One Piece Multi-Piece #8: Marineford (Part I)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. Master of Tickets

Before we set sail for this epic issue of the One Piece Multi-Piece, please chart a course 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.

The Marineford arc is an overinflated spectacle of a mess that begins with the news that Ace isn't Luffy's biological brother (obvious, considering they have different last names, but also not obvious because Ace said he disowned his father and took his mother's maiden name). The cool part of the reveal is that Ace's mother, Portgas D. Rouge, was secretly romantically involved with Gol D. Roger, meaning that all this time, Ace's father was the King of the Pirates!

Now, in past issues of the Multi-Piece, I have gone back and forth between calling him Gold Roger, Gold D. Roger, and Gol D. Roger. It's interesting to note here that the characters in One Piece most often refer to him as Gold Roger (even the narrator), but those in the know, or who have incredible power, refer to him correctly as Gol D. Roger, almost as if a sheer act of will (perhaps a "Will of D"? Or maybe Haki? It's too soon to know for sure because there's still a long way for me to go) has made the average person forget his real name. There have clearly been other characters with the D. initial who know of its significance and are still referred to with it in their names (like Luffy, Garp, Dragon, Saul, Ace, and the late? Rouge), but there's enough in the early Marineford episodes to back up my hypothetical so far.

We also learn, as Whitebeard's fleet attacks Marineford and the incident is broadcast to Sabaody, that the Supernova rookies aren't dead after all. But then Luffy and his Suicide Squad crew from Impel Down literally crash the party, and it devolves into twenty episodes of that Looney Tunes gag where the weak comic relief picks a fight with the super-strong antagonist and keeps walking offscreen to get his ass kicked: Luffy runs toward the scaffold where Ace is set to be beheaded, some high-ranking Marine knocks him back or stalls him, he gets up and keeps going, lather, rinse, repeat for ten fucking hours straight while rubble and Pirate and Marine fodder fly every which way. There is an attempt to add variety and diversion with cutaways to Buggy's prison cult leader shenanigans and Hancock playing both sides to keep her Warlord status while ensuring that her oblivious, loud-mouthed crush succeeds at rescuing Ace, and the interactions between Luffy, his former enemies, and his new, tenuous allies, the Whitebeard Pirates, continues to be interesting. It's even impressive how many unique character designs Oda manages to pack into this arc. But it still starts with twenty episodes of Luffy taking ten hours to watch Sixty Minutes because he's getting his ass kicked by that Paula Abdul song with the rapping cartoon cat.

When opposites finally stop attracting and Luffy can make progress by inadvertently using Haki (re-dubbed here as "The Emperor's Spirit" for some stupid reason) on the entirety of the Marine forces, his path is blocked once more; this time, it's Grandpa Garp. This makes things uninteresting from a combat standpoint but thematically important for showing Luffy's growth as a character because he goes into Second Gear and non-lethally one-shots Garp, finally reaching Ace and freeing him with the help of a wax key from the crafty Mister Three.

After the brothers make their way back through the carnage and the Marines shift focus to taking down Whitebeard, though, they are intercepted by a Lava-powered admiral named Akainu who makes most of the previous twenty episodes irrelevant because, while elemental ("Logia-Type") Devil Fruit users are pretty much invincible, Akainu has "power so hot it can burn even fire," and that includes punching a giant hole through Ace's chest while Luffy watches the remains of his brother's necklace bounce around in slow motion like a Martha Wayne reference.

Portgas D. Ace, formerly Gol D. Ace, is dead. And after all the time and effort wasted on rescuing him (on both sides of the screen), I hate it. I'm not sad and broken like Luffy, or filled with murderous wrath like Garp and Whitebeard. I just straight up hate Ace's death, and the arc leading up to it, for making Alabasta, Enies Lobby, and Impel Down (three of my favorite arcs so far, all of which had some focus on Ace) into retroactive wastes of my fucking time, as well as making the waste of time that is the beginning of Marineford into a meta-waste of my fucking time.

But I also understand its narrative purpose (besides serving as a source of many flashbacks to dump personal lore on the audience about Luffy's childhood and Ace's search for family and a reason to exist). Ace is Luffy's final childhood crutch: a big brother to protect him. If Luffy were to succeed and have Ace join him (or Ace continued to wander the seas alone), there would always be that lingering dependency to hold Luffy back, and his shonen protagonist status would come to feel unearned. Since Sabaody changed the game, One Piece has been about Luffy growing as a leader and a solo act, showing that he doesn't necessarily need others to achieve his dream, but he wants them, and has the ability to gather and lead them no matter the circumstances. And as cool as Ace is, his presence would passively hinder that going forward.

Next come a rapid-fire series of events as the massive, macho, tremor-powered Whitebeard avenges Ace's death by punching Akainu so hard that he reduces Marineford to rubble and sends the magma-powered Admiral plummeting to the bottom of the ocean...maybe. Then Blackbeard shows up and reveals that killing one of Whitebeard's crew to get his darkness powers, defeating Ace, and breaking into Impel Down were all parts of his grand plan to do...something, something, King Of the Pirates, I guess.

In the course of the battle with Marine headquarters and the Blackbeard Pirates, Whitebeard succumbs to the cumulative effects of over five hundred wounds and dies on his feet, his back unmarred by retreat, like the gigantic badass pirate that he is. In his dying moments, however, we get a flashback to a friendly parlay with Gol D. Roger, wherein the then-future King Of the Pirates begins to tell Whitebeard the old legend behind the D initial (but the flashback ends before the story can begin) and name-drops a place called Raftel. This is interesting because Whitebeard's dying words are to tell Blackbeard (whose real name is Marshall D. Teach, by the way) that he's not the one Roger was waiting for, and to shout over the Transponder Snail broadcast that the One Piece is real. So, wherever Raftel is, I'm betting my Berries that it's the location of the One Piece.

Now, with Ace and Whitebeard dead, Blackbeard makes his scheme known (kind of) when he covers the statuesque corpse of Whitebeard with a black sheet, steps beneath it, and later emerges like a morbid David Copperfield, revealing that he now has Whitebeard's Tremor powers in addition to his own Darkness powers (which is supposedly impossible, as a few bystanders state that eating more than one Devil Fruit will make a person's body explode).

As Blackbeard uses his combined powers to further pulverize Navy HQ and turn the frozen sea into a collaboration between Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, and M.C. Escher, the so-called "War Of the Best" whips into a frenzy of bloodlust and needless tragedy on both sides, leading to one hell of a reveal about Coby (yeah, he and Helmeppo have been here the whole time...): that he has the same kind of Haki--or rather, Mantra--as Aisa, a Shandian child who was an important supporting character in the Skypeia arc. Overwhelmed by the collective bloodlust of the Marines and Pirates, and the massive-and-growing body count, Coby attempts to put a stop to the bloodshed and is almost killed by Akainu...until mother-fucking SHANKS rolls up and casually blocks the Admiral's lava punch, saving Coby's life and convincing everyone to stand down.

Though this is far from the only wow moment in Marineford, it is the only one, aside from Ace's lineage reveal and Whitebeard's flashback and final words, that made me pop off. Shanks showing up is this arc's Aokiji swerve, its Kuma drop; the moment that made Marineford worth watching.

And we're not done yet!

Meanwhile to all of this spectacle and carnage, Buggy gets a funny reunion with Shanks and winds up accidentally saving Luffy and Jinbei (a Fishman and former Warlord whom Ace befriended and Luffy rescued in Impel Down) with the help of Crocodile, after they got perforated by Akainu because putting large, cauterized holes in people is his passion, I guess.

Throw in the sudden arrival of Pirate doctor Trafalgar Law (who lives in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, and was one of the Supernova rookies who got handed back in Sabaody) to somehow fix two people with lava floes for chests even though we already saw that wound kill two other, much stronger people, and Hancock offering Amazon Lily as a refuge for Luffy and Jinbei to recover, and I am back on board with this arc.

But why did it have to take half of the arc (and some moments that, while cool, are still contrived, "help me; I'm a writer trapped in a corner!" bullshit) to make me feel that way?

Once we get away from the spectacle, there is some admirably handled commentary on the polar morality of revisionist history and war (i.e.: treating "the bad guys" as generally inhuman, when, with a few notable exceptions from our own history, they are just as flawed and human and misguided by their views as the rest of us), the shortsighted nature of band-aid solutions (civilians thinking that Ace and Whitebeard being dead just magically erased all Pirates, even though Whitebeard was a peacekeeper and protector who held back lesser Pirate threats), and the destructive nature of grief (Luffy eventually awakens back on Amazon Lily, still so traumatized by Ace's death that he thinks for an instant that he dreamed the last two arcs, and when reality sets in, he risks re-injuring and killing himself by going on a rampage that destroys half of the island).

The Marineford arc as a collection of episodes is far from over at this point, but it feels like a good place to stop the review, as a new chapter in Luffy's story, and a resolution for the rest of his scattered crew, is about to begin, so Stay Tuned for more to come, and please stay on course 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!