第39回：Heaven and Earth and Trauma

Talk about ’thinking global’! The celebratory color cover for Oda Eiichiro entering the Guinness Book of World Records depicts the Straw Hats dressed up in *ahem* ’traditional’ outfits from real world countries that correspond to nearby flags.

Sanji: France
Nami: America
Usopp: Brazil
Franky: China
Brook: United Kingdom
Chopper: Canada
Robin: India
Zoro: Germany
Luffy: Japan

What’s kind of cool about this is how it’s something of a switcheroo for the characters (aside from Sanji and Chopper) who first received real-world homelands in Volume 56’s SBS:

Congratulations, Oda-sensei!

Two good ones this week! First up, ’MEGANE WARETAN TO CHAU’ which is (instead of expressing a character’s line) almost speaking for the reader expressing shock that Doflamingo’s glasses are history, "Did that feller’s glasses gone done and broke?"

This one is a beaut! Took a while to figure it out but the key was in realizing that the citizen’s arm isn’t covering any letters, everything you need to read is right there! ’HIDARI TE PAA’, meaning, "My left hand is wide open". Why yes, yes it is indeed. DOESN’T THIS GUY HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT!?

Very interesting choice for the chapter title folks! ’Heaven and Earth’ clearly brings the societal difference between Luffy and Doflamingo to the forefront. As his appellation as a ’celestial dragon’ indicates, Doflamingo is *symbolically* considered to hail from heavenly origin. On the other hand, Luffy, as a ’D’, is a, "Natural born enemy of the gods.", according to stories heard by Corazon. Well, if the D’s are the so-called ’enemies of gods’ then this only means one things, they’re *devils* or *demons*. While the title (in both English and Japanese) refers to only ’earth’, the reading of ’earth’ could also refer to ’hell’!

As I’ve said in the past, it all comes back to that ’gear’ being cut in Chapter 690, which is coincidentally, exactly 100 chapters ago. Luffy and his crew are turning ’heaven’ and ’earth’ upside down and the world will never be the same.

Speaking of things that will never be the same, Doflamingo’s master plan to bring the world to its knees has been obliterated and the ’Heavenly Demon’ is going to have to face some demons of his own. Ultimately, Doflamingo’s danger lay not with his scheming, but in the trauma he was subjected to as a child. One might be quick to draw conclusions to another villain whose childhood we explored, Hody Jones, but whereas Hody was a villain that hated humanity despite not actually knowing about humans, Doflamingo suffered deep physical and emotional trauma at the hands of humanity and never let go of it.

Proof of the lasting effects of the traumatic events he suffered during his childhood are seen in this chapter with what may be Doflamingo’s most powerful attacks: Flap Thread & God Thread.

Consider how Doflamingo describes both of these attacks: Flap Thread is equivalent to ’a thousand arrows’ and God Thread is a barrage of ’sixteen holy bullets of death’. Both of these attacks appear to be based directly based on the torture that Doflamingo was either subjected to or threatened with as a child.

Wow, the second week in a row of Oda-sensei bringing a situational t-shirt wrecking ball to the fourth wall during a heavy emotional scene! Not that I’m complaining ^o^

Ready for a needlessly complex explanation of a needlessly complex gag? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? ^_^ Check out the ’OSHI’ clothing with a monkey on it. Oda-sensei is getting pretty obscure with his references here and I couldn’t be happier. The word for ’monkey’ in kanji is 猿which is read as ’saru’. However, ’saru’, when written differently as ’去る’, means ’to leave behind’. A colloquial pun on this refers to monkeys as the *opposite* of ’leaving behind’ which is ’to gain’ , 得て or ’ete’. It’s actually even a little bit more complex than this but…don’t worry about it. The take away is, the coat therefore reads 『OSHI ’ete’』 or ’oshiete’ which means, "Tell us…", exactly what the character is asking Gyatz to do! PHEW!

Here we’ve got a ’YATTA’ (which I hope needs no translation, thanks to Chun Li) and a ’LUCY’ underneath which appear to be some numbers but aren’t quite clear. My guess is ’39’ which could be ’san-kyuu’ or ’thank you’ ^_^

I don’t make a point of addressing every time he appears but this week it’s worth mentioning his appearance because of how HUGE he is! I’m hard-pressed to think of another Pandaman appearance where he’s been this close in the foreground!

I was wondering if it was just last week’s color spread but here, yet again, Sanji is seen with some of his beard shaved off. In the time that’s passed, did he have time for a shave?

Viola’s super vision quest for Princess Mansherry gave us an anime-only tour of never-before-seen rooms within Dressrosa’s castle.

Upon Bartolomeo’s arrival [crash landing ((notice how Law just bounces, what’s up with that?)) ], of course Luffy calls him by his nickname, トサカの奴 ’tosaka no yatsu’ which literally translates to ’crest-guy’ but refers specifically to a rooster’s crest hence his nickname in the English version, ’rooster-headed guy’.

Speaking of characters lost in their own fancies, another original scene from this episode dropped a hint as to the direction Baby 5’s battle is heading.

While it’s possible she simply misheard Sai’s, "I’ll accept the onslaught from all of your techniques!", as, "I’ll accept all of you.", over the buzzing of her Flying Disc Girl attack, it’s just as likely she’s hearing what she *wants* to hear because she’s so eager to be needed by someone.