May 15, 2025 • 56 mins
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Thank you very much to Florian for commissioning this episode!
These episodes are the ones where we have to go and watch the fight between Kyros and Diamante, which is the thing that both Florian and Iwere not that interested in. Also, there's a new development in the fight between Zorro and Pica.
Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
Wanna talk spoilers? Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/rEF2KfZxfV
Thank you very much to Florian for commissioning this episode!
These episodes are the ones where we have to go and watch the fight between Kyros and Diamante, which is the thing that both Florian and Iwere not that interested in. Also, there's a new development in the fight between Zorro and Pica.
Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
Wanna talk spoilers? Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/rEF2KfZxfV
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me,
covering one piece episodes seven seventeen through seven nineteen Tiueno
Bastardo Kiro's furious strike moving across the ground, the giant statue,
(00:23):
Pika's surprise maneuver, and a decisive battle in mid air
Zoro's new special secret technique blasts. In these episodes, Zoro
begins to realize that the only way to defeat Pika
is by keeping him in the air where he cannot
(00:43):
reconnect with the ground. Actually a pretty clever understanding. I
liked this, but overall these episodes did for me a
little bit Welcome to boil Me, Welcome to the show everyone,
(01:20):
I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Florian for
commissioning this episode. So yeah, this was like a weird combo, guys,
of I guess it's really what it is is that
it's a cool idea that we eventually reach when it
comes to Zoro and his attack mode and figuring out Pika.
(01:43):
But it just has all been so drawn out that
any interests that I might have in the development just
gets worn out by the time it actually becomes anything.
Does that make sense? And and this like the whole
(02:06):
I mean, I the first of these three episodes, seven seventeen,
was supposed to be included in my coverage with Florian
last week, and honestly, I don't really feel like I
need to even talk about it. And like Florian and
I barely talked about the second half of episode seven
(02:28):
sixteen because it was mostly to do with Hiros and
Rebecca and Diamante and then this, unfortunately, out of these
three episodes, one and a half maybe even more has
to do with them again, and I I look, occasionally, guys,
(02:57):
I will have these moments where I will feel like
I must have zoned out, I must have grown someone
interested that I miss something, and I will rewind and
rewatch because I'll feel like I just didn't absorb any
of that. I just clearly didn't. I need to regroup.
(03:17):
And I think plenty of people have experienced this, where
if you're listening to a podcast or an audiobook, you
will realize that you missed a particular thing, and then
you go back and you somehow managed to space out
again in the exact same spot that you spaced out
(03:40):
last time, so you wind up repeatedly rewinding and re
listening but somehow, five times in a row you still
manage to miss the thing. And that was what happened
to me. Kids. I rewound, and rewatched, and rewound, and rewatched,
(04:00):
and every single time my attention just wound up straying
to the point that I was like, okay, you know what,
hold on, I'm gonna go to the like. There are
summaries on a wiki of the One Piece episodes, and
(04:21):
I was like, let me just go and read the
beginning of the summary for this episode, because sometimes what
that does, weirdly is it gives me something to cling to,
and when I rewatch, I will absorb it better if
I've got like that guideline of what's about to happen
in terms of plot beats already in my head. I
(04:43):
don't do this often. I only do this when I
find that my attention is like continually wandering. And even
if I were to do it very often for other shows,
there are very few things I cover that just have
like a plot summer as detailed as the ones that
exist for One Piece, So it's not really a thing
(05:05):
almost at all. But I've got to tell you, when
I went and read the summary for the first half
of seven seventeen. In the one piece Wiki, I literally
did the same thing, but with text. I read the
(05:30):
whole like first paragraph, and I realized as I got
to the end that I hadn't absorbed a goddamn thing
and went back and read. I had to reread it
like three times because kids, it's boring. It's very boring.
I was like, I could not help but laugh because
(05:50):
it's just a bunch of he says this, and then
he attacks, and then he says the other thing, and
then he attacks, and then he says, no, that's not true,
and then he dodges and he attacks again, and that's
literally all it is. So when I finally kind of
like got my head around the scene, I realized that
(06:12):
even if I had missed everything, it wouldn't matter. It
doesn't matter. I'm gonna I just I'm just gonna read
this to you guys. Leaving toward Diamante, Kiro slashes at him,
resulting in a shockwave that blows Diamante back. While dodging
and blocking Kiros attacks, Diamante expresses disbelief in him being
able to move during the death end Hambre. After moving
(06:35):
away from Kiros, Diamante asks him if his body is
an iron ball, only to note that Kiros must be
feeling immense pain after seeing a spiked ball land in
his arm, before demanding to know if Kiros is a
ball of stupidity. However, Kiros proclaims that feeling pain is
a mark of being human and that the don Quixote
pirates do not understand this, before clashing with Diamante once more.
(06:56):
Recalling Scarlet's death. Kiros continues clashing with Dimona before claiming
the don Quixote family does not understand the pain of
losing someone they love or being unable to feel whatever
they touch, declaring what he currently feels does not hurt
when compared to the tragedies dress Rosa has suffered. Kira
leaps forward and resumes clashing with Diamante and just saying
(07:18):
resumes clashing with Diamante. That phrase is repeated like eight
times or so in this because it's just a bunch
of like, I suffered so bad? Yeah, did you suffer
when I murdered your wife? It was so sad I
didn't have a wife. Yeah, I killed her. Did you
(07:40):
know that I killed her? I bet you really miss her,
don't you? I do miss her? And I care about
my daughter, and it's so sad that she didn't know
who I was. Yeah, she didn't know who you were
because I killed your wife and then we took over
the island. Did you know that I killed your wife?
And Rebecca off to the side with Nico Robin doing
thing but gasping that he would mention their mother. I
(08:03):
can't believe he would say that, but she has said
it like fifty times. This is the dialogue, this is it.
It's it's so bad, it's so bad. I look. There
are times when a villain just taunting somebody with like
(08:24):
I killed so and so that you liked. There are
times when this works, but you can't just keep going
to it over and over again because it just loses
the bite that it's meant to have for the audience.
And so then watching somebody like Rebecca reacting to it
(08:45):
the whole time, I can't help but feel like I
know that that was her mother, but it would lose
its bite for Rebecca. Also, by this point, she's heard
him say it too many goddamn times. I just refuse
to believe that she would continue to be as affected
by his shit talking. After he has gone to that
(09:08):
same well eleven hundred and fifty times, like there's no
water left in it, there's nothing at the bottom of
that well. It's empty. The reacts are gone. So this
I will dance right on past, because really it's like,
(09:30):
the most that we get is just Diamante saying you
should just let us have dress Rosa because we won
all those years ago, and so you lost, get used
to it. That's basically it. He's it's very like, I
(09:51):
don't know it, it's just very whatever. And ultimately Kiros
uses his technique trueno bastardo. This cuts Diamante's like wobbly
sword in two pieces and wounds him terribly, and Diamante
(10:13):
gets flung backward and lands on Scarlet's grave, which is
like just enough, already, okay, we get it, we get it.
She's dead. He killed her, did you know? And meanwhile,
as all of this is happening, Violet is I never
(10:36):
know what because they call her Violet, but then in
the subtitles sometimes it says Viola, I'm just gonna keep
going with Violet. But she is watching all of this,
and she manages to tell everybody finally that Kirosis has
beat Diamante and there's some guy there who's just like, wow,
I can't believe he came out on top. Diamante was
like at the top in the coliseum, and there's some
(10:59):
other dude next in the It's like, are you fucking high?
Don't you remember that Kiros was like the undefeated champion
for a long time. Of course he beat him, what
are you talking about? And honestly, I did appreciate that
little reminder and that, like the whole thing with them
(11:24):
at this plateau, you would think this is done now, right,
like it just feels like it should be. But we
go back to the plateau a lot of times just
to sort of have like the reactions of everybody up
there and to have like a check in, and it
(11:45):
is I just want that to be not a part
of the story anymore. And I know that I can't
have that because they are kind of central to what
is going on here. But I have to assume at
some point Kiros is going to be the king of
dress Rosa because Riku basically by the end of this
(12:09):
trio of episodes, he's like, I'm gonna go down there
and I'm going to help people. Now that my image
has been rehabilitated. Everybody can see that I wasn't the
guy who did everything they think, but I let them down.
Dress Rosa got taken over and I am not worthy
(12:31):
to keep doing the job. And my assumption is that
he is going to hand over the brains to kiros
I guess it's fine. Sure, whatever Sarah Fim says once again,
like eighty percent of that is just anime. Padding Viola
(12:54):
is her real name. Violet was what she went as
as part of Dophy's crew. Okay, I look, barb be
it from me, But don't you think if you're gonna
pick a different name when you're part of the crew,
you'd pick like a different different name. Like that just
(13:19):
feels it's so close? Why bother? What's the point? I
don't know. That's just me So all right, let's let's
see the next section of that episode. Is we check
in with is it ese? Is that how you say it?
(13:41):
The Blind Marine? He is like, weirdly a little bit
of a part of things, but there's he's not like
doing all that much. He just wants to make sure
that everybody is being more organized and get the Marines
to gather all of the citizens together and that's kind
(14:05):
of the only check in that we have with him.
And uh. We go then to Pica now saying that
I liked the revelation of how to defeat Pica. I
(14:25):
really mean that in terms of the way that he works,
because essentially what it is is that like he can
travel to different stones by like basically okay, so the
power that he has, what it is that Zoro finally
(14:46):
zeros in on helloel is if I try to kill
this guy's stone body, the actual body is hidden somewhere
in there and is unaffected. I'm just cutting up stone,
which just nothing, and I have to find his body.
But when he is in such a huge mass of stone,
(15:10):
how do I find it? Where is he? And he
begins to realize that Pika can travel through the ground.
So what I have to do is disconnect him from
the ground and get him in mid air, so that
(15:34):
if I cut him in half in mid air, he
has to be in one of those two halves. And
then if I cut that half in half, he's got
to be in one of those two. And you can
always tell which one he's in because he blinks his
eyes open in whatever section he's in, or he talks
(15:54):
and so he gives himself a way, which really Pika
should kind of like pipe down and stop being so active,
because then he could uh disguise which of the two
halves he's in. But Pika just Pika's a talker, considering
like how silly his voice sounds and everything. He really
(16:19):
is a chatty kathy and so Zoro is able to
like continually pare down or that's that's the goal. But first,
what we have are we have this whole thing with
Pica looking over at the plateau and he sees that
(16:43):
everybody is like trying to get Riku to like encourage
him to be king again, and Pika gets real fucking irritated,
and he says that do Flamingo is the only one
worthy to be king. He tries to do the whole
like after everything he did to you when he's talking
(17:07):
to Rebecca and to Kiros, and it's so weird because
I guess he's thinking that they don't know the truth
at this point, sir, maybe knowing what do you think?
Like you know what I'm saying, like just the idea
(17:30):
that this secret of what he really did has been
kept this whole time, my friend, I mean of course
they are aware that this was all a set up
by now, so they have to say that to him,
you know, and be like, dude, we know Rico didn't
actually kill a bunch of people and he didn't do X,
(17:51):
Y and Z, And it just seems like it irritates
him that they are aware, But he's very It's him
and Diamante are both surprisingly ride or die when it
(18:12):
comes to Do Flamingo. And when I say surprisingly, I
guess what I mean is it's not really surprising in
a villain exactly. It's more that I don't really know what.
I would like a little bit more detail on what
it is they see in Do Flamingo that makes them
(18:35):
think that he is such a worthy ruler because the
fact that he has like won in the past. Sure,
but I haven't really gotten a lot of like substance
from the way that everybody who works for him sort
of worships him. The main takeaway is just that he
(18:58):
tends to win most of the time. Maybe that's it.
Maybe it's that simple, you know that he just sends
to be the strongest. He has a power set that
is really really difficult to defend against, and that inherently
makes him worthy. But if that is what it is,
(19:23):
I would kind of like to hear them say it.
It just feels like they keep talking about how he's
the only one who's worthy, and that we won, you lost,
and so you're you should just accept the way things
are in a way that's sort of like it feels
(19:48):
like a very half asked kind of reasoning. To me,
it feels like it doesn't feel so much like they
are saying do Flamingo would be such a good ruler.
It feels a lot more like what they're saying is,
Oh my god, we already beat you guys. Can't you
just settle down? This is a lot of work. I'm
(20:11):
really sick of having to beat you guys back down
over and over again. That's what it sounds like to me.
Is less I think Dol Flamingo is the man for
the job and much more. He's already king Just leave it,
Just leave it alone, you know what I mean. And
there's something about both of them feeling this way in
(20:33):
this vague sense that's like a part of me was
sort of interested in the fact that they are both arguing.
For Dol Flamingo, it's not just about I I'm on
this certain side, and I want my side to win.
What they are starting to do is argue why Dolflo
Mingo is better for everybody, but they never actually like
(20:57):
explain in detail what what they mean why that is.
And I really kind of you, guys. I'm always this one.
I want an itemized list, I want opening arguments. I
want a courtroom drama where we present the witnesses from
either side. We present a you know, maybe bar graph
(21:22):
about the economy, perhaps have some some you know reports
about trade. Let's sit down and let's have a discussion.
But honestly, it's just very much like Dophie's cool. He's
very cool and badass, and you should let him rule
(21:43):
you because you should be so lucky. It's nothing. So
I was a little disappointed because Peka's like throwing in
and getting pretty hardcore about like no, no, no, Rico's
not taking his country back. That's not what's happening is bullshit.
It could have been a compelling thing to have happen,
(22:07):
and instead it just feels sort of flat. And what's
really a shame about it is that Pika is such
a weirdo character that having him in particular be the
one that's like rooting for dofel Mingo. You could do
(22:31):
something kind of interesting with that. I don't know, I
just feel like there's potential there. So anyway, this whole
thing with like Pika sort of he was focused entirely
on his fight with Zoro, but once he starts to
realize that Riku is being put back on the table,
he gets quite distracted and he decides that he is
(22:55):
not gonna take it, and he sets up all of
these barriers as he takes off, using you know, the
earth to travel in pretty much, and he makes it
so that Zorro cannot easily follow him because Zorro is
(23:17):
on foot. This is this is one of those things
that happens with this show where I get that, like, yes,
Zorro is on foot, but also later on he's like
literally fighting in mid air, and the show just never
seems to know what it wants to do in terms
(23:39):
of like is this flight? Can people technically fly? It
just is a little disingenuous for me to be like, oh,
I can't get there in time because I'm being blocked off,
when like I have personally seen Zorro jump forty feet
and just push himself off a rock to another rock
(24:03):
that's thirty feet ahead and then push himself off there
and basically do a parkore between cliff sides and reach
somebody that's half mile away in fifteen seconds. I've seen it,
we've done it. So for all of a sudden us
to be like, oh, I can't catch him. He set
this up so that I couldn't reach him. Uh uh,
(24:25):
I'm not buying it, especially because it's all of these
like stone spikes, which in my mind is like the
exact type of thing that would be perfect for a
character like Zoro to use to travel to get to
him fast. So it's just the only thing that I
did think was kind of funny was Zoro going through
(24:47):
all of his different plans that he could do. So
first he's just like I could slash him from real
far away, and then he's like, Okay, by the time
that reach him, reaches him, there's gonna be like no power,
and it's gonna be like I'm just slapping him across
the face, and no, I could jump on top of him.
(25:09):
Now I can't jump all the way up there. That's
not happening either. Then he's like I could try and
warn Zorro and everybody, and he just literally starts yelling, no,
Zoro us up. Sorry, he could try and warn Oosop
and everybody. So he starts yelling and very quickly realizes, Yeah,
(25:30):
that's not gonna work either because I'm too far away
and there's too much noise. So let's see what is
the next one, because there's a bunch of oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then he's like, oh, I know transponder stail and then
he reaches into his pocket and he's just like, oh,
I guess I dropped it. And it's weird because there's
like a cut right here to Oosop as if Usop
(25:55):
saw Zorro realizing that he had dropped it. But I
couldn't tell if that was just like a weird coincidence
or if I am supposed to think that that's what
happened there. And anyway, Zora is also like, if I
yelled to them, they're not going to have time to
get out of the way in any case, and maybe
(26:20):
five sees that, like, oh, Pika is about to try
and kill Riku, and this results like because she steps
in with cy at a few different points, and I
was sort of interested in how this is going to
shake out, but it turns out that yeah, Pika sees
(26:43):
that she is working with them and is instantly like, wow,
you completely betrayed us, Oh my god, and he starts
to attack her as well. Pika is pretty much kind
of going after like anybody who isn't nailed down. You know,
(27:05):
there is a point where and correct me if I'm wrong,
but it almost looks like he's going after the lower
level folks on his own side, which I thought was
sort of weird, And I don't know if it's supposed
to be, like is he just having a tantrum and
so he doesn't realize or what. So around this time
(27:28):
is when Zoro starts to like realize exactly how we're
going to be able to take this guy down, and
the whole like huge imposing quality of Pika standing over
everybody on the plateau. I have to admit, it's like
(27:51):
lost its impact at this point. You know, it just
happens when you draw something out this much, the impressive
quality that you begin to develop from seeing the first
time we saw Pika's ability come on, it was like
(28:13):
very very impressive. It was so cool, and it's gotten
to this place where it's almost like I feel like
a dog a little bit, where it's just too big
for me to fully comprehend. And now it's just sort
of a vague impression of like, oh, yeah, there's a
(28:34):
face on this hill, and that isn't like it's supposed
to be. This guy is a mountain. You know. That
sounds very impressive in a vacuum, but the effect of
it being in my face over and over again is
such that I start to just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
(28:54):
so the guy's big whatever. And I regret a little
bit that it starts to just numb me, because I
think this actual moment where Zoro starts to like cut
him in half would hit a bit harder if I
didn't feel so inured to the effect of this by now.
(29:17):
So let's see, there's a bunch of Marines as well
who are hitting Pika with cannonballs, and I think this
was part of what also was like just making me
kind of zone out during this episode, is I had
to sit through a lot of attacks on Pika that
(29:40):
I knew weren't gonna work. You know. It was just
like one after another of things that I'm just why
are you wasting my time? And your time. Of course,
cannon balls are not going to work on this fucking guy.
It's not going to happen, and having to just sit
and watch them, and it's more like we have to
(30:01):
make the Marines do something, you know. It almost doesn't
even feel like they themselves think they're going to have
an effect so much as well. We can't just like
sit here and do nothing. So I guess, sure, cannonballs,
that's the best we can come up with. And we
get this guy. I think his name is Tank. There's
(30:23):
a moment in the first of these three episodes where
Viola is remembering how when she first heard that Diamante
was bragging that he killed Scarlet, she was going to
jump in and beat the shit out of him. Basically,
she was disgusted and very emotional, and this guy Tank
(30:48):
holds her back from doing it and you know, potentially
fucking things up for everybody. And that occurs to her
that moment where Tank is like trying to stop her.
It's in her memories because the guy is like crying,
He is sobbing frankly at the thought that she's going
(31:08):
to like throw herself away by picking a fight with
this dude. I would argue he's picking a fight with
everybody else, but you know, that's like the point of him,
I suppose, But yeah, he uh, the guy Tank winds
up coming back to being important again for a minute
(31:30):
where he's the one who is going to help Ricu
retreat and also like get all of the other people
who are on or around the plateau out of the way.
And Ricu is like, I am going to let everybody
else get out of here, but I'm not going anywhere
(31:53):
because clearly Pica is after me. So if I'm the target,
let me just stay here and face this guy. And
Pika is like, all right, well, I'm going to kill
you and I'm gonna crush this entire plateau. And Ricu
(32:17):
isn't even resisting at all. He is very much in
a headspace right now. I think of just like Penance.
You know, I am paying for my failures as a leader.
And I have such mixed feelings about this, because I
(32:39):
admire anybody who is in a leadership position for taking
responsibility in a general sense. That's always been something that's
missing in leadership in my world, and so I'm a fan.
On the other hand, there is a point where I'm like, Okay,
this isn't doing anything for anybody, though, you get that right,
(33:01):
Like this is not helping, and you're like, I think
the thing that he thinks is happening here is if
I make myself a target and take my punishment, I
will be saving the lives of all of these other
people who are here through no fault of their own
(33:23):
that I already fucked up with to begin with. And
I will finally get to lay down my life in
place of theirs so that I can offer them the
protection I should have offered all those days in the past,
(33:45):
when actually I was the one galloping around hurting people
and being the one swinging the sword. Now I can
put myself between them and the sword, and I do
admire that. Actually I like it. And Riku, I haven't
gotten that much of him since all of this is
like turn this corner, and I find him sort of
(34:07):
interesting because he's like he's he's he's a little bit
boring in some ways, but I feel like there's a
lot of potential there, And I guess that's really what
it is, is more that I'm interested in his potential
more than what's actually being done with him. But the
(34:29):
fact that he is just sort of like offering himself up.
Zoro does not think much of this, and he also
is like, I don't like the fact that Pika is
going to flatten this guy when he's not offering up
any fight, Like that's not the whole point is the
(34:50):
fight to Zoro. So Pika just being like, I'm just
going to crush you an unresisting, willing participant, I think
kind of short shorts out his brain a little bit.
And then Pika starts to like bring down the hammer
(35:10):
because he's made one of his fists into a giant,
you know, house size thing, bigger than a house actually,
And this is when Zoro jumps in with his armament
hockey and begins to slice him up. This is also
when Riku states, like, because Pica is mocking him for
(35:33):
all of his fuck ups, And this is when Riku says,
for sure, oh yeah, after all of this, like I
am not taking the throne back again. That's a wrap
on that job for me. And I didn't really get
a good sense of like if Pica was surprised by
that at all. I kind of wondered if he was thinking,
(35:57):
like I didn't expect it. I'll say that. I'm curious
if you guys thought that this was going to be
the way it would go. Riku's deciding I'm going to
abdicate the throne. It makes sense actually politically speaking, if
you fucked up this bad and you have been like
a prisoner of the enemy this whole time, and you
(36:20):
were kept so separate from everyone that the whole kingdom
literally assumed you were dead. Yeah, yeah, I think probably
it is for the best that you not be the
king anymore. Like, how do you command respect after being
(36:41):
treated like this and the entire kingdom is taken over
by a bad, bad man and you were there by
his side the whole time. And that's not to say
it all that he's like complicit, but knowing that kind
of humiliation that he has been forced to experience, it's
(37:05):
just not something that really inspires a great level of
trust I could see in people. So I just have
a I just feel sort of like I should have
seen coming that Rica would not want the throne back,
But I genuinely just sort of expected we're just going
(37:25):
to go back to how everything had been. I really did.
I figured we are working toward going back to the
way it had all used to be and trying to
get closer to the past and working backward, which isn't
really a great mindset. That's not like, that's not the
(37:49):
way forward, that's literally not the way forward. So once
I realized, I was, like, I feel like a bit
I felt very old. Really was it was because it
was sort of giving. Of course, you're just trying to
reach into the past to regain something that has been
(38:11):
lost forever Natasha. You know, it felt like a bit
of an indictment that it didn't occur to me that
maybe we should just do something new now. And like
I said, I am assuming that it's going to be Kiros.
I've got to be real though. If it isn't Kiros,
that would be pretty cool. I would be into it.
(38:31):
Like Kiros is just such the obvious choice, and to
a point, that's fine, but like, look, I know that
this is me just wishing for a thing that's never
going to happen. It would, though, be kind of nice
(38:53):
if we could have a woman ruler. What about that
crazy idea? But what if we had Rebecca be the
queen instead of there being a king. I don't think
that that is likely to happen at all. And I
(39:17):
especially don't think that it is likely to happen because
Rebecca is still single. And maybe this is me just
like not giving Oda much credit here, but forgive me,
it does not seem like she Like women characters are
(39:38):
often trusted with power unless they have a male partner
in the picture. I just the only time that we
have really seen a woman in power is like that
wasn't an actual bad guy is Boa Hancock and she
(39:59):
was sort of strattling the line between that guy think
a guy and then she fell totally obsessive with Loofy.
So now like she's not in a relationship, but it
feels like her power has been kind of diminished in
making her so foolish over him. So I feel like
(40:20):
it's just yeah, I just don't see it. Oh, Seraphim
has been commenting, Sorry, his crew is pretty much a
cult of personality. Logic doesn't matter. Their leader is just amazing.
It deserves to be in charge. There's not really anything
you could do in this situation. If going that route,
Viola would be the next in line. Oh is she
(40:40):
older than Rebecca? Okay, I did not keep track, but
I believe you. I the Violet Viola I'm trying to
think because she was sort of involved with Uh sangy,
(41:03):
But like, I know, Sanji's not gonna be king, He's
not gonna stay with her and dress Rosa, So I
don't see that happening either. I think it's gonna have
to be Kiros. And I also feel like if we
were looking at this from the perspective of what it
would be like in real life, Kiros is the choice
because he's been turned into a toy, and in that sense,
(41:30):
he has experienced something that a lot of people in
the city would have experienced that would be very difficult
to like explain to someone who has not gone through it.
So I feel like he would have a big advantage
there in saying, like, I'm one of you guys, I
went through the same thing, and just the fact that,
like he was not enslaved when he was transformed, so
(41:55):
he manages to continue to be badass and try to
fight back even when he's a toy, which, like it's
no fault of anybody else's that they don't do that
because they are enslave, they cannot make choices for themselves.
They are put in a position specifically where they have
to do as they are told to do. So this
(42:15):
is no criticism, but I could see that really really
working for him if you were talking about like an
election platform, you know what I mean, having it be
I not only was turned into a toy, my child
forgot me, my wife was murdered. I went through all
these hardships, and yet throughout it all, despite everything, I
(42:39):
never forgot about all of you, and I never stopped
fighting for dress Rosa. Like, that's a pretty compelling platform
to run on. Oh, Seraphim says, violent is Rebecca's aunt, right,
that's right, she was Scarlet's sister. Okay, yeah, thank you.
(43:02):
So anyway, Okay, I'm all over the place here, but frankly,
like a part of me feels like I've kind of
already talked about everything because there's not all that much
going on except that it's lots of back and forth
that it feels like I've watched the same back and
forth eight times by the time we get to the
one that actually matters. So we have Zoro cutting Peka down,
(43:27):
uh and pecause it's just basically like mocking Zoro for
a little bit, going like you really think you figured
me out? Huh? You really thought you won, and he
covers his entire body in hockey. He uses the armament hockey.
It's very interesting to me every time somebody reveals that
(43:50):
they can use armament hockey, because I can't help but
feel a little bit like, isn't that convenient? I thought
it was a lot less known than it seems to be,
and that just might be me, you know, having assigned
a frequency and a value to it. But it just
(44:15):
keeps popping up with people that I would not think
know how to do it. And now I'm starting to
think I have to assume most people, like at this
point in the story can do it. So Zorro is like, oh, hockey,
I got hockey too, how about that and basically says,
(44:40):
let's just have a little dick measuring contest right now,
see who's is stronger, And of course Pica is like,
what do you mine is stronger? What are you even
talking about? And Zorro has an interesting moment here where
he thinks back to fighting dracoul Mihawk and remembers that
(45:05):
he really thought he was the best. There was no
doubt in his mind, and how utterly humbled he was
when he is like, this fight I had forgotten that
Miehawk literally takes out the smallest sword he has, not
even a sword. It's like a little shrimp knife. It's
(45:26):
so it's so insulting, you guys, it really is. But yeah,
it's just thinking back to this moment, and he slashes
at him, and of course Pika's whole head splits the
fuck open and he starts coughing up blood down on
(45:49):
the ground. Bro is the King with the punch, Elizabella.
He keeps this and actually kind of funny, you guys.
He keeps trying throughout these episodes to be like, I
got it, I got it, I could do something. I
got my punch, and Zoro keeps telling him save it,
(46:10):
just save your punch, save your punch, and he when
he slices up Pica, Elizabella is like, oh my god,
you saved Riku. And he is so respectful for a moment.
But then because of slicing up Pika in mid air,
(46:34):
there's all these huge chunks of stone that are just
falling downward. And like when I say huge, I am
talking like apartment building sized. I am not talking big
like the size of a car. This the thing that is, uh,
(46:54):
the truth about this whole thing is that everybody in
dress Roast should be dead. The amount of attacks that
have happened on dressed Rosa that do not in any
way take into account the many civilians standing nearby, the
(47:16):
number of times where there has been an earthquake, huge
cracks forming in the street with people falling in. We've
had explosions going off, we've had comets falling from the sky,
and now we've got like a nine to eleven style Yeah,
I said it, pieces of mortar falling down to the ground.
(47:38):
Every single solitary human being on dress Rosa would be dead,
and they're not. And that's fine. But let's just be
very very for real for a second here. So as
this comes down, elicit Pellow punches the rubble away and
(48:04):
then he yells at Zoro about how I can't believe
you had me save my punch this whole time, and
all I did was basically be a janitor. That's the
wording that he uses. It is just like you just
had me on cleanup duty. I cackled. That was actually
really funny to me, Like it's ultimately like you probably
(48:30):
saved more lives than you would have otherwise, because it
just feels to me like this punch thing. I don't
really know how effective it would have been, so probably
punching rubble keeping it from landing on people, you probably
did more good with that than you would have in
(48:51):
any other use of your punch. Especially I don't know
about this punch up against hockey. Now that Pika had
hockey this whole time, how am I supposed to look
at this? I feel like there's no world in which
this punch from this king overpowers hockey and does jack shit.
(49:16):
And maybe that's me just underestimating him. I don't know,
but I think that likely he either underestimates his enemy,
overestimates himself, or is just wrecked up in his ego
and that this was good for him. Seraphim says it's
(49:36):
also a longstanding fan concept that a lot of people
we met were using it all the time. The show
just didn't start using the black coloring to show it
off till after the time. Skip. Nah, I can't decide
how I feel about that. I get what you mean,
and probably that's true. I could see that being like
(50:00):
a believable explanation, but I've got to admit it feels
a little bit of a cheat. And maybe that's not fair.
I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I can't decide,
but I think you're probably right. So that's the end
(50:27):
of seven nineteen guys. I have like almost ten minutes remaining,
and I feel like I've covered everything in these three
episodes because there's not that much else. We just spend
most of our time on Kiro's diamante and I don't
even want to include Rebecca in it anymore. When I'm
(50:48):
saying it, I'm including Rebecca by a default because Kiros
is her dad and he's doing this for her allegedly,
and YadA, YadA, YadA. But it just does not feel
like Rebecca's actually doing anything at this point. So a
big part of me is sort of like, eugh whatever
about her and doesn't feel like she's really involved now.
And Robin is pretty badly injured from making this like
(51:13):
umbrella thing that she did to block them all from
that rain. So honestly, Robin, I don't want you injuring
yourself on Rebecca's behalf ever again. And maybe that's like
cold blooded of me to say, but I'm sorry, Rebecca,
you are not worth it. You are very very boring,
(51:37):
and I guess I can pardon it this time because
Robin had to also save herself, so making this umbrella
saved her also, And it wasn't just her like sacrificing
herself on behalf of Rebecca, it was for everybody. But like,
that's the only time I'm going to make this exception. Otherwise,
(51:59):
don't do this again. I don't like it. Robin. Robin
has been, as you all know, kind of my least
favorite of the crew because I just find her boring
and I appreciate the attempts to have her be like
(52:19):
the sort of morbid one and whatnot, and like sometimes
that lands, but most of the time she just comes
across as very dull. So you really must know how
I feel about Rebecca. If I am reprimanding Robin for
risking herself on Rebecca's behalf, it's got to be pretty bad.
(52:47):
I just I feel so sad about this, in large
part because it's a woman character problem. Clearly with this show.
He just has a lot of women be really really
boring because they have to be good in this way
(53:08):
that is so narrow and so almost like childish. You
know that it does a complete disservice to actual real
human beings a lot of the time, and maybe this
(53:30):
is just something that feels like it applies to women
so much because there are so few women characters overall
that matter that I am on high alert with them,
and probably if I did the math, there's lots of
male characters that are just as dull. But when you've
got so many men characters, it doesn't matter that some
(53:51):
of them are boring because you've got a billion to
choose from. And not me being like one of our
mains but also being real greedy. That's like as close
as we come to somebody who's of a woman who's
of real importance and has like a through line flaw
(54:13):
to her that makes her seem like kind of a
less good person, because even like the flaw with Baby five,
it's like a flaw that means that she's too giving,
you know, even that it makes her like so open
hearted and kind in a way that's damaging and foolish,
(54:34):
but still so That's part of what I really enjoy
about Nami is that she's allowed to just be avaricious
and opportunistic. I just want to see the more dope women.
Viole is like a little bit more fun her introduction
(54:57):
being a double agent and try to seduce Sanji and
convince him to kill a guy and all that. That
was a pretty good time. I wouldn't mind if we
had her going back into the fem fatale thing just
to drop Like, I get that part of it was
her cover, but maybe we could have it be that,
like she was good at it and she misses it.
Maybe she's you know, I don't know how that would
(55:18):
even work, but anyway, Okay, I'm gonna wrap this up.
I think I've said enough. I appreciate you all bearing
with me on missing it for the last episode. Thank
you Florian as well, and thank you Seraphim for coming
in and chatting and telling me stuff that I uh
forgot or got wrong. Need that. Hope you guys are
(55:39):
enjoying the coverage, and until next time to Loo motherfuckers.
(56:12):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me,
covering one piece episodes seven seventeen through seven nineteen Tiueno
Bastardo Kiro's furious strike moving across the ground, the giant statue,
(00:23):
Pika's surprise maneuver, and a decisive battle in mid air
Zoro's new special secret technique blasts. In these episodes, Zoro
begins to realize that the only way to defeat Pika
is by keeping him in the air where he cannot
(00:43):
reconnect with the ground. Actually a pretty clever understanding. I
liked this, but overall these episodes did for me a
little bit Welcome to boil Me, Welcome to the show everyone,
(01:20):
I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Florian for
commissioning this episode. So yeah, this was like a weird combo, guys,
of I guess it's really what it is is that
it's a cool idea that we eventually reach when it
comes to Zoro and his attack mode and figuring out Pika.
(01:43):
But it just has all been so drawn out that
any interests that I might have in the development just
gets worn out by the time it actually becomes anything.
Does that make sense? And and this like the whole
(02:06):
I mean, I the first of these three episodes, seven seventeen,
was supposed to be included in my coverage with Florian
last week, and honestly, I don't really feel like I
need to even talk about it. And like Florian and
I barely talked about the second half of episode seven
(02:28):
sixteen because it was mostly to do with Hiros and
Rebecca and Diamante and then this, unfortunately, out of these
three episodes, one and a half maybe even more has
to do with them again, and I I look, occasionally, guys,
(02:57):
I will have these moments where I will feel like
I must have zoned out, I must have grown someone
interested that I miss something, and I will rewind and
rewatch because I'll feel like I just didn't absorb any
of that. I just clearly didn't. I need to regroup.
(03:17):
And I think plenty of people have experienced this, where
if you're listening to a podcast or an audiobook, you
will realize that you missed a particular thing, and then
you go back and you somehow managed to space out
again in the exact same spot that you spaced out
(03:40):
last time, so you wind up repeatedly rewinding and re
listening but somehow, five times in a row you still
manage to miss the thing. And that was what happened
to me. Kids. I rewound, and rewatched, and rewound, and rewatched,
(04:00):
and every single time my attention just wound up straying
to the point that I was like, okay, you know what,
hold on, I'm gonna go to the like. There are
summaries on a wiki of the One Piece episodes, and
(04:21):
I was like, let me just go and read the
beginning of the summary for this episode, because sometimes what
that does, weirdly is it gives me something to cling to,
and when I rewatch, I will absorb it better if
I've got like that guideline of what's about to happen
in terms of plot beats already in my head. I
(04:43):
don't do this often. I only do this when I
find that my attention is like continually wandering. And even
if I were to do it very often for other shows,
there are very few things I cover that just have
like a plot summer as detailed as the ones that
exist for One Piece, So it's not really a thing
(05:05):
almost at all. But I've got to tell you, when
I went and read the summary for the first half
of seven seventeen. In the one piece Wiki, I literally
did the same thing, but with text. I read the
(05:30):
whole like first paragraph, and I realized as I got
to the end that I hadn't absorbed a goddamn thing
and went back and read. I had to reread it
like three times because kids, it's boring. It's very boring.
I was like, I could not help but laugh because
(05:50):
it's just a bunch of he says this, and then
he attacks, and then he says the other thing, and
then he attacks, and then he says, no, that's not true,
and then he dodges and he attacks again, and that's
literally all it is. So when I finally kind of
like got my head around the scene, I realized that
(06:12):
even if I had missed everything, it wouldn't matter. It
doesn't matter. I'm gonna I just I'm just gonna read
this to you guys. Leaving toward Diamante, Kiro slashes at him,
resulting in a shockwave that blows Diamante back. While dodging
and blocking Kiros attacks, Diamante expresses disbelief in him being
able to move during the death end Hambre. After moving
(06:35):
away from Kiros, Diamante asks him if his body is
an iron ball, only to note that Kiros must be
feeling immense pain after seeing a spiked ball land in
his arm, before demanding to know if Kiros is a
ball of stupidity. However, Kiros proclaims that feeling pain is
a mark of being human and that the don Quixote
pirates do not understand this, before clashing with Diamante once more.
(06:56):
Recalling Scarlet's death. Kiros continues clashing with Dimona before claiming
the don Quixote family does not understand the pain of
losing someone they love or being unable to feel whatever
they touch, declaring what he currently feels does not hurt
when compared to the tragedies dress Rosa has suffered. Kira
leaps forward and resumes clashing with Diamante and just saying
(07:18):
resumes clashing with Diamante. That phrase is repeated like eight
times or so in this because it's just a bunch
of like, I suffered so bad? Yeah, did you suffer
when I murdered your wife? It was so sad I
didn't have a wife. Yeah, I killed her. Did you
(07:40):
know that I killed her? I bet you really miss her,
don't you? I do miss her? And I care about
my daughter, and it's so sad that she didn't know
who I was. Yeah, she didn't know who you were
because I killed your wife and then we took over
the island. Did you know that I killed your wife?
And Rebecca off to the side with Nico Robin doing
thing but gasping that he would mention their mother. I
(08:03):
can't believe he would say that, but she has said
it like fifty times. This is the dialogue, this is it.
It's it's so bad, it's so bad. I look. There
are times when a villain just taunting somebody with like
(08:24):
I killed so and so that you liked. There are
times when this works, but you can't just keep going
to it over and over again because it just loses
the bite that it's meant to have for the audience.
And so then watching somebody like Rebecca reacting to it
(08:45):
the whole time, I can't help but feel like I
know that that was her mother, but it would lose
its bite for Rebecca. Also, by this point, she's heard
him say it too many goddamn times. I just refuse
to believe that she would continue to be as affected
by his shit talking. After he has gone to that
(09:08):
same well eleven hundred and fifty times, like there's no
water left in it, there's nothing at the bottom of
that well. It's empty. The reacts are gone. So this
I will dance right on past, because really it's like,
(09:30):
the most that we get is just Diamante saying you
should just let us have dress Rosa because we won
all those years ago, and so you lost, get used
to it. That's basically it. He's it's very like, I
(09:51):
don't know it, it's just very whatever. And ultimately Kiros
uses his technique trueno bastardo. This cuts Diamante's like wobbly
sword in two pieces and wounds him terribly, and Diamante
(10:13):
gets flung backward and lands on Scarlet's grave, which is
like just enough, already, okay, we get it, we get it.
She's dead. He killed her, did you know? And meanwhile,
as all of this is happening, Violet is I never
(10:36):
know what because they call her Violet, but then in
the subtitles sometimes it says Viola, I'm just gonna keep
going with Violet. But she is watching all of this,
and she manages to tell everybody finally that Kirosis has
beat Diamante and there's some guy there who's just like, wow,
I can't believe he came out on top. Diamante was
like at the top in the coliseum, and there's some
(10:59):
other dude next in the It's like, are you fucking high?
Don't you remember that Kiros was like the undefeated champion
for a long time. Of course he beat him, what
are you talking about? And honestly, I did appreciate that
little reminder and that, like the whole thing with them
(11:24):
at this plateau, you would think this is done now, right,
like it just feels like it should be. But we
go back to the plateau a lot of times just
to sort of have like the reactions of everybody up
there and to have like a check in, and it
(11:45):
is I just want that to be not a part
of the story anymore. And I know that I can't
have that because they are kind of central to what
is going on here. But I have to assume at
some point Kiros is going to be the king of
dress Rosa because Riku basically by the end of this
(12:09):
trio of episodes, he's like, I'm gonna go down there
and I'm going to help people. Now that my image
has been rehabilitated. Everybody can see that I wasn't the
guy who did everything they think, but I let them down.
Dress Rosa got taken over and I am not worthy
(12:31):
to keep doing the job. And my assumption is that
he is going to hand over the brains to kiros
I guess it's fine. Sure, whatever Sarah Fim says once again,
like eighty percent of that is just anime. Padding Viola
(12:54):
is her real name. Violet was what she went as
as part of Dophy's crew. Okay, I look, barb be
it from me, But don't you think if you're gonna
pick a different name when you're part of the crew,
you'd pick like a different different name. Like that just
(13:19):
feels it's so close? Why bother? What's the point? I
don't know. That's just me So all right, let's let's
see the next section of that episode. Is we check
in with is it ese? Is that how you say it?
(13:41):
The Blind Marine? He is like, weirdly a little bit
of a part of things, but there's he's not like
doing all that much. He just wants to make sure
that everybody is being more organized and get the Marines
to gather all of the citizens together and that's kind
(14:05):
of the only check in that we have with him.
And uh. We go then to Pica now saying that
I liked the revelation of how to defeat Pica. I
(14:25):
really mean that in terms of the way that he works,
because essentially what it is is that like he can
travel to different stones by like basically okay, so the
power that he has, what it is that Zoro finally
(14:46):
zeros in on helloel is if I try to kill
this guy's stone body, the actual body is hidden somewhere
in there and is unaffected. I'm just cutting up stone,
which just nothing, and I have to find his body.
But when he is in such a huge mass of stone,
(15:10):
how do I find it? Where is he? And he
begins to realize that Pika can travel through the ground.
So what I have to do is disconnect him from
the ground and get him in mid air, so that
(15:34):
if I cut him in half in mid air, he
has to be in one of those two halves. And
then if I cut that half in half, he's got
to be in one of those two. And you can
always tell which one he's in because he blinks his
eyes open in whatever section he's in, or he talks
(15:54):
and so he gives himself a way, which really Pika
should kind of like pipe down and stop being so active,
because then he could uh disguise which of the two
halves he's in. But Pika just Pika's a talker, considering
like how silly his voice sounds and everything. He really
(16:19):
is a chatty kathy and so Zoro is able to
like continually pare down or that's that's the goal. But first,
what we have are we have this whole thing with
Pica looking over at the plateau and he sees that
(16:43):
everybody is like trying to get Riku to like encourage
him to be king again, and Pika gets real fucking irritated,
and he says that do Flamingo is the only one
worthy to be king. He tries to do the whole
like after everything he did to you when he's talking
(17:07):
to Rebecca and to Kiros, and it's so weird because
I guess he's thinking that they don't know the truth
at this point, sir, maybe knowing what do you think?
Like you know what I'm saying, like just the idea
(17:30):
that this secret of what he really did has been
kept this whole time, my friend, I mean of course
they are aware that this was all a set up
by now, so they have to say that to him,
you know, and be like, dude, we know Rico didn't
actually kill a bunch of people and he didn't do X,
(17:51):
Y and Z, And it just seems like it irritates
him that they are aware, But he's very It's him
and Diamante are both surprisingly ride or die when it
(18:12):
comes to Do Flamingo. And when I say surprisingly, I
guess what I mean is it's not really surprising in
a villain exactly. It's more that I don't really know what.
I would like a little bit more detail on what
it is they see in Do Flamingo that makes them
(18:35):
think that he is such a worthy ruler because the
fact that he has like won in the past. Sure,
but I haven't really gotten a lot of like substance
from the way that everybody who works for him sort
of worships him. The main takeaway is just that he
(18:58):
tends to win most of the time. Maybe that's it.
Maybe it's that simple, you know that he just sends
to be the strongest. He has a power set that
is really really difficult to defend against, and that inherently
makes him worthy. But if that is what it is,
(19:23):
I would kind of like to hear them say it.
It just feels like they keep talking about how he's
the only one who's worthy, and that we won, you lost,
and so you're you should just accept the way things
are in a way that's sort of like it feels
(19:48):
like a very half asked kind of reasoning. To me,
it feels like it doesn't feel so much like they
are saying do Flamingo would be such a good ruler.
It feels a lot more like what they're saying is,
Oh my god, we already beat you guys. Can't you
just settle down? This is a lot of work. I'm
(20:11):
really sick of having to beat you guys back down
over and over again. That's what it sounds like to me.
Is less I think Dol Flamingo is the man for
the job and much more. He's already king Just leave it,
Just leave it alone, you know what I mean. And
there's something about both of them feeling this way in
(20:33):
this vague sense that's like a part of me was
sort of interested in the fact that they are both arguing.
For Dol Flamingo, it's not just about I I'm on
this certain side, and I want my side to win.
What they are starting to do is argue why Dolflo
Mingo is better for everybody, but they never actually like
(20:57):
explain in detail what what they mean why that is.
And I really kind of you, guys. I'm always this one.
I want an itemized list, I want opening arguments. I
want a courtroom drama where we present the witnesses from
either side. We present a you know, maybe bar graph
(21:22):
about the economy, perhaps have some some you know reports
about trade. Let's sit down and let's have a discussion.
But honestly, it's just very much like Dophie's cool. He's
very cool and badass, and you should let him rule
(21:43):
you because you should be so lucky. It's nothing. So
I was a little disappointed because Peka's like throwing in
and getting pretty hardcore about like no, no, no, Rico's
not taking his country back. That's not what's happening is bullshit.
It could have been a compelling thing to have happen,
(22:07):
and instead it just feels sort of flat. And what's
really a shame about it is that Pika is such
a weirdo character that having him in particular be the
one that's like rooting for dofel Mingo. You could do
(22:31):
something kind of interesting with that. I don't know, I
just feel like there's potential there. So anyway, this whole
thing with like Pika sort of he was focused entirely
on his fight with Zoro, but once he starts to
realize that Riku is being put back on the table,
he gets quite distracted and he decides that he is
(22:55):
not gonna take it, and he sets up all of
these barriers as he takes off, using you know, the
earth to travel in pretty much, and he makes it
so that Zorro cannot easily follow him because Zorro is
(23:17):
on foot. This is this is one of those things
that happens with this show where I get that, like, yes,
Zorro is on foot, but also later on he's like
literally fighting in mid air, and the show just never
seems to know what it wants to do in terms
(23:39):
of like is this flight? Can people technically fly? It
just is a little disingenuous for me to be like, oh,
I can't get there in time because I'm being blocked off,
when like I have personally seen Zorro jump forty feet
and just push himself off a rock to another rock
(24:03):
that's thirty feet ahead and then push himself off there
and basically do a parkore between cliff sides and reach
somebody that's half mile away in fifteen seconds. I've seen it,
we've done it. So for all of a sudden us
to be like, oh, I can't catch him. He set
this up so that I couldn't reach him. Uh uh,
(24:25):
I'm not buying it, especially because it's all of these
like stone spikes, which in my mind is like the
exact type of thing that would be perfect for a
character like Zoro to use to travel to get to
him fast. So it's just the only thing that I
did think was kind of funny was Zoro going through
(24:47):
all of his different plans that he could do. So
first he's just like I could slash him from real
far away, and then he's like, Okay, by the time
that reach him, reaches him, there's gonna be like no power,
and it's gonna be like I'm just slapping him across
the face, and no, I could jump on top of him.
(25:09):
Now I can't jump all the way up there. That's
not happening either. Then he's like I could try and
warn Zorro and everybody, and he just literally starts yelling, no,
Zoro us up. Sorry, he could try and warn Oosop
and everybody. So he starts yelling and very quickly realizes, Yeah,
(25:30):
that's not gonna work either because I'm too far away
and there's too much noise. So let's see what is
the next one, because there's a bunch of oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then he's like, oh, I know transponder stail and then
he reaches into his pocket and he's just like, oh,
I guess I dropped it. And it's weird because there's
like a cut right here to Oosop as if Usop
(25:55):
saw Zorro realizing that he had dropped it. But I
couldn't tell if that was just like a weird coincidence
or if I am supposed to think that that's what
happened there. And anyway, Zora is also like, if I
yelled to them, they're not going to have time to
get out of the way in any case, and maybe
(26:20):
five sees that, like, oh, Pika is about to try
and kill Riku, and this results like because she steps
in with cy at a few different points, and I
was sort of interested in how this is going to
shake out, but it turns out that yeah, Pika sees
(26:43):
that she is working with them and is instantly like, wow,
you completely betrayed us, Oh my god, and he starts
to attack her as well. Pika is pretty much kind
of going after like anybody who isn't nailed down. You know,
(27:05):
there is a point where and correct me if I'm wrong,
but it almost looks like he's going after the lower
level folks on his own side, which I thought was
sort of weird, And I don't know if it's supposed
to be, like is he just having a tantrum and
so he doesn't realize or what. So around this time
(27:28):
is when Zoro starts to like realize exactly how we're
going to be able to take this guy down, and
the whole like huge imposing quality of Pika standing over
everybody on the plateau. I have to admit, it's like
(27:51):
lost its impact at this point. You know, it just
happens when you draw something out this much, the impressive
quality that you begin to develop from seeing the first
time we saw Pika's ability come on, it was like
(28:13):
very very impressive. It was so cool, and it's gotten
to this place where it's almost like I feel like
a dog a little bit, where it's just too big
for me to fully comprehend. And now it's just sort
of a vague impression of like, oh, yeah, there's a
(28:34):
face on this hill, and that isn't like it's supposed
to be. This guy is a mountain. You know. That
sounds very impressive in a vacuum, but the effect of
it being in my face over and over again is
such that I start to just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
(28:54):
so the guy's big whatever. And I regret a little
bit that it starts to just numb me, because I
think this actual moment where Zoro starts to like cut
him in half would hit a bit harder if I
didn't feel so inured to the effect of this by now.
(29:17):
So let's see, there's a bunch of Marines as well
who are hitting Pika with cannonballs, and I think this
was part of what also was like just making me
kind of zone out during this episode, is I had
to sit through a lot of attacks on Pika that
(29:40):
I knew weren't gonna work. You know. It was just
like one after another of things that I'm just why
are you wasting my time? And your time. Of course,
cannon balls are not going to work on this fucking guy.
It's not going to happen, and having to just sit
and watch them, and it's more like we have to
(30:01):
make the Marines do something, you know. It almost doesn't
even feel like they themselves think they're going to have
an effect so much as well. We can't just like
sit here and do nothing. So I guess, sure, cannonballs,
that's the best we can come up with. And we
get this guy. I think his name is Tank. There's
(30:23):
a moment in the first of these three episodes where
Viola is remembering how when she first heard that Diamante
was bragging that he killed Scarlet, she was going to
jump in and beat the shit out of him. Basically,
she was disgusted and very emotional, and this guy Tank
(30:48):
holds her back from doing it and you know, potentially
fucking things up for everybody. And that occurs to her
that moment where Tank is like trying to stop her.
It's in her memories because the guy is like crying,
He is sobbing frankly at the thought that she's going
(31:08):
to like throw herself away by picking a fight with
this dude. I would argue he's picking a fight with
everybody else, but you know, that's like the point of him,
I suppose, But yeah, he uh, the guy Tank winds
up coming back to being important again for a minute
(31:30):
where he's the one who is going to help Ricu
retreat and also like get all of the other people
who are on or around the plateau out of the way.
And Ricu is like, I am going to let everybody
else get out of here, but I'm not going anywhere
(31:53):
because clearly Pica is after me. So if I'm the target,
let me just stay here and face this guy. And
Pika is like, all right, well, I'm going to kill
you and I'm gonna crush this entire plateau. And Ricu
(32:17):
isn't even resisting at all. He is very much in
a headspace right now. I think of just like Penance.
You know, I am paying for my failures as a leader.
And I have such mixed feelings about this, because I
(32:39):
admire anybody who is in a leadership position for taking
responsibility in a general sense. That's always been something that's
missing in leadership in my world, and so I'm a fan.
On the other hand, there is a point where I'm like, Okay,
this isn't doing anything for anybody, though, you get that right,
(33:01):
Like this is not helping, and you're like, I think
the thing that he thinks is happening here is if
I make myself a target and take my punishment, I
will be saving the lives of all of these other
people who are here through no fault of their own
(33:23):
that I already fucked up with to begin with. And
I will finally get to lay down my life in
place of theirs so that I can offer them the
protection I should have offered all those days in the past,
(33:45):
when actually I was the one galloping around hurting people
and being the one swinging the sword. Now I can
put myself between them and the sword, and I do
admire that. Actually I like it. And Riku, I haven't
gotten that much of him since all of this is
like turn this corner, and I find him sort of
(34:07):
interesting because he's like he's he's he's a little bit
boring in some ways, but I feel like there's a
lot of potential there, And I guess that's really what
it is, is more that I'm interested in his potential
more than what's actually being done with him. But the
(34:29):
fact that he is just sort of like offering himself up.
Zoro does not think much of this, and he also
is like, I don't like the fact that Pika is
going to flatten this guy when he's not offering up
any fight, Like that's not the whole point is the
(34:50):
fight to Zoro. So Pika just being like, I'm just
going to crush you an unresisting, willing participant, I think
kind of short shorts out his brain a little bit.
And then Pika starts to like bring down the hammer
(35:10):
because he's made one of his fists into a giant,
you know, house size thing, bigger than a house actually,
And this is when Zoro jumps in with his armament
hockey and begins to slice him up. This is also
when Riku states, like, because Pica is mocking him for
(35:33):
all of his fuck ups, And this is when Riku says,
for sure, oh yeah, after all of this, like I
am not taking the throne back again. That's a wrap
on that job for me. And I didn't really get
a good sense of like if Pica was surprised by
that at all. I kind of wondered if he was thinking,
(35:57):
like I didn't expect it. I'll say that. I'm curious
if you guys thought that this was going to be
the way it would go. Riku's deciding I'm going to
abdicate the throne. It makes sense actually politically speaking, if
you fucked up this bad and you have been like
a prisoner of the enemy this whole time, and you
(36:20):
were kept so separate from everyone that the whole kingdom
literally assumed you were dead. Yeah, yeah, I think probably
it is for the best that you not be the
king anymore. Like, how do you command respect after being
(36:41):
treated like this and the entire kingdom is taken over
by a bad, bad man and you were there by
his side the whole time. And that's not to say
it all that he's like complicit, but knowing that kind
of humiliation that he has been forced to experience, it's
(37:05):
just not something that really inspires a great level of
trust I could see in people. So I just have
a I just feel sort of like I should have
seen coming that Rica would not want the throne back,
But I genuinely just sort of expected we're just going
(37:25):
to go back to how everything had been. I really did.
I figured we are working toward going back to the
way it had all used to be and trying to
get closer to the past and working backward, which isn't
really a great mindset. That's not like, that's not the
(37:49):
way forward, that's literally not the way forward. So once
I realized, I was, like, I feel like a bit
I felt very old. Really was it was because it
was sort of giving. Of course, you're just trying to
reach into the past to regain something that has been
(38:11):
lost forever Natasha. You know, it felt like a bit
of an indictment that it didn't occur to me that
maybe we should just do something new now. And like
I said, I am assuming that it's going to be Kiros.
I've got to be real though. If it isn't Kiros,
that would be pretty cool. I would be into it.
(38:31):
Like Kiros is just such the obvious choice, and to
a point, that's fine, but like, look, I know that
this is me just wishing for a thing that's never
going to happen. It would, though, be kind of nice
(38:53):
if we could have a woman ruler. What about that
crazy idea? But what if we had Rebecca be the
queen instead of there being a king. I don't think
that that is likely to happen at all. And I
(39:17):
especially don't think that it is likely to happen because
Rebecca is still single. And maybe this is me just
like not giving Oda much credit here, but forgive me,
it does not seem like she Like women characters are
(39:38):
often trusted with power unless they have a male partner
in the picture. I just the only time that we
have really seen a woman in power is like that
wasn't an actual bad guy is Boa Hancock and she
(39:59):
was sort of strattling the line between that guy think
a guy and then she fell totally obsessive with Loofy.
So now like she's not in a relationship, but it
feels like her power has been kind of diminished in
making her so foolish over him. So I feel like
(40:20):
it's just yeah, I just don't see it. Oh, Seraphim
has been commenting, Sorry, his crew is pretty much a
cult of personality. Logic doesn't matter. Their leader is just amazing.
It deserves to be in charge. There's not really anything
you could do in this situation. If going that route,
Viola would be the next in line. Oh is she
(40:40):
older than Rebecca? Okay, I did not keep track, but
I believe you. I the Violet Viola I'm trying to
think because she was sort of involved with Uh sangy,
(41:03):
But like, I know, Sanji's not gonna be king, He's
not gonna stay with her and dress Rosa, So I
don't see that happening either. I think it's gonna have
to be Kiros. And I also feel like if we
were looking at this from the perspective of what it
would be like in real life, Kiros is the choice
because he's been turned into a toy, and in that sense,
(41:30):
he has experienced something that a lot of people in
the city would have experienced that would be very difficult
to like explain to someone who has not gone through it.
So I feel like he would have a big advantage
there in saying, like, I'm one of you guys, I
went through the same thing, and just the fact that,
like he was not enslaved when he was transformed, so
(41:55):
he manages to continue to be badass and try to
fight back even when he's a toy, which, like it's
no fault of anybody else's that they don't do that
because they are enslave, they cannot make choices for themselves.
They are put in a position specifically where they have
to do as they are told to do. So this
(42:15):
is no criticism, but I could see that really really
working for him if you were talking about like an
election platform, you know what I mean, having it be
I not only was turned into a toy, my child
forgot me, my wife was murdered. I went through all
these hardships, and yet throughout it all, despite everything, I
(42:39):
never forgot about all of you, and I never stopped
fighting for dress Rosa. Like, that's a pretty compelling platform
to run on. Oh, Seraphim says, violent is Rebecca's aunt, right,
that's right, she was Scarlet's sister. Okay, yeah, thank you.
(43:02):
So anyway, Okay, I'm all over the place here, but frankly,
like a part of me feels like I've kind of
already talked about everything because there's not all that much
going on except that it's lots of back and forth
that it feels like I've watched the same back and
forth eight times by the time we get to the
one that actually matters. So we have Zoro cutting Peka down,
(43:27):
uh and pecause it's just basically like mocking Zoro for
a little bit, going like you really think you figured
me out? Huh? You really thought you won, and he
covers his entire body in hockey. He uses the armament hockey.
It's very interesting to me every time somebody reveals that
(43:50):
they can use armament hockey, because I can't help but
feel a little bit like, isn't that convenient? I thought
it was a lot less known than it seems to be,
and that just might be me, you know, having assigned
a frequency and a value to it. But it just
(44:15):
keeps popping up with people that I would not think
know how to do it. And now I'm starting to
think I have to assume most people, like at this
point in the story can do it. So Zorro is like, oh, hockey,
I got hockey too, how about that and basically says,
(44:40):
let's just have a little dick measuring contest right now,
see who's is stronger, And of course Pica is like,
what do you mine is stronger? What are you even
talking about? And Zorro has an interesting moment here where
he thinks back to fighting dracoul Mihawk and remembers that
(45:05):
he really thought he was the best. There was no
doubt in his mind, and how utterly humbled he was
when he is like, this fight I had forgotten that
Miehawk literally takes out the smallest sword he has, not
even a sword. It's like a little shrimp knife. It's
(45:26):
so it's so insulting, you guys, it really is. But yeah,
it's just thinking back to this moment, and he slashes
at him, and of course Pika's whole head splits the
fuck open and he starts coughing up blood down on
(45:49):
the ground. Bro is the King with the punch, Elizabella.
He keeps this and actually kind of funny, you guys.
He keeps trying throughout these episodes to be like, I
got it, I got it, I could do something. I
got my punch, and Zoro keeps telling him save it,
(46:10):
just save your punch, save your punch, and he when
he slices up Pica, Elizabella is like, oh my god,
you saved Riku. And he is so respectful for a moment.
But then because of slicing up Pika in mid air,
(46:34):
there's all these huge chunks of stone that are just
falling downward. And like when I say huge, I am
talking like apartment building sized. I am not talking big
like the size of a car. This the thing that is, uh,
(46:54):
the truth about this whole thing is that everybody in
dress Roast should be dead. The amount of attacks that
have happened on dressed Rosa that do not in any
way take into account the many civilians standing nearby, the
(47:16):
number of times where there has been an earthquake, huge
cracks forming in the street with people falling in. We've
had explosions going off, we've had comets falling from the sky,
and now we've got like a nine to eleven style Yeah,
I said it, pieces of mortar falling down to the ground.
(47:38):
Every single solitary human being on dress Rosa would be dead,
and they're not. And that's fine. But let's just be
very very for real for a second here. So as
this comes down, elicit Pellow punches the rubble away and
(48:04):
then he yells at Zoro about how I can't believe
you had me save my punch this whole time, and
all I did was basically be a janitor. That's the
wording that he uses. It is just like you just
had me on cleanup duty. I cackled. That was actually
really funny to me, Like it's ultimately like you probably
(48:30):
saved more lives than you would have otherwise, because it
just feels to me like this punch thing. I don't
really know how effective it would have been, so probably
punching rubble keeping it from landing on people, you probably
did more good with that than you would have in
(48:51):
any other use of your punch. Especially I don't know
about this punch up against hockey. Now that Pika had
hockey this whole time, how am I supposed to look
at this? I feel like there's no world in which
this punch from this king overpowers hockey and does jack shit.
(49:16):
And maybe that's me just underestimating him. I don't know,
but I think that likely he either underestimates his enemy,
overestimates himself, or is just wrecked up in his ego
and that this was good for him. Seraphim says it's
(49:36):
also a longstanding fan concept that a lot of people
we met were using it all the time. The show
just didn't start using the black coloring to show it
off till after the time. Skip. Nah, I can't decide
how I feel about that. I get what you mean,
and probably that's true. I could see that being like
(50:00):
a believable explanation, but I've got to admit it feels
a little bit of a cheat. And maybe that's not fair.
I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I can't decide,
but I think you're probably right. So that's the end
(50:27):
of seven nineteen guys. I have like almost ten minutes remaining,
and I feel like I've covered everything in these three
episodes because there's not that much else. We just spend
most of our time on Kiro's diamante and I don't
even want to include Rebecca in it anymore. When I'm
(50:48):
saying it, I'm including Rebecca by a default because Kiros
is her dad and he's doing this for her allegedly,
and YadA, YadA, YadA. But it just does not feel
like Rebecca's actually doing anything at this point. So a
big part of me is sort of like, eugh whatever
about her and doesn't feel like she's really involved now.
And Robin is pretty badly injured from making this like
(51:13):
umbrella thing that she did to block them all from
that rain. So honestly, Robin, I don't want you injuring
yourself on Rebecca's behalf ever again. And maybe that's like
cold blooded of me to say, but I'm sorry, Rebecca,
you are not worth it. You are very very boring,
(51:37):
and I guess I can pardon it this time because
Robin had to also save herself, so making this umbrella
saved her also, And it wasn't just her like sacrificing
herself on behalf of Rebecca, it was for everybody. But like,
that's the only time I'm going to make this exception. Otherwise,
(51:59):
don't do this again. I don't like it. Robin. Robin
has been, as you all know, kind of my least
favorite of the crew because I just find her boring
and I appreciate the attempts to have her be like
(52:19):
the sort of morbid one and whatnot, and like sometimes
that lands, but most of the time she just comes
across as very dull. So you really must know how
I feel about Rebecca. If I am reprimanding Robin for
risking herself on Rebecca's behalf, it's got to be pretty bad.
(52:47):
I just I feel so sad about this, in large
part because it's a woman character problem. Clearly with this show.
He just has a lot of women be really really
boring because they have to be good in this way
(53:08):
that is so narrow and so almost like childish. You
know that it does a complete disservice to actual real
human beings a lot of the time, and maybe this
(53:30):
is just something that feels like it applies to women
so much because there are so few women characters overall
that matter that I am on high alert with them,
and probably if I did the math, there's lots of
male characters that are just as dull. But when you've
got so many men characters, it doesn't matter that some
(53:51):
of them are boring because you've got a billion to
choose from. And not me being like one of our
mains but also being real greedy. That's like as close
as we come to somebody who's of a woman who's
of real importance and has like a through line flaw
(54:13):
to her that makes her seem like kind of a
less good person, because even like the flaw with Baby five,
it's like a flaw that means that she's too giving,
you know, even that it makes her like so open
hearted and kind in a way that's damaging and foolish,
(54:34):
but still so That's part of what I really enjoy
about Nami is that she's allowed to just be avaricious
and opportunistic. I just want to see the more dope women.
Viole is like a little bit more fun her introduction
(54:57):
being a double agent and try to seduce Sanji and
convince him to kill a guy and all that. That
was a pretty good time. I wouldn't mind if we
had her going back into the fem fatale thing just
to drop Like, I get that part of it was
her cover, but maybe we could have it be that,
like she was good at it and she misses it.
Maybe she's you know, I don't know how that would
(55:18):
even work, but anyway, Okay, I'm gonna wrap this up.
I think I've said enough. I appreciate you all bearing
with me on missing it for the last episode. Thank
you Florian as well, and thank you Seraphim for coming
in and chatting and telling me stuff that I uh
forgot or got wrong. Need that. Hope you guys are
(55:39):
enjoying the coverage, and until next time to Loo motherfuckers.
(56:12):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.
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