This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread.

Straight up, I loved this chapter. It’s the exact kind of chaos that Oda does best, with so many characters and so much action happening all at once. I wasn’t expecting Wano to get this crazy this soon, even if it’s just a skirmish before the main event, but damn.

So Orochi’s fruit is actually an Orochi model. I really thought Oda would try to avoid that. We’ve seen really on the nose names relating to a character’s powers before, but never anything on this level. That said, I can’t believe that even speculating it would be a hydra model, I guessed dino dino instead of snake snake for the fruit type. That said, I love how the eight heads look on the page. They feel like they’re constantly in motion, slithering around each other and lashing out about the room. They’d look great animated, but I doubt the anime will be able to spare the budget for the kind of constant motion the art infers.

I really wish Oda had taken the time to show the layout of the Shogun’s palace in more detail. It was pretty hard to tell where the stuff with Robin and Brook was taking place relative to the bits with Orochi. Sometimes they seem to be on the outer edge of the same room, sometimes in the adjacent room, and the only shot with both Robin and Orochi makes it look like she’s been on a balcony overlooking the floor Orochi was on. I think I got it by the end, but it just didn’t read clearly throughout the chapter. And while we’re on the topic of things not totally clear, I wasn’t sure at a glance if Brook was physically there or just projecting himself, since we’d never seen a full body apparition from him before.

Kyoshiro and Komurasaki was a surprise. It’s not really clear if the Koizuki plan card is something Kyoshiro had on him, or something he picked up from Komurasaki’s “corpse” (yeah right she’s really dead), is it? Really not sure what to make of Kyoshiro’s alignment at this point. He certainly didn’t seem too invested in a Koizuki Family return back in his intro scene. If he was a sleeper agent, or a protector of Hyori from the start, his whole attitude towards Toki’s curse seems out of place. That said, he seems pretty drunk in that scene, which makes his true feelings hard to read…

Nami using Zeus is something I’m happy to see. Actually, between him and the raid suit, the new stuff the crew picked up from Tottoland are all getting used really quickly. Glad they’re not gonna go to waste or be saved purely for finishing moves, because they do change up what we can expect from Nami and Sanji in combat going forward in some fun ways.

Big Mom plot is running basically as expected. The idea of a prison break, especially Luffy’s reaction, not knowing that she’s turned, is pretty hype. Hey, what he he attacks her on sight and knocks her memories back into place with a blow to the head, messing everything up? It’s hard to imagine the amnesia plot being over that quickly, but it’d still be a fun idea. Big Mom = Carmel theories are dumb and I have no time for them.