sky Island, Skypeia. Luffy also has an interesting encounter with a boisterous man who really likes pie and seems to share his dreams.

After the Straw Hats leave in search of a man who might be able to help them get to Skypeia, several of the pirates who had been wreaking havoc in Mock Town's side streets come to join the boisterous man, and it is revealed that he is Blackbeard, the fugitive pirate whom Ace was looking for in the last arc.

The Straw Hats' troubles with salvage monkeys isn't over, however, as they soon get in a fight with the other salvager's brother on the way to meeting with someone named Montblanc Cricket, a descendant of Montblanc Nolan, an infamous "liar" who claimed to have discovered a lost city of gold on Jaya and was executed when his king journeyed to the island and found that the city did not exist (or vanished?). We get some fun, "are you sure you aren't talking about Usopp?" gags with Luffy out of this, which I feel dumb for not expecting ahead of time, but that just adds to the strength of the joke as far as I'm concerned.

Some exposition and rushed modifications to the Going Merry later (it turns out that the salvage brothers work for Cricket, looking for scuttled artifacts of the lost city, and they hurry to make the Merry flight-worthy before either Nami's Log Pose locks onto a different island or they miss the eruption of a massive geyser-current called the Knock-Up Stream), and also some comedic padding while they look for a Southbird (and solid slapstick that continues Luffy's...inconsistent track record of interacting with the local wildlife that began with Laboon and the Drum Island rabbit monsters, and has just gone downhill from there in the funniest way possible) to guide them to the Knock-Up Stream, the Straw Hats make it to the eruption point on time and somehow survive being thrust thousands of miles into the sky. Also, because shonen protagonists, they adjust immediately to the thinner atmosphere.

The Skypeia Arc begins in earnest here, tackling controversial issues like racial caricatures, the theft of native land (there is an indigenous-inspired group called the Shandorians/Shandians who seek to reclaim their El Dorado-esque homeland from Skypeia), and the societal ills of organized religion (a man with lightning Devil Fruit powers, who looks like Eminem and Geese Howard had a baby, used his power to overthrow Skypeia's previous leader and declare himself God--a wrathful one at that--so he can build a flying ark, steal the Shandorians' lost riches, and smite the entire city on his way to the Fairy/Endless Vearth, which is either a mythical mass of solid land encircling the world like an atmosphere, or it's just the moon, depending on the translation).

Eneru (the aforementioned, slim and shady goose god with electricity powers, voiced by J. Michael Tatum, Klein the Butler in RWBY, speedster Iida in My Hero Academia, and several voice roles for the Dragon Ball and A Certain franchises), his four Priests, and a few other characters have an ability they call Mantra, which is kind of like a buffed ki sense from Dragon Ball, but also has predictive capabilities. It will make a surprise return in a future arc. Keeping with the religious connotations of the arc, Skypeia is a city made of solidified clouds, and all of its citizens have wings and halos (including the Shandorians for reasons that will be confusing after later reveals, and it's never stated whether they are biological extremities or decorative costuming) to look like angels.

As with the Grand Line, Skypeia also introduces some new tech in the Dials: spiral shell objects that can replicate most real-world modern--for the late 90s and early 2000s--technology, such as jet engines, kinetic weaponry, and media, elemental, and sensory storage. I think Dials are incredibly inventive and cool, even though real world technology has surpassed them many magnitudes over. There's just something whimsical and magical, yet plausible, about them that I like.

As for the Straw Hats, it's slightly different but more of the same as they befriend some locals and piss off the authorities, the natives, and the man in charge, but for once, it's Nami who ends up going off on her own and starting trouble by riding a Dial-powered jet ski called a Waver to Upper Yard (the only patch of land--Vearth, in Skypeian vernacular--on the Sky Island, which makes it rare, sacred ground that only God--as it turns out, this is just a leadership title--and his Priests are allowed to set foot on). Many goofy but high stakes fights (some of which involve Zoro pulling a new projectile slash out of his ass--take that as a statement of "backed into a corner" writing, not literally--called the Caliber Phoenix), territorial disputes with the Shandorians, cool platforming sections in the giant trees of Upper Yard, flashbacks, and archaeological discoveries later (Nico Robin is into history, remember?), we learn that Upper Yard is the missing piece of Jaya where Nolan the "Liar" met with the early Shandorians in the City Of Gold.

Even cooler, Luffy takes his strategic fighting to the next level against Eneru by taking advantage of his rubber physiology and turning his brain off in a sort of Drunken Fist counter to Eneru's Mantra ability. The final confrontation aboard Eneru's ark for control of the Golden Bell of Shandora (which, it turns out, was embedded with another Poneglyph and has some footnotes indicating that Gold D. Roger could read and write the ancient language as well) is epic and satisfying.

Somewhere in there, Usopp awakens to find a mysterious figure restoring the Going Merry to its original, flightless state. This will be important in a future arc as well.

But it also means that, in order to return to the sea (thousands of miles below Skypeia, remember?), they have to take a parachute octopus back to the surface because One Piece.

After more filler, there's an arc of canon filler (it was apparently in the manga, but has that "be weird but end where you left off before" feeling to it) where the Straw Hats have to beat Pimp Waluigi, Bondage Donkey Kong #3, and their massive pirate crew at Mario Party: Squid Game Edition. It's purely comic relief (including a final boxing match where Luffy puts on a Blaxploitation wig, talks jive, and dresses like a Hajime no Ippo reference), the stakes are ultimately non-existent, and Foxy (the Waluigi pirate captain) is never seen or mentioned in canon again after this (I hope). There's a weak, "get to know the locals" subplot where hopes and dreams turn every plant and animal on Long Ring Long Land into a stretched-out version of the norm and the Straw Hats accidentally reunite an old man on stilts with his son who got kidnapped by a mooooooole or something. It's stupid and the arc where things "really get good" is coming up in the next part.

But first, after finding happiness and her place on the Straw Hat Crew, and uncovering new information about the poneglyphs on Skypeia, Robin is unexpectedly shaken by a face from her past: a lazy but terrifyingly strong Marine Admiral with ice powers named Aokiji who has come to apprehend her. He easily defeats Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro all at once, but lets them go with a warning as payback for neutralizing Crocodile in Alabasta. Unfortunately, this ominous feeling will weigh on Robin's mind into the next arc.

For now, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and join my Crew on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest snail transmissions of news on my content.

In the next One Piece Multi-Piece, Robin's past comes back to bite her in the arcs where (aside from Arlong Park, Alabasta, and Skypeia) things really get good.

I'm gonna be Master of the Tickets!