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

Just gonna throw it out there, Solitaire and Daifugo are probably the best smile users so far in terms of appearance/powers. It’s good to see they aren’t guaranteed to disadvantage the users. Babanuki is also interesting. At a glance, I thought the elephant’s lower jaw on the page where it’s shooting was a neck leading out from Babanuki’s belt. Figured the belt might have been some kind of device that helps him control the animal parts and hide them when they weren’t needed, which would have been cool tech. But no, it’s just fixed to his chest like normal.

I wish we could have seen more of Luffy’s breakout attempt. It feels like we cut very quickly from it starting to him being caught and served up for judgement by Queen. I’d even have sacrificed a page of the bathhouse (blasphemy!) for a bit of that.

Queen is… interesting. I hope now that we’ve seen a bit more of him people are going to stop saying he’s an okama. I’ve sung the praises of okama on here before, I’d love to see more of them and have Oda doing different things with them, but Queen seems to have got the reputation of one via the name alone. He doesn’t dress feminine, he doesn’t have different pronouns, he’s apparently straight. It’s like people around the place and out on reddit totally forgot about the deck of cards theme. Overall I like him, the “top three things you’re worried about” bit was hilarious and I’m sure there’s some good backstory behind the robot arm.

Zoro’s sword being stolen again as a way to hook him into a plot thread is meh. I”m sure he’s getting involved in something good, but the setup is meh.

Not sure how I feel about the many pages of bathhouse in the chapter. On one hand it’s easy, shallow fanservice of a kind Oda easily dips into. On another, it was a kind of fanservice I enjoyed, even if it’s not really necessary and not what I come to One Piece for. And Oda wouldn’t be the first fantasy author to use characters discovering another culture has different taboos/lack of taboos about nudity and gender mixing as a worldbuilding thing. Plus it does feel accurate to how Japan was in the period Wano is based on, based on things I vaguely recall reading once. That is an experience that can happen when you travel. Eh, even with the best possible interpretation, I’d say the scene outstays its welcome just a little. Like I said above, I think at least one page of the scene should have gone to the prison instead.

Not much to say about Hyogoro yet. Wait and see if and how he lives up to his reputation and how he fits into everything. Offering up his own life to save Luffy is a great start.

Good to have the fishbone prisoner confirmed at last. If I never read the words “lurking legend” again it’ll be too soon. It’d be just like Oda to subvert expectations with a really weird looking otter monster for Kawamatsu, but I think this time I’d prefer he go traditional and just let a cute otter be a cute otter. And I really hope the actual reveal is next week. After all this build up, it’d be painful to wait any longer now we have the name.