One Piece Multi-Piece #9: Marineford (Part II - Post-War)

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.

When we last saw Luffy, he had just had his almost-life-ending mental breakdown after being hit with the full weight of accepting his brother, Ace's death, and throwing a quarter of Amazon Lily at another quarter of Amazon Lily (thereby destroying half of it because shonen superpowers and math).

The following episode transitions into a flashback to Luffy's childhood (aside from the previous flashbacks to Luffy's childhood that involved Garp trying to physically abuse the Piracy out of him with his "fists of love" because old men punching toddlers in the head is funny?); set ten years prior to Marineford, when Luffy has already accidentally eaten the Gum Gum fruit and been saved by Shanks, but beginning just before he is introduced to his future adopted older brother (and at a point where Luffy hasn't learned to use his powers effectively, resulting in him missing his target and knocking himself out on the rebound), the flashback tells of how Garp sent Luffy to be raised by a group of mountain bandits and their formidable matriarch, Dadan, who had already been tasked with raising Ace. At this point, Ace knows and despises his own birthright, and goes out of his way to make Luffy's life miserable (and that of anyone else who is or wants to be a Pirate), turning the beginning of this Grey Terminal mini-arc into a physical training montage for Luffy as he gets stranded in the forest trying to catch up with the older and more agile Ace. When he finally manages to catch Ace, he discovers the cutthroat scavengers' wasteland that is Grey Terminal (a suburban landfill where the High Town of the adjoining Goa Kingdom dumps its trash--including the human variety), and a runaway Goa noble named Sabo whom Ace hangs out and commits crimes with. The three of them soon become friends and found brothers when Luffy endures hours of torture without revealing the location of their Pirate Savings to a member of the Bluejam Pirates. The boys craft their own Jolly Roger, vowing to head out to sea when they've swindled enough capital to buy a ship, under the banner of the American Sign Language Pirates. I joke because it's just a skull and bones with ASL painted on it in primary colors, but it obviously stands for Ace, Sabo, and Luffy. Unfortunately, all three of them want to be captain, so they make a bet that whoever can kill the giant tiger in the forest first gets to be captain.

This brings them into contact with an old man made of eyebrows named Naguri, who has Conqueror's Haki (or Emperor's Haki, or "the Emperor's Spirit," depending on the episode and whether it's subbed or dubbed) and agrees to train Luffy to get him physically on par with Ace and Sabo. This amounts to the old martial arts movie standby of making him do menial labor (in this case, it's chopping wood like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, but offscreen instead of with a montage).

So, Luffy isn't any better at fighting or aiming his Gum Gum [insert firearm here] attacks, but he's physically stronger, which means he accidentally can punch himself (and Naguri) in the face harder than he could before.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the arrival of one of the Celestial Dragons (a.k.a. World Nobles), the Goa Kingdom aristocracy have hired the Bluejam Pirates to set incendiary and explosive devices all over Grey Terminal to be set off on an unusually windy day, trapping and incinerating all manner of trash because nobility was the real garbage all along.

On the day of the fire, things start to get interesting, as the majority of Grey Terminal's residents are rescued by...Dragon, Iva, and...Kuma?

There was a moment where things pulled focus to the dojo where Zoro grew up, and I thought, oh, fuck; are they going to pull another "these characters didn't know they knew each other all along!" like they did with Brook and Laboon?, but instead, Oda decided to make things genuinely interesting by revealing that Kuma was a Revolutionary working with Monkey D. Dragon and Iva all along. There's still that dramatic irony, six degrees of missed connections thing going on because of Dragon being Luffy's dad, but it didn't trigger the same negative response as when it happened in Thriller Bark.

The next day, the World Noble arrives just as Sabo is setting sail to run away from his shitty, sociopathic family, and straight up merc's Sabo's ship, leaving him presumed dead. However, there is enough dialogue and animation to suggest that Dragon saved Sabo's life, and we will see the boy again in the future, looking completely different. For now, though, we get a little more of a time lapse and some montage training as Ace and Luffy work through their shared loss and try to cooperate in taking down the giant tiger with their brother gone. Vowing to set sail when they come of age, as Sabo had, Ace and Luffy have trained for seven years, at which point Ace departs, leaving Luffy to get himself up to par with the beginning of One Piece over the next three years. With Luffy now setting sail on his own small boat (upon which rests a certain barrel, hinting that he won't make it very far before the first episode), a realization of the series' sense of time sets in. The Grey Terminal flashback is set ten years before Marineford. Ace trains for seven years after the "death" of Sabo, and Luffy trains for another three after that. Which means the past five hundred-three episodes, minus that decade of offscreen training that only lasted an episode, all took place in under a year. Let that sink in, okay...?

Back in the present, Luffy expresses sadness and shame that he ever thought he (who was unable to save Ace and Sabo or reconnect with his scattered crew) could be King Of the Pirates, as he sees himself as too weak to protect anyone (a stark contrast to his dialogue with Blueno in the Enies Lobby arc, where he gave his reasoning behind Gear Two). After losing a desperate, emotional fight to an equally injured Jinbei, Luffy expresses his desire to see his crew again, and perspectives begin to jump around: Shanks and the Whitebeard Pirates hold a funeral in the New World for Ace and Whitebeard, Garp visits Windmill Village (Luffy's hometown) where he comes to blows with a furious Dadan and offers to protect the village in Whitebeard's place, Luffy receives a training offer from Gol D. Roger's first mate, Rayleigh (whom we haven't seen since Sabaody, and who seems to have some history with the Amazons), there are flashes to the Supernova Rookies' adventures in the New World (where it's perfectly normal for any non-rain element to fall from the sky, including fire, lightning, and giant icicles), and we get continuations of the Friends' Whereabouts episodes where they have extreme reactions to the ever-changing news on the War Of the Best.

Nami winds up in Cloud Island jail when she tries to rob a bunch of absent-minded old weather wizards and fly to Sabaody on a craft she has no idea how to pilot.

Zoro comes to blows with a tribe of human-mimicking mandrils and seeks training from Hawkeye Mihawk (the Warlord who almost killed him and casually sliced a galleon in half back in East Blue), all the while being totally oblivious of Perona's developing tsundere feelings for him, reinforcing my previous declaration that they are my new favorite character dynamic.

Usopp has gotten fat from indulging in the ready-to-eat junk food that grows on the island where he's been stranded and fighting off carnivorous plants with the help of the beetle-armored hero, Heracles. In his desperate attempts to get off the island and reunite with the Straw Hats, he finds his path blocked by a pack of kaiju who were lured to the island (soon revealed to be a giant, Sea King-devouring carnivorous plant itself). Changing events lead Usopp to beg Heracles for training so he can turn all of his fat to muscle.

Sanji is still learning things about himself on Iva's Kamabakka Island when news of Ace's death comes to the Queendom, and things don't get any better for him when Iva herself arrives, showing Sanji just how physically, mentally, spiritually, and nutritionally outclassed he is compared to the entire Kamabakka population. Now, he must incapacitate every single one of them and retrieve their recipes so he can feed and fight himself stronger in preparation for the day when he reunites with the rest of the Straw Hats.

Chopper makes peace between the giant birds and the tribal stereotypes, getting one of the birds to fly him to Sabaody once he has studied every medicinal plant on the island where he is stranded, and learned organic chemistry from the stereotypes because they were secretly Wakanda all along.

After helping a group of Revolutionaries bring down the bridge-building Nazis, Robin accepts their help getting back to Sabaody on the condition that she comes with them to meet their leader. And you all know by now who the leader of the Revolutionaries is!

Franky overcomes being turned British because he'd been drinking tea instead of cola, and causes several legendary incidents on the departed Dr. Vegapunk's winter island (including literally nuking his own face off and surviving because shonen anime, cartoon logic, and cyborgs) in search of a ship that will get him back to Sabaody, ultimately deciding to upgrade himself and build his own ice-breaker...in a cave! With a box of scraps!

And finally (and most hilariously), Brook finds himself the de facto leader of a group of lazy Satanists who think he's the devil, and helps them do a Seven Samurai offscreen against a tribe of jocks with extra elbows. This so-called Long-Arm tribe then capture him as a sideshow attraction because he's still useless for anything that doesn't involve bone puns or women's underwear, and he decides to get stronger by doubling the number of songs he can play (so, now it's two), switching genres from sea shanties to heavy metal, and improving his body through the collective power of physics, geometry, and planking? Solid humor here, but it fails to distract from the fact that a normal, cowardly human with a slingshot who ate himself fat on a giant carnivorous flower's kaiju bait is more useful than a Devil Fruit skeleton with a sword.

What changes the Straw Hats' priorities from a quick reunion to rigorous training is that Luffy returns to Marineford, causes a silent ruckus during the ongoing repairs there with a smile on his face, and rings an important Marineford landmark called the Ox Bell to get the attention of the press and give a moment of silence in Ace's honor.

Speaking of Ace, one defining characteristic of his design is the misspelled tattoo of his name on his arm (reading ASCE, with the S crossed out). When we finally get a reveal of what the Straw Hats saw in the paper after Luffy's visit to Marineford, it turns out that Luffy had decorated his own arm with a similar tattoo, reading 3D2Y with the 3D crossed out, telling his crew that instead of reuniting at Sabaody immediately (originally three days from when the Sabaody arc began), they would meet up again after training for two years.

There are some other important tidbits, like Coby officially learning that he has Haki, the reveal of the World Elders (who express a distaste for "those D's," referring to Dragon, Garp, Luffy, Blackbeard, and any others we may encounter later), and a Warlord named Doflamingo Donquixote (who has puppeteering powers, was behind the trafficking operation on Sabaody, and looks like an evil Elton John) finally putting an end to Moria (so he's automatically my favorite One Piece villain now).

The Marineford arc concludes (for real) with Luffy beginning his training with Rayleigh by learning about the different types of Haki (and confirming nearly all of my speculations about it from previous arcs). This season finale wraps up with the first time I actually liked "We Are" as a theme song (because the Japanese version is more hype and visual accompaniment makes all the difference), and instead of the usual "To Be Continued," we get a screen that says "To the New World."

I need time to catch up with another arc, so the One Piece Multi-Piece will be going on a hiatus for a few months.

Call it a training hiatus if you like, but also 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.

To the New World!

I'm gonna be Master Of Tickets!