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

Okay, we’re officially in the postarc! We made it, no more room for doubts! I’m glad to be here, but it’s hard to keep the break and final saga announcements from overshadowing this milestone and sowing concern that the long-awaited lore dump will be cut short.

My prediction is that the next chapter will end with the Act Three concluding and curtains closing on the shogun and samurai of Wano now that their arcs are all more or less concluded, but we’ll remain in Wano after the end of the play for the focus to shift back to the Strawhats and their interests. The start of the final leg of the story will be the Wano lore and poneglyph setup. I think we’re fooling outselves if we expect every lore and worldbuilding question raised by Wano to be answered in Wano, because One Piece has never, ever, ever worked like that, but I’d be surprised if the crew is ready to leave after just one more chapter.

Pictured below: how Oda answers lore questions:

People seem to have high expectations for Wano wrapping up absolutely everything, but it’s easy to forget that One Piece lore has always come in the form of like one sentence worth of concrete information per arc alongside a lot of vague implications leaving us to piece together everything we know like a drip fed puzzle over the course of 25 years.

But anyway, the chapter. I’m very interested to see why the Five Elders thing the timing is bad for the Emperors to start falling. Did their Order 66-ing of the Warlords not turn out so well? Is the big thing with deaths and Revolutionary attacks at the Reverie trigger some political strife? Is Imu’s command to erase a light from history likely to create a delicate public relations situation?

Zunesha vanishing without even driving off the WG ships is a bit of a disappointment. Oda could have put a tiny bit more effort into at least pretending there was something going on there besides confirming the Joyboy thing. Hell, with the Five Elders cutaway during the fight to namedrop Nika, even that probably wasn’t necessary. I’ve seen it suggested by someone here that Gear Five should have been left a mystery during the fight, giving us months of time to predict how it fits in and what it means, with those confirmation scenes saved until around this time, and I have to say that does currently feel like it would be better.

That said, Zunesha’s disappearance seems to confirm to the Elders that Wano will stay closed. Interesting. I wonder if we’re going to find out a little more about what opening the borders actually entails – if Zunesha has a role to play in maybe tearing down the rock walls or opening a more convenient way up than the waterfall. If the World Government was expecting the country to literally open in that kind of way, it explains why they’ve brought a fleet only to hold it back. Big Mom’s crew showed us twice how dangerous a contested waterfall ascent can be. The WG feared the worst, but thought it would give them an easier way up, and don’t want to risk the casualties of doing it the other way.

Ordinarily I would have rolled my eyes at Hawkins seeming to die in the immediate aftermath of the fight, but in the same chapter that confirmed the demises of Izo and Ashura, with every sign pointing to Orochi and Kanjuro also staying down, I’m willing to actually believe it. Hell, a part of me wonders if Drake is supposed to be succumbing to his injuries here as well.

I really like Oda circling back to the kids of Wano being taught propoganda in school and showing that one of the first things done under the new regime is to start correcting that.

Hey so how’d the people of Wano hear the name Joyboy? As far as I remember, it’s only come up between Momo and Zunesha since we’ve arrived. Who’s spreading the story?

Izo and Ashura’s deaths are surprising and sad, but also emblematic of Oda’s odd handling of death. Kiku and Kin got near-perfect dramatic death scenes with big, memorable last stands, but still pulled through. Ashura and Izo died fighting, but not in ways you’d expect a character’s final scene to play out. In some ways this still manages to enhance the feeling of an all-out war. When you have so many people wagering their lives in so many different skirmishes, with so much chaos and the spread of information so difficult, you’re not going to find out everyone who lost the ultimate gamble until after things calm down and the casualties are tallied. There’s a grounded sense of randomness to who gets to come back from the battle and who doesn’t. Even having seen as much as we did thanks to our omniscient viewpoint as readers, it feels somehow like we missed Izo and Ashura’s deaths due to our inability to be everywhere on the battlefield at once.

We go straight from that somber scene into a whole lot of humour and fanservice. I’m not massive on Momo suddenly being super resistant to physical blows after the last chapter’s narration tried to sell the idea of his strength being nothing to write home about, but I’ll let it slide for the gag. Luffy and Zoro not recongising Momo is great, but Momo trying to be a perv using his age as a defence is a very played out kind of manga humour. And I like Luffy taking Yamato’s “prayer” at face value. Still don’t know if I’m sold on the crewmate angle, but every good interaction between Yams and the crew helps. The highlight of the scene has to be Zoro immediately attacking Sanji based on their last conversation.

The bath scene, while blatant fanservice, is legitimately so much more inclusive than I usually expect to see. No one has an issue with Kiku and Yamato bathing in the area that reflects their identity.

Although Yamato’s identity really is only complicated after the Vivre Card emphasising that he’s a woman with him continuing to introduce himself as a son last chapter and joining the men’s bath this week. My stance remains that if someone introduced themselves to me like Yamato typically does and used the men’s bath like this, I would guess they want to seen as a man and base the language I use for them around that. It’s really hard to say what Oda’s perception of Yamato is meant to be with all this in mind, or what the plan for his development out of the Oden phase is (if one even exists).

It’s cool to see the time being taken for repairs after the battle, although I’m not really sure when the Polar Tang would have taken damage. Kid’s ship also didn’t get hit onscreen, but it’s easier to believe it could have happened during the initial sea battle. I would have liked to see how the Sunny and Kid’s ship got from the bay of Onigashima back to the oceans though.

Man, Apoo’s gotten off real easy for all his betrayals and the damage he did as an enemy. I have the impression he skuttled off after Onigashima landed and this is the first he’s been seen since then. The lack of concern about is presence is mostly because he wouldn’t stand much of a chance against everyone at that port anyway, even with Inbi backing him up. He hinted during the battle that he has ties to the media, and now he seems so proud of how his reports ended up. I wonder if we’re being set up for some kind of a fakeout where Apoo downplayed or embellished the actions of certain groups to fit his own agenda…

Ryokugyu at the end is a fun surprise. The theories about plant powers were reasonable enough, but I never really thought the theories tying him to Wano were based on anything solid. I guess we’ll find out shortly how personal his presence is. Oda definitely seems to setting up a character who could help or hinder the crew next week.

I feel like we’re unlikely to hit as natural a stopping point as the timeskip before the break starts after the next chapter, but I’m glad it’s confirmed we’ll at least see bounties and who the world sees as having Emperor status before that. Should give us a lot to chew on a speculate about for a month. It’s also rough to have a month off right when I was getting excited to move onto the post-battle stuff – but I’m trying to keep in mind that this only has to be dealt with once. The arc will flow smoothly over this gap on every reread.