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One Piece Chapter 1167 Review/Recap

They say you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. However, I think that One Piece might disagree with that saying, as while you can’t choose your birth family, you can choose who you consider your true family. Take Shanks, for example. Despite now knowing that he’s the son of Figarland Garling, the leader of the God’s Knights, I think the fandom considers his true father to be Gol D. Roger. As for Loki, despite acting like the villain Elbaph thinks he is, I think most of the fans know that, deep down, he’s a good person. The reason why this is so important now is because as we watch Harald become a servant of the Celestial Dragons, we see how Shanks and Loki feel about their own families.

Recap

After the Navy chose to accept Harald’s pledge to atone for the Giant’s past, he began aiding them behind the scenes, striking out against pirates as their numbers continued to grow. Eventually, Roger would become King of the Pirates, with his death heralding the start of the Golden Age of Pirates. This surge in piracy prompted the Navy to start drafting Giants into its ranks.

Amidst all this, Harald would be inducted into the lowest ranks of the God’s Knights, with the promise that Elbaph could join the World Government once he achieved the highest rank. It was also during this time that Harald first met Shanks, who had journeyed to Mariejois to claim his status as a Celestial Dragon. Despite claiming to have hated his time on the surface, though, Harald sensed something was up with Shanks.

Meanwhile, Fisher Tiger’s escape and liberation of the slaves of Mariejois takes place. Unbeknownst to everyone, someone aided Tiger by telling him about the armory being unlocked. Saul would return to Elbaph and found the Walrus School., and events continued to progress. But then, tragedy struck when Ida became seriously ill and bedridden, only growing weaker with each passing day. That’s when Loki learns a horrible truth from the village Estrid was born in: they had secretly poisoned Ida to stop her from becoming Harald’s new Queen.

Loki’s response: he burns the village, beats up everyone in it, and disowns them as family, saying Ida was the only person he’d ever call Mom.

Review

Oh my gosh, you guys, what an amazing chapter! The lore reveals! The family drama! Seeing what Shanks does and what Loki does! There was so much to talk about here!!

Contracts of Evil

Let’s start off with the big one: the hierarchy of the God’s Knights. It’s a little confusing, and I don’t entirely get it, but at least Oda starts to explain it to us here. To begin with, there are the tattoos, which they call contracts. There’s three of them: shallow sea, deep sea, and abyss. Only thirteen members of the God’s Knights have the Abyss Contract, which the Five Elders says connects them directly to “God.” In other words, they’re all connected to Imu, and it’s likely that Imu can directly possess the ones with the Abyss Contract.

I really like how Oda chose to name these marks Contracts. He hasn’t been shy with hinting that Imu is the Devil of the world of One Piece, but calling the marks Contracts helps reinforce this belief. The people who receive the marks are basically making a contract with the Devil, forced to swear loyalty to them in exchange for power. Since this is the Devil, though, the cost involves sacrificing your free will whenever Imu wants it. It’s not worth the price, but Harald doesn’t understand this, which will all but certainly lead to his eventual death.

Shanks is Playing his biological family for chumps

Then we have Shanks in Mariejois as a lower ranking member of the God’s Knights. I don’t need to go on social media to know that everyone in the fandom knows that Shanks is playing his biological family. They may think he’s embraced his Celestial Dragon lineage, but it’s obvious to us that he’s doing this to undermine them from within. The chapter may not confirm it, but fans strongly suspect that he was the one who helped Fisher Tiger escape and then liberate the other slaves later on. His brother and biological dad don’t even suspect him, because they’re that arrogant and full of themselves.

The Elbaph Arc has given us a look at what Shanks could’ve grown up to be like had he been raised in Mariejois, and it is not pretty. Thankfully, he was raised by Roger and the Roger Pirates, turning him into the kind, friendly, and morally upstanding pirate that we all know and love. I doubt im the only one to say this, but the Roger Pirates were Shanks real family, and Roger was his real father.

As a quick aside, I would love it if Oda gave us a look at Roger raising Shanks.

I knew Loki was a Tsundere!

And speaking of family, we need to lastly talk about Loki. Or rather, how everyone and their mother was probably cheering when they saw Loki torch Estrid’s village.

I have already said this before, but I’m going to say it again: Estrid was a bitch. Her brother was a bitch. Her entire village and blood relatives are all bitches. And if i could jump into this chapter right now, I would grab a weapon and join Loki in burning that place to the ground. They are not Loki’s family, as they lost the right to call themselves that the minute Estrid abandoned him and they chose to do the same. The fact that they honestly thought that Loki would side with them shows just how full of themselves they were. As far as im concerned, Loki has every right to end them for hurting Ida.

Poor Ida. I haven’t been sure about whether or not we’ve seen her in the present day, but seeing her sick from poison has me fearing the worst. I’ve considered her to be Harald’s true wife and Estrid the homewrecking gold-digger, and she does not deserve to go out like this. The only silver lining is Loki calling Ida his real mom. We all know that Loki acts like he’s a bad guy, but he’s really a kind person. He just got burned so many times by people that he can’t afford to let his guard down. He can deny it all he wants, but Loki is a good person. He’s a total tsundere.

I’m all but convinced now that Loki didn’t kill Harald. He loves his father, his real family, and his home too much to have willingly done that. I only hope that in the present day, Luffy can help him show Elbaph this.

I Give “Ida’s Son” a 5/5

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