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cptn-m · 4 months

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One Piece chapter 1102 review

This unseasonably cold and wet Christmas morning, Oda gifts us with yet another heartbreaker of a flashback chapter to close out the year, but also a promise of a return to the present, and maybe some clues about what will happen when we get there. It's a more relaxed easing into the present than I'd expected - I've been predicting for weeks there'd be one last secret tragedy as a stinger to close things out, and maybe the self-destruct switch would qualify, but maybe I should just be happy that Kuma isn't being made to suffer more.

We pick up where the last chapter left off with Bonney on her adventure. I have to say, this is the most I've liked her character up to this point. She's never been unlikable, but the spirit of getting out there and adventuring and seeing the world while hunting for her lost dad really comes through now that we have the full story. The childlike quality of her ideas of piracy and ways of compromising them echoes Luffy's own energy. She feels like the main character of her own story here, one with enough substance that it'd be enjoyable even removed from the wider context of One Piece. The vibe of her crew is infectious, and I'm happy to see them living their best lives out in the world. Uh, hope those guys are alright after the encounters with Blackbeard and Sakazuki before the timeskip…

I'm looking forward to paying more attention to Bonney with also info on hand on my next reread.

There was a theory I read a few chapters ago that suggested Bonney's bounty shot up to Supernova levels because of the need to get her back to control Kuma. This chapter instead suggests a misconception that her crew targets children and the elderly because of her power. Which is funny, but far less interesting. I think I would have liked this more if we'd learned is much sooner. Like in her original introduction she's talked up as a ruthless attacker of the vulnerable, and it leads toward the first reveal of her Devil Fruit and the joke lands that way. Maybe an idea for The One Piece, right? That's just going to be my go to for anything that might have worked better with earlier setup now. It's fine though. We can even still assume that control of Kuma remained a factor for the World Government behind the scenes while also satisfying all the bad PR she has for leaving injured children and old people in her wake.

The bits with Luffy, Dragon, Smoker, Ace and Jinbei are partly fanservice, but they do also serve to keep the timeline in check. They're synchronising moments. The translation of Sabo's line in the scans indicated that Dragon was going to Loguetown alone, which would have killed the theory that Sabo had been spotted in the crowd there (pictured below), but the official release makes it ambiguous enough that Sabo might have gone. To be honest I was never big on that theory, even if it would make things more interconnected and foreshadowed. I figure seeing Luffy that close, particularly his apparent execution, would have triggered Sabo's memories returning.

I'm a little disappointed that the return to the Thriller Bark doesn't give us anything new about Kuma's actual intentions should Luffy's allies have failed what now know to obviously have been a test. Seriously, was the plan to zip him off to Dragon, or just let him go and tell him he needs to find better friends, or given the previous scene with Vegapunk, would it just said to Kuma that Luffy didn't really have the Nika qualities he'd thought.

But that brings me to something I do like about the montage of Kuma learning about Luffy's life in the chapter. The rubber power is acknowledged, but only as a footnote. Even having seen a power that matches the myth, Nika can only be assumed to be a myth. Luffy's actions - declaring war on the World Government, earning the loyalty of the Thriller Bark victims, assaulting the unjust rulers of the world to save a single enslaved friend - are what make him stand out to Kuma. And while I'm sure we'll see something specific to Luffy, such as the D, the voice of all things, or yes, the fruit, become important to the plot eventually, but it's good that Oda is laying a foundation now that Luffy acts like Nika just by being himself, regardless of whatever other ways he's been made into the legendary figure by the narrative.

The next scene gives us two possible paths for things playing out in the present. The first is Kuma's self-destruct mechanism. Given that I've already put money down on Kuma's death, my immediate thought about this development is that it will be used to fight Saturn in a tragic heroic sacrifice. How ironic for Saturn to be destroyed by the mechanism he insisted Vegapunk install.

(But why wasn't it activated sooner, like when Kuma was rescued by the Revolutionaries, to keep them from reverse engineering his tech, or when he was rampaging in Marie Geoise? You have to assume there's a limited number of remotes for the thing, since the Celestial Dragons who've been using him can't be trusted with their impulses, and/or a limited range on the activation symbol.)

But the other curious thing is Vegapunk suggsting a personality switch. Which is odd, considering how impossible a reversion was said to be in previous chapters. And if Saturn really could detect it so reliably and keep it from being installed, why mention it in the first place? This feels like Oda giving himself an out - a way to save Kuma at the last moment just by saying 'oh, Vegapunk found a way to conceal it after all.' Which would be lame. The only way I'll accept this thing's use in the present is in tandem with the self-destruct so Kuma can go out as himself, and maybe exchange some words with Saturn on the way out.

And it's especially weird when you put it next to the revelation that viewing Kuma's extracted memories will consume them, taking off the board popular theories that Kuma would be restored by passing the bubble on to him. In one chapter, Kuma is twice doomed, once saved. Anyone's guess which way Oda will take it in the present.

The final sequence is the cherry on top of a fantastic One Piece flashback, one that will certainly be remembered as one of Oda's best. The life affirming message rings true to the broader themes of the series, bringing to mind scenes like Tom and Ace's deaths. Even the lab assistants are moved (oof, didn't Saturn order these guys' escape ship sunk? That's rougher knowing they were all on team Kuma all along), as the montage of Kuma's life and loved ones proves Vegapunk correct in calling Kuma a hero. And even in his final moments Kuma thinks first of his daughter. Beautiful stuff.

This is also very strongly framed like a death scene. It's not hard evidence, but I'm taking it as half a point toward Kuma's mind being unrecoverable and/or his destruction assured in the present.

And the flashback really does seem to be over. Never in the series' past have we cut from black panel gutters at the end of one chapter to the normal white ones in the first page of the next one. There's always a transitional page within the chapter, be it at the start or at the end. (At least for the full, multi-chapter flashbacks, I think one of the small, segmented Zou ones went straight from black to white over a chapter break.) I'm not sure where the fade to grey on the last page here leaves us. It's not quite the present, but with only a day left to cover, I can't imagine there being anything else worth showing. Maybe Bonney's view of the offscreen battle with York? A shorthand version only, though.

Either way, it's been a hell of a year for One Piece, and with Egghead's momentum going into its climax, I think the next one could be even better.

#One Piece #OP1102 #One Piece Spoilers #bartholomew kuma #manga review

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firstumcschenectady · 29 days

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“Resurrecting Joy” based on Isaiah 41:4b-10 and Luke 24:1-11

I have a question I'd like you to contemplate: Which do you like more – daffodils or tulips?

OK, assuming you are now ready – daffodil fans can you raise hands and cheer? Tulips fans?

Believe it or not, I'm going to take this a step further. (I know, I know, not the Easter sermon you were expecting.) Tulip fans – can you shout out things you love about them? Daffodil fans?

Thank you.

Amen

;)

Just kidding. This Lent we've done a Bible Study on the Resurrection Narratives. We read the stories of Easter from each of the Gospels, and asked a few questions about each one:

What does resurrection seem to mean here?

Why describe it this way?

How does it feel?

How does this connect today?

As we read and discussed, we started to notice something about the empty tomb stories: they feel incomplete. The empty tomb isn't the POINT, instead it feels like the introduction to the point. The tomb is empty... ok. That could mean a lot of things, including grave robbers. But each of the gospels ends the story of the empty tomb with something to nudge us towards its meaning. Luke ends with the rest of the disciples believing the empty tomb to be an “idle tale” but Peter going to see for himself and being amazed. In Luke in particular, the empty tomb is the start of sharing stories of the post-resurrection Jesus experiences. Those experiences are the ways the followers of Jesus end up claiming that he is alive, and the work of God in him isn't completed yet. It isn't, actually, the women sharing the story (though maybe it should be) or the dazzling clothes of the angels (black? white?). It isn't the early dawn on the first day of the week or the prepared spices. It isn't even the angels saying “he is not here.”

The empty tomb points to the continued life of Jesus, but it is in fact JUST an empty tomb. The early followers of Jesus were transformed in those early days by whatever experiences they had that led them to call it resurrection, and eventually they came to understand THEMSELVES to be the shared Body of Christ, and understanding that has been passed down the ages, right to this moment, when we are together the Body of Christ alive and doing ministry in the world. The empty tomb points to LIFE.

I'm going to take this even a step further. When we say “Christ is alive” I believe that it implies “and calls us to life abundant.” Life itself, just life, isn't the point. Especially today when medical science allows life to continue far after abundant life has ended, it is easy to see that this isn't just about being alive, but about being ALIVE – about life abundant.

Christ is alive and calls us to abundant life.

Christ is alive and calls us to full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE.

But, it is possible that for some of us, that sounds... I don't know, really hard?

Am I off? I don't think I'm off. Our lives are fulled with innumerable stressors, real ones. We've learned that about half of our society doesn't have enough money to “make it,” and another big chunk of society lives in fear of falling under that line. So monetary stress is real, regular, and abundant. Job stress. Health concerns. Traumatic experiences of the past. Worries about our loved ones. And then, heavens, all the things in the news. ALLLLLLLL THE THINGS. There is this constant stream of information about things we should worry about, or fix, or grief, or understand, or... care about.

And the stressors and the worries and the news add up, day after day, after day, after day and maybe full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE feels kinda unlikely? I read an article1 recently that discussed the ways life has improved over the past four years, and that somehow people don't seem to have NOTICED. The authors, psychiatrists, suggested that the malaise of the American public today is due to unprocessed pandemic grief, “But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured. As clinical psychiatrists, we see the effects of such emotional turmoil every day, and we know that when it’s not properly processed, it can result in a general sense of unhappiness and anger—exactly the negative emotional state that might lead a nation to misperceive its fortunes.” I know we all want to be over it, but between continued illnesses and deaths and long COVID, we aren't. And, further, we haven't processed it. So, there are good reasons aplenty that we aren't all feeling like we're all in on that full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE that we're called to.

And yet, beloveds of God, we are called to full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE. Even now. So, how do we do it? I came across an idea that I believe MATTERS in reading I thought I was doing for the sake of becoming a better premarital counselor. I was sitting there reading Emily Nagoski's book “Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections” (highly recommend) and in the final chapter her teaching about sexuality and sensuality became even more spiritual. At one point she says, “Our only certainty is that one day, we won't get any more days.”2 Which is pretty much the whole point of Ash Wednesday and part of what we're meant to hold as we travel through Lent AND Holy Week.

She explains in her book the phenomenon of “savoring” which she defines as people's “capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance positive feelings in their lives.”3 She says that there is a Savoring Checklist, and it includes: sharing joy with others – talking about what is happening and why it is good; reminding ourselves that time is passing as a way to cherish a moment before it passes away, which could sound like saying to yourself, '”Time is short and I choose to do this with my time.”; expressing the joy in our bodies – laughing, and jumping, clapping and whooping; and finally slowing down to pay attention to the experience of joy or pleasure itself – in many of the ways we've been taught through mindfulness.4 She goes on to say that every time we chose pleasure and joy we enable ourselves to pick it again in the future and remember the pleasure and joy of the past. Then she says, “when we savor pleasure and thus highlight it in our memory, we can remember our lives as more worth living. We look back on our day, our year, even our entire lifetime, and we see less of the struggle and more of the countless moments of pleasure.”5 The memories “glitter across our memory, brighter and more numerous, when we take time to savor them.”6

OK, so the gist: to live life abundantly there is a trick: take the wonderful moments and savor them – share the joy by talking with others, notice the wonder while it happens, and let your body be full of joy. When you do that – when you savor this wonderful life that God gave you, it will bring your attention to the good, the wonderful, the pleasurable, the joy-filled parts of life, both now and over all.

It will, it turns out, move us to full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE. Just, enjoy the good stuff!! Savor it, let yourself be delighted when you are. And of course, this can be some of the big stuff of life. Every year I savor singing Easter hymns with brass accompaniment, and when I think back to my wedding I remember a moment in the midst of the worship service when I wished it could last forever because it was such a delight. But pleasure and joy are easily abundant everywhere too. Food tastes good (if you are lucky.) Stretching your body feels good. Laying down to rest is a wonder. Your favorite song is worthy of savoring.

And, to bring it full circle, there are pretty flowers in the world. Ones that you have now brought attention to, embodied the joy of, talked about the joy of, and … savored. Daffodils and tulips, they're pretty amazing, huh? And they are just one of the many wonders around us, gifts given by God and others to calls us to full, beautiful, connected, joyful LIFE.

Thanks be to God!

Amen

1https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/covid-grief-trauma-memory-biden-trump/677828/

2Emily Nagoski, Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections (New York: Ballantine Books, 2024), 292.

3Nagoski, 270.

4Nagoski, 272.

5Nagoski 273.

6Nagoski, 273.

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 31, 2024

#thinking church #progressive christianity #rev sara e baron #fumc schenectady #first umc schenectady #schenectady #umc #sorry about the umc #Easter #Emily Nagoski #Come Together #Savoring #Joy #Savor joy #Full abundant life #Christ is Alive #Christ is alive and wants us to have abundant life #Happy Easter!

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