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

It’s weird to think that this is the third colour spread we’ve gotten in a row, and the second of that group to just be a promo for a spinoff project. Having the spread just be Oda’s Film Red poster that was revealed at minimum weeks ago is kind of a letdown though. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that the Film Gold and Stampede posters got the same treatment, but I feel like them showing up as colour spreads was their actual first reveal, lettimg them be a tad more exciting.

This chapter cuts back and forth between two sequences – the conclusion of Aramaki’s fight on the surface, and the lore deep dive further below.

Aramaki’s bit is definitely the weaker of the two, and not just because I’m biased toward learning the world’s secrets and history over seeing fights. The big narrative takeaway of Momo telling Yamato to stand down and let the defenders of Wano prove they’ll be alright on their own is seriously undercut by them having minimum success and being saved by Shanks. It’s probably a factor that all the Scabbards are likely still not at 100% after the Kaido fight, and Momo’s mid-battle level up makes the outcome without Shanks’ interference far from certain, but it still feels a tad messy. I hope we get a little bit of follow-up in the next chapter or two, as least showing how the Wano locals plan to learn from this encounter.

Cool of Oda to show in no uncertain terms that Aramaki’s fruit has some actual Logia defensive properties. He may have used the word ‘logia’ in his self-description last week, but up until this point his powers seemed far more paramecia. It’s a unique logia, feeling more regenerative (like Marco) than fluid, but I’m willing to accept it as one.

Shanks at the end shows us a very new application for Conqueror’s Haki. In every other use I can think of, the lightning that signifies the Colour of the Supreme King has just sparked randomly off, more aesthetic than functional. Shanks’ haki seems to arc directly toward and over Aramaki from a great distance. There’s a ton of little things here that get my mind racing. How are we meant to read the way it splits these panels here? Have Aramaki and Shanks met, and if not, how did he know from the Haki who was there. Hell, he identifies the whole Red Haired crew, even though it’s only Shanks’s Haki being blasted out. Aramaki’s reactions make it seem like Shanks really is talking to him directly purely through his Haki.

Oda’s showing us here how much we have to learn about Conqueror’s Haki and its uses, leaving Luffy some room to develop a little further over the final saga. I’m glad to see it – simply using Conqueror’s like Armament would have been a pretty underwhelming last Haki revelation.

I’m not reading Aramaki’s retreat as any kind of a loss of face. Marineford’s whole defence force including three Admirals and five Warlords, plus Blackbeard’s newly bolstered crew all declined to fight Shanks. However you slice the powerscaling, Aramaki has less firepower than that enormous force, and since he disobeyed orders to pick a fight in a hostile nation, he’s got no hope of calling for reinforcements. Retreat is a smart option, especially after Momo proved his dragon form was being underestimated.

Regardless of if the issue of Wano’s self-defence gets brought up again, the final scene of Luffy, Zoro, Sanji and Jinbe watching over the battle, just in case they had to step in, is a really nice end to this sequence.

The meat of the chapter, at least to me, is the journey underground and the revelation that there’s a whole other Wano at the bottom of the huge basin the country is situated upon. That is such a cool recontextualisation, that everything we’ve seen so far, this huge, diverse and well-developed nation, is all a plateau halfway up the mountain that seemed to tower over it. This is One Piece worldbuilding at its absolute finest! The wording that the walls sprung up is interesting, implying that the people of Wano didn’t build them or choose to have them built, and are thus excused from being called stupid for the lack of irrigation leading to the flooding. It makes the most sense if a certain elephant, or perhaps a dim but well-meaning ancient giant like Oars built them up on the hasty or misinterpreted words of a well-meaning outsider. Or maybe they did have irrigation initially, but debris after an unexpectedly heavy rainfall plugged the system and created a domino effect of flooding that couldn’t be undone…

Personally, I like the Zunesha angle. We all wondered a little why the great beast showed up only to leave so anticlimactically when Momo decided to leave the borders as they were for now. Well now we know – Zunesha wanting to be there for the country’s opening and not feeling needed if that wasn’t happened was completely literal. It was likely planning to pull down the wall itself as soon as Momo gave the order.

While it makes sense to keep the World Government out a little longer and save the unleashing of Pluton for the final battle, I can’t help imagining the version of the Wano Arc where Zunesha smashed the wall open, drained the sea and revealed Old Wano all at once during the climax of the battle. Man that would have been a lot to take in at once!

The idea that Pluton is hidden even further down is a strange one. Kaido’s crew, having sent Jack down, would have found the legendary battleship if it were just moored somewhere and sucked underwater by its own anchorage during the flooding. Sukiyaki is also quite confident that unleashing it would be easy after the walls came down – that even after 800 years it would require no repairs or upkeep (good, since Wano isn’t known for its shipwrights). But I also feel like Pluton couldn’t be anything too mystical, and certainly not anything alive and literally sleeping; having blueprints for it passed down through generations wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

One thing worth remembering is that Wano was described as a country of gold in the past, but we haven’t seen much evidence of that in the present. Could it be that the Atlantisian Old Wano was the one with the rich gold seams, and they simply didn’t reach high enough up Mount Fuji to be mined the same way by the present generation. And could ancient gold mines be the justification for Pluton being hidden further below?

In typical fashion, every answer here raises two new questions, the start of a rabbit hole of connecting threads that we might not come back to for years. These parts, truly, are my favourite bits of One Piece. It’s bizarre thinking that we might be getting complete and final answers after being strung along for so many years. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself if there aren’t One Piece lore mysteries to wonder on. We’re definitely near the end of Wano now – only a handful of things left that either need to be done or would feel like a real missed opportunity to leave without looking at. That and the crewmate debate. I’m not the biggest fan of Yamato joining up, but Momo’s bits this week are evidence stacking up against me. But we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.