Poor Maru-maru. He thought he had an easy and quick way out of this plot, and then Gregory tells him we don’t do the three-act-structure. So he’s stuck again.
I mean, it’s not like Maru-maru particularly likes the idea of committing seppuku…but he’s not afraid of it, either. In fact, people have been telling him that that’s how he will end ever since he got his first set of blades. And quite a few have also told him that it’s how he should end, with a strong preference for him doing it as soon as possible. So the thought is kinda familiar to him, and in order to get out of this sort of story, it almost seemed worth it.
But with his plan thwarted by a nosy teenager*, he has no choice but toughing it out. Naturally, he turns to alcohol immediately…but, to his credit, he doesn’t even drink it, he only wants to use it to summon the drunk version of his departed mentor. Which isn’t even a bad idea, given the many similarities between football and samurai warfare…or, at the very least, samurai bar fights, which Oda also was a past master of.
More on Monday.
* While Maru-maru is an anti-hero, rather than a villain, in exceptional cases anti-hero can also have their plans thwarted by nosy teenagers. They don’t like it any more than villains do.