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

Oh. Didn’t see that coming. Wow.

RIP to the idea of wrapping the fight up in volume 103. Probably…

Drake coming back only to fail to take down the CP0 boss (surely he deserves a name after this one) is a real shame. I was cheering for the guy to get one last shot after all the fighting he’s done – at least a mutual KO. Will he get up again? I mean, Apoo survived a finger pistol to the neck and kept running, but Drake might be pushing even Oda’s limits for second winds if he does the same.

I’m not the biggest fan of these Snakeman attack volleys if I’m honest. They get just a tad samey when you start comparing all the panels of Kaido being hit from multiple directions at once.

So Kaido doesn’t think the Gear Four skillset quite matches the properties of rubber. This mysterious fruit thing gets curiouser and curiouser. While it’s hard to imagine Oda committing to a full renaming of everything to do with the main character’s powers, it’s past time to start making your peace with there being more to the Gum Gum than meets the eye. I don’t think that’s the end of the world.

Kaido drunkenly trying to flirt with Luffy is the bisexual representation we never knew we needed  The love heart in the sound effects does a long way to sell it. All tongue-in-cheek comments aside though, I love that we’re still seeing drunk Kaido. I’d been so sure it was just a one chapter gimmick, but it persists!

I really like Kaido breaking out the future sight and using his serpentine form to twist through the barrage. It’s a creative way to replicate the way logia users with high-level CoO morph their bodies to dodge attacks.

The overhead shot of the island as Kaido flies up with Luffy in his mouth shows how much of the outside has already crumbled away. It begs the question of where the Sunny ended up after Franky concealed it following their landing. Is it still on the island, and will there be an easy way to get it to safety (let alone back to water) when the whole thing drops? But hey, Kaido blasting Luffy straight through the island makes me feel confident of Luffy eventually dunking him straight through and dropping the whole place on his head.

Oda is going a long way to sell the idea that Luffy is out of time and won’t be able to keep fighting if he drops Gear Four again. Are we going to end up with a Doflamingo-style “one more attack” situation after the haki recharge, or are things going to be even more dire than that?

It’s not really clear how long the exchange of blows that covers most of this chapter is meant to take, but CP0 guy climbs a long way through a lot of fire to get where he is at the end. Oda’s been pretty good at keeping locations straight through this battle and not teleporting anyone across the island without giving them enough offscreen time to justify the trip, but CP0 stretches things a little. Still, it makes for a genuinely surprising ending. I never would have foreseen Luffy getting this kind of parallel with Oden. And with Law and Kid making it clear last week they’ve got nothing left in the tank after Big Mom… things are looking bad.

Oda did a great job misleading me into thinking CP0 would be a non-factor in the fight. Oh, they’re just in Wano for the worldbuilding, for their relationship to Orochi. They’re reporting in, not getting involved. They’re a narrative device to show the numbers on the battlefield. No wait, they’re mobilising to give the fightless stragglers someone to confront. And then they come out of nowhere to bring disaster to the hero at a critical moment, right when you had them totally dismissed. Great narrative smoke and mirrors there. And so fitting to have the secret agents hiding in plain sight and striking from the shadows. I know some people think CP9 are too weak in retrospect to hold the rank and importance they were given, but if all of Cipher Pol can act this shrewdly to influence events in the World Government’s favour it goes a long way to explain them not needing to confront high weight class pirates in one on one fights.

I don’t really get why CP0 uses Iron Body after he grabs Luffy. Is it an armament coating to avoid being hurt by the haki that covers most of his Gear Four body, or just to make himself more rigid to more strongly impede Luffy’s attack or what?

While I was definitely surprised, and I will definitely be on the edge of my seat for the next chapter with no idea what will happen, I’ve meant what I’ve been saying for weeks about having a decent bit of battle fatigue. Just when I was getting used to the idea of getting into the post-fight portion of the arc, this is a huge setback. The Doflamingo version of this development took five chapters to play out to the end of the fight. Two more months on the current schedule. I trust that it’s all part of the plan, and I’m sure I’ll feel different when I can reread the arc as a whole, but god damn does the ending feel far away.

I guess like Kaido himself, I’ve got some pretty mixed feelings about this big moment.

So what next? Well, it’s not looking good for CP0. The face hag didn’t survive interfering with Kaido’s fight, and he was by all appearances sober at the time, so there’s our first order of business. And then I guess Kaido tries to renew his plan to squash the capital, overpowering Momo’s pull on the island. Perhaps then the nine shadows and/or the Momotaro homage rises up to delay him until Luffy staggers back to his feet for the finishing move. I think that covers all the super obvious stuff, but Oda must know how much those points have been talked through already. There’ll be some surprises in how it plays out, or in what exactly plays out, I’m sure.