One Piece Multi-Piece #6: Island Of Women

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master Of Tickets

I'm going to be honest here; I originally had two arcs worth of coverage here, but because I'm getting close to the end of my draft backlog for the One Piece Multi-Piece and the Marineford arc is so long (sixty episodes!), I'm putting a little Gum-Gum on things and stretching my content so I can catch up with the series and keep up with my Alien April reviews.

As always, please 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.

I keep forgetting to mention important things, which shouldn't come as a surprise because of how massive and lore-dense One Piece is, but this is a big one.
In addition to Devil Fruits (don't get me started on the fact that there are types and models to these awesomely damned things), Sea Prism Stones, Dials, solidified clouds, Poneglyphs, Rain Powder, ancient weapons, the Six Powers, Transponder Snails, Log Poses, and enough other weird gadgets, characters, and techniques for a Buggy-themed ICP cover band to write a lifetime of "Miracles" parodies, there is also a force (maybe capitalize the F?) called Haki.
Haki is One Piece's answer to ki, hamon, spiritual pressure, etc.; basically a life energy that varies in amount and strength from person to person, if it is strong enough and/or focused enough, it can make people sick, knock them unconscious, manipulate their will, or be infused into weapons to increase their effectiveness. There are probably earlier instances (like when Blackbeard freaked our Luffy back in Mock Town), but the first mention of it that I can remember was when Shanks knocked out half of Whitebeard's crew just by showing up for their meeting in the Enies Lobby arc. Luffy activated it twice during the Sabaody Archipelago arc (stopping Masked Duval's bull, and knocking out the audience at the human auction) without knowing what it was or how to trigger it. Kind of interesting that the author would introduce a new battle concept in the arc where the main characters (and because it's always a good idea to give the villains a prison yard flex moment for hype purposes, the other nine strongest Pirates in the Four Blues) get killed.

Now, we all "know" the Straw Hats aren't dead because of the little dialogue hints and the fact that we're nowhere near halfway done catching up with this monster series (also I have at least one more arc of recap reviews written for you beyond this post), so let's dispense with the preamble and find out what happens next!

What happened is that before Kuma hits people with his Paw-Paw strike, he often asks them about their ideal vacation spot. Sometimes the destination turns out to be more of a Monkey’s Paw than a bear paw, and the physics of how people actually survive his strikes boil down to "it's a cartoon," but Kuma can control where he sends people, and swat them there at super-sonic speeds without crushing them into gory pancakes in the process.

We get little anime canon episodes throughout these next two arcs called "The Friends' Whereabouts," that have Franky getting repaired by Dr. Vegapunk (the mind behind the Pacifista program, whom Dr. Hogback name-dropped in Thriller Bark), Robin battling the forces of a Communist/Nazi allegory nation (and showing her growth as a character from when she was a reviled and betrayed child on the run) in a distinctly different animation style that has a foggy, retro fluidity, Usopp battling giant plant monsters (which I watched as little of as possible for obvious phobia-related reasons) with a fellow masked Brave Warrior, Chopper playing doctor to some unruly giant birds while poorly-aged tribal native stereotypes try to eat him, Nami learning weather "magic" from an eccentric cloud island scientist, Zoro getting lost and tortured in a creepy castle by Perona (whom I never thought I would be happy to see again, but this was among my favorite character dynamics in this "new era" of One Piece), and Sanji...learning things about himself...?...on an LGBTQ+ island. These little catch-up stories are fun, make me want to stay invested in the narrative, and use character-appropriate bumpers for once. But until I get to a point in the story that tells me otherwise, they all end on cliffhangers, and that makes me mad!

What doesn't make me mad is the focus on Luffy as he lands in a paw-shaped crater on Amazon Lily for the Island Of Women arc. Comedy and Japravity ensue as he ends up unconscious and covered in mushrooms, the locals (all female warriors because Amazons) don't know what a man is, and they spend an uncomfortable amount of time trying to extract one last mushroom from "her" body, if you know what I mean. Thankfully, this doesn't veer hard into harem territory because men are either killed on sight or imprisoned and defeated in trial by combat. But because Luffy is Luffy and male protagonists tend to have a certain effect on the opposite sex, his kind nature and single-minded determination to reunite with his crew (also his previously established tendency to crash into places unexpectedly and learn people's secrets by accident) wins over a few of the warrior women. Chief among these (literally because she's the queen of the island) is Boa Hancock, a woman who, along with two others, was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and force-fed Devil Fruit. Her two "sisters" were turned into Gorgons, and Hancock herself was given the power to seduce anyone and turn them to stone. As slaves, they were branded (something that the three women would craft into "the curse of Medusa's eyes," a legend to conceal their past of servitude and enhance their authority when Hancock took over as queen), and it turns out that many of the Fishmen were also enslaved at that time, and would later brand a sun logo over it (or in Hatchan's case, wear the sun brand as a mark of solidarity, and this is an interesting parallel to how Nami mutilated her Arlong tattoo and later replaced it with the pinwheel/tangerine mark she wears now).

Because of her past, Hancock (because a character named Gang Bang was too subtle, I guess?) hates men and sees everyone as so far beneath her that she literally bends over backwards to look down on them. Her Devil Fruit powers don't help with genuine personal connections, either. That is, until she tries to seduce and petrify Luffy...and it doesn't work.

Thinking that her feelings for him are poison and he could pose a threat to her, she sentences Luffy to a public fight to the death with the Gorgon Sisters, who, like the rest of the Amazon Lily elites (most of whom were petrified for helping Luffy earlier in the arc) use Haki to enhance their physical strength (could the Six Powers be Haki?) and weapons. But most interesting of all, they can predict Luffy's movements, which means Mantra (that predictive life-sense ability from Skypeia) is Haki!

Public perception of Luffy begins to change, however, when he starts pausing the fight to move the petrified women out of harm's way, leaps onto one of the Sisters' back to cover her brand and protect the audience from the "curse," and when given the choice between a ship to find his crew or asking Hancock to de-petrify her subjects, he shocks her by choosing the latter. Luffy, ladies and gentlemen!

As he is about to leave on Hancock's ship, though, she falls ill with a bad case of Valentine's Disease and Luffy learns of his brother's defeat and impending execution. So they team up using Hancock's status as a Warlord as a pretense to sneak Luffy into Impel Down to rescue Ace while she half-heartedly joins the brewing war with Whitebeard.

So please set a course for next Monday's One Piece Multi-Piece 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.

I'm gonna be Master Of Tickets!