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

First thing to say about this one, and it sucks that it has to be a negative, is that someone has really dropped the ball with the release timing for this one. Absolutely no avoiding spoilers. And every year the first issue leaks super early, so Shueisha must have known it would happen here as well. Would have been smart to move up the release of the digital version with that in mind, or at least not let the English release be so many days behind the Japanese one. And the whole thing with taking down scan sites might have gone a little smoother without this long delay so soon after it happening. Give people a bit more time to transition before the annual first issue delay shakes their faith. Just feels like there should have been some way to manage this better.

The colour spread is… not my favourite. The Arashi boys are deeply uncanny, and a lot of the bobble head Strawhats aren’t super appealing either. It is cute the way the Arashi ship is holding hands with Merry and Sunny at the bottom though, and Jinbe’s presence leads me to believe we’ll be getting back to him very soon after the flashback ends. Interesting to put him in his Marineford outfit though. I would have expected the Fishman Island or Tottoland duds to be used as his default appearance going forward, but I guess he changed so little over the timeskip that it doesn’t matter the same way it would if any other crew member got that treatment.

But the rest of the chapter more than makes up for the odd colour spread! The lore! The history! The hints at the endgame! Gold Roger in the flesh! He’s really been cemented as a human being now, after so long purely as a mythic figure, and I like him a lot. It really does feel like he could be the hero of his own story if a prequel was ever done. The chronology of Roger’s adventures is interesting though. From Water Seven to Tequila Wolf and then back to Fishman Island? Are we to assume a long passage of time in which Roger left the Grand Line and started over (even after suspecting at Water Seven that all the poneglyphs would be in the New World)? Something from the past? Or maybe they were distracted by a sidequest we just don’t know about for the moment.

The location of the Fishman Island ponegyph is sure to be a big deal going forward, but the options are far too open to speculate on now. (Maybe Jinbe would remember something about it if given the right hint from Oden’s logbook?). One of the most interesting fragments here is Roger explicitly describing Poseidon as “a weapon that’ll destroy the world one day” which perhaps suggests the Ancient Weapons could do more than simply nuke Mariejoa and Reverse Mountain as some theories suggest. But as to what could be combined with Neptunians and a great battleship to create a global scale threat, who knows. The wording is vague, but the line about “people who called it a weapon” could be read to imply that destruction is only one possible function of the so called Ancient Weapons. And of course, the idea that fulfilling the One Piece’s purpose will take all three and Roger couldn’t do it because he was ten years too early is easy theory fodder.

You almost feel bad for Roger. Too late for Joyboy, too early for the One piece. Makes me think of the old “born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the universe” meme, except Roger did get to explore the world. And, well, he does seem happy with the friends he made things he accomplished in his own time, and isn’t that what counts?

Looking forward to the questions about how hair mermaids actually grow, coming soon to an SBS near you, from the usual gang of pervs

It’s interesting to see how much Wano was already changing when Oden stopped in for the poneglyph. Previously we might have assumed Kaido did most of the damage after establishing himself there but it’s clear now (and from the last chapter) that Orochi industrialised the country on purpose to lure powerful allies like Kaido in, which makes me even more ready to see his downfall when we get back to the present. Kaido is a bad guy for sure, but his evil is an uncaring force of nature. Orochi is malicious and exploitative in a way Kaido just hasn’t been so far.

Genghis Baan! What a name! I do wonder, what is it Cat and Dog told their people to convince every single man, woman and child on Zou their bond with Wano was too important to betray, even in the face of annihilation. I can understand them feeling that way personally, but we aren’t seeing a lot of Oden making an impression on the general mink population. The pack mentality is strong among minks, I guess.

“Several Real Poneglyphs” is interesting to note. It’s been a point of speculation for a while if the full text of the Real Poneglyphs could be found alongside the One Piece. The logbook implies both that Roger didn’t find all of them and that he learned all the secrets of the world anyway. How many poneglyphs were missing from the Pirate King’s set? Would Robin have seen any so far that he never did?

Poor Buggy and Shanks. Hey, it seems Buggy is like the “bad timeline” version of the aged up characters Oda’s been doing in the SBS lately. Wonder if we’ll ever get a good timeline version of him, maybe what he would be if he did get to see the One Piece. Shank’s plot is doing nothing but thicken. Has he visited the last island on his own? If he doesn’t know about the One Piece and the secrets of the world, what’s his leverage with the Five Elders? Too many questions!

So what do we know about the One Piece? It’s a real treasure, but there’s a lot of information in there as well. The Void Century, the Weapons, the People of the D (I can’t wait to for my friends who don’t really follow the series to ask if we know what the treasure is yet so I can say with complete honesty that the secret final treasure is what the D in Monkey D Luffy stands for), and that it has something to do with Wano, given how desperate Oden was to restore the country to its open state after seeing it.

The final spread is a beautiful piece of work which I can see becoming iconic for the series for years to come. In fact, I’d be shocked if there weren’t prints of the manuscript available at Jump Stores already. Interesting that the official release actually went with Laugh Tale as well! I’m glad for it, but I’m aching for the podcast episode to come out so I can hear a little more about how they’re going to handle it.

I assume next week our time with Roger is going to wrap up pretty quickly and the focus will shift back to Wano and Kaido. Our time with him, like his life, feels so much shorter than it should have been, but all the same it was beautiful, inspiring, and a great bit of a laugh. My heartiest congratulations to Oda for sticking the landing on this one. After 20 years of anticipation, seeing Roger as he actually was could easily have been massively underwhelming, but somehow he pulled it off. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for the end of the series!