It’s the middle of summer vacation, my computer has fully given up the ghost so I’m writing this on my old computer which thankfully still runs relatively well and I’m generally not in the greatest of mood to write right now, but the show must go on, so let’s do a bit of a shorter recap this week. We took our time talking about Baby5’s situation last week after all, so it should be fine.
Let’s start with Kyros and Diamante, who crash in the flower field. Kyros takes a beating but having been in the body of a toy for so many years the pain just reminds him that he’s alive. After caltrops rain from the sky he braves the pain and charges at Diamante, taking him out with relative ease. It’s a silly but fun little detail that he ends up being knocked out by hitting his head on Scarlet’s gravestone, making everything come full circle. With Diamante down and Bellamy soon following in a rather sad scene where he has long realized that he followed the wrong man but doesn’t want to be a coward and change his mind there are only three left standing. Trebol and Doflamingo at the top and Pica in the castle walls. Zoro has been dealing with him and although it seems like the pirate hunter is much stronger than Pica, his ability to flee and hop around town is becoming a real issue. When Pica realizes that he’s not going to beat Zoro in a fair fight he instead changes tactics to attacking the weak and injured, ignoring Zoro all together. In a move that doesn’t feel like Zoro yet also only makes sense because he’s stupid enough to come up with it he has Orlumbus toss him at the giant Pica in the distance who is trying to annihilate Usopp, King Riku and the others there. With Isabello on standby he is flung and with tremendous Haki he cuts Pica into two halves. Once he locates which half the ability user has fled into he cuts it into smaller and smaller bits until Pica has no choice but to reveal himself. Although Pica pretends to be confident about the clash, Zoro makes quick work of him and Isabello’s king punch is utilized to get rid of all the debris falling towards them. That just leaves Trebol and Doffy.
Law and Luffy are fighting the duo and while Luffy got occupied with Bellamy, Law was left in a terrible state. A quick trick with a body double saved him from certain death but even without taking that gunshot, it’s still not looking good. With a final trick up his sleeve, Law manages to deal serious damage to Doflamingo as well as defeat Trebol who ends up being just a really scrawny guy hiding within his own goop. To each their own, I suppose. After Trebol is down and Luffy brings Law to a platform lower down, we go into the final (long) stretch of Dressrosa. The only fighter standing is Doflamingo, but the allies are severely hurt and damaged and Doflamingo’s birdcage is closing in quickly.
As we move into the conclusion, Luffy and Doflamingo exchange some attacks but it seems like the warlord with his devil fruit awakening is too much of a match for Luffy. Luckily, we finally get to see the next gear that Luffy has been developing during the timeskip. Gear Fourth, Bounce Man. Luffy turns his muscles into rubber and coats his body in Haki turning him into a bouncing ball with incredible power behind each attack. With this power he manages to beat the crap out of Doflamingo for a few moments but it seems like there’s still quite a bit of fire left in the sociopathic warlord. He also points out that Luffy cannot maintain such power forever and wonders what his limit is. Will Luffy’s power hold out or will Doffy be victorious? What is Jesus Burgess planning and can Koala stop him if she needs to. Where is Fujitora right now and how will this chaos finally come to an end? If I’m not mistaken, we should get a conclusion in the next volume so make sure to check in for that. And for now, I’m going back to reading and enjoying the summer, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 