Captain M Entertainment

Oda takes a chapter to put a bow on the God Valley storyline and ease us back to Harald. And it feels like a reasonable ending for volume 114. It’s always nice getting that Jump cover/colour spread combo as well. The spread has some nice, autumnal vibes with some pleasing new outfits for the characters who made it in (Nami in particular), buuuuut I don’t think we really needed to go back to the Wano cast so soon after Yamato’s cover story. The Jump cover is simple, but it gives us Rocks’ colours, so that’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. I like the look, but I’m not looking forward to the amount of Buggy theories we’re going to get from the blue hair. It also looks like Oda is picturing a red shirt for Garp in this sequence – that means the anime already has this wrong in Kuma’s flashback, but maybe the long-dormant digital colour manga has enough of a gap to get it right when they get there.

It’s very interesting that Rocks appears to legitimately be back to normal in the opening pages here. Conqueror’s Haki being able to do that lines up with it banishing the Elders from Egghead, and it gives Oda an out for saving Dorry, Brogy and anyone else who gets taken over in the present. Going with understated final words instead of a big speech is a common Oda choice for beloved characters – see Merry and Ace – which makes it feel more deliberate that Rocks has come off as a lovable rogue rather than the outright villain he was built up to be. And the knowledge that Rocks could likely have been saved if Rayleigh and Scopper had arrived before Garling’s squad did makes the tragedy complete. The world conspires against the man to the end.

Not sure what to make of God Valley’s apparent implosion into the sea. That’s not anyone’s power that we know of, and it’s a crazy thing for a normal fight to do. I guess knowing that most of the One Piece world is mountaintops, it could make sense for the ceiling of a chamber inside the mountain to be shaken open, letting the top of the mountain (and the sea) collapse into it. Maybe a bit of a reach, but it could be.

The following spread is a real winner though. That’s an awesomely dramatic sailing scene. Seeing pirate ships and Marine ships flee equally from the destruction while lightning splits the sky and a new era begins.

Cool to see the storyboarded page from the Film Red promo material finally making it into the series. Not much else you can say about it.

If I’m honest, I still don’t quite understand how Garp game away from this thing shining like he does. The God Knights don’t seem to be so top secret Garling couldn’t be given all the credit. For him to have attacked Saturn/Imu directly and to wield at least 50% of the conqueror’s power to undo a Domi Reversi feels like it should be grounds for execution. And at the same time that his son turns traitor? Remember how the top dogs of the WG believe that things like being a god or a criminal get passed along in the bloodline? We know from things like Smoker being given credit for Alabasta or Koby and Rocky Port that the WG likes to make heroes of its Marines for the propaganda, so earlier in the series it would have been easy to roll with Garp being propped up that way. But we’ve seen too much of the Government’s hard lines now, and we know Garp has crossed to many of them.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Sengoku’s philosophy in his chat with Garp either. Does the size of the oranisation really give cover to any of this, acting like the top dogs might just be making weird choices because they legitimately can’t keep track of everything below them. But it wasn’t insanity in this case, it cold, calculated cruelty in an attempted grap of resources, and it came directly from the top and kept out of sight of the lower levels. It doesn’t really hold water, and it does feel a lot like, as Garp says, Sengoku turning a blind eye to keep his career going. Sengoku implies he wants to make change once he reaches the top, but I wonder if in the present day, now that he’s retired, he thinks he succeeded. With Sakazuki in charge, the Marines are at least as bad, if not worse than when Sengoku came in, I think that’s inarguable. And does Garp truly believe Sengoku made it through his career without being corrupted, or did he have one of his trademark internal conflicts and couldn’t find the courage to kill Sangoku like he says here? It would be interesting to see some vignettes of how this relationship and their goals changed over the decades, how the morality slipped one compromise at a time.

The talk with Rocks Loki remembers raises a few questions about their relationship and Rocks’ morality as well. One strongly inferred feature of Rocks’ plan is the legendary Elbaph Devil Fruit’s ability to revive the sleeping Galleila (what power could that be), and the reason he wanted Harald is to have the current king of the giants to give them an authority they would recognise. This was all laid out ten chapters ago and reinforced here. So it would actually have been an easy win for Rocks to take on the prince of Elbaph. Loki is ready and willing to be groomed as a tool in Rocks’ master plan, and just as royal as his father. So what stops Rocks? Doesn’t want to use a kid that way? Or is he so enamoured with Harald he needs to have the man as a partner and equal, a point of pride to have won him over rather than subjugate or bypass him?

And while we’re on that doomed friendship, I actually do feel sympathy for Harald here. Rocks must have seemed so invincible to him. We’ve talked already in recent weeks about how unlucky Rocks was at the end, the wrong person on the wrong island at the wrong time; the wrong additional hostage bringing extra attention; the wrong people arriving first after the fight. Just one domino falling a different way would have changed Rocks’ fate, and Harald knows it could have been him. I don’t agree with many of Harald’s choices, this one included, but it’s a sharp pain to live with the loss of a friend because you didn’t realise how desperately they really needed it when they asked. He’s a well-written character with layers of internal conflict to peel back.

The pair actually have me thinking of the Guts and Griffith of Berserk’s Golden Age Arc. One has too great a respect for the other to stand being anything less than an equal, the other has ambitions that leave little room for friendship. The conflict between these motivations ultimately dooms the relationship. If I’m drawing Berserk comparisons, you know you’re doing something right.

And speaking of nuanced characters whose choices I wouldn’t have made, Garp and Dragon’s scene is great. So much said with so few words and one action. I’ve raised issues in recent weeks about Garp staying in the Marines and how much he has to overlook about them and how much the WG has to overlook about him to make that happen, but scenes like this make him such a compelling character. Since Marineford, the constant internal conflict between duty and family have made him one of Oda’s best written characters.

Finally, such an ominous scene to end on. The grand gesture of a man repenting, but it’s not really about the sins of his ancestors, is it? You can feel the weight of choosing propriety over friendship and regretting it driving Harald now; from shifting the family dynamic away from the traditional, to grovelling to the WG. The former would be a pretty clear positive if he was going to be around to integrate his families, but the latter ends on such a grim choice of words. And Oda puts Imu’s eye in to make sure there’s absolutely no missing the point. (And if we wander back to the Berserk comparison, losing Guts also spurs Griffith to take a series of rash actions that will ultimately undermine the kingdom he’s been working towards and end with his transformed into a demon. Hmm…)

Often in One Piece, it’s the bits between arcs that are the most exciting. Seeing a big even ripple out and change the world is where the extensive worldbuilding a massive cast pay dividends. Never thought I’d see one of those sequences inside a flashback, but Oda pulls it off for an unexpected hit of a transitional chapter.

Well that’s definitely more actual fight choreography than I expected from a flashback. What a pleasant surprise as we say farewell to a legend. If anyone deserved this special treatment it’s Rocks.

I like that the fighting is set up so that every move comes as a one-two punch. Oda doesn’t let Roger or Garp dominate the fight, they work as a sword and shield, forcing you to wonder what could have been if Garp had taken Roger up on his offer to be a pirate. Generally, I would say I’m not here for the action. I’ve seen all the shonen fighty stuff over the years and its tropes don’t motivate like they used to. But the bits where two rivals end up in an unlikely alliance and are immediately completely in sync with each other because of the years they spent getting to know each other’s moves? Those ones are always bangers.

There’s a little bit of wrapping up of loose ends through the middle of the chapter, mostly watching the Rocks Pirates go their separate ways. Marco’s father being called Polo is a 10/10 move, no notes here. But the standout is Dragon’s departure from the island. I’d been wondering how that might happen, and what a power move from him. The respect I have for him and his cause, having now seen its origin. You have to wonder if any members of his squad were convinced to defect with him, or if any of the God Valley survivors he rescued were founding members of the Revolutionary Army (or its predecessor organisation the Freedom Fighters). For being such a minor character in this flashback, Dragon comes out of it shining as a hero.

Garp, I’m not so sure of. He rejects the chance to leave the World Government and its corruption behind, staying because he thinks he can ‘protect the rank and file.’ But how? Garp’s career is definitely doing well at this point, but he’s not the hero of the Marines yet. What power does he have to save multiple battleships’ worth of sailors if the WG decides every witness gets executed? He knowingly struck a Celestial Dragon! Is he just thinking of getting close enough to Dragon to warn him off before the consequences come down? In which case, there’s a kind of irony in that choice being made right as Dragon defects, but then Garp stays for another 40 years, so who even knows what he’s planning at this point. I wanted more from this, but the way it’s framed gives me a nasty gut feeling that I probably won’t be getting it.

There’s some interesting talk about Haki and how it can be used toward the end. Not much that couldn’t be intuited, but it’s cool to see it put into words by Oda. Interestingly, I think this is the first time we’re seeing characters other than Luffy speak of the kind of disabling Haki burnout that comes at the end of a Gear Four fight, let alone actually suffering it. Will we see more of this going forward? Will powerscalers come to realise that Haki isn’t an infinite resource that can be endlessly tapped by any who awakened it, but also that for storytelling reasons we’ll never see a gamey percentage bar showing how close to running out they are?

The final stage of the fight stuns visually. Not just the combo attack spread, which is awesome – the sword slashes doing damage makes sense, but Garp is literally punching holes in the guy is completely savage – but the expression work done on Rocks’ face leading up to it. He must really believe he killed his family to be showing so much pain. And if their escape was narrow enough that Rocks, at ground zero, couldn’t detect it, that must mean Imu doesn’t know either.

We’re in the ending zone for vol 114, and with that narration I could definitely see it wrapping up here, but let’s just see what the next two chapters bring before we lock in any guesses. With so much Loki’s life leading up to Harald’s death, plus maybe glimpses of his pirating career after, all still to cover, I have zero hope of seeing the present before vol 115. A couple more chapters and this sequence will outstrip Oden’s flashback to become the series’ longest. But what could Oda possibly have in the tank that could surpass God Valley?

Well, the end has come. God Valley is wrapping up. Rocks is on his last legs. Volume 114 is now on its ninth chapter, so I guess we’re not going back to the present before the flashback is done, even if we stretch to 12 chapters. If the cover story hadn’t finished when it did, Oda might not have drawn Luffy at all for the whole book. I wonder if he’ll still be on the cover.

There’s a lot of trademark Oda vagueness in this chapter. Davy Jones as the previous king of the world? Him and Joyboy being separate but comparable threats to Imu’s order? Davy’s dream, not to be confused for the Will of the D (probably), and that promise that was also mentioned last week? Rocks being ‘too early’ to face Imu and that’s why he lost? (Is this related to it being ‘too early’ for Roger to properly use the One Piece as well?) Yeah, we’re going to be looking back to some of these lines for years. For now, the idea of Davy Jones and Joyboy both scaring Imu is something that’s sticking with me. Obviously Blackbeard represents one and Luffy the other. Could they be forced to team up to topple Imu (or just race to be the one to take him down) and then Blackbeard makes his play for the world, turning into the real final boss?

Just when you think Rocks couldn’t endear himself harder, he defends Harald to Imu in his final lucid moments. After everything that happened between them, it takes integrity from Rocks to this. What a way to go out. And while it’s obviously a very bad thing for him, it does have to be said that he absolutely rocks the fangs, and wings forming out of his cape is a fantastic visual touch.

I’m awed by the clash between Rocks and Whitebeard and the sequence of the mountain toppling that follows. Holy shit that is cool. The scale. The power. I have to believe Oda knew he was going to do this from the moment he first drew those spires, it’s such an effective escalation. You really get the feeling that things are over for this island. It’s most prominent landmark has been savaged; the following pages show how far fire has spread through its forests as all but the strongest flee to save themselves. How much of the landmass – how many fleeing people – were obliterated under an unfathomable weight of solid stone just now? Almost like a sinking ship, the structure and safety of the place fails zone by zone, making it uninhabitable by the living. Get to the lifeboats, the end only accelerates, and you don’t want to still be onboard in the final minutes of the cascade.

And right when you thought you couldn’t love Kuma more, he puts himself in harm’s way for Eris and Teach. What a clutch move! But this means Eris both survives and never sees Rocks’ ultimate end. Will she depart from Sorbet and make it to Lulusia expecting him to be there? How does she meet her end, and how much of this is conveyed to little Teach before she does? Questions for a future Blackbeard flashback.

This sequence also closes off a question that’s spurred a lot of debate in recent months: why didn’t the World Government kill Blackbeard when they had the chance, in his warlord days? I wasn’t massively bothered by this – with the fake Marshall name there’s only a loose family resemblance to go off – but it’s still nice to see an answer. All signs suggest Imu genuinely believes Eris and Teach were killed by Rocks. From a distance, he sees the explosion rise and knows he can’t sense the Voices of the pair on the island anymore. He doesn’t curse that the Davy clan slipped away again or chastise Rocks for failing as a tool, he just calmly assigns the next task. Why hunt for a bloodline you’ve already extinguished? And even if you want to take no chances on every dude with a similar nose to your old nemesis, that’s a long enough shot you can probably let him fight a war for you first (and not demoralise your other Warlords by killing one of their number in front of them right when they’re about to fight). Case closed. Ah, the rollercoasters of serialised reading. The time it can take to see apparent holes closed up in easy and satisfying ways like this is why I try to take a wait and see approach to developments that get a lot of the fanbase riled up.

Expanding on the above, it’s harder to say for sure because he would have had the chance to see Kuma, but I wonder if Rocks also believes he succeeded in his mission. The pained expression, tears and begging for death aren’t just about losing to Imu or turning on his crew. They only start after Eris and Teach disappear. The kind of guilt Rocks must be taking to his grave in this case…

I think next week is the last we see of God Valley. Oda doesn’t like to linger on a fight with a foregone conclusion, so I’m keeping my expectations reasonable for the amount of battle we get to see. One or two showcase moves, teary final words from a wounded Rocks, then a transition into the aftermath leading back to Loki and Harald’s story. That’s my prediction. But damn, even knowing, it’s going to hurt to see the last of Rocks.

Oda may make us wait, but he rarely fails to deliver when the time comes. And this week, he has delivered. My god, has he delivered. It’s a hype chapter, but it’s also a ‘more questions’ rather than a ‘some answers’ kind of installment.

Imu rising out of Saturn is something that has the potential to look goofy, but he pulls it off to surprisingly intimidating effect. Man, I have so many questions about how his powers work – why didn’t this happen at Egghead? Why does this also make Saturn so much bigger? Is Saturn even conscious while this happens – he was pretty chatty on Egghead but doesn’t speak a word while acting as a portal here. Look at the way the swirls on his legs come alive to attack; the other Elders don’t have swirls in their monster forms, so is there an equivalent for them? Roger’s wounded crewman doesn’t seem to have been hit with the same corrosive poison Saturn coated his talons with on Egghead, so does an Imu possession limit some of their powers as well as adding all this weird new stuff? Does the wound being ‘fascinating’ hint to something around Domi Reversi? So many questions I can’t wait to see answered.

Fascinated by Garp this week. These are not the words and actions of someone planning to keep his Marine career going. Full disillusionment and a Luffy-level willingness to take a swing at the world’s highest power. So what happens next? The fact that he’s even allowed to live and that he’d stick with this side after everything makes me feel there has to be some kind of memory manipulation involved in making him into the Marines’ ‘hero.’ I think Oda would have to work to make a long-con ‘bring them down from the inside’ play work for a guy like Garp, even if Sengoku pressures him into it. And to be committed enough to that kind of plan to let Ace die? I don’t think Garp would do that unless he really believed he was in the right, and that would mean not having this incident in his mind at that moment. I’ll be very curious to see how this gets played, and how it could connect to a present day story with Garp captive at Fullalead.

Rocks and Imu’s exchange about a promise is for sure one to stick a pin in, probably for when we get more from the Harley mural. Seems the Davy clan set themselves a purpose that’s at odds with Imu’s, but what, and when? Questions, questions.

I enjoy seeing known Devil Fruits in the hands of unexpected users in these flashbacks. And I like how John getting blown away in the middle of his Big Eater move naturally scatters treasure across a wide area of the island. When the time comes for a frantic retreat, it’s going to make it easy to justify random pirates grabbing what they can see without looking too close, helping Shanks end up where he ends up. Also as a way to separate Dragon and Shanks without Dragon having to abandon the child.

The main event is a truly killer spread. It feels like an event, and not just because we’ve been told all of these guys is a big deal, but because each one has hundreds of pages of setup making them into characters that matter to us. I can appreciate a brief, efficient story when I see one, but this kind of epic-feeling scope is the domain of the long-form narrative. It just hits different. And holy shit does it look cool.

This attack even gets a bit of unique rendering unlike much else in the series. Look at the grey around the explosion in the main spread and covering the middle panel of the following page. It’s not the even halftone pattern Oda usually goes to for shading, it’s a smudgy and uneven shade with something of a canvas texture to it. It feels similar to the shading used to give the Sleeptid monsters the feeling they were drawn and coloured by children, but not quite the same. The canvas texture even impacts the black inking that runs through it, strangely enough. I wonder if it’s just a new tool Oda recently added to his kit after first starting to change up his shading with the Sleeptids and the Harley mural.

And, of course, more questions for the final pages. How does Domi Reversi work? Who can resist it and how do they do so? I’m pretty surprised to see Rocks get taken. If it was just willpower or some innate ability of a big-name clan that provided resistance, you’d think he’d be in the clear. I also thought because we’re likely to get Harald’s Reversi in the near future, Oda wouldn’t want to stack up the same twist too many times. And even if Rocks does go rogue and chase his family, would that really be enough to make the others here give up on Imu. A chapter or two ago I was saying we’re mostly just watching foregone events play out, but Oda’s managed to throw in enough unknowns to really get me wondering about the coming weeks.