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

This chapter feels like half of a really good chapter and half of a really meh one. Chopper’s big moment and the talk about Punk Hazard and the artificial fruit were great, but the opening pages feel like they’re going around in circles, building up the threats of the ice oni and the yakuza taking each other out again and again even though that was made perfectly clear at the end of the last chapter. Queen’s big evil speech in that section is definitely necessary to emphasise why the Waiters and Pleasures swapped side, but I can’t help feeling it could have been done in half as many pages. And then there’s the stuff at the end…

Since we’ve seen battles raging in basically every indoor area of Onigashima at this point, it’s hard to say what percentage of the surviving Beasts Pirates were on the Performance Floor for Queen’s speech and the ice oni debacle, but considering it seems to be the main battlefield, I’d say the losses are significant. It’s interesting how Kaido and his executives keep talking about betrayal to the Straw Hats and their allies, but recent chapters have had their underlings turn on them one after the other. Oda’s obviously building this up as a theme, but a full analysis of that kind of thing is best left until the arc is done and we’ve seen how far he takes it.

Chopper getting to save the day is well-deserved. He’s been a very backgroundy mascot character for a long time, but here he gets to make a stand for his beliefs, show off visually with his personalised mushroom cloud and reaffirm how necessary his two years of training were. No one’s going to be underestimating this little raccoon ever again. And, of course, he gets to land a blow on one of the big name enemies, which is a first. I doubt Queen is down for good, so hopefully we get to see a little bit more of a Monster Point battle in the future. And hey, Monster Point really lives up to its name. Maybe I should have known after he was withstanding the kind of Big Mom hits that sent Jinbei and Luffy flying away back during the Tottoland escape, but still, what strength!

The talk of Momo’s fruit being a failure obviously sets it up to be the exact opposite of that, and probably in a way that will save the day, but what exactly would that mean? Momo’s fruit doesn’t have the jank that Smiles do, he just seems to be unable to control the transformation. Will something change to make it act like the real thing? Will he gain control over his changes? Become a full-size dragon like Kaido?

But the really interesting part is that Kaido’s Bloodline Elements specifically were used to create Momo’s fruit. While we knew all the way back in Punk Hazard that Bloodline Elements were a factor in artificial devil fruit creation, we didn’t know how direct that was. And this has implications! Firstly, devil fruits alter the user genetically on such a level that the fruit can be recreated from their blood. Good to know. Think about how Big Mom got her fruit from eating Mother Carmel. Does eating a fruit make a person on some level become the fruit for that to work? What about Blackbeard’s ability to use his gravity to remove a fruit entirely – not just block the ability to activate powers like seastone or hit a true body despite transformations like haki, but remove even one-time transformations like Luffy’s. What exactly is his power pulling on to make that work? And what does it mean for his ability to steal powers and use multiple powers? What about how people can’t eat two devil fruits at once? Suppose the human genome can withstand one devil fruit mutation (which is essentially what they are, apparently), but a second alteration changes your genetics too far beyond humanity to continue functioning. Look at Judge using Bloodline Elements to give his kids superpowers, or how Vegapunk was able to replicate Kizaru’s lasers. How much of that do you think came from copying devil fruit genetics? The implications!

Better still, if you subscribe to the genetic chimera theory for Blackbeard, this is a strong point of evidence in its favour. We’ve been given all the in-universe setup and terminology we need to say “he has an odd body with more than one kind of Bloodline Elements, and each fruit he eats affects a different set.” Obviously this doesn’t change much about the actual theory, but it saves finding a way to insert the wikipeadia entry for genetic chimeraism into the manga by giving the characters the ability to say it in their own words.

Now to be fair, making devil fruits genetic mutations does feel like it stops one step short of midichlorians, but I think it still works with what we know so far.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic of Punk Hazard, wonder what else Vegapunk tried to do with those Kaido Bloodline Elements, hmmm?

That head shape, the horns, the nostril shape, the round spots separating the hide from the underbelly…

And even more on the topic, how much does a zoan fruit make the user’s genetics similar to the animal the fruit is based on? Could that have something to do with why all the Smiles ended up being zoan types? That easy access to Bloodline Elements that match those of the fruits being made?

And you know, the island did have a suspicious amount of spare animal legs lying around for Law to use to make centaurs out of Caesar’s paralysed staff…

I reckon Punk Hazard is going to go off on a reread. It’s going to have that Skypiea thing where it’s kind of unappreciated in its time by casual readers but the further we go the more apparent its importance becomes.

And after that absolutely fascinating bit of lore, we get to the final two pages. There is no doubt in my mind that Oden is dead. Onimaru and Kanjuro are the most obvious suspects, though the motives remain murky in either case. And because of how impossible it is, the whole scene feels pretty cheap as cliffhangers go. And what a place to end for a break week. The subreddit is going to be intolerable until the next chapter hits.

Oh, and finally, this means Momo, using the dragon powers that came from Kaido’s Bloodline Elements, would have at least a passing genetic similarity to Kaido. Could this play into the climax of the arc in some way? Most would agree Momo doesn’t have the size or strength to lift Onigashima on his own, but suppose he could hijack and redirect Kaido’s flame clouds, given that he’s essentially using a cloned version of the same power. Could we end up with a battle of wills to move the island where it needs to be, or at least buy time, while Luffy and co fight the final stage of their battle?

AND FINALLY, how we still don’t know much about Kaido’s resemblance to the legendary Ancient Giant race and how much of a factor that is in the experiments done on him. Remember that Punk Hazard was once used for efforts to create artificial giants, and how it had that one room full of frozen giant corpses?

Let’s look at the Numbers, who we know originated on Punk Hazard, and are a bit too monstrous to just be giants, but a bit too human to be dragons. Suppose they were early efforts, the results of inexperienced geneticists being unable to separate Kaido’s ancient giant heritage from the dragon mutation from his fruit. Juki even has a little bit of that elongated head shape that was so familiar between Kaido and the guard dragon. It all fits together just a bit too well.

And I know most of what I’ve highlighted here isn’t new or original theory, but I’m just excited that Oda’s confirmed a major connecting thread and locked in the in-story terminology for it.