One Piece Multi-Piece #15: Dressrosa Arc (Third Piece)
a.k.a. Master Of the Tickets,
Meister Of Anime.
Ahoy, Ticketholders!
Usopp in One Piece has gone on a huge journey, not just from Syrup Village in East Blue through the Grand Line insanity and being trapped on a giant carnivorous flower for two years, and now into the New World; but from being a liar and coward to just a coward, to a strategic coward and makeshift shipwright who wants to be a Brave Warrior Of the Sea, to someone who can stand toe-to-toe with Luffy, to a revolution-igniting superhero who can befriend giants and emotionally scar ghosts, to a man driven by survival to become the peak physical version of himself. His cowardice has always been a part of his character, but as the story has gone on, it's become less of a "this is this person's one defining trait" situation, and more of a...power-dampener for Eiichiro Oda-sensei to figure out ways to write Usopp as a character who is powerful in ways that don't require strength: using strategy, psychological warfare, ingenuity, resourcefulness, absurdity, and social capital to whittle down strong foes and endear himself to strong friends. Usopp has been my favorite Straw Hat (besides Luffy and Robin) since the very beginning.
But as of last week's crop of episodes, it seems Usopp has regressed back to having Why Does It Have To Be Me? Disease.
Another character who comes to mind as being rich in social capital is Buggy. Like Usopp, I didn't care for him in the beginning. But through unlikely friendships he made in Impel Down and the cult-like following he acquired during the early Marineford material, Buggy became one of the Seven Warlords. He was a villain, he lied, he let people believe what they wanted to believe, and he achieved success because of it.
Now, we get back to Usopp. On Green Bit, he managed to exploit the Tontatta's gullibility (a trait they probably share at the expense of Oda making a bilingual Gulliver's Travels pun?) and the conveniently-shaped helmet he's wearing this arc to convince them that he is a descendant of their legendary "Big People" hero, Nolan the Liar (a decent way of bringing the joke about Luffy confusing the two full-circle from the Skypeia preamble). And instead of keeping that ingenuity track going to the point that lies become truth through his actions (Usopp's purpose for joining the Straw Hats, for challenging himself as he has, and doing the things he has done so far, was to have true stories of his Pirate exploits to share with Miss Kaya when he returns home), the Dressrosa Arc focuses on how much Usopp is letting the pressure of maintaining his lie overwhelm him and how he didn't sign up for any of this (he literally did, almost six hundred seventy episodes ago) and wants to run away. He was once inspired by Giants to become more than he was, and now that he is the inspirational giant in comparison to those who believe in him, all he can think to do is run away and leave them to die. He literally had the solution to their problems in the palm of his hand at one point (a legally distinct Tabasco sauce pellet that looks like a grape because of the purple anime food trope and is the size of Usopp's Star ammo, so again, he could have just popped it into his Kabuto and shot it into Sugar's mouth, saving me a week of rage and the Tontatta hundreds of fictional near-deaths because almost no one actually dies in One Piece—autocorrect tried to brainrot me into picking Ohio, by the way), and said, "nah, I want you guys to do it instead...for your self-esteem."
He ultimately does come back to save the Tontatta after ignoring their many, many, many expressions of faith and pleas for help, and his intervention does lead to the use of the fake grape in emotionally scarring Sugar into unconsciousness, but like I said at the end of last week's review, common sense took an unnecessary backseat (and was shredded on the pavement when it fell out of the car at double the speed limit, metaphorically speaking) to unfunny, superficial, for-its-own-sake, subversive humor.
And because Buggy has achieved his goals for now, his character arc from prior story arcs is later foisted upon Pumpkin Usopp "the God" (so, is "Pumpkin" Usopp's last name?), and circumstances beyond his control result in physical harm and his...failure?
What's the message here?
Are we supposed to recognize Usopp's guilt over lying as a sign that he is a good person (who would abandon hundreds of people to enslavement and death out of selfish cowardice)? Or are we supposed to understand that committing to the lie unconditionally is how you achieve greatness? I mean, it seems to have worked out for the man destroying my country at the moment...right?
It's amazing what a little context and a week of simmering retrospection can do for my eloquence, because the above is what I wanted to say at the end of the previous One Piece Multi-Piece, but all I felt was "Usopp fucking sucks now, and I want him to die several horrible deaths while eating shit." I think I expressed myself far better here than there, and I'm as eager as anyone can be after watching what I saw last week to find out where this week's doubled dozen of Dressrosa derring-do dares to dally, dammit!
The kingdom-wide revolution doesn't last much longer, though, as we see Doflamingo's composure start to crack, and he traps the entirety of Dressrosa in a cage of razor thread, puppeteering some Marines and armed citizens to kill the others as he did to the former king, and to the Navy at the end of Punk Hazard. The only way to be set free, according to him, is to kill a Straw Hat, a member of the Revolutionary Army (because Sabo is there, and we find out that Robin knows him from her "Friends' Whereabouts" episodes, but may not have made the connection that Sabo and Luffy are sake brothers just yet), or a member of the old royal family.
So, while Luffy attempts to rescue Law from Doflamingo (after a crazy fight the two Warlords had earlier that destroyed half of Green Bit and pushed Law to his limits) and evade the criminal fodder that are trying to collect his bounty, the other Straw Hats and supporting characters fight their own battles, as is the style of One Piece arcs.
Apparently, the response to Usopp having Doflamingo's highest bounty was a misdirect, and so we get a thematic callback to arcs like Impel Down and Marineford, with the freed Coliseum participants (especially fanboy Bartolomeo and the arrogant Cavendish) choosing to put their grudges aside to support Luffy, and the freed Smile factory workers doing the same on God Usopp's behalf, which was nice even though most of them end up as fodder for the lesser Executives. Perhaps the most fun of these is the fight between Chin Jao and the old Super Sentai man whose one joke is teaching the children in the audience (of this attention span-defying series with murder, blood, existential horror, fanservice, PG-13 cursing, slavery, and sex crimes) about words that start with the letter G, like geriatric, goon, grandpa, gangster, and Godzilla.
Zoro fights the Donquixote Family's Logia-powered Spade Executive, who can reshape entire land masses with his stone-manipulation abilities and his one joke is being a huge guy with a squeaky voice who wants to murder anyone who draws attention to it. Zoro is cool here, using psychological tactics in addition to his sword skills. And like with Franky during his fight (which I will get out of the way shortly), the score brings back his pre-skip individual bumper theme at a key moment, and I appreciated the hell out of it. I don't recall if any of the other Straw Hats' themes returned just yet, but Zoro's and Franky's stood out to me.
As for Franky's fight, he hugs and kisses a woman without her consent and spends far too long German suplexing and punching it out with the macho incel man-baby pervert, Señor Pink, and I eventually just started skipping his cutaways altogether because there were better narrative ways to fill my eyeballs and earholes.
Things like Kyros reuniting with Rebecca on Flower Hill and saving her from a repeat of the past at Diamante's hand (the Diamond Executive who shot and killed her mother). Things like Sabo and Fujitora (the blind Navy Admiral with gravity powers) coming to very destructive blows as they fight casually (recall how when Akainu and Aokiji fought seriously, they rewrote the ecosystem of an entire island prior to the last arc) to learn if each other's convictions align or not. Fujitora is my new favorite Navy character, and even with how poorly Sabo was introduced as a tournament replacement for Luffy, he's a badass here, thanks in part to Bosch's dub performance.
Speaking of better things to watch and characters redeeming their shitty writing, when Luffy and a freed Law (Doflamingo had him in Sea Prism handcuffs and part of this batch of episodes' yap & run action was about getting the key to Luffy before they reached the villain for their literal runback fight) were almost to the top of Doflamingo's...restructured tower palace (because a multi-ranked concurrent battle structure that gives everyone something to do while Luffy takes a direct course toward launching the source of the conflict into the Endless Vearth with his fists is also a staple of One Piece arcs, and I've referred to such a plot structure as a "tower entry" format in the past even when the literal structure in question isn't a tower, which it very much is here), the reveal came that Sugar was conscious again (not much of a reveal, considering Robin, Bartolomeo, and Cavendish spent two episodes fighting giant zombie nutcracker toys beforehand, but then again, Dressrosa has been a far from masterful arc at paying off its twists with any kind of timing or impact, but can be a powerhouse of emotion more often than not), and Usopp got his own runback opportunity with the help of former Princess Viola (the flamenco dancer who seduced Sanji in the First Piece of Dressrosa) and that missing samurai Kin'Emon has been loudly searching for.
I'll get back to Usopp in a minute, but I need to detour for a look at said samurai. His name is Kanjuro, he looks like a dour kabuki performer, and he has Devil Fruit powers that let him give life to anything he draws...except that his one joke is he's a terrible artist and everyone shames him for it; isn't that funny.
Anyway, using Kanjuro's...skill, Usopp has an image of his own face 3D-printed and wraps it up in a huge Green Star ammo ball (along with improvised, time-release, dual thruster rocket technology he made himself using incendiary Star ammo), then launches it with pinpoint accuracy from a distance that requires two-stage propulsion to clear, using Princess Viola's Glare-Glare powers (which probably could have just been a high-level affinity for Observation Haki if it wasn't a Devil Fruit, but maybe she's going to have a greater role later in the series?) as an enhanced imagery targeting system. This is the kind of Usopp writing I love, and the pressure of the situation helps him unlock his own flavor of Observation Haki that functions like a mix of ki-sense and Predator vision. There may be a prognostication component to it, too (that's the formula of Copium I'm choosing to take, anyway), as the episode focusing on this features an All Is Lost fakeout where Usopp's grip slips, he misses his shot, and Sugar turns Luffy into a toy. It's cheap, it's yet another thing this arc ruins the impact of through odd timing and editing, it didn't need to exist, and if it was Usopp foreseeing a bad future, I don't know how it would be possible to predict an event that would make you forget itself. However, Usopp does hit his mark as previously stated, traumatizing the chuni sociopath into unconsciousness yet again, redeeming himself, earning a new power, and giving his Captain and ally the opening they need to get to their fight with Doflamingo. So hype!
And the fight is, too. Doflamingo's mind games and power set (everything you can imagine being done with string, thread, wires, etc., taken beyond its logical limits, plus Armament Haki), clashing with what we've seen from Luffy and Law thus far, is rich in emotion and a feast for the eyes.
Of course, none of the fights mentioned here (nor any of the ones I neglected because of how huge and dense this arc is) are going to conclude anytime soon, it'll be interesting to see how Luffy and the others will get to Zou without the Sunny (I literally forgot that half of the Crew left last week as I was writing this), and it wouldn't be the Dressrosa Arc if there weren't at least one more reveal thrown in to disrupt the flow of the action so the characters can learn something the audience knew six dozen episodes ago: Doflamingo reveals to Luffy that the Donquixote Family are Celestial Dragons, which Law already knew and didn't bother to share earlier because "our alliance is dissolved and we're enemies now, even though we still both want the same thing," or some such bullshit.
And speaking of Trafalgar Law and reveals, there are two more regarding him, which seem like they're going to be handled with narrative competency in the future. First is the true, full potential of his Devil Fruit. It's revealed that the Op-Op Fruit has a secret technique that allows the user to grant immortality at the immediate cost of their own life. Considering that normal uses of the Devil Fruit's Room space include swapping souls, removing organs and diseases, disassembling and reconfiguring conscious living bodies, teleportation, and the general warping of biological and non-biological reality, and considering that Devil Fruits reappear when the previous user dies, it's easy to assume the technique might have some reincarnation aspect to it, or that the surgery might entail transferring the Devil Fruit itself to a new user. This, of course, begs the question of whether Law aided Blackbeard in acquiring Whitebeard's power, and why. Then there's the Op-Op Fruit's connection to the Celestial Dragon homeland of Marie Geoise to consider, as it's said to be tied to a national treasure there that's strongly suggested to be something like the three God weapons mentioned in the poneglyphs. Huge long-term implications with this one, obviously.
The other revelation with Law (and Doflamingo, really) is more immediate and personal, and regards the four Suit Executive seats. We've seen that the Spade, Diamond, and Club seats are filled by Pica (the Stone-Stone Chad with the squeaky voice), Diamante, and Trebol (the disgusting, derpy snot guy who guarded Sugar), respectively, and it was mentioned offhand earlier in the arc that Vergo (the Marine double-agent with food stuck to his face who died when Caesar's Punk Hazard lab exploded) occupied the Heart seat. But before him? There was the aptly named Corazon, Doflamingo's younger brother, whom he killed because Donquixote Doflamingo is a heartless (appropriate puns!), anarchistic, nihilistic, Celestial Dragon asshole who's begging for a beating. But we won't learn anything more about Donquixote Corazon until Law has a flashback...next time!
Oh, and I should also mention that once One Piece hits Episode 687 (where Sabo and Fujitora start fighting), the OP changes to "Hard Knock Days" by GENERATIONS From EXILE TRIBE.
The accompanying animation is more in line with the events and character designs we've seen in the arc so far, and it's more of a driving rock banger than the uplifting pop track we got before, but still brings the hype.
Until next week, please Stay Tuned for The Best Of Zenescope and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. Also, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because the real paying the bills is not the Crew we met along the way, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
23
Master Of Tickets,
Piece,
Out!
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