Manga: Chapter 643 Review (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

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Summary

Cricket and the Saruyama Alliance are on a search for Nakurowa. (Cover Story)

Robin frees the human slaves and fights Hammond. 

Brook and Usopp continue their fight with Zeo and Drauma. 

Hody's motivation for exterminating humanity is revealed. 

Thoughts

I find the current cover story arc to be very entertaining. You get to see interesting vignettes  about characters that we haven't seen in a long time. It is great to see that Cricket is happy and I hope that we will eventually see what he is searching for.

Shojo's Luffy-inspired outfit scares me and I never want to see that again.

If you used a non-sea prism stone net on a known Devil Fruit user then you deserved this

I have never really understood the 'Devil Child' epithet for Robin. Her power is unusual and seeing arms sprout out of the ground can be frightening, but I never considered it satanic. I am now willing to reconsider that opinion because of this chapter. You get to see Robin use her powers in scary ways that can truly spook a person.

These scenes made me wonder where the real Robin is. Is it the one grabbing Hammond by the legs? You would think that the real Robin was the one releasing the humans but as you can see that wasn't the case. It is possible that the Robins we are seeing right now are both clones. That would mean that the real Robin is elsewhere. She is possibly still researching the Poneglyph.

A complaint that I have is that it seems as if Robin finished her job. If so then that was pretty fast. I hope that the fight with Hammond will last longer.

Later in the chapter you see Nami is still fighting fodder. Don't you think that Nami deserves to defeat an elite villain since she has a history with the fishman race?

Yeah...Lame....

Originally, Brook and the reader were lead to believe that all the fruit did was keep him alive, but now we are seeing there is more to his Yomi Yomi abilities. His powers seem to have a lot of ghostly undertones. The abilities are to reassemble himself, astral projection, and wrapping his blade with his soul to bring the frigidity of the underworld into this world. I predicted that Brook was going to be able to remove his head but I never thought about him doing the latter.

The ability to freeze things was a surprise. Now his blade has an added freezing effect when it strikes the opponent. You can see in the last panel with Zeo that Brook’s slash attack was freezing  the wound. If Brook is able to slash up Zeo a few more times, then the fishman will soon become a frozen fish stick.

Daruma is an interesting character. He has the ability to put himself on fire without harming himself. I wonder what trick he is using. He also seemed to have a lack of comradeship similar to the rest of Hody's crew. Too bad Daruma is just as smart as the rest of his crew.

"All you've been doing is blindly shooting duds around!"

-Daruma

When I read this line I knew exactly what Usopp was doing. It is obvious that Usopp has been shooting traps all over the field that will  finish Daruma. The small fishman is going to be in a world of pain within in a matter of minutes. 

You can tell that Usopp has changed a lot in the last two years. The last panel made me realize that Usopp hasn't been as boastful as usual. He looks much more confident compared to how he was  two years ago. It is like you are watching a completely different person right now.

This and the last chapter all took place while Luffy, the Neptune Children and Hody were up above Fishman Island. This cut is amazing because it shows the degree of urgencyright now. It was however a confusing cut.

"Well, that chapter just makes Hody an even more meaningless villain than I thought he was. Get it done and over with already."

-E1n from Twitter

"Racism is senselessly passed on through generations, losing sight of the original fear and ignorance that started it all." Hody = result."

-XeroXOmega from Twitter

The tweets above sum up my thoughts on the reason for Hody's hatred for humans. It feels like Hody is a waste of time and that sentiment was expressed in the narrative. On the other hand, it is a reflection of racism within the world. Originally, there was a reason for hate, but the hatred of some people is now based in engendered and tolerated extremist ignorance.    That is what is fueling Hody right now but it makes him feel pointless to me. If Oda wants us to feel this way about Hody, then he is succeeding.

It makes sense why Hody hates humans with such passion, but because of that reason, it frustrates me  more so that we have to deal with Hody and his gang. You have to hate Hody because of the things he has done and this just adds more fuel to the fire.

I just want to see Hody defeated and move on. As Fukaboshi explained, this is a pointless fight and the only thing worth worrying about is Noah falling down. It will be curious to see how Luffy will handle this news though.

Until next time true believers!

Written by Mikey-san

Edited by Dsaftler