The last handful of chapters in One Piece's manga all concern Dr. Vegapunk's great message to the world. As of Chapter 1114, that message is underway, much to the Navy's and World Government's outrage. This is the second chapter to feature Dr. Vegapunk's message in the middle of the fight for Egghead Island, and while the revelations are intriguing, plenty is left on the table for future chapters to reveal. That's to be expected, but it may be disappointing for some readers.
With the benefit of the knowledge gained from Ohara before the deadly Buster Call incident, Dr. Vegapunk is ready to share the World Government's most dire secrets about its past, including the Void Century. His mesage has a strong environmental theme that, while fictional and based on unnatural phenomena, may resonate with One Piece readers who are concerned that the real world is suffering an environmental calamity. That's a cool twist for "The Wings of Icarus," though it doesn't leave much room for any real action, either.
The Rising Sea Levels Feel Like a Horribly Real Threat
The major threats and antagonists in One Piece are generally people who have particular plans in mind, usually with regional consequences. Examples are copious throughout the story, from Arlong seizing Nami's village and Don Krieg the fleet captain attacking the Baratie, not to mention Sir Crocodile's plans on Alabasta and Hody Jones terrorizing Fish-Man Island after One Piece's two-year time skip. Few threats in the series go beyond a particular island, ship, or group of characters, but One Piece raisees the stakes in its Final Saga to encompass the entire globe. Chapter 1114 makes that fact horribly clear via character dialogue. There aren't any cool visuals to back it up, unfortunately, but just the facts are enough to raise the tension for what's to come.
In Chapter 1114, Dr. Vegapunk elaborates on his warning of the entire world sinking into the sea. Around the world, listeners comment to expand on this idea even more. In particular, Warden Magellan and the imprisoned Donquixote Doflamingo comment on this impending disaster inside the mighty prison Impel Down. Doflamingo states that just a five-meter rise in sea levels would wipe out most cities across the One Piece world, thus ruining countless nations and economies, throwing the world into chaos, to say the least. The sea levels are already rising by one meter, and that alone is enough to cause some serious harm to low-laying areas, like coastal cities and the island of Water 7. Now the race is on to see if One Piece's heroes can find the cause of this environmental catastrophe and put a stop to it, or at least help evacuate people in threatened areas.
While One Piece's most recent chapter suggests that this is an unnatural phenomenon, the threat of rising sea levels may still feel resonant to fans who worry about real-life climate change, with rising sea levels and flooded coastal areas already being a major concern for many. For all its supernatural and larger-than-life elements, One Piece can be remarkably resonant with the real world as fans know it, making the plot and stakes that much more palpable. The series has touches on themes like slavery and governmental oppression beforehand, and now environmental themes are taking center stage as the final world war looms. Fans may already be strained to juggle so many villains and plot threads, but there is surely room for a fresh and serious threat like environmental catastrophe.
One Piece Teases a Few More Details About the Void Century
For years now, One Piece has been teasing fans with serious and evidently important enigmas about how the world came to be, from the Ancient Kingdom to the nature of the fabled One Piece treasure to the Void Century. In fact, the World Government will call upon the wrath of a Buster Call just to preserve the secrets of the Void Century, as Nico Robin knows all too well. But Dr. Vegapunk is privy to Ohara's discoveries about the Void Century, and he's sharing a few key details about it in Chapter 1114's message.
Of course, Dr. Vegapunk cannot reveal every single detail about the Void Century and the Ancient Kingdom in Chapter 1114, since that would result in a clunky info dump that would disrupt the pacing. Chapters like these are already heavy on monologues and exposition, so some limited reveals are just fine. Most of all, One Piece can continue saving some of its juiciest plot twists and reveals when the time is right later, which is the kind of thing any fan can expect by now. Even if Dr. Vegapuk admits that he cannot reveal anything, he reveals enough for "The Wings of Icarus" to be a fairly compelling chapter. In this case, he reveals another key detail about the mysterious Joy Boy -- that Joy Boy had been the world's first pirate.
Looking back, it makes perfect sense that Joy Boy was a pirate, and not just because One Piece is always about pirates. Protagonist Monkey D. Luffy is the embodiment of Joy Boy thanks to his consumption of the Gum-Gum Fruit and his shonen transformation with Gear 5. If Luffy is a freedom-loving pirate, then of course the original Joy Boy was a pirate, too. Most of all, Luffy chose to become a pirate to savor his own freedom as a carefree ESTP hero, and he extends that freedom to oppressed people in the islands he visits. For Luffy, piracy and freedom are synonymous, so making Joy Boy the first pirate makes the Luffy/Joy Boy/pirate paradigm come full circle. It's a fine way to end Chapter 1114, since this chapter is rather light on developments otherwise. Joy Boy and the environmental disaster are the only real standouts in "The Wings of Icarus," but at least they deliver.
Chapter 1114 Doesn't Deliver on Action, Nor Does it Have Time to
For the most part, One Piece chapters will either feature hard-hitting action, show the heroes exploring and learning about a new location, or deliver long-winded exposition to reveal the series' most essential secrets. All those chapters are important for One Piece's famously large and lengthy narrative, since there are countless characters, settings, and plot threads for fans to juggle. It's a necessary evil for some chapters to be long-winded exposition, sometimes with flashback sequences, at the expense of action and characterization. "The Wings of Icarus" is similar to a few other recent chapters. The plot developments here are worth the time to read about, but within the confines of Chapter 1114 alone, it can also be a bit dull.
Chapters like this aren't terribly exciting to read in isolation once they come out, since they're just info dumps, albeit well-written ones. Chapters like "The Wings of Icarus" are more palatable when a fan is reading many chapters at once and can digest the exposition chapters before promptly returning to the action in other chapters. For the time being, "The Wings of Icarus" just feels like a workhorse chapter, doing the necessary work to establish new details and allow a minute or two of in-universe time to pass as the chaotic battle for Egghead Island continues. Not even the Mythical Zoan powers of the Five Elders get a chance to be even remotely interesting here.
Chapter 1114 does show Gear 5 Luffy punching an Elder and shows Edison preparing to get the Thousand Sunny off the island safely to make sure the plot hasn't completely ground to a halt. But even so, "The Wings of Icarus" delivers next to no Straw Hat action, and no characters aside from the recently deceased Dr. Vegapunk stand out. Chapters like this can be reduced to just their text and have almost the same effect, making them less than thrilling to read at the moment. This holds "The Wings of Icarus" back a great deal, but ideally, the action will resume within a chapter or two, and the heroes will reclaim their position in the spotlight in due time.
