Whitebeards orders his men to retreat despite their protests. Fossa tells them that even though no one wants to, staying and dying will only serve to spit in Whitebeard's face. So with heavy hearts and teary eyes, the pirates leave their captain behind and begin fleeing in earnest towards the ships they have left. Mr. 3, meanwhile manages to create a wax shell to protect himself from the marines' weapons and hastily scurries away.
With Whitebeard rocking the island once more with his powers, the soldiers wonder how he can have so much strength left despite his injuries. Sengoku explains that now that Ace is safe, he no longer has to hold back and is free to sink the entire island if he so pleases. Garp recovers as well and says that the old pirate is making sure that this era closes with him.
Meanwhile, Buggy and the prisoners are having a hard time getting their stolen telesnail to come out of its shell so that they can resume filming Buggy's moment of triumph, Buggy himself being the only one of the bunch who knows that killing Whitebeard is really only a pipe dream. He suggests that they just let the snail go, causing some of the prisoners to lose their faith in him. That is, until the telesnail, moved by his "kindness" comes out on its own. They finally return the video feed to the information-starved Sabaodians, but their only response is "Not you again!"
Back in the thick of the battle, Whitebeard is determined to take the entire Navy on all by himself as this men escape. Jozu is still frozen, so they have to get Blenheim, who's just as big, to carry the frozen commander on his back. Ivankov urges Luffy to run. Luffy tells a hesistant Ace that they need to get out of here, and Ace says that he won't waste their efforts. Still, he ends up prostrating himself before Whitebeard. His captain preempts him by saying that there's no need for words, but asks if he was a good father. Of course he was, Ace manages to get out, and Whitebeard lets out one final laugh.
Eyecatches: Luffy and Usopp
After another brief segment of Buggy trolling the Sabaodians, we go back to Luffy and Ace. Jimbei comes up behind them and tells them that the Navy is specifically gunning for them now, and to hurry towards the ships as fast as they can, even as the men behind them get blown away by Akainu's lava fist attack. The Admiral calls them cowards for fleeing the battle. Kingudu tells the pirates to ignore his taunts. Akainu admits that it doesn't surprise him, given that their captain's a loser from a bygone era.
This does it. Ace stops in his tracks and tells Akainu to take it back. His comrades try to talk him out of this, but Ace says he won't stand by and let someone mock Whitebeard. Akainu refuses to retract his words, and goes to to say that his father, Gold Roger conquered the Grand Line and opened up this era, truly earning the title of Pirate King. Whitebeard, on the other hand, never accomplished anything like that, instead using his name to intimidate weaker pirates and keep them in line. He will never be able to surpass Roger. Furthermore, his gathering a crew and calling them his family is proof of his empty life, one of which even betrayed him just by hearing certain words, and now he'll die just to protect that man.
Izo and the others yell for Ace to come back as he starts stalking towards Akainu. Ace says that Whitebeard gave them all a place where they could belong, something that Akainu could never understand. He shouts that he'll never let anyone mock him, and that he is the name of this era. Their two powers, fire and lava, clash, and Ace is send flying back. Akainu calls him overconfident because of his Logia. His own lava is of a higher tier, and his powers are far beyond Ace's.
Despite Jimbei warning him that he's beyond his limits, Luffy starts forward only to fall to his knees. Seeing his Vivre Card on the ground his bends to pick it up...just as Akainu says that he'll never let the sons of Gold Roger and Dragon escape, and leaps towards him. Luffy looks up, only to see Ace shielding him from the blow, Akainu's lava fist right through his gut.
The Vivre Card burns away to almost nothing.
And there we go. Not the Big One, but close to it. At this point in the story, it seemed pretty clear-cut as to how the arc would end. Whitebeard would die, making a last stand so that his crew could safely escape to the New World, with his passing ushering in a new age. Ace's survival wasn't in too much question. I mean, after all Luffy's gone through during the last few arcs, it won't be for nothing, will it? Well, Ace unfortunately had to ruin that by feeding the troll and fighting Akainu. On some level, this scenario is a bit unbelieveable for two reasons. One, up until this point, Ace hadn't really been portrayed as someone who was hotheaded and rash. When we saw him in Alabasta he was pretty level-headed and reasonable, and even in his confrontation with Blackbeard he kept his wits about him. It wasn't really until Marineford that he was established as being emotional and rash. I suppose that that's the cost of having a character who's very important to the overall storyline only make very short, bit appearances in the story itself. And one thing that bugs me a little bit is how he went on earlier in the arc about how everyone's fighting and dying for him, and earlier in this very episode he said he won't let everyone's sacrifice go to waste. Well, he just did. So I'm not all that sympathetic towards him on this one, especially since, let's face it, the taunting was kinda juvenille. Was loser the only derogatory insult Oda could come up with?
The second issue that usually raised around the final scene is the whole "lava burns fire" deal. Physics buffs will probably shake there heads at that, since fire actually does get hotter than lava, though lava can also smother it, I suppose. But I just choose to think of it this way: what's more dangerous, your house catching on fire, or a volcano erupting right underneath your ass?
Okay, enough about the story, on to the episode. The animation team behind this one is unfortunately the weakest one on the show. I don't know why you would give one of the more important episodes of the series to the weakest team, but what can I do about it? The direction wasn't so hot either (fun fact: this director handled 469, which I absolutely reviled). Major complaints involve the Buggy filler. It's been present all throughout the arc, but now that things are winding down and getting more desperate, it kills the pacing and is not very funny anymore. It's a cheap and easy way to extend the episode, but it leaves us feeling exactly like the Sabaodian audience. I guess the teary telesnail was kind of cute though.
Other thing I didn't like was the flashback to Lola explaining the Vivre Card at the very end. It pretty much killed the pacing and interrupted what was an incredibly tense scene. I know this show is targetted towards twelve-thirteen-year-olds, but we don't need to have everything spoonfed to us like we're stupid. It's a shame, because the second half of the episode was rather decent up until that.
But on the bright side we now have hair-fixing Akainu, the manga didn't have that!
Comments
