One Piece is hitting up the end of its ‘Whole Cake Island’ arc, but there are still things the anime can surprise fans with. Monkey D. Luffy shocked plenty by winning his fight against Charlotte Katakuri, and it seems Pekoms is the latest character to surprise.
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After all, the Mink did just show off his Sulong form, and the reveal made a major manga departure.
Over the weekend, One Piece stepped out with its latest episode, and it was there fans caught up with Pekoms. The lion-like pirate met up with Luffy in the Mirro-World after turning his back on Big Mom by kidnapping Brulee. Pekoms took the girl as a hostage to distract all the Big Mom forces waiting in the real world to kill Luffy, and his plan worked like a charm.
While Luffy escaped under Sanji’s care, Pekoms was left to distract Big Mom’s forces from the pair. His plan his a snag when Oven appeared, but things did even out when Pekom’s Sulong form came out. The soft fighter turned into a hulking beast similar to Carrot, and his long white mane was impressive to behold. The power-up helped Pekoms take on a score of Big Mom pirates along with Oven momentarily, but he could not win the fight. The episode ended Pekom’s run with him being overtaken by enemies, but his plan did give Luffy enough time to escape certain death.
For fans, this display of power was touching, but it did catch manga readers by surprise. After all, One Piece did not play out this scene the same when it was first published. Pekoms did go forth with his plan to distract his former allies, but Oven made sure the Mink could not transform into his Sulong form. The overpowered fighter took out Pekoms before he could deal damage, so it seems the anime felt it was time Pekoms got to strut his Sulong self at last.
Were you surprised to see this form actually happen in the anime? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.
