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

Great chapter to come back on after a long two weeks off (though that’s still a small price to pay for Oda’s health).

Interesting choice to put Yamato on the Jump cover. He’s technically an important figure, but he’s not doing much of note at the minute, and certainly isn’t all that relevant to this chapter. Could this imply that he’ll be a little more in the spotlight soon? Or did Oda just want to settle the colours for a popular fanart character sooner rather than later? (Perhaps he’s decided against using Yamato on the volume 98 cover and wasn’t sure when he’d get another chance). Or I’m overthinking all of this. The red horns are interesting. A point in favour of the theory that Black Maria is his mum, not that genetics are all that consistent in One Piece’s world.

The colour spread is gorgeous and full of fun, playful details in that classic One Piece way, but I think Jinbei looks a little too big up the back there. Could he not fit through the doors of the train? Also, it’s a little disappointing to see he’s still using his Marineford-era getup as his default outfit. It would have been nice to see something different now that the timeskip has come and gone. I’d hoped it would at least be a different colour, given the change in how it’s inked, but that’s what you get for making colour assumptions based on Oda’s inking.

Big Mom seems to have some kind of a plan for the alliance, or there’s more to her truce with Kaido than we’ve told so far. I’m not shocked she would eventually bring her kids in line despite their objections, but the Marco-Perospero alliance is over almost as quickly as it’s begun. A shame we couldn’t have had at the very least some more dialogue between the two before it was over.

Despite all the characters breaking off in pairs, I wasn’t convinced we were getting confirmed matchups at the time. Carrot and Wanda chasing after Perospero as a duo has me wondering if I could have been wrong. Likewise, the framing implying that Shinobu, Momo and Yamato might be drawing close to Black Maria. And speaking of her and her song, for a while I’ve trusted Greg’s line of thinking that there might only be three acts, but this specific setup of someone to play us in and out again also has me rethinking my expectations. And with us so close to chapter 1000, from which everyone is expecting something big…

And also, it would be pretty cool for in the fade out ad the darkest hour for Hyori to be replaced with Kaido’s apparent-head courtesan, to really emphasise that it’s all him when it happens.

And after that, it’s all spectacularly-rendered action straight through to the end of the chapter. The transition from Black Maria to the rooftop, using her song as the soundtrack to the battle is one of the few things that’ll definitely hit harder in the anime. The fight that follows will likely be too drawn out to have the same punch it did here, but the transition at the start is guaranteed to be sick.

Kaido summons lightning that splits the earth. While this is new, it’s not surprising given that eastern dragons are often associated with controlling the weather. We did see him bring his own stormclouds back in volume 92 (and the colour version of the volume makes it a lot easier to see exactly how centralised around an in-flight Kaido the bad weather is meant to be. But Conqueror’s Haki has also been known to make lightning and crack the earth, so he could be using a bit of that too, though I’d expect another comment about copying Oden’s “special trick” if that was the case.

Almost all of the Scabbards have had their own individual moment to show their stuff against Kaido now, which bodes poorly for them. Only Ashura and Denjiro remain, though they did get to be part of the big moment at the end, so maybe that counts. With all the characters we’ve spent the past eight volumes building up all having had their strength showcased, and none of the Strawhat/ally battles in the dome even properly started, let alone feeling so close to concluding, it feels more inevitable than ever that the tide will turn back in Kaido’s favour.

The translation of Raizo’s attack is interesting. Apparently, in the original Japanese, the wording of it had a similar structure to a devil fruit name (Scroll Scroll or Roll Roll), which would go a long way to explain all the weird shit he can just kinda do. But Stephen has translated it as “Scrolling Jutsu.” I wonder if this is one of those things where he got an editorial behind-the-scenes tip that no, Oda wasn’t trying to name a devil fruit there.

The chapter ends with Kaido taking his biggest hit yet. But remember how literally every Kaido fight so far has gone: he takes a surprising amount of damage or hits in dragon form, falls to the ground, transforms back to his human(ish) mode and ends things almost instantly with his club. Oda isn’t known for being predictable, but he does know how to utilise a pattern. We’ll see where it all ends up next week. I didn’t expect to have so much to say about a chapter that was mostly action and attack names, but I guess it just goes to show how many balls this series manages to keep in the air at once.

As a final note, I can’t wait to come back to this chapter in a couple of years when the colour version hits. You can see Oda substituting screentones and hatching for full inking in a lot of places where things were getting too busy or the lighting needed to be emphasised, especially across Kaido’s scales. The colouring team has always been good at bringing full vibrancy back to things Oda had to have fade into the background so as not to overwhelm a black and white panel. It’s gonna look incredible.