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

Welp, it seems like he’s gone and done it. Oda’s finally let an Emperor fall at the hands of the up and coming generation. Big Mom’s defeat isn’t totally confirmed, but it’s hard to deny how this chapter makes it look. We start with a gorgeously adventurous colour spread, ad then it’s right into proving wrong all the musing I jotted down last week about saving this moment to be more or less simultaneous with Luffy’s conquest of Kaido. It’s going to be interesting to see how it feels on a reread to have Big Mom, first put into the seat of a main antagonist 20 volumes ago, five and a half years ago in real time, to be brought down in the first half of a volume, and with Orochi, Fukurokuju, Kazenbo, Apoo, Inbi and CP0 still to wrap up. I’ll be honest, this final hit feels, as a gut reaction, too similar to how King and Queen’s fights were structured and concluded, like she’s just another executive. But it may be the reaction of the world, or even just the people on Onigashima in the next chapter, that sells the gravitas of an Emperor’s defeat.

In the chapter’s one cutaway from the main fight, Momo is almost definitely hearing Zunesha talk to him. Maybe the big elephant still needs his permission to attack the ships off the coast after all, which could explain why it didn’t act against the Big Mom pirates on either of their attempts to get in. It also looks like Momo’s moved Onigashima decently far back from the capital by this stage. Even if the bombs were to go off, it probably wouldn’t cause the kind of mass slaughter threatened previously. That is to say, the island could drop at almost any point from now on.

The first panel on the Performance Floor illustrates exactly what I wrote last week about Corna Dio (does anyone else keep writing Corona Dio for some reason?) needing a better establishing shot. It’s so much larger than I’ve been picturing it! It’s also cool that we can see the castle burning in the background here.

The banter between Kid and Law is a highlight here, as is Big Mom using her power on the inside of her own body to heal broken bones. It makes me wish we could have gone a little deeper into the possibilities and limits of this kind of skill. You have to wonder if these soul buffs did any heavy lifting to keep her body operational and her children safe, considering she will have been pregnant for most of her pirating career.

Is Misery meant to be purely an attack with a life of its own or some unholy fusion of Hera and Prometheus? She’s got Hera’s face but there are a lot of flame effects coming off her body. Either way she looks pretty damn cool.

You know what’s some really cool continuity? The section of building Law uses to hit Big Mom from above is the top of the tower cut by Zoro when he first showed up for the raid all the way back in chapter 980. It all comes full circle.

I actually want to share some screencaps to illustrate this point because I do really enjoy that it happened.

Here’s the towerfall in chapter 980:

The severed tower persists as a background element in a lot of Performance Floor shots over the next nearly-60 chapters, but here’s one good overhead shot from chapter 1006:

And here we are with it breaking over Big Mom’s head. Even the underside of it matches the chapter 1006 overhead shot!

It’s this kind of attention to detail that makes me absolutely fall in love with a story.

Although in looking all this up I found a small continuity goof in chapter 1030 when Kid uses his Awakening on Big Mom – that tower is shown at its full height, even though Oda’s been really consistent with the damage on it previously. Maybe he thought no one would notice if he did it to make a more appealing symmetrical shot. Or maybe it’ll be fixed in the volume version.

I’ll be honest, Law’s Awakening still isn’t totally clear to me. How the growing sword relates to his operation theming or what he gets out of making it that long hasn’t been well-enough communicated. I get that it’s a big deal, but I don’t really get why or how. Props to Law for taking so many point blank and haki-clad blows from Big Mom undefended though.

I think it’s interesting that there’s a hole in the ceiling of the Performance Floor leading to the roof, and there’s now a hole in the Performance Floor going all the way through the island and out the bottom. While I doubt the two line up that well (the ceiling hole should be a lot closer to the castle than this one) but it might be a cool end for Kaido if Luffy managed to literally dunk him through the whole island. And as a bonus, if that’s the finishing blow, it means the Flame Clouds fade and all of Onigashima comes crashing down on top of him right after. It probably doesn’t tick every box a Kaido defeat should and I wouldn’t put money on it, but it’s a fun idea for a memorable finish, don’t you think? Or it could just be a convenient bomb disposal chute like everyone else is saying. That makes a lot more sense, honestly.

And finally, Kid makes what I can only assume is a railgun. The natural endpoint for any character with magnet powers. It really is framed as a finishing move, but the panel doesn’t have quite the oomph I was expecting for one. It looks like the beam is exploding against the front of Big Mom’s body, like they still aren’t quite getting under her skin. Compare and contrast Franky’s beam hitting Sasaki and seeming to go right through him, with the blast coming out the back. Of course Big Mom and Sasaki are very different targets and Kid’s electromagnetic attack is different from a laser. Maybe we’ll get a better perspective of how this thing is hitting and why it’s the end in the opening pages of next chapter.

It’s so good to have the forum back in time for such a landmark moment in the story. I feel like I’ve been saying this for months now, but the time has come for Oda to hit the gas and have the final dominoes fall one after the other. We’re less than halfway through volume 103 now, so there’s a very real chance that Kaido will be the last enemy standing by the time it’s done.