第88回：Eternal Pudding of the Spotless Mind

Oda-sensei could have taken Pudding’s emotions in a number of directions and I’m glad that he’s gone for an extreme case of what I like to call ‘Vergo Syndrome’.

Vergo would habitually lie about his life even when there wasn’t a need for it. Even though Oda-sensei didn’t clarify the reasoning behind that character quirk it’s likely that his capricious dishonesty was a side-effect of the dual life he led carried by lies. Here, Pudding, having acted a life of feigned innocence, is unable to properly deal with her emotions.

The choice to depict her this way is important because it doesn’t make her feel like a damsel in distress whose life of deceit simply melts away at one sentence from Sanji. No, she’s going to have to earn that change of heart and I don’t think it will be an easy road.

If my thoughts on the nature of a *certain crime* that Pudding has perpetrated in the past are true, Pudding’s evil side will have to see eye to eye…to eye…with her family and confess to some atrocious acts before she can heal, be honest with herself, and drop the act.

So what does this mean for Pudding and Sanji? For the time being #ItsComplicated and although I’m not sure Oda-sensei is ready to let Sanji leave behind his bachelorhood, I can imagine a scenario where Sanji exits this arc either promised or in fact married to Pudding!

One last bit of trivia for the road! Pudding was expecting to make Sanji flip out when she revealed that third eye but guess what? Sanji’s sudden appearance on Rabian forced evil Pudding to make a genuine shocked face fault of her own!

Point for Sanji!

Volume 86 confirmed Katakuri as a ‘special’ Paramecia user and this chapter is yet another example of just how truly unique he is among Paramecia users.

Note how Luffy’s Hawk Gatling punctures his body. A body is something that a Paramecia user, unlike Logias, should have, so what gives? Well, much like Luffy’s body *is* rubber, perhaps we can assume that Katakuri’s body *is* mochi.

Therefore, when Luffy is punching through Katakuri, he’s simple displacing Katakuri’s body, not destroying it. In this way, when you think about it, Paramecias like Luffy are pretty similar to Logia in this fashion and, therefore, Luffy and Katakuri’s bodies are somewhat similar. Luffy has normal human organs, they’re just composed of rubber.

This differs greatly from someone like, say for example, Foxy who has special beam powers but lives in an otherwise normal body.

This begs the question then, is Luffy a ‘special’ Paramecia as well?

Character Establishment: Level up!
Having Mom send Cracker off to deal with Luffy was a class choice in terms of establishing Cracker for the next episode.

With Cracker’s ‘plucking’ of Pound left off until the next episode, anime viewers have an entire week to wait for his *full* reveal and that kind of retained excitement is excellent in a serial format. It’s almost a shame that the corresponding manga chapter (835) didn’t start with this scene!

While both Pound and Big Mom have pink hair, Lola’s hair color and style seem to more closely match her father’s relaxed pink and wavy hair than Big Mom’s vivid pink and frizzy hair.

Also, kudos to the animation staff for remembering that Lola signed her vivre card! Lola’s name can be glimpsed behind Nami’s fingers in this scene. I wonder though…will the Strawhat’s connection to Lola be a blessing or a curse?