I can’t say I enjoyed this volume much. It was fine, but comparing it to other parts of One Piece makes it feel a bit empty. The villains in Hody’s crew are a bunch of tone deaf morons that aren’t really a challenge for the Straw Hats. I understand that the point of this arc is to show off how much the crew has grown and it’s a nod to Arlong Park and them leaving their old problems behind them. This is Arlong’s legacy after all and they struggled against him a lot in East Blue. It’s easy to forget that Arlong Park and Sabaody weren’t that far apart. They grew a ton in that short time, so imagine how much stronger they got now that they spent two years training. Well, it shows as the straw hats each take out a member of Hody’s gang with incredible ease. Even Hody himself is a total pushover. Sure, hopped up on drugs he becomes a walking ball of brute strength and being in the sea gives him an incredible advantage, but he’s no match for the man who will one day be the pirate king. So Hody’s crew gets taken out. Vanderdecken is a different story, he gets betrayed by Hody. I suppose he did betray Hody first by trying to throw a giant ship at Fishman Island. Hody likes the idea but not the execution so he kills Vanderdecken, causing the ship to start plummeting towards the island.
Let’s talk a little bit about Hody. When I first watched and read this arc, I wasn’t very politically aware. I didn’t really vote when I was in my late teens/early twenties and besides knowing that things weren’t great, I didn’t have much insight into our country either. So when I initially watched this arc I didn’t understand Hody’s motivation at all. You see, his claim that nothing happened to him felt like a vague and bad motivation. I didn’t quite understand how discrimination leads to breeding hatred the way I understand it now. And when I say I understand it now I do still mean it from a bystander’s perspective, I’ve not experienced any real discrimination in my life, but I’ve listened to many stories of other people. I was watching an episode of Taskmaster the other day and one of the guests, Munya, made a joke that when they filmed a few scenes at the airport he “still got randomly searched somehow.” Banger joke of course, but it reminded me of friends I have at uni who all had shared experiences of being questioned at the airport for seemingly no reason other than that they “look muslim.” Hody hasn’t experienced any obvious discrimination himself, but he’s seen what it’s done to others and that alone was enough to radicalize him. He idolized Arlong who hated humans. It’s unfortunate that Hody’s personality was much worse than Arlong’s and where the previous villain cared much about his own men and built Arlong Park for them all to live in comfortably, Hody doesn’t have that shared experience. He hasn’t actually suffered like Arlong has, so the bond between crewmates isn’t there in the same way. This makes Hody a much more violent and cruel villain.
The chain of racism that has held Fishman Island in its grasp seems to be coming towards a conclusion. People’s opinions are getting swayed and the blight that is Hody’s gang has been dealt with. There is a pretty big problem left though. The Noah, the giant ship from the Fishman District, is still slowly falling towards the island. If it pierces the bubble that protects it the water pressure will come flooding in and destroy everything. Luffy is trying his best to stop the ship by punching it, but the fishmen royals are horrified at the notion of the ship being destroyed. They promised they would protect it until a certain someone comes around. Of course we have some ideas as to who this could be, but that’s for a future post. For now it looks like certain doom is imminent and we’ll have to wait for the next volume to find out what happens.
Speaking of the next volume, I hope we get some new cover stories in that volume. I haven’t really talked much about the current cover stories and that’s mostly because they haven’t been all that impactful on the plot. After learning about Hachi, Enel and CP9, we now get a small story for several of the people around the world that have been influenced by the Straw Hat pirates throughout their journey. We see the people at Skypiea as well as king Cobra, Vivi and the other people we met at Alabasta. I don’t quite remember what any future cover stories look like right now, so that’s an exciting prospect. For now I’ll leave it at this, I’ve got to prepare for work tomorrow. Thanks for reading and I hope you all join me next week for the thrilling conclusion to this arc.
Opal Kaharis 