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

This one definitely feels a little slower compared to the last few. Like going back to a transitional phase of the story. I was expecting to move quickly from the Sanji stuff at the end of last chapter to a quick takedown of Queen and return to Zoro and King soon after, but it seems Oda wants to give these two battles the same treatment as the other crew fights, with an extended period of development intercut with the rest of the battle playing out. Presumably the battle with Big Mom will be handled the same. I mean, I’m glad these important fights are going to get the time they need to breathe, but it’s a slow way to handle things and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little bit of fatigue setting in after a year and a half nonstop fighting. A couple of months ago I would have bet the first half to two thirds of volume 102 was wrapping up these last fights with a transition into Luffy vs Kaido in the closing chapters, now I’m starting to think we’ll be lucky if the book ends on King being felled.

Marco and Izo are back in action for… something. I guess they’re joining the pack of characters rushing toward the armoury conflagration, which is a scene I have no idea how to predict anymore given how many different parties are being funneled in its direction.

Fuga being a centaur is certainly a surprise. Kinda funny that the scientists working on gigantifiation made one 20ish years before Law showed up and made the whole surviving staff into centaurs, but strange that none of the other Numbers were combined with animals the same way. Wait, did Fuga eat a Smile? It would be hard to tell if they were fed to them, given how the Numbers always seem to be laughing anyway. Whatever the lore behind this, I love the detail of his horns scraping through the roof as he tries to keep up with Yamato.

I complained in the last chapter’s thread that Apoo and Drake’s team-up was floated and sunk way too quickly, and now in a third consecutive chapter they’re back on speaking terms. Could not have picked the two of them fighting CP0 though. Not in a million years. I do enjoy how instantly self-serving Apoo’s reaction to CP0’s presence is though. I’m having a hard time getting a read on Drake’s interaction with them here. They say they know who he is, and from these top-level intelligence guys, that would presumably mean SWORD. All good, right? He’s undercover and they’re doing clandestine Government work – we’ve known about Cipher Pol’s shady dealings for so long it feels like an open secret – and all signs pointing to Cipher Pol (especially CP0) outranking Marines anyway. And yet Drake asks them what their excuse is and they try to take him out. Could this be proof SWORD is an alliance working for the greater good from inside the Marines, rather than just another branch of the same broken organisation?

King’s stretchy face doesn’t quite top Queen’s snake trick for the best stupid Zoan power, but it sure is something. And I guess he uses it to shoot a flying slash type attack? The exact thing being done here is super unclear. But hey, we got some hilarious panels out of it.

There’s a lot of talk about King’s race and his powers here, but we don’t actually learn that much about him, it’s all just hyping up the mystery. It speaks to the man’s strength that he defends so well against an attack Zoro brought out against Kaido on the rooftop though. In fact, he seems less bothered by it than Kaido did. But maybe that’s more a consequence of Zoro’s fatigue.

I was pretty dismissive of theories about Enma literally carrying some of Oden’s soul/will/haki inside it, even with Big Mom’s strange reaction to it, but its reaction to the sound of the shamisen has me rethinking that stance. There’s definitely something going on here.

And finally, we get our second chapter in a couple years that ends with the big reveal that it was Hyori all along even though everyone already figured it out a long time ago. I guess there was a little more room for doubt here than at the end of the flashback, but it would still have been a pretty big reach for the silhouette to be Toki. Ah well, at least this means the end has to be close for Orochi. I still think Denjiro’s long absence is part of the setup for this as well and he’ll jump out and have a hand in what happens next – if he didn’t go find Hyori and outright plan this trap with her.

The problem with this setup is that it wouldn’t be Oda to have Orochi drop before his right hand man, so Raizo and Fukurokuju need at least one more scene first. I think the ideal for next week would be half the chapter on them, they half on Orochi, ending with his demise. Then there’s just the whole armoury jumble to sort out, followed by Queen, King, Big Mom and Kaido, presumably in that order. Still a long way to go, and Oda does not seem prepared to rush it. As always, looking forward to seeing how he manages to tie it all together, even if i’m feeling a tiny bit tired.