User blog:Xilinoc/Ch. 835 - Soul Queen

Might as well take a gander at this infodump of a chapter while I'm waiting for detergent.

So after yet another color spread, we kick off with a somewhat ominous page showing how people living in Totland are forced to choose between "life" or "leave" every six months, with those choosing "life" getting a little orb of something scooped out of their bodies. Looks kinda like the healing stuff Mansherry can make.

Then, we finally get an explanation on what's going down in the Forest Sauvage: when Luffy and his gang confronted Bruhaha, she helpfully revealed that she was behind all the shenanigans from a few weeks ago because she's a Mirror Human who ate the Mirror-Mirror Fruit. Looks like I was totally right. Apparently, this lets her not only copy other people and landscapes, but also reflect attacks and trap people in a mirror world. Jesus, I was just memeing with the JoJo reference earlier, but she's basically Paper Moon King, Gold Experience, and Man in the Mirror all in one. This is a pretty versatile fruit, albeit one that can't really harm opponents on its own, so I'm definitely interested in seeing how Bruhaha's gonna go down.

After Carrot gets trapped and Chopper goes Monster Point to buy her time to escape, the real Nami got caught up in Luffy's clone roundup from the last chapter because hilarity. With the situation explained to him, Luffy turns to the strange man in the ground and asks him if he knows what's up with the forest itself. Here we get a second Devil Fruit reveal, and one that's been a fair amount of time coming: Big Mom has the powers of the Soul-Soul Fruit, which let her take soul/lifespan from people and redistribute it to inanimate objects and the like. So much for that acid DF theory. Using this power, Big Mom essentially extorts people to live under her protection in Totland by taking a month off their life every six months if they don't want to leave. What a dastardly business model. Oh, and the animated objects are called Homies for whatever reason.

But how does Ground Man know all this? Why, he was Big Mom's husbando, maybe even his first, and was discarded after giving her two kids. As if on cue, yet another one of the Charlotte kids (named Cracker because THEME NAMING) comes along and pulls Ground Man out of his precious ground (RIP OTP), revealing that he's just as misshapen as Big Mom herself, before berating him for giving away sensitive intel so willingly. However, Ground Man's only response is to ask about Chiffon from the last chapter and...Lola, who is apparently another Charlotte in the most shocking plot twist since Naruto becoming Hokage.

Neato chapter this week. I'm glad the forest situation was explained fairly soon after its introduction, and with such an interesting Devil Fruit being behind it no less. The soul thing for Big Mom was something I think a lot of people saw coming, but the extortion aspect was a neat twist that fits perfectly with her profit-driven and often crazy mindset. Of course, Lola's bound to become relevant to the arc plot somehow as like the only Charlotte kid that Big Mom actually likes, but it's cool to see Thriller Bark being relevant again.

Thoughts on this chapter? 5/5 would read while buried in ground 4/5 would read while trapped in mirror wārudo 3/5 might read while paying part of soul to live 2/5 would only read if other option is banging Big Mom 1/5 Stāēīōūw