User blog:JustSomeDude.../790 & 791 - Break

As some of you may know, I've spent the past couple weeks away working and the like. I was actually so busy during my break, that I actually forgot One Piece existed. When I actually got an hour to read the two chapters I had missed, I felt like I needed to write up a blog after my break.

The first thing I want to talk about is obviously, Luffy's defeat of ol' Doffy. Back when Luffy first used gear 4, I was actually unimpressed with Doffy's strength. It had seemed like a man so powerful and feared as Doffy was getting fucked in every way possible. It felt like we had yet to see his most powerful form. 790 fixed that. We saw him turn entire sections of the city into Haki-tiped strings, which still managed to pierce Luffy who was using Haki himself.

But there was one HUGE thing in this chapter that I'm not sure anyone else really noted: Luffy managed to break Doffy's strings. Why is that so important? Because nobody else has done it before. Even Doffy was completely shocked by this development. Law never did it, Zoro never did it, Crocodile never did it, Moriah never did it, Jozu never did it, Smoker never did it, and Kuzan never did it. Not even Issho, a marine Admiral was able to cut the birdcage. The closest I know of was Abudullah and Jeet, but under closer inspection, they only unraveled Doffy's string clone, and never cut the string. Only Monkey D. Luffy, "God's Natural Enemy" was strong enough to break the strings of the "Heavenly Demon".

Doffy is also the biggest enemy Luffy has ever faced, and the aftermath of his defeat will send shockwaves around the world. The collapse of Joker's vast criminal network will create great change, as everyone from countries to Yonko used it to gain power. Doffy's own strength was enough that the Marines sent Rosinante to keep tabs on Doffy, just to prevent him from going on a rampage, knowing that they could not just defeat him outright. Doffy has Haoshoku Haki, an important thing that the WG always takes note of. Luffy's defeat of Doffy was also incredibly public, with Gatz announcing it to the whole country. The World Government cannot cover up this one, and Luffy will be credited with this defeat.

I would also like to draw comparisons to Luffy's defeat of Crocodile. Croco-boy is in many ways similar to Doffy, both are Shichibukai who (at least) tried to take over a country, inflicting great pain upon its residents. Luffy's defeat of Croc was always a powerful scene for me: Luffy punched Crocodile hard enough and fast enough to send him through the bedrock of the city and into the sky (Wowza!). Luffy punched Doffy hard enough to send Doffy into the ground, breaking the city in two, and having the two halves become airborne and fold into each other. Luffy pretty much leveled what small part of Dressrosa wasn't already leveled by the birdcage (Is this how Luffy destroys fishman island?). But where Luffy defeated Crocodile underground and the public never knew who did it, Luffy defeated Doflamingo in the sky, for all to see, sending his body down into the underground trade port.

Now, on to 791, a chapter another blog calls essentially filler. I do not think this chapter was exciting in the least, but I do think it is a very important chapter to have. It is one of those chapters that exemplifies the subtleties of Oda's writing. 791 basically shows the great change that has occurred on Dressrosa. Back before Doffy's takeover, Dressrosa was a poor, but happy country. Once Doffy took over, he started to imprison people, turn them into toys, and have all the bad parts of the country covered up or forgotten about. The country became quite wealthy, all over the bodies and memories of those who Doffy kept down. Remember when we first saw Bartolomeo? He seemed like such an asshole for throwing what appeared to be a bomb into the crowd at the colosseum. But that "bomb" actually existed to show that the citizens of Dressrosa were the true assholes. They scrambled selfishly to save themselves, and they cried out of the blood of the fighters. A real classy bunch, eh? Now with the difficulties of the birdcage, there has been a shift among Dressrosa's citizens towards righteousness. People helped each other try to escaped the cage, even the weak. They didn't fall for Doffy's ransom game. This fight with Doffy has changed Dressrosa's landscape both physically and socially, and even with the whole country reduced to rubble (the chapter's title, get it?!) Dressrosa is the happiest we've ever seen.

Stray observations not worth more that a quick note:
 * We still haven't seen Doffy's eyes.
 * The bottom half of Pica's statue is one 3 or 4 remaining structures in the whole country.
 * Kryos needed to go off alone to hide in order to have his long-awaited cry. The man hasn't been able to since the death of his wife 10 years ago, he deserves it. But he's still a pussy for not being able to cry publicly, like some peopel
 * Do people know that dwarves exist now?
 * When the birdcage disappeared, Zoro, Kin'emon and Kanjuro all tripped. Issho did not. This is funny.

Anyways, I hope you've enjoyed my double-long chapter(s) blog! Thanks for reading!

Oh yeah, and Sabo and Burgess is still unresolved, along with CP-0! Have fun speculating about next chapter now!