第51回：Of Minks and Mermen

Pekoms mentions his parents in this panel where he reunited with friends and family but it’s not entirely clear exactly who his father and mother are.

Just like two merfolk of different fish species can produce a child with expressed genetic traits not seen in the parents, two different species of mink may be able to produce offspring that appear to be a completely different species. If the rule follows merman and fish people, so long as a specific animal species’ DNA was somewhere in a family line, any offspring may show the expressed traits of said species.

Capone’s underling Vito caught my attention with his slithery tongue from Chapter 812 and now we find out that he’s worth a full-fledged Oda-box!

Now let’s look at those huge hands of his. At first I assumed that his hands were large because they were in the foreground but check out this comparison of Vito’s right hand and his own head. They’re HUGE! That means this flame he’s creating to light Capone’s cigar in Chapter 812 is also significantly bigger than a lighter flame. What’s up with that? The curl of hair glimpsed on the back of his head is reminiscent of a certain reptile’s tail.

Last but not least there are Vito’s tattoos; one on his forehead and one on the back of each of his hands. What’s that all about? A friend and observant One Piece aficionado noticed that it resembles the kanji 下 for ‘below’ which is read ‘shita’. Interestingly enough, there’s another kanji read as ‘shita’ that has an entirely different meaning 舌which means (wait for iiiit) ‘tongue’. Aha~!

What does all of this add up to? He seems an awful lot like a chameleon and although the Copy Copy Fruit was eaten by the character Chameleone in a non-canon Universal Studios Japan stunt production, the Copy Copy Fruit was a paramecia-type which frees up the potential of Vito being a zoan chameleon. However, this hypothesis doesn’t seem to fit when we consider his novelty foam hand-sized palms since chameleons have tiny clasping ‘hands’. If Vito’s base character design comes from something else besides a chameleon, I’m willing to venture a guess: the snakey ghost-like hattifatteners from Moomin. His body is fairly long, thin and straight like the hattifatteners which also have extremely large phalange-like projections on either side of their body. While that’s a fairly big assumption, it’s his laugh that helps seal the deal; hattifatteners are called ‘nyoro nyoro’ in Japanese, strikingly close to Vito’s laugh.

Kyros embodies the anger of the people of Dressrosa when he launches his assault on Diamante.

The anime makes the point that it’s probably a *bad idea* to flaunt that you killed someone’s wife *multiple times* when you don’t know what a beast you’re going up against. Oda-sensei skillfully depicted Kyros’ animalistic strength when his hero sliced straight through Diamante’s blade, but the anime took the warrior’s onslaught a step beyond when Kyros also sliced through Diamante’s metal umbrella!

In this manga panel the umbrella is last seen as it’s thrown away by Diamante, but viewers of the animation were treated to a scene where a delightfully terrified Diamante gapes in horror at the results of Kyros’ beast mode.

Hahaha! Great use of airtime as we enjoyed Zoro thinking through his doomed tactics one by one. It’s always fun when the anime team allows us an exclusive glimpse into the minds of the Straw Hat crew!

This might sound strange to some readers but the highlight of the episode, at least for a longtime fan like myself, was this cut featuring Zoro.

Seeing Zoro in a skewed angle like this should transport any longtime fan back to Alabasta-era Zoro during his bout with Mr. 1 where he was commonly depicted in a similar fashion.

That’s easily one of my favorite battles in *both* the comic and the animation. More of this please!