第98回：Observational Observations

Luffy’s blindfolded Observation Haki training recalls memories of a certain somebody’s impromptu blast shield helmet training in a galaxy far, far away! Just a coincidence?

Let’s talk about Flampe’s butt. According to this chapter, she can literally give herself a bubble butt by inhaling a great volume of air and storing it in her lower body.

After fully exhaling, Flampe’s posterior appears…uh… ‘fairly’ normal(?) suggesting that she might have a relatively normal body but it’s too difficult to know for certain.

Can’t say I feel too bad for her Conqueror Haki-related TKO but it’s a shame that we never got to see her use that fancy-looking sword which -by the way- apparently she needs to remove when she fires her blowgun.

Here’s another instance of Oda playing with hand-lettering. Note the curl on his ‘ru’(る) character here, accentuating the action of spinning his trident. Keep an eye out for these playful little artistic flairs, they pop up from time to time!

Notice how Luffy is reading Katakuri’s punches. This visual depiction of the mental image going through Luffy’s mind is very similar to the mental images seen by Fujitora of Dressrosa’s citizens *and* how Usopp viewed Luffy, Law and Sugar when his Observational Haki awoke.

We’re still left with the question of why Fujitora doesn’t seem to be able to visualize detailed facial features.

In addition to the case of the townspeople, consider Oda’s depiction of what Issho thinks Luffy looks like from Volume 81’s SBS. Here, like Usopp, Luffy visualizes Katakuri in significant detail but how is this possible!? Why is a newbie CoO-user like Usopp so much more skilled than someone who is certainly a CoO master like Issho? This might be the answer to this conundrum!

Notice that in the case of Luffy and Usopp, they had previously *seen* what each of their targets looked like with their own eyes. However, Fujitora doesn’t have the advantage of ever having seen their faces/bodies. This suggests that *visual information* may be able to augment Colors of Observation’s mental image of a target!

Woah, what!? Hold up! What’s this!? A Paramecia-user literally shooting his arm OFF and regrowing it!? Katakuri’s body is capable of moving out of the way of attacks so we might assume that his body is mochi just like Luffy’s is rubber, but our current understanding of his powers doesn’t seem to explain how he can actually ‘lose’ limbs like a Logia. Is Oda-sensei hiding a key detail about Katakuri’s true body?

A big episode for anime-only fans! If you avoided reading my column on the Pudding reveal when I covered it a year ago, now might be a good time to catch what I had to say in Course #73.

Manga fans have been eagerly anticipating Pudding’s facial antics as well as her insulting impersonation of Sanji and both the animation team and Pudding’s voice actress, Miyuki Sawashiro, met all expectations! The 24 minutes of the episode literally flew by even though much of it was Pudding running her mouth! Hats off to Sawashiro-san for carrying the episode!

Among the appropriate stylistic and moody choices for the episode, my favorite part didn’t actually feature this week’s stars, Sanji & Pudding.

It was the ‘toothy transition’ from Luffy recalling Pudding’s confession to his current predicament that made me grin the widest. Luffy’s emotions and motivation are made perfectly clear in one deft swoop! It felt out of place in the series but in a *very* good way! I’d love to see more stylistic transitions like this in the future!

Brook VS Big Mom is almost largely unique to the animation and gives us very clear views of Mom fighting with Prometheus and Zeus as weapons early on!

Check out these scenes that you’ll only find in the animation of Brook butting skulls with an Emperor!