Captain M Entertainment

Hooray, it’s really happening! This is very much a build-up/anticipation chapter most of the way through, but Oda makes a smart choice to drop the first bomb at the end instead of leaving us waiting, so it won’t feel like a total copout even if the broadcast is shut down before it’s complete. And now that the ball’s rolling, the momentum for post-Golden Week is going to be unstoppable.

We start with a gorgeous colour spread full of fun details, perfectly synced to the title of the chapter. I love having Robin as a chessmaster, Jinbe as a rook recalls his time in Big Mom’s crew (remember her using that as a rank?) and the designs of the Chopper pawns are all adorable. Weirdly, they’re numbered up to 16 (despite there only being seven in the image), which is the total number of pawns on a chessboard, but across both sides. Are there some enemy pawns on the Strawhats’ side of the board already? The process video for this one is a treat too. I love that it’s not just building up from rough sketches, they show the moment Oda pauses, goes to a new page to just line up the pieces and develop who is going to be what, then even maps out a chessboard and plans out the moves so that no one’s in an impossible position for the finished artwork. I love that kind of attention to detail for things absolutely no one would have thought to check otherwise.

“Well, it’s been such a short time…” Vegapunk you fricking tease, no it has not. But hey, if the Vegacoffee really stays warm for two months maybe there’s something to it.

I expected a brain in a jar for Punk Records, but I was picturing a Mother Brain kind of situation, having it just be Vegapunk’s giant misshapen forehead is hilarious. And I love all the tubes and cables in the reveal panel. I keep looking at it and assuming the detached portion of head is the same size as it was in the flashbacks to post-Ohara earlier in the arc, then I look down to Mars and realise its true size. Can you imagine if Vegapunk still had this thing attached to his dome?

Seeing so many locations connected to the Strawhats as the broadcast builds up really makes it feel like the world is drawing a breath for the big news. Oda wants this moment to breathe, as frustrating as it can be as a weekly reader. And hey, is that a Thousand Sunny beast in the Baldimore segment? Franky was busy while he was there.

And man, speaking of the scale issue with Vegapunk’s brain, I’m also taken aback by Nusjuro towering over Franky’s group. I know the reveal spread for the Elders’ yokai forms showed them being enormous, but in my mind, Nusjuro’s centaur form somehow ended up proportioned to the human half, not the horse half. The fact that until now he was mostly shown next to the towering Pacifistas definitely didn’t help matters. Sanji’s blow to his jaw is an extremely cool moment somewhat undercut by Sanji’s fixation on Bonney. He doesn’t know. I just have to tell myself he doesn’t know. But it’s still offputting. The depiction of the transformation back to horse mode is unique, with the human parts seeming to burn away, lingering in the background as the hose head snaps at Sanji. His transformation to the centaur mode was depicted as a much more fluid morphing. He also leaves trails of flames as he goes back to human in Oimo and Kashii’s grip a page later.

I’m still not a huge fan of these distorted futures. They really stretch the limits of where it feels like the fruit’s rules should be. The callback to Luffy’s descent through the clouds during the Kaido fight is fun though, I guess.

The true highlight this week is Saturn’s attack on the crew’s weakling squad. We get the ‘bringing things full circle’ reveal that he was the one who spoke to Clover and ordered his death, followed by a truly heart-warming moment of the whole squad forming up around Robin. As someone whose favourite One Piece moment is probably “I want to live” I love these moments where either the crew stands up for her or she affirms her faith in them. And it’s a great page besides, with a ton of moments compressed into a single panel, the flurry of attacks and counterattacks developing as your eye moves over the page.

Oda’s building up that we’re still going to be given a solution to the transponder snail dilemma through Mars and York’s continued search. This probably means that we won’t hear the full backstory to the reveal on the next page. I’ll maintain that even with a decoy in place, I don’t trust Vegapunk to have made his deception *too* extreme. The man has been characterised through this whole arc as naive and perfectionist. He does not have the social skills for a chessmaster manipulation of career politicians and their whole military, and he’d go all in on his first idea come to fruition rather than having numerous redundancies and backups. It would be out of character for him to suddenly be able to bamboozle the whole world, so I do think they’ll find the right snail on the island eventually.

And almost to prove this point, Vegapunk refuses to call the World Government and its leaders outright evil, thinking that because he can’t understand their final intent there is no call to be made about their actions. That is a *lot* of benefit of the doubt in my opinion. While I don’t disagree that extreme circumstances can justify extreme actions, I’ve yet to see the circumstances that justify the World Government’s *multiple genocides*. Vegapunk believes that whatever other mystery he hasn’t solved yet, it must make the cruelty of these people slot into place and finally make sense. It’s a nice thought from a very understanding heart, and it’s exactly the kind of thinking that’s made it so easy for them to fool him time and time again.

And then the bomb drops. “The world as we know it will to sink into the sea!!” A fitting apocalypse for an ocean-covered world, and just the kind of lategame reveal I’d expect from Oda. Just at a glance, it makes a lot of worldbuilding pull together, from the desirability of the Redline to the strange sinking issues of Long Ring Long Land and Water Seven, the impact of the Mother Flame test on the level of the ocean, and even possibly the height of Wano’s walls and the choice to build Zou on Zunesha’s back. We know there’s a lot that Oda can change on the fly, but I’m ready to fully believe this was one of those things that was planned from the start.

Interesting too is the panel of merfolk at the very end of the chapter. They don’t appear to be listening to the broadcast or otherwise connected to the scene at all, but of course they have a symbolic relevance to a flooded world, especially if it turns out a cleansing flood has come and gone already in the past. And let’s not forget the plainly significant to this scenario Noah and Poseidon back at Fishman Island.

So we’ve got one big reveal that sets the course for the remainder of the series already. Anything else Vegapunk manages to get out before being shut down is just gravy. Plus we’ve got a lot of strawhats in rough situations with some escaping to do. The Egghead climax is so far proving to be worth the wait.

It’s good to be back! To be honest, I had a fairly busy April, so it feels like the big break has gone faster than previous years. I thought I would suffer more. Maybe we’re all just getting more used to this now-annual tradition. Hope Oda’s feeling more rested as well!

This is the chapter that could be the twelfth of volume 109, but I think it’s more likely the first or second of volume 110 instead. Both Dorry and Brogy’s arrival in chapter 1110 and the ancient robot standing in chapter 1111 are incredible end-of-book cliffhangers, but I think maybe chapter 1111 has a better volume opener, easing into its action with the wordless page of Mars breaking from the barrier while Jinbei looks up, awed. But we’ll see, the opening pages here also do a lot to ease a returning reader back into the conflict in its present state. In a matter of panels, Oda reminds us of the Buster Call, Nusjuro’s disabling of the Pacifistas and Bonney’s power over them, and the giants’ goals and location. But it’s possible the return from the break was a motivator for this level of restaging as well.

After those opening two pages we’re right back into the action. Even if it’s brief, it’s great seeing Franky get a win. The long tail of his speech bubble running under Redking’s legs in the anticipation panel is fun as well. Bonney’s methods are pretty funny as well, when compounded with Guillotine’s shock despite having witnessed the transformation happen.

Mars is not wasting any time in the Labophase. There seems to be an electrical effect around his blast of energy, but I haven’t read up enough on his specific brand of yokai to say if that should be interesting or not. It’s cool that we can see the back of Vegapunk’s lab here, and the side structures that looked like speakers from the front are plugged full of power and audio cables like speakers from the back too. I wonder how many design elements here were influenced by the knowledge that it would be used to send an important message really, really far.

Stussy and Kaku’s dialogue in the following scene seems at odds with Lucci’s immediate recognition of and deference to Mars in his bird form a few chapters ago. Maybe he’s better at recognising voices than the two of them are, or he may simply hold a higher rank and have gotten more hints about the true nature of his bosses than the other two. I’m sad for Stussy’s sacrifice, in part because this arc hasn’t at all made the most of her as a character. Her betrayal of Cipher Pol was a compelling early twist, but then she lost her stylish and memorable original outft for the same leotard look every other woman in this arc got, dropped off the map through the middle of the story, just to get finger gunned and now make the ultimate sacrifice. This is a character who’s been lurking on the sidelines of the plot for seven years. That’s getting close to the point where there, at least in Japanese, the series might have readers younger than she is as a character. A minor character, sure, but I hope this isn’t truly the end for her. Oda can offer far better.

That said, I did say a few chapters back that I expected the need for someone in the control room to turn off the dome to be a problem to solve, though I predicted a race against the clock to get on the ship before it launched, not fully staying behind. Careful what you wish for I guess.

And on the topic of sacrifices and problems to solve, I wonder what Edison has planned to help the Sunny make the distance. If you asked me to guess, I’d say something in the junkyard. Not the ancient robot specifically, but I think whatever he’s going to get will be the excuse to bring someone from the Strawhats’ side in contact with it.

It’s a good moment for Usopp rallying the crew here, both to follow the plan and to improvise if it doesn’t work. Confident leadership from a once self-proclaimed captain. Good for him.

The squished up Ju Peter head as he swallows the building is hilarious. Being able to capture the shape of the turret embedding in the back of his skull and the wrinkles of everything folding up around it in monochrome with only the white shading on his back body is some great artistic detail. It cannot have been easy to make that read clearly.

The situation gets more dire after this last little win though. Luffy’s back in normal form, and even if we’re handwaving away the exhaustion effect at the end of Gear Five, Oda is telling us clearly it won’t be enough to stand up to the monstrous Elders. Love the detail of his hand still being on fire from Red Roc even as he clutches it in pain from Warcury’s deflection. It makes such an absurd visual. The question does have to be asked though: was the sheer power with which this attack was rejected relate to haki, a monstrous ability, the strange regeneration that keeps these beats immortal or something else? It can’t just be natural hardness like Kaido’s dragon scales – that wouldn’t hurt Luffy like this did. There needs to be an energy involved for there to be pain on Luffy’s end. I don’t want to sound too conspiracy-minded though; haki is the most obvious bet. Look back to the moment in the Katakuri fight when they meet fist to fist and Luffy’s hands are hurt by his superior haki. There’s a similar trembling effect around the the injured hands, and though they were also swollen there, that would be hidden by the inflated fist in this case.

Saturn’s spider limbs coming over the edge of the Labophase cloud is a wonderfully terrifying visual, as is the silhouette of the centaur Nusjuro, and each of them so bad for the groups they’re confronting. Even with the inevitability of Zoro and Jinbei arriving in time to protect the group with the Sunny and Luffy and the giants close to converging with Franky’s team, we still don’t know how to deal lasting damage to one of these bastards. You have to hand it to them, as villains, they’ve all found their way to the worst places they could be for the heroes very, very efficiently, and at this stage no one is expecting any of them to be felled in this arc.

Mars’ final scene with the snail just emphasises the ‘game over’-ness of the whole last two pages. I don’t think he’ll succeed in stopping it, the broadcast is the most obvious thing to fulfill the promise of a huge, world-shaking event coming from this arc, but there’ll probably be some kind of deception involved in why he can’t cut things off from here. I’m curious to see what the inside of Punk Records looks like as well. Maybe it’s just big computers, but it would be cool for it to be something with a bit more mad science cred, like a giant brain in a jar.

I’m determinedly not getting my hopes too high for a Toriyama tribute in next week’s colour spread. Which isn’t to say it’s not likely, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out that way. With only a minute on the clock, Mars at the broadcast’s apparent source and two groups of heroes being menaced by unstoppable foes, the climax of the arc feels afoot, so it’s going to be time to start the big reveals, cavalry calls and final turnabout moments as the 110th volume escalates. Good time to have that post-break momentum, if you ask me!

Last one going into another long break. Potentially but not definitely the end of volume 109. And I think a shift into the final bit of action for the Egghead Arc. While I’m disappointed to have to go three weeks without, I definitely prefer Oda getting the downtime he needs to carry the story through to its end inn the best way possible. And the phrase “scheduled maintenance” in the announcement makes me think this is going to end up being an annual thing, which at least means it won’t be a surprise in future years.

We do at least get some gorgeous colour pages for a send-off. The classic piratey vibe of the Jump cover has a whole lot of appeal while the colour spread has some gorgeous lighting for Copic work. The transparency on the jellyfish is stunning. There’s cute symbolism in giving Kuma a seahorse shirt, perfect for the series’ most dedicated single dad. Bonney and Vegapunk getting to be included is also a good touch, Always nice when current arc characters get to hang out with the crew on these things. I also really like the One Piece logo down the bottom with the jellyfish top and tentacles around the O.

Mars breaks inside the barrier. I initially thought he’d was rebuffed by the lasers last week, but I should have known he’d be able to use his immortality to power through undaunted. And that makes the situation really bad for the crew.

The apparent lack of concern the Strawhats have for Vegapunk’s broadcast is interesting. I actually had to go back and double check if they even knew it was happening at all. They do, but it still doesn’t really seem to concern them. Escape has become the most important thing, and though I’m sure they’d stand and fight if one of the surviving Vegapunks said it was their greatest dream and the Stella’s dying wish to make sure it goes through, but even they seem to be putting their lives first. It’s actually kind of funny the number of people complaining last week about Oda using the ‘ticking clock’ trope in yet another arc, only for the crew to just outright ignore it and continue with their original plan of escaping. All this plus the escape map to lay out the distances and groups involved paint a picture of how the final stage of the arc is likely to play out.

This is an interesting chapter for Lucci. Obviously a commanding show of strength to stay standing after Zoro’s big hit and then to remain conscious and clear-headed after Jinbei’s subsequent blast, but also to call Kaku his partner and beg for his life to the ultimate authority of the Five Elders. Remember, in Lucci’s eyes ‘gods are not bound by logic’ and ‘it is the natural order for gods to have whatever they desire’ (chapter 907). He also showed an extreme callousness toward any team member he thought wasn’t performing up to par at Water Seven, like the potentially now-dead Nero. To make the request at all, to a man whose desires and whims have complete priority, speaks to a kind of camaraderie I never would have figured he had in him. At some point I’ll have to go back over Water Seven properly and see if there’s anything that can be interpreted differently with this side of him in mind.

Lucci also looks absolutely terrified when Mars appears, but he immediately recognises the Elder even in his monstrous form and doesn’t hesitate to obey. We were told before that anyone below the rank of commodore can’t even meet them, but it wasn’t clear how much of a secret their specific powers were. York’s reaction at the end of the chapter shows that she wasn’t aware of the demon forms, despite the Vegapunks having had audiences with the Elders.

The Haki roar is a cool show of power. I’m looking forward to learning more about the limits of the physical effects of Conqueror’s Haki and how much they can be controlled. I also loved the visual gag of all of Luffy’s stuff blowing off, seeing him stick his scars back on. Amazing comic instincts on that one.

I think one of the big important things to remember for Luffy’s characterisation in this chapter is the way the giants talk both with him and about him to Warcurcy. They say that he looks like the god they’ve heard tales of, but when Warcury asks who Luffy is to them, the only important part is that Luffy is their friend. And we learn concretely that it wasn’t even the Nika appearance that inspired them to come intervene, they just saw that he seemed like he was in trouble in a place they were close enough to. Luffy isn’t the messiah of the giants (at least not yet), just a guy who makes the right friends.

I try not to dwell on spoilers without the full story, but they definitely coloured my perception of this chapter’s baseball bat gag. When I read that Luffy ‘conjures’ a bat, I was extremely worried. I have raged against the perception that Luffy’s new power is literal imagination and that he can magic things into existence or warp reality in any tangible way. I would not want that to be the way the story progresses. Imagine my relief when the outcome is only as absurd as turning a palm tree into a bat with his teeth. I could take or leave the paint and hat. They only interact with Luffy himself and are gone in less than a page, so I can take them as part of the bit. The paint in particular is funny because to leaves the bat looking exactly the same as if it had a layer of Armament Haki (at least as far as Haki is portrayed to the readers). That’s like the one part Luffy could have just manifested through willpower and he finds paint instead.

I expected more emphasis to be placed on Ju Peter’s revival, but he’s just kind of there after the explosion. Do we think the original head reattached to his body, or did he grow a new one? Maybe Oda’s saving that reveal for later, when we go further into what the Elders really are.

As much as I want to see Franky get some action, I think the three vice admirals are setting up a Kuma moment, probably his big finale for the arc, whether it’s a full awakening or death, or taking his daughter and teleporting away. Borsalino seems to be out for good, understandably overwhelmed by his emotional distress. I wonder if there’ll be a tangible difference in the next fight against him, if it happens in a scenario where his heart can truly be in it. And then the robot, with that big, important Joyboy connection promising big things to come. I wonder, if the Strawhats are being characterised as unconcerned with Vegapunk’s broadcast, if the robot will then be the force that makes sure it plays in full. Or is there some kind of twist coming about the broadcast’s source that we haven’t considered yet. Mars asks York about the room Vegapunk is in, as if he thinks the broadcast is actually live. Saturn only said to the other Elders that he thinks Borsalino killed Vegapunk, so they may be operating on the assumption he’s somewhere else, especially if the technology to record and repeat a message via snails is not widespread.

But these are questions for three weeks from now. Meantime, I hope Oda enjoys his rest and processes everything he needs to process about Toriyama and comes back to the series refreshed for the home stretch of the arc.

This is a chapter that doesn’t disappoint. Things are really heating up as we hit the tenth chapter of volume 109 with Egghead’s likely final end-of-volume cliffhanger to come in the next chapter or two.

But we start out with a new cover story, and yeah, it’s Yamato following Oden’s tour of Wano, which is probably the least exciting thing going on this week. However with the last cover story having such a large and immediate connection to the current story, I’m going in with an open mind and considering my hopes. Seeing some of the stuff that got shortchanged in Wano’s clipped epilogue would be cool, like Ryuma’s grave for example, or passing by Izo’s tomb and seeing Kiku visiting. Perhaps a more direct confonrtation of the public’s feelings about Tama’s Kurozumi heritage. That one might be hard in the pantomime format of a cover story, but you never know. It’s going to be a few installments before there’s enough info to make any real prediction about the story’s trajectory though, we know they never quite stay the course they seem to start on.

Getting back into it, Oda spends a couple of pages building into the big reveals. We also get a timeline update, with 3 minutes down already, which is a brisk pace as Shonen countdowns go. The summoning circles definitely seem closer together and like they’re placed in a more rubble-strewn environment than in the final spread of the last chapter, enough to ease my concerns about the space shifting slightly.

And the monster designs that come out when the shadows are pulled back are truly awe inspiring. I don’t know a lot of yokai or much about any of them (could tell you a little bit about classic sandworms though), but these are easy 10/10 beasts with all of Oda’s best character design ideas on full display. When One Piece ends and he inevitably gets restless after his well-earned break Oda should absolutely do the Toriyama (RIP) thing and design monsters for games. What do you even say to a pair of pages like this? I can’t stop looking back to them.

And these guys are made to feel like a threat too. None of them speak in the whole chapter; similar to Saturn’s original rampage it makes them feel all the more inhuman. (Saturn did speak when he confirmed the summons in the last chapter, so we know they can but you still get the same effect from how sparse their dialogue is.) They spring immediately into action with no apparent coordination or communication between each other, and they go straight for their goals. There’s no posturing or speeches or taking test shots at Luffy to measure his power. Nasjuro is off and running already, cutting down Pacifistas to unblock the Buster Call fleet, solving problems for the bad guys. Mars takes a shot at the barrier, and even though it doesn’t work you know he’s going to be there the moment it goes down for real. And Ju Peter and Saturn go straight for Luffy. They really don’t feel like playtime villains, which is exactly what you need at this late stage of the story.

The absence of Warcury is curious though. Is he also fighting Luffy, or is he going for something else? Charging towards Bonney perhaps?

But what are they? The fact that the odaboxes simply give creature names without specifying a Devil Fruit type is super suspicious. Nasjuro’s ice powers mirror Brook’s abilities (which allegedly come from having returned from death, rather than being directly a feature of his fruit), which could maybe suggest that he as well has returned from some kind of underworld.

I’m not ready to totally rule out it being a misdirect and them having Devil Fruits of a matched kind, but the weird details are adding up.

Speaking of weird details, I can’t quite tell if it’s weird scaling/camera angles or not, but it almost seems like Lucci knocks Enma away from Zoro only for it to boomerang back to his hand. I’m not crazy, right, other people are seeing this? At a glance you think maybe it goes up and he catches it as it comes down, but that flight path is curved in every panel. So what, did Zoro just get lucky with the amount of spin, or is there some strange new property of Enma’s power/contained Haki being shown here. Or something to do with Zoro’s close grim reaper encounter? Stick a pin in this one I think we’ll be coming back to it later.

I’m ambivalent about the Zoro and Lucci fight as a whole. The outcome was never in doubt, and it was too offscreen to provide any real character interaction or clash of ideology to add substance. Zoro snapping and finding the motivation to take the win right away when Sanji talks him down is a decent bit for the two of them, but it’s not quite enough to make the whole fight feel like more than padding.

Truly, if Lucci had been handcuffed properly after the death game portion and never made his breakout attempt, I don’t think the arc would have played out any differently. Even the silly anticlimax of the sliding ship serves the purpose of justifying the Sunny getting from A to B over dry land, but Lucci? Was taking Stussy off the table that important? Was it the only way to make it believable that Zoro wouldn’t follow Sanji and Vegapunk down to the Labophase and get involved with the Elders too soon? I’m having a hard time seeing it, but the arc isn’t over yet.

The final spread is a fantastic callback and great hype-builder for the next chapter. And I think it’s going to prove just how far the Elders’ regeneration is able to go. The Elders aren’t going down here, definitely not, but with Dorry and Brogy there might just be enough muscle on Luffy’s side to hold them back until the broadcast goes ahead.

We’re getting colour pages next week, and I have to wonder if an Akira Toriyama tribute is coming. Jump has to do it, there’s no way they won’t, but the gap between when the pages are finalised and when we see them, and the break between when Toriyama died and when it was announced to the public makes it all kinds of tough to figure out the earliest that could happen. I could definitely see Oda pivoting last minute and trading out a finished colour spread to something in honour of Toriyama, but the timing is tight. We’ll see soon, I suppose. May the hits keep on coming for the Egghead finale!

Ooh, this is actually heating up right when I was expecting Egghead to start winding down and continue cutting off sources of tension. There was a point a year and a bit ago where the question might have been asked, ‘why this arc, on this island?’ If Oda is rushing to the finale, what does Egghead offer that Elbaf doesn’t, and what will it add to contribute to the macro-level plot? Up til now, aside from wrapping up stories for supporting cast members like Bonney and Kuma, it seemed that maybe the main thing here was getting the scientists in the party and setting up more Void Century teases to develop more later. Well I think now we’re getting the big thing that made Egghead unskippable.

But first we’ve got a Jump cover here, the latest in a long line of ‘Luffy is about to punch you’ covers, now in Gear Five form, and a very relaxed colour spread. Sure, why not give Uta another appearance in the manga. But what’s that going on between Reiju and Tashigi? But my favourite thing here is the dapper canines in the portraits in the background. Cute stuff.

Caribou’s scene feels like more of a recap than anything. I’m actually surprised to see him and the Blackbeard Pirates again so soon, I would have been satisfied if their time on Egghead wrapped up with the last chapter. Of course, there’s no chance they choose not to take him with them, even if Oda leaves it ambiguous.

Now, I’m not a firearms guy. I don’t live in one of those countries where you see them regularly. But is it just me or is Augur’s form with the rifle really bad here, with the stock all the way out the back. You’re meant to use that thing to brance for the recoil, right? So if he pulls the trigger this weird way he’s holding it, the whole thing just slips between his arms and goes flying backwards, wouldn’t it? I’ll accept corrections for anyone who does know guns on this point.

I love getting names for all the vice admirals here. It’s the details. Guillotine is still my favourite design of the batch.

The talk about taking back control of the Pacifistas by eliminating Bonney feels odd though. Is that how it works? So a person of equal rank in the hierarchy can’t override orders, but the death of the current top dog will let someone lower down cancel their standing orders? Pacifista control is a mess, and for all the ways Egghead has been a breath of fresh air post-Wano, it’s complicated contrivances like this that drag it down in the end-of-arc retrospective.

The giants’ meetup with Franky’s group has some interesting points. First: they don’t recognise Franky because his bounty picutre was changed to the Sunny’s figurehead. But that’s still weird. It can’t have been done just to set up this half-second misunderstanding. Franky’s ready to square up, making the at this point safe assumption they’ve come as enemies, which is great from him. We learn that Usopp’s been talking about his time with the giants to the crew since Franky joined. You have to assume that kind of offscreen bonding is happening, but it’s always nice getting the little confirmations of it.

Glad to see one of the weaponised sea beasts survived. And Bluegrass and Doll manage to look very cool riding it back to Egghead. I wonder if Doll’s connection to Saul is setting up a bigger arc or moment for her, or if it’s just an excuse to remind casual readers of his name.

Saturn is truly terrifying in his new form. That’s fantastic design. Even before Sanji points it out, you can see something is wrong with his eyes. That is one intense stare. And the fact that he doesn’t speak once in the whole chapter makes him feel all the more inhuman. What is this man now, if he’s still a man at all?

But where did Borsalino go after the last chapter’s standoff. Has there been a little offscreen clash with Luffy and Sanji he’s just retreated from? Was he forced to get out of the way as demon Saturn stampeded in? I’d rather have seen either of those things than releared what Caribou knows at the start of the chapter. It’s not a hard one to explain, but it still feels like a continuity glitch, which is frustrating. It came up during the ‘who fed Luffy’ discussions in the past week that Luffy’s position changes before and after the flashback, last seen in Franky’s hands going in, then lying a decent way away from the group with no apparent action taken by him or Franky after. If there was one thing you could absolutely say in the Onigashima battle’s favour, it’s that it was intricately and carefully mapped. We had the layout of the whole castle and knew where everyone was inside it. No one teleported from one side to another in a single page, they got at least a little bit of offscreen time to travel before popping up somewhere new. The attention to detail was a highlight there, which makes it all the more disappointing that this battle’s staging misses beats like this.

I can’t help feeling really bad for Vegapunk as he lays dying here. Not because I’m super personally invested in him, but just because it feels so wrong for the character design. He’s so goofy and cartoony with the apple head and forever-lolling tongue that he feels like he should be incompatible with blood. This guy should be giving me the tutorial of an edutainment game, not having his guts blasted out. Like a child, or a housepet, the apparent innocence makes it feel even crueller to attack him. (Apparent innocence only, we all know his morality is questionable at best given the horrors he enabled for the World Government.)

Borsalino getting to finish the job is a shock, and yeah, the monitor at the end does make me think the job is finished. Rough, and unexpected. I was better on Kuma’s death and Vegapunk’s rescue, but it looks like I got it the wrong way around. Luffy’s giant transformation is an awesome panel, with just the intensity you want for a moment like this. No notes. I also love the smaller panel of the page showing him from ground level, towering over the buildings. Would love a bigger and more detailed form of that next week please.

And then the stinger. Vegapunk seems to have set up a dead man switch with some big secrets. This is great. Perfect thing for the smartest man in the world to do, especially considering how long he’d been expecting an attempt on his life was coming. And it has the potential to be huge for the world. A turning point. Potentially the start of a war or several. I don’t think we’re getting the full Void Century here, of course, but it’s hard to imagine it playing out without at least one major reveal. And how will the Government respond? With the Buster Call running too slow, will Imu turn the Mother Flame on Egghead, triggering an escape sequence (and maybe cutting the exposition dump short because this is One Piece). The potential for this is huge. Huge.

I’m always happy to be getting three chapters in a row, but I’m so glad this one didn’t line up with a break. See you all next week when the bombs drop.

The Egghead climax is definitely in full swing now, but it’s still hard to tell how much of a full length, stand-your-ground fight to expect from this arc. Battles lately have left more like skirmishes. They’re not about beating down your opponent until they physically can’t move anymore, it’s enough to make them dazed and in need of a moment to catch their breath so you get the chance to go on to your own objectives or keep them away from theirs. Plenty of other arcs have featured these kinds of ‘smack the other guy away and get back to the more important stuff’ kinds of confrontations (which people online love to extrapolate into being decisive wins or losses despite the result’s lack of staying power) but never as a substitute for the traditional final battle. And I think this feeling that the final 1v1 could still come is the last thing that makes it hard to predict the remaining length of the arc.

Getting started, it’s awesome seeing the Giant Pirates in action. With the scale normal humans can reach in One Piece, it’s easy to forget how freaking big real giants actually are. They tower over the Marine warships enough to cleave them with single swings. And while there are humans who can also cut a battleship in two with their blades, those are individuals, and generally ones near the top of the food chain. When Mihawk cuts through a ship in an instant, it’s a moment of awe. And giants are a whole race of people who can do that just virtue of their sheer size.

Usopp’s joy at seeing the great warriors again is a wonderful moment. I get the need for a recap for casual readers, but I’d rather have seen some kind of explanation on the giants’ timeline – when and how Dorry and Brogy gave up their duel and reunited with the others.

I feel like I’m starting to see part of the escape taking shape in the sequence with the ship sliding. The talk of Brook ‘passing through in a moment’ and not being able to stop seems to be setting up the crew on top leaping onboard as the Sunny slips past. There’s probably going to be a little bit of tension and last minute saves with Jinbe and Zoro rushing to make the rendezvous and a Vegapunk having to rush inside to turn off the barrier (almost forgot about that) and then have to make it back in time, or just sacrifice themselves so the others can get away. With the giants right underneath, there’s people there who could catch the Sunny and break its fall, or it could just do a coup de burst to ramp off the edge and into the hole in the Marine fleet made by the giants’ arrival. That’s my theory for how things play out from here.

Even though I floated the idea of Bonney being upset with her ‘god’ for not showing up sooner, I’m not at all surprised that she commits to him as a hero instead. While very dramatic, the other thing wouldn’t quite have been Oda’s style. I appreciate Luffy’s casual dismissal of the Nika idea. He’s still himself. But I do wish his reaction to seeing Vegapunk’s injuries was a little more personal and had a bit more staying power before he shifted back into fun mode. Gear Five coming with a strong sense of euphoria isn’t something I mind, but I want to see the difference split a little more evenly. Or at least give Luffy a chance to see a thing like this before transforming. I was close to writing off the lead-up to the attack on Saturn as well. The back and forth with Bonney almost makes it feel like the move is going to be more about showing her up than avenging Vegapunk, and that, to my mind, made it too much of a game. But after taking the stare attack from Saturn, the old Luffy shows his face. Nika will play with Bonney, letting it be her plan and a souped up version of her punch, but Luffy has a score to settle about his friend. The expression in that panel is good. He’s still smiling, but it’s a determined, focussed smile, with a furrowed brow that brings a wilder intensity to the wide Gear Five eyes. This is the version of Gear Five I want to see more of.

Vegapunk not being able to move without dying is an interesting complication to add. On the topic of having to stand and fight, it gives Luffy and Sanji a reason to defend this space to the end instead of stunning or knocking back Borsalino and Saturn before fleeing, but what happens after? Can we get Chopper down here to save the scientist? And if Vegapunk has enough medical knowledge to be sure of that, wouldn’t Atlas, who shares his brain, have the same medical knowhow to do a patch job? Surely Franky has the strength to carry Kuma in her place.

Then there’s the Sanji moment. He doesn’t know. We’d thought that maybe because he’d acted less pervy around Bonney in some recent chapters that he had a sixth sense for it, but now we just have to say he doesn’t know. This does mildly sour the coolness of the laser kick (as does the fact that he did it already two chapters ago without the big reaction). “Physics as we know it is dead” is a great line though.

I’m very interested to see how the choreography for a 2v1 for Luffy, Sanji and Borsalino will play out, even if it ends up being a short, interrupted one. In his earlier fight with Luffy, Borsalino proved an ability to zip around and attack from offshore one moment, up close the next. That speed makes him a terrible foe to have to protect a wounded ally against. In a tag team, however, one person can protect Vegapunk while the other chases Borsalino across the island. Could be fun, especially with Sanji’s speed.

Now, that last scene. That’s where it’s all at this week. I’ve been asking questions about that Blackbeard ship tease for a long time, and we finally see the agenda. If that touch is what it takes for Catarina to be able to imitate Saturn (and what else could it realistically be?), shit’s really about to get serious. It seems like Teach’s go-to tactic is weaseling his way into the good graces of a group that has something he wants (Whitebeard’s crew, the Warlords, and now seemingly the Celestial Dragons) and betray them to run off with the prize. Then there’s this idea of them acquiring “the world” as an ultimate goal. Do we think it’s a mirror of Luffy’s own secret goal in some way, possibly relating to Gaimon’s shoutout to “buy the world” back near the start of the series?

And then, in a one-two punch, we finally get Caribou’s endgame. Oda’s been stringing this one out for literally the whole timeskip, putting this slimey bastard in the right place at the right time to learn all kinds of valuable things about the Ancient Weapons and the Poneglyphs (as well as the Strawhats’ idiosyncrasies) to make him the perfect asset to a final boss.

What a wild chapter. A finale coming together. Exciting action. Mixed feelings about the balance of goofball fun and genuine emotion in Nika. And the last two scenes feeling like they’re bringing things Oda has spent most of the series coming to a head at last. The growing pains of Gear Five’s implementation into moments of drama are easily forgiven in the face of these ultimate payoffs manifesting.

Oh, and Zoro’s fighting Lucci I guess. There’s basically nothing of note here except trash talk. The one clash we’re shown isn’t even particularly dramatic.

If you want evidence of how in-focus Kuma and his family have been in recent months, look at the list of recent chapter titles. Bonney, Kuma (as himself, “daddy,” “Kumachi” and describing himself as a pacifist) and Ginny are mentioned in every title since chapter 1096. Characters in chapter titles is by no means a new thing, but so many who are so closely related in so many back to back chapters feels like an outlier.

Kuma opens the chapter with a punch that’s well worth the wait, counting both the post-New Years days off and the long flashback build-up to this moment. It’s beautifully composed and drawn as well, full of dynamic speed lines that fully emphasise the impact and with incredibly clean panelling that doesn’t let anyone or anything distract from a moment that had to be all Kuma’s. This is chapter two of 2024 and it’s already guaranteed to be a frontrunner for best panel/spread of the year. One thing I’m not seeing much discussion about is the panel on the bottom right, where we see Saturn’s eye narrow into a glare even as his face folds around Kuma’s fist. Where many are saying Saturn won’t be that much of a powerhouse, relying on regeneration rather than defence and durability, this moment of defiance shows that Saturn knows how to take a punch without losing his focus.

Lucky for us, it’s an incredibly strong punch that sends him flying even if it doesn’t fully break his concentration.

The Marines’ lines emphasising the horror of a slave, at the very bottom of the pecking order, attacking a man at the “pinnacle of the world” makes me think of the Emperor Card game in the excellent Kaiji – in which the emperor dominates the citizen cards, who themselves look down at the slave card. But played right, the slave can be the most powerful card in the game, as it has nothing to lose, and can attack the otherwise immune emperor. For a moment here too, the slave stands taller than any free man. Also Kaiji is something everyone should watch because it’s great.

The self-destruct reveal is a bit weak. It’s not quite the copout I feared when Vegapunk pitched a personality switch in the flashback, but it still feels a little unearned for Vegapunk to have just fooled Saturn so easily after he said he’d check. I wonder if a translation difference could have set the right expectation for how this played out – something like “killswitch” instead of “self-destruct,” so that it could be interpreted as as either a killing mechanism for Kuma or an emergency shutdown on a machine, turning Vegapunk’s move into more of a semantic deception rather than an outright lie told to the audience.

The hug with Bonney isn’t as dramatic as the punch, but it’s just as earned and just as cathartic. Like when she debriefed with Vegapunk after the flashback, Bonney becomes a little girl again to emphasise her vulnerability in the moment. It’s simple, but it takes the father-daughter reunion to the next level.

Love the visceral detail of Saturn’s regeneration. If I had any faith in the anime it’s something I’d be excited to see in motion because you could do some cool, messed up things with it. His powers are still hard to pin down. Even with his body full restored, the paralysis has worn off for the main characters and it’s not clear what steps it will take from Saturn to set it up again. I did enjoy Sanji and Franky getting to casually land hits on him now that Kuma and Bonney have set the precedent.

Borsalino continues to be an enigma. I’m falling on the side of him holding back and giving the crew breathing room when he can get away with it, then fighting seriously when his boss’s eyes are on him. I think he knew, from Kuma’s punch, that there’d be no going back and no slipping out of this one anymore, and the line about darker glasses at the end is a very telling piece of dialogue for the character. I kinda wish the illustration packed it up a bit more though. That would have been a good time to reveal some genuine sadness in his eyes, but he retains his trademark neutrality all the way through.

With the advent of the Buster Call, there’s no chance of this arc not being in its endgame. The question is, how are we going to distinguish this arc from the last time the Strawhats faced one of these? Perhaps we’ll see them mount more of a defence and push back instead of wrapping up their fights and fleeing the burning island. Or maybe the presence of Saturn and Borsalino alone is meant to be this one’s defining features.

I’m setting my hopes high for the next few months. Egghead has been on so many levels a breath of fresh air after Wano, and now it just needs to stick the landing to cement its place among the series’ best. After proving he’s still got it in the flashback department, I’ve got a lot of faith in Oda to bring this one full circle.