One Piece Chapter 1171: RAGNIR

So, we come to the end of Loki’s flashback (or the Harald Flashback, within the Loki Flashback, as many people have pointed out) and what a ride it has been, the naïve and loving King Harald, who gave up too much in hopes of gaining the respect of a regime who would never have budged an inch, if not for his use as a weapon to them.

Imu makes this clear in his bigoted language, not only seeing the Giants’ past as a warring tribe as innate to their nature, but feeling that Harald was an aberration to that history. Too kind to be useful, and willing to give up power for the sake of his people. Much like Wano’s Oden, Oda presents us with a deeply flawed, but goodhearted leader, at odds with the cruel world they’re faced with, willing to go through the ringer for their beliefs, but not necessarily willing to change them, for better or for worse.

We respect these figures, Harald, Oden, but we know their children will have to do better, in order for a better world to be possible, they will have to fight. Loki makes this clear in his dialogue, their enemy is the World Government, and always has been. There’s no use degrading themselves, playing respectability politics, with a status quo that doesn’t even see them as human. It’s easy to draw parallels to other oppressed races within the world of One Piece, like the Fishmen, and perhaps even for our real world.

It will be interesting to see how Loki’s beliefs and goals intersect with Dragon and the Revolutionary Army’s, who are currently launching an attack on the Celestial Dragon’s food supply, the fight against this tyrannical regime is really heating up now, and I’m sure all these plot threads will be brought together over the coming year. One very curious moment in this chapter is Shanks seemingly attempting to pull off his own arm, many (including myself) have speculated that Oda is bringing us towards the conclusion that in fact, Shanks losing his arm in Chapter 1, was an intentional move on his part. I never saw Shanks’ injury to the Lord of the Coast as any kind of oversight by Oda, but it just goes to show you that he is the king of this kind of thing, never leaving anything by the wayside.

The last thing I’d like to highlight is Loki’s attack “NIBELHEIM”, which probably rings a bell for many fans of Norse Mythology, (or Norse-flavoured pop culture anyway). It’s interesting here that it seems to reference the names as written in Final Fantasy, more commonly written as “Niflheim”, the freezing domain of Hel, Loki’s daughter. I feel like it shouldn’t have been a shock to me, but it kind of was. This wouldn’t be the first time the son of a horned giant (not one piece Giant, but big person) had ice-based powers, Yamato, of course, also had a mythical Zoan that gave him some ice powers on the side. It’s interesting to me how Loki calls upon Ragnir to use these powers, does the squirrel have the ice abilities? Or does Loki’s bestial form give him them? It’s hard to say at this point, but I’m sure it won’t take long to find out.

It’s hard not to draw parallels to Marvel’s Thor in these previous chapters, a test of “worthiness” for a mystical hammer that can come to the wielder on command, though in this case, a very Oda twist of it being a living squirrel, or, most likely, a hammer that ‘ate’ the Squirrel fruit. It definitely makes me think I need to read Jack Kirby’s iconic run on Thor, a bit of a blind spot for me as I work through his Fourth World Saga in my own time.