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That certainly was an entrance worth waiting for. But for all the hype, I’m a little confused about where Oda plans to take this arc’s finale. Things seem a little too set in the heroes’ favour, so I’ve been expecting a reversal from the God Knights to set the final stage of the battle. But Oda has pulled what seems to be his biggest emotional trigger here and now, rather than saving it for the critical moment.

Sommers is fantastic in the opening scene here. What a slimy, self-serving nasty piece of work he is. It’s been building for a while, but I’m now fully sold on his guy you love to hate status. That face he makes when he realises he can get away with watching the kids and their parents die? Disgusting. And the overconfidence that Imu will take responsibility for the plan going wrong instead of giving him the Saturn treatment? And this being so twisted in a way that only presses Saturn’s specifc buttons that even Killingham isn’t into it? man, watching this guy go down is going to be so satisfying. I think there is going to be broad disappointment that the God Knights aren’t as threatening in a straight-up fight as people want from antagonists this late in the series, but Sommers is exempliary of a rich kid who gets nepotism’d into a position he’s not qualified for and makes an unhinged power trip out of it. The man is coasting on borrowed immortality and the best devil fruit money can buy. But he’s having the time of his sociopathic little life doing it.

And then we reach the emotional peak of the kidnapped children storyline. And look, if I’m completely honest, there are things about how recent arcs have played out that give me reservations about the series’ finale. Wano showed that Oda can burn out and drop the ball. Egghead delivered chaos and tension, but was shortchanged of the worldbuilding and feeling of being populated that is such a trademark of every prior island. Elbaph’s flashback compromised on its emotional core to drop the God Valley lore. Sometimes I worry if these cracks will grow. But then you get a scene like this one with the kids that proves in no uncertain terms that Oda can produce a resonant emotional hook in a very small number of pages.

Oda leands toward the biggest and most dramatic character beats, but he makes the right choice by going really, really small with the things the kids think of when word goes up the line that they’re facing divine punishment. The flashbacks are all basic kid stuff. Scuffles, lies, avoiding homework, not eating vegetables and lashing out at people who only want the best for them. All mistakes a child should be allowed to make and then grow to learn from. Nothing that deserves death, but when the mind of a child tries to put cause and effect together to make sense of the world…

Ronja was heartbreaking enough in her spotlight chapter last year, and she hits that note again as she goes from optimism to a breakdown as her father arrives.

Bent feeling guilt just bringing his mum up as his biggest fear is one that feels very grounded to me. I remember once when I was pretty young (early primary school I guess) and had a dispute with my mum, I went and drew a handful of comics that cast an unkind caricature of her as the villain and a few hours later regretted that private act so tremendously I tearfully destroyed them. Tell you what, I would have been pretty distressed too at that age to have been marched off to my doom before I could set a moment of childish cruelty right.

And even as these kids reflect on the acts they think make them most deserving of punishment, the adults swoop in and do what adults should for their kids: put themselves on the line to give the young ones that chance to grow up from their mistakes, and simply provide comfort and guidance when that’s the only thing left that can be done. It’s genuinely touching stuff. Oda makes sure to keep the One Piece theme of surrogateand found families in the spotlight, because it’s not just blood parents; grandparents, teachers and big brothers all go through it the same, sacrificing their own bodies despite the kids’ past rejections.

And I actually hate Sommers even more now, because man shut up and let me enjoy this heartfelt scene, how many times do we need to cut back to you laughing?

I would expect a moment like this to cap off a chapter and leave us hanging for a week (or two) to find out what happens, but Oda obviously had a bigger moment to reach for this one, so find out basically immediately that everyone is safe. I don’t even want to run the numbers on how big Luffy must be here. Actual giants are just dots on top of him, and he still has to be thick enough to provide cushioning. This goes way beyond the giant-size Gear Five we saw on Wano and Egghead.

The prophecy segment that leads into the final pages solves one narrative problem, but rubs me the wrong way. Okay, a lot of us were wondering what power Loki could have that would convince him he was Nika, given that there is an actual Nika power and someone else has it. But when you get down to it, if the giants worship Nika as an actual religion, that would assume he’s a real guy who would get a second coming, not that someone would get his powers from a fruit. They would think that Nika will be reborn rather than remade. I don’t see a hypothetical One Piece Buddhist taking on Sengoku as a spiritual leader just because he has Buddha-themed powers, do you? So when Loki, who’s been outcast and treated as a destroyer all his life, gets powers of ice and lightning and the ability to become a beast that fills the sky, of course it clicks into his head that he’s Nika and he has some prophecies to fulfill. I wonder at this point if the giants even know there is a specific Nika fruit.

But on the flip side, I wish we’d heard this bit of prophecy a long time before this. During the Harley chapter at the absolute latest. I don’t care if it would have made it easier for people to guess Loki has dragon powers, imaging if we’d had the idea of Luffy and this giant beast building for a couple of years. Just like with Nika himself, even a single early hint could have gone a long way to making this feel like a more natural progression.

And while I’m grumbling about Nika stuff, what’s up with Luffy’s outfit? His Elbaph duds have just disappeared entirely. He’s shirtless in the panel after he saves the giants, and then back in his default outfit for riding on Loki’s head in the final pages. It was the same stupid thing on Egghead, where the local outfit just vanishes at random for the transformation, and I thought Oda was past that when we got an actual white Elbaph outfit when Luffy fought in Rodo’s room and at the castle. But nope, back to the generic version. Sigh.

Dragon Loki looks pretty cool though. Freaking huge. Like that you can still see a bit of his helmet on the transformed design. Eye placement is a bit odd, but maybe they were exaggerated to not get lost in the spine of the physical edition. Love Ragnir just being along for the ride. Can you imagine if he’d done more than hybrid mode inside the castle when he first got it? The resmeblance to the dragon on the Harley mural goes without saying, but it’s interesting how much Loki also resembles the Ancient Giant fighting the demon on the left side. I think this supports the interpretation that the mural only shows the first and second worlds and is not a prophetic view of the final battle in the third one. Echoes of these old worlds will feature in the battle to come, but they don’t have to be one to one parallels.

With the next few chapters forming the climax of volume 115, I can’t wait to see what this big beefy boy is going to do. And what the bad guys are going to do about him…

Well I’m glad to be back in the present and playing with Luffy again, but as flashback endings go, this one wasn’t quite it. When I think of a successful flashback, I think of returning to the present with a new perspective on the relationships and motives of the primary characters, and this sequence was side-tracked too hard to give Loki, Hajrudin or Gaban the focus needed for that. While I’m glad it isn’t going on any longer, it feels like there’s a whole section missing to make sense of some major details.

But we’ll start positive. If you want to see some fun attention to detail, put the opening page of this chapter and the walk through the castle from chapter 1137 side by side. All three of the panels on this first page showing the carnage inside the castle is a direct match to an older one. You can see how the castle has been stripped of ornaments, hangings and carpets by thieves over the years. The activities of thieves and branches and roots growing in have caused more damage in the present, but just about every scar and crater in the flashback remains in its place in 1137 with near-perfect continuity. There’s just one window in the arch over the doorway that has a broken frame in the past but only broken glass in the present. What can I say, attention to detail and continuity of space thrill me.

I also like the spread of Loki sitting with Harald’s body. The shot is framed well, and we keep the mystery of Loki’s exact powers and their effects going by covering Harald with his cape. At a glance though, between Loki’s complete cape and Harald’s ripped one underneath, I thought this was a much gnarlier panel than it actually is. Can you imagine Oda doing that kind of gore?

We learn a tiny bit more about Imu through the end of the contract. It’s interesting to see them being so upfront about their plans, decision-making and weaknesses with the Elders, I didn’t think that had quite been their relationship before now. And another hint about the D…

It’s in the aftermath that the flashback’s ending really falls apart. Gaban knows. Shanks knows. Jarul knows. A number of guardsmen know. And Loki was still allowed to be vilified and locked up for all those years. Following One Piece often means waiting for explanations, and I’m sure we will revisit some of this when we see more of Shanks’s life later on, but I can’t imagine it having more impact there than it would doing it right now. While there is some conflict in where we leave things, it’s mostly about the others thinking Loki is being reckless in going to attack the World Government so directly, not that these people are actually opposed to each other.

Loki implies after returning to the present that revealing the truth would undo everything his father had done, like it would be seen as a failure of the methods of peace that would cause Elbaph to return to war, but it’s tacked on in such a throwaway way that it doesn’t feel genuine. Oda could have demonstrated that faith in Harald was important to maintaining the ways of peace before they had a generation raised knowing nothing different, but we didn’t see enough of the changing Elbaph. Maybe if Jarul, an in-power leader who might be more on the pulse of the population’s wavering had talked through the idea of losing progress we could have justified the cover-up.

And why did Shanks step in and lock Loki up instead of assisting him. We can see how strongly he hates his family. Did Loki take it too far and start attacking WG nations instead of the WG itself? Was he going to get himself killed and Shanks wanted Loki alive for when the time is right, based on info he got either from Roger or his time in the Holy Land?

There’s also Loki and Hajrudin. I expected the flashback to turn Loki’s freedom into a big moment for Hajrudin. Time spent showing how Hajrudin was sidelined, or how they interacted after Harald got them living together, or some kind of post-Harald interaction that gave Hajrudin the wrong idea (or showing how he was taken in my the speculation and rumours) could have gone a long way. But this is already the series’ longest flashback. Rocks just didn’t leave room for that kind of introspection. It’s tragically ironic that the best part of the sequence was the worst thing for it overall.

I wonder what could have been if Oda had saved God Valley for a future Shanks story and kept a tighter focus on Elbaph for the short term. Ugh, but maybe he felt like he needed all the bits about Domi Reversi and how to fight someone who’s been turned for the Elbaph story. It’s a messy bit of work.

And nitpick section two, right as we go back to the present there’s a continuity issue with how things were left. Hajrudin’s crew, along with Zoro and Sanji, were meant to be taking the lift up while the others heard the story, but apparently they chose to stick around. I know these things can happen in storytelling. As readers, it can sometimes be easier for us to keep track of little things like that. The author might have two or three versions of an event in their head, and especially if they did an experimental draft of one of the alternatives before committing it can be hard to remember six months down the road which one became canon. It’s a trap I’ve fallen into as a writer. But I don’t have an editorial team paid the kind of wages Oda’s editors must be raking in. You’d expect them to be helping him catch these things. It feels sloppy otherwise.

There’s also the chance that they did catch it and chose to ignore it. Oda came up with a new idea in the last seven months (!) that requires Sanji taking Gaban to the top. Is it better to abandon that idea for something he’s less passionate about, or to cater to the small handful of fans dedicated enough to keep track of these things? The Egghead flashback had a similar issue with Luffy’s placement, being in Franky’s hand before it and lying off to the side after. But if he hadn’t been moved off to the side, Oda couldn’t have done Kizaru feeding him, which was a big moment for Kizaru (even if it took an SBS a volume later for it to be confirmed).

Getting back on topic, it’s interesting that Hajrudin says the misjudgement on kinslaying doesn’t undo his other crimes. An allusion to the rampage period we still haven’t seen?

The last spread definitely makes an exciting start to the battle potion of the arc. Ice powers as well as lightning for Loki? It’s hard to say what’s coming from Ragnir and what’s coming from Loki. Oda tends to play fast and loose with his mythologies, which makes it hard to rule out anything at this stage. I really like the rendering detail that went into the frozen draugr – the crayon-textured shading needing to be refracted across the ice with lines of white to show fissures in the surface. There’s some great visuals ahead after the break.

That’s a bow on 2025! Wow, what a year. It feels almost like a shame to not squeeze one more chapter in and get the climax of the flashback done so we can start fresh in the present for 2026, but that’s life. We get some great colour work to wrap up with – the unique stained glass Jump cover, and then a slick as hell colour spread.

What can you even say about this spread? The Rocks crew are looking amazing, truly fitting for the crew that dominated the conversation for so much of the year. It’s all attitude, all the way down. I have to wonder if this piece came from a rejected concept for the volume 114 cover. Oda has, in the last few arcs, used colour spreads to give group shots to crews that didn’t get covers to themselves (the Beast Pirates in Wano and then the Vegaclones in Egghead) and since that volume wrapped up just a few chapters ago this would be the time to be thinking of its cover. Maybe it will be more Harald and Loki based?

And before moving on from this, the presence of the tiger begs analysis. Roger and Luffy have long been associated with lions, and why wouldn’t they be? King of the jungle and king of the pirates. Oda loves to use the mane of the lion as a visual metaphor for the burning wreath of the sun, tying Nika lore into lion symbols. But while lions are the culturally accepted heads of the food chain, in reality tigers match if not best them in terms of size, weight and power. So of course Rocks gets a tiger. The counterpart cat that hits just as hard but got left out of the conversation. It’s a perfect choice. Plus, you know, he’s got those zigzaggy stripes in his hair too.

Shanks learning of Ace and thinking of Roger’s legacy in the opening scene definitely raises questions about his being in the East Blue at the start of the story. He must have known it wasn’t Luffy, but he could have been looking for Ace just as easily as he could have been seeking out the Gum Gum Fruit Cipher Pol had found. Gaban thinks it’s more interesting if the children of the greats aren’t guaranteed their own spots at the top, but he’s maybe in the wrong story for that.

As predicted, Harald gives the order for his own death, causing the scene we opened the flashback on. You can say a lot against Harald and his choices, but his commitment to Elbaph’s future at the cost of himself is complete and true. There is no hesitation on his part to die for the country, and he doesn’t waver (at least internally) once the choice is made. Stupidity does not rule out integrity, and Harald has that if nothing else.

Picking up the Shanks and Gaban conversation, I’m intrigued by the covenant mechanics here. Shanks has hesitated a long time in pursuing the One Piece; is that because getting it will involve entering Marie Geoise or otherwise going somewhere close enough to Imu to be influenced? The popular line of thinking in the fanbase seems to be that Shanks was freed with the loss of his arm, but I’m not so sure. Gunko had her whole upper body destroyed, for sure burning up the mark, but was still able to regenerate and act as Imu’s conduit. My view is that the mark is just a symbol, not the source of the power. Shanks himself might not even be totally sure if he’d be safe or not. He may be gambling with his soul.

There’s a lot of tragedy coming from bad timing in this flashback. Rocks was undone by a perfect confluence of random encounters. And here, one final time, we have Shanks arriving just barely too late with his warning for Harald. How much history could have been changed with the smallest nudge…

Back in the castle, I appreciate how in the official release, Harald’s dialogue gradually takes on the font they’ve been using for Imu. I’m not 100% sure if Imu has an exclusive typeface in Japanese – I don’t think so at a scan of his scenes in the raws, if he does the difference is a lot more subtle – but as an adaptational choice it works really well and I’m happy for them to continue it.

The mystery of Elbaph’s Devil Fruit deepens. Rocks inferred it would be important in raising the Galeila. Harald says it would give the user the power to overcome a covenant-holders godlike regeneration. Jarul foresees apocalyptic consequences to it being eaten. My old theory was that it was the Gum Gum, and that Government agents who came through the abyss Harald made stole it and let Loki take the blame. That no longer makes sense. No one has used the pentagram. It seems unlikely the fruit could leave the castle at this point. The spread of Harald cutting through the guards in this sequence is also a fantastic action shot.

The presence of Shanks and Gaban here puts a spanner in our understanding of the present. If they saw this, if they both know so much, why does Elbaph see Loki as a criminal? They should be able to explain it all. There’s a piece of the story missing, some kind of greater good honour play they must all feel bound to. But does it happen here and now, or later when Shanks captures Loki at sea? Maybe Gaban went with him for that. He has fewer scars here than he does in the present, after all.

Ragnir moving is definitely something. That’s no small twitch or chance toppling, it’s literally a straight flip upward. The hammer having absorbed the Devil Fruit somehow would explain a lot (its powers, why not just anyone can use it) but would require a few explanations of its own. Like why this kind of thing isn’t more common if it can just happen naturally, and how Vegapunk worked it out and if his method differs. I’ve been waiting a long time to learn about that. Next chapter’s answer to this strange final scene is going to set the trajectory for Loki’s role and abilities, something we’ve been kept in suspense about for the whole arc.

I think this has been unquestionably one of the best years One Piece has had in a while. The last two years of Egghead didn’t slouch, at least compared to Wano, but from the Harley to Rocks, the amount of important info we’ve gained this time has been immense. And we can only hope for 2026 to be even bigger.

The climax of the flashback draws close, I feel like in maybe as few as two chapters we could be back in the present for the first time since… June? Jesus christ. That’s such a long time to go without our actual main character. There’s more leaping forward in time here with some surprising skips. I’m shocked we don’t at least get a nod to Lola, but maybe it’s being saved for later.

Also I think the choice to say ‘that same year’ in the opening narration box confirms this chapter to be in the same volume as the one before it. Wouldn’t make sense to say that if there’d been the four month gap of volume releases between them, but if they’re separated by two pages it works just fine.

While I criticised the Loki and Ida relationship last week, I think Ida’s death was really well handled in this chapter. The way Harald thinks and speaks of her after this first jump forward brings an ominous feeling that builds to reveal of the grave and the flashback to her actual death. And that itself is a classic tragedy. The talk of dreams and then her arm going limp. The completely silent sequence as Harald leaves and Hajrudin rushes in. The grief on Hajrudin’s face. Loki mourning in silence in his cell. Beautiful stuff. I really liked Ida and energy she brought to the story. It tugs on my heart to see her go.

Oda does something interesting here in having both Saul and Ida argue against Harald’s ideals. Mentor characters in One Piece tend to go to extremes and are rarely outright questioned on it. But here, the scholar Saul wonders about the tradeoffs of the cultural shift. He certainly would have seen what could happen to a nation of thinkers without the ability to defend themselves Ida, who sees the good in everything, seems to have been attracted to the warrior aesthetic and sees value in embracing one’s roots. I think Harald has a pretty insurmountable counter-argument for her when he says that same culture kept them from marrying, but these two conversations lay a groundwork of doubt over Harald’s dream and the idea of unquestioningly inheriting his will. You can’t turn Elbaph back into a blank slate, not withing losing more than you intend to. Finding a balance where the nation holds onto some independent security and retains a culture it can feel proud of is going to be key to setting Elbaph up for the future. We might be about to see a different kind of inherited will where a person’s dreams aren’t just completed by the next generation but augmented into a better version of themselves first.

The dramatic tension of Harald’s meeting with the Elders is undercut somewhat by the absurdity of the panel where he walks after them with only his enormous foot in the frame. Oda’s pretty lucky he drew this hall so big back in 2018, or maybe he knew all along he was going to put giants in here. (although I saw a pretty funny fan edit showing how big Harald is actually meant to be next to the Elders. And hey, there’s an awful lot of empty space in the top right of the middle panel of page 9, so was he maybe drawn bigger then erased and shrunk down for better framing?) There’s an obvious jump forward in the middle of the scene which makes we wonder if we’re going to eventually return here and learn how Imu explained his existence to Harald in a way that left Harald still willing to trust him. Did Harald have to verbally agree to something to confirm his Depths Covenant? Did he have to make physical contact with Imu to start the process of the mark transforming? Or could Imu forcibly upgrade any Shallows Covenant in his presence?

(Shanks not being here to receive his mark isn’t a surprise, but I’m so curious about his plan. Did he get what he wanted, or did he know the promotion would mean being trapped and had to bail when it was offered regardless of where his plan was at?)

Okay, so a thought I had when first flipping through this chapter is that when you get down to it, Imu and Rocks kind of had the same plan for the giants. Imu wants to recruit and control Harald and use his status as king to turn the nation of Elbaph into an unstoppable army that completes his dominion over the world. Rocks wants to befriend and recruit Harald in hopes the resurrected Galleila giants would follow his authority and fight to make him king of the world. You could even say that Rocks is dreaming bigger, targeting the legendary ancient giants instead of smaller modern ones. The difference between them is that Imu can’t even bring himself to wait five minutes before trying to remove Harald’s will with mind control while Rocks lashes out at Kaido for just suggesting that Harald or Galleila be brought to heel by force. And you have to wonder what would have happened if Imu was a bit more patient. Let Harald abdicate the throne but tell him his successor also needs a mark. Both Loki and Hajrudin are much more willing warriors that could be groomed in the direction of making a giant army before fully taking over. This now being the early years of the Great Pirate Era, maybe Imu was feeling the pressure to crack down hard on the pirates inspired by Roger, and that made him rush.

But thinking Rocks and Imu’s parallels also makes me think of the way Luffy and Blackbeard are often compared for pursuing the same goal by totally different means. It makes me wonder if Blackbeard has an additional goal for after he acquires “the world,” like Luffy’s secret objective that comes after being Pirate King. Or like Imu, does his ambition fall short compared to the grander vision of a true dreamer? Just a tangent…

I enjoy the posing of Harald trying to resist while being made to move against his will. The unsteady wobble perfectly conveys a puppeteered look in a still image. And Harald, to his credit, acts quickly and decisively when he realises he’s been betrayed. It’s unclear what his plan is, but I’m almost inclined to guess he might order his own death when he figures out he’ll lose control, and that’s the scene Loki and Jarul arrive to.

It’s possible we could be back in the present in as few as two chapters. Next week is all the massacre, the one after summarises the steps from there to Loki being locked up and brings us back to the battle for Elbaph. We’ll be lucky to even see spoilers for that by the end of the year, with the December breaks looming, but given the unfinished panels this week I’m happy for Oda to take the break he needs and recharge for the home stretch.