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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 3 years

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The Voyage So Far: Water Seven

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

i’ve mentioned several times before that the davy back fight is one of my least favorite arcs, mostly because i found it very dragging and tedious when i was reading it, but there are a couple things i really like in it, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, most of them have to do with zoro. i really like his moment here with chopper, and it also showcases his ability to act as more of an authority figure to the crew, which is something that makes a substantial return after enies lobby with the matter of usopp’s return.

zoro and sanji’s match in the davy back fight is far and away my favorite part of the entire arc. it’s just really fun.

like i said, this arc isn’t a favorite of mine, but i do definitely understand why it’s important to the saga and greater story in a couple different ways. one of them is that it’s just an easy, lighthearted detour that both gives the audience a chance to breathe and the strawhats a chance to showcase just how much they love each other and work well together- which turns into a fucking sledgehammer to the skull in the next arc when that unity is directly threatened. and the other reason this arc is important...

...is because of aokiji.

aokiji’s introductory scene is a brutal showcase of absolute power, and a very clear reminder that the strawhats are still very much little fish in a very, very big pond. all of the strawhats are impacted by this to some degree- it’s how badly they get curb-stomped here that leads luffy to come up with his gears as a way of closing the huge power gap he’s just learned about.

most important, though, are robin and usopp. for robin, this is a stark reminder of the fact that the government will never stop hunting her down; for usopp, who’s less obvious, it’s the seeds of the full-blown inferiority crisis that will later explode with the news about merry. both of their arcs throughout water 7 and enies lobby, essentially the twin emotional backbones of the saga, start right here.

i really like that the other strawhats all fell asleep waiting for robin and luffy to wake up. it calls back to them doing the same when nami was sick before drum, and also it’s just so fucking sweet.

water seven is my favorite island, full stop. if i was going to live anywhere in one piece’s world, i’d want to live on water seven. it’s just so creatively designed and visually great, with the canals and the tiered city and the massive fountain in the middle. the supporting cast are still one of my favorites, and the culture feels very real and authentic. i just love water seven a lot.

i just said it but it bears repeating- the water seven supporting cast is really good. iceburg, the galley-la shipwrights, franky and his family, kokoro and chimney are all really memorable, and most of them are really likable, too- and cp9, with all their eccentricities, fit in perfectly. water seven’s cast is very interconnected, as well, and their relationships all feel very believable.

all of which, of course, only makes the later treachery hurt all the more.

the atmosphere of water seven is really, really well done. the bad starts slow, with the news that merry is unfixable, and then continues into an accelerating downwards spiral of hopelessness: usopp and luffy’s fight and usopp leaving the crew, robin’s seeming betrayal, the assassination attempt on iceburg, the city and galley-la turning on them as a result, and the agua laguna- it just gets worse and worse and worse.

and then, after they’ve been stomped down about as far as they can go and come out alive anyways, they pick themselves back up again and go to save their friend, because that’s what the strawhat pirates do.

i just really like getting to see these four going feral on the franky family, it’s one of my favorite scenes in this whole arc. in general, i tend to love the moments where luffy specifically gets properly angry, and we get a lot of them in this arc.

even though the fight between luffy and usopp is genuinely very tense and fast-paced and would probably be exciting if it were any other two characters fighting, it never really feels anything other than melancholy. i think that’s a testament to just how good oda is at setting the mood of the scene. it’s made very clear, especially through the reactions of the other characters- merry ‘crying’ is fucking heartbreaking- that this is nothing less than a tragedy.

i think it’s kind of interesting we aren’t shown franky’s face until about halfway into water seven. prior to this, we’re given pretty much only reasons to hate him, with his theft of the strawhats’ money and the franky family beating usopp to shit. but just after this point is when we start getting our first humanizing and sympathetic moments for him, starting when he gets worried and a little frantic when he hears about the attempt on iceburg’s life.

i just really, really like the way some of these water seven action sequences are depicted. they feel very tense and desperate, which matches the general mood of this part of the arc perfectly.

this panel of usopp working on merry always reminds me of the shots of the klabautermann doing the same during skypiea. i’m not sure if it’s even intentional, honestly, but it’s an extra little bit of heartbreak either way.

one piece has a lot of amazing spreads, but this might be one of my favorites for sheer impact. cp9, watching as the city they’ve lived and worked in for years burns down in a fire they set, satisfied by a job well done. it’s almost all in black and white with very little grey, which creates some fantastic contrast, and their pitch-black silhouettes against the nighttime inferno are just striking.

this entire scene between usopp and franky, as usopp works on the merry and franky gives him advice and tries to make him see its hopeless and they kind of awkwardly, accidentally bond, is probably my favorite in the whole of water seven. it was also the scene that singlehandedly made me love franky as a character.

they have a really good, really enjoyable dynamic, and at the same time the conflict between them is real and understandable, and brought about because they’re both trying to do the right thing.

tom’s workers are one of my favorite little groups of characters in the whole of one piece’s story, and they deserve more appreciation. they’re family!! a little family of broken pieces who worked together to build something really, really amazing. and they still care about each other in the present, even though they got shattered apart so badly and none of them ever really recovered.

this is a tremendously under-appreciated chopper moment. not only did he carry two full-grown men out of a fire, he even managed to get zoro’s sword and iceburg’s hamster. extremely cool of him.

this is also the exact moment the strawhats’ collective luck begins to turn: chopper saves the day, and nami learns that robin did what she did to protect them, and sanji gets aboard the sea train, and from there it’s a no-brakes train from their very lowest low straight to the triumph at enies lobby.

i love all the shenanigans sanji gets up to with the sea train, i think the whole sequence is absolutely one of his shining moments. it’s always a delight to see sanji get up to Sneaky Bastard Bullshit, and the whole thing is just so fun, which is a dearly needed breath of fresh air after how relentless this arc has been until this point.

robin’s little smile when thinking of luffy and when she joined the strawhats... :( i’ve noticed it’s a recurring trend for strawhats who try to leave the crew to flash back to when they joined as they do. usopp has it earlier this same arc just before leaving, and sanji does it in whole cake island in the sanji vs. luffy chapter.

i really like how much everyone comes together at the end of water seven leading into enies lobby. after how fractured and fraught things have been throughout the arc, both within and without the strawhat crew, it’s great to see them not only all united again for a common goal, but with a huge group of allies at their backs.

these three are SUCH a hilarious team, and i would love to see them work together again like this sometime. they’re literally just clowning on the marines all the way up the train, it’s fantastic.

factually i understand sanji’s aversion to fighting with his hands and his fighting style is very unique and cool and also meaningful to him because he learned from zeff, and also if i remember right it’s implied he learned how to swordfight from the vinsmokes which makes it very reasonable he would want absolutely nothing to do with that skillset

but speaking purely in terms of stupid idiot lizard brain i think sanji should fight with knives more

this is another of my absolute favorite spreads, and i think what makes it for me is the casual confidence- luffy tells zoro to cut the train, and zoro does, both of them with no doubts at all about zoro’s ability to do so. it really goes to show how far they’ve come from back in east blue when zoro couldn’t even cut luffy out of a metal cage.

there’s something very impactful about the fact that of all the strawhats, robin gets this speech from usopp. usopp, who’s had the worst falling-out with luffy in the series to date, is the one who tells robin: you haven’t left the crew yet, you can’t leave the crew yet, luffy is coming to get you. believe in him.

franky’s “existing is not a crime” line is one of the most memorable and iconic lines from this entire saga, and for good reason. it sums up one of the main themes of not just this arc but also the series as a whole- the very same idea will come up again for ace during marineford, and in law’s backstory as well. it’s never a crime to just exist, and people should not never be persecuted for their blood or heritage. one piece doesn’t fuck around with its theming, it really doesn’t.

to be continued next time, with enies lobby!

#the voyage so far #one piece #long post #arc: water 7 #not japanese #opmeta

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