Loki Loki Literature Club
We're back! Yay! And what a chapter to come back on. We don't get this a lot in One Piece, but here we have a chapter where Luffy spends the bulk of it alone in a tense conversation with a powerful yet nebulous figure. A nebulous figure that picked a great way to get under Luffy's...sorry Loppy's skin here. This is such a cool moment in this series to me. Why?
Because it kinda feels like Loppy's on the other side of this than he'd usually be. We're in a country he already likes, someone they decided to chain up is trying to build a buddy so he can fuck shit up. But honestly Loki's kinda the rude little shit here while Luffy? Let's talk about Luffy here.
So let's consider the last three arcs and how they started. WCI the crew gets played by one of Big Mom's daughters. Wano you have a segment with many similarities but it's unwittingly finding one of the Akazaya Nine. Similar skillset but you start from neutral. The concepts there are put to an interesting test in Egghead and buddy you get suckered in. Now you're sitting here with a chained, Emperor-level threat who is probably just trying to get you to release him. Here, fun comparison:
See what I'm getting at here? Loki's about to find an in with you Loppy...did you learn the lesson from the two actresses? That some people are really good at hiding their true intentions, even from someone as perceptive as you? I'm not harboring any serious delusions you still smuggled someone out of Wano but there were still weird story beats and things like Academy kinda pulling the same trick with Kiku & Yamato, so I still have that feeling you could fit in somewhere. And we already identified potential with Shanks. Especially with the cover serial giving us a solid chance to line up Yamato's post-quest spur to Ringo with a little further into Elbaf.
If it all came together through Hajrudin at that point...that'd be fuckin cool because the Grand Fleet's update serial was rolling Act 1 of Wano. Which gets to my real point with all this. Luffy...bruh, please use your head. You have allies here. If Shanks was around the guy chained to the tree probably isn't even the best guy to ask about it and almost certainly isn't the only one because he didn't even bring it up!
Be calm, or you're going to walk right into another Egghead Incident you have nothing to do with.
Hey look, someone even got a haircut! There was other stuff this chapter. Oh my god this was sweetness. Brook did so well. Robin went back to her old bangs because of Saul who better not seriously fucking die right now. You are not about to Sunflower Samurai me here for our sweet sweet Nico Robin but you hurt me so so bad with Izo Oda...
You had that and a little advancement for the rest of the landing crew hiding from the New Giant Pirates. Which along with Loki mythos give this chapter a lot of dramatic irony. Love that shit. We'll surely see how these stories play out but I'm really interested in what decision Luffy makes here.
