One Piece 49

[sara_tanaquil]

A day later than I had hoped, but on with Volume 49! A lot of shounen fighting to get through here. I'm looking forward to getting into Volume 50 and the transition to one of my favorite arcs coming up next

Comments

[printfogey]

The team-up fights here were so great - it's been a while since I last read it, but from what I remember, each and everyone except perhaps Luffy got their turn being 1) nearly killed, and 2) saving someone else from getting nearly killed. This is how big team-up fights should be done!! Plus, it all did a very good job of [I forget if we count this as a spoiler]cementing Brook as a future member in the crew. I think the very first time I read the part where he shows up saving Usopp at the nick of time while wearing a huge bag of salt, I cheered out loud. :D

I also really like how Lola takes her stand at the end.

And I'm particularly taken with how, when they are all knocked out one by one before Nightmare Luffy comes in, it happens in reverse crew order from Franky to Sanji, until we're just down to the first three members of the crew not counting Luffy. At which point the order breaks down, because Zoro isn't going to let Nami and Usopp get taken out before him. So the two most fragile members [*]or maybe not in the case of Usopp: I'm not sure we've ever seen Robin exposed to the kind of knocks he's taken and survived are left to be saved by Nightmare Luffy, giving him a good entrance into the bargain. ...I'm not quite sure why, but there's something about this whole sequence I just really like. [Speculation into the future of One Piece]I could actually see a final hard trek to reach One Piece itself on Raftel (if that's truly where it is) take a similar course - unless Oda would find that too repetitive, of course.