第128回：Luffytarou and the Year of the Boar

I was going to write about Luffy’s removal of the explosive collar (which a good friend of mine noticed before even I did) but it turned out that the very next chapter addressed that similarity in a very big way!

That’s when I realized the collar scene isn’t the nostalgic scene from this chapter! Big Mom’s handling of Queen is extremely similar to how Luffy handled Momoo except this takes it to an entirely new level, as expected for an Emperor!

Queen calls Big Mom a ‘wild boar’ which is a trait of her’s that Oda-sensei has had in mind for some time already. Remember this color spread from last year? Various characters portray the animals of the Chinese zodiac and Big Mom is, yup, a wild boar! Attacking in a straight line is a real wild boar’s characteristic aggressive behavior which is why Queen drew this comparison. It’s also how she reacted to being trapped in a pit in the Seducing Woods, cutting a passage straight through solid rock. This year just so happens to be the ‘Year of the Boar’ so maybe things will go her way despite how things look for Linlin at the end of this chapter!

Woah! Hello there Kawamatsu! So let’s address the elephant in the room (sit down please, Babanuki) what race Kawamatsu!? Is he a fishman? Is he a…frogman? Like, some kind of amphibious mink race? All we can say at this point is, it’s certainly an interesting coincidence that a giant frog named ‘Yokozuna’ from Water 7 also played sumo with the Puffing Tom. Granted there were some very different circumstances that led to Yokozuna’s sumo aspirations but this can’t just be a coincidence…can it? Was Yokozuna the frog a pet of Kawamatsu’s that Tom inherited?

Also! This joke might have gone over some foreign readers’ heads but the sound of frog’s croaking in Japanese is ‘gero’. It just so happens that ‘gero’ is also the word for ‘puke’ whiiich is exactly what Kawamatsu did in no small amount ^O^

If you’re an anime-only fan who isn’t familiar with the manga, I suggest going back and reading Ace’s sidestory ‘Ace’s Great Blackbeard Search‘ which took place of the cover pages of Chapters 275-305 or Volumes 29-32. The young lady who seems suspiciously prominent for a background character in this episode is actually a big part of Ace’s story and her appearance here is her very first time showing up fully voiced in the animation!

Also love the debut of the commanders!

A little bonus here, we never heard what Karasu said in the manga the first time he appeared because of some speaker trouble so this is the first time hearing his threatening words to the Pinkbeard Pirates!