Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.

Ugh, I read the title and assumed it was pointing toward an enemy reveal. Oda played the hell out of me on this one. Not that I can be too upset, with the reveal set to happen next week and the Labophase Death Game hurtling towards its conclusion with around four characters taken out of the competition in one fell swoop.

The opening scene takes the time to show us in certain terms that the lab assistants are regular people, something we never really got the chance to establish in Oda’s haste to introduce the Vegapunks and setup the horror scenario in the upper lab. Sentomaru is proving increasingly likable in this arc as he lets them all know what they’re up against and gives them the chance to run.

Bit of an odd place for an Ohara refresher though, right? Wouldn’t this have been best done a dozen chapters ago, before we were flashing back to Dragon and Vegapunk picking through the rubble and showing Saul alive? Strange choice.

Well, I said for the last chapter I wanted the Seraphim fights to have gone a little longer and I sure got my wish. Another thing I’ve said in the past is that the Lunarian defence-speed tradeoff was an undercooked mechanic for Zoro’s fight with King on Wano, but I noted at the time that it could be forgiven if longterm it ended up being a primer for understanding future Lunarian battles. It’s back here and… I still think Oda hasn’t quite worked out what he’s doing with this thing. The Lunarians don’t seem to be inconvenienced at all by their flame being on. Sure, they’re faster without it, but they’ve never been so slow they can’t keep up while it’s on. There’s no apparent drawback to keep them from being, as Zoro says here, “basically invincible” all of the time. Oda needs to give the heroes a way to force the mode switch, or the Lunarians a compelling reason to do it, or every fight against these guys is going to end up feeling like a videogame boss doing that one attack that exposes its weakpoint, just for the player’s benefit, even though you know it could have won if it just stopped using that move.

These battles are ongoing though, so we’ll see where Oda takes it.

And the joke the chapter gets its title from did get a laugh out of me. That’s a great little Zoro moment.

It’s interesting how the Seraphim challenge the crew through their perception of what they are rather than their real purpose, even now that the crew know it. Nami hesitates to attack what is visually a child and sends her apologies to Jinbei. Franky reflexively apologises. Even Bonney, earlier in the arc, despite probably knowing better, can’t stand to see damage done to the Pacifista built in her father’s image. We know that these are obediant killing machines wearing cloned flesh. The characters know it too. But appearances are powerful. What was it Atlas said near the start of the arc? “Whether it’s real or not is for you to decide.”

Let’s hope the crew starts making better decisions while they’ve got the chance!

Sanji was pretty active in the first clash with S-Shark and now he gets to fight him solo. I have a weird feeling this might give Sanji a chance to let off some steam over his bounty issue Jinbei. But I actually wouldn’t be a fan of that happening. When it’s Sanji and Zoro that’s an established rapport with a long history of back and forth. But if he’s getting that petty toward Jinbei you know it’s going to be one-sided, and it’s going to feel a lot meaner of him as a result.

It’s very cool seeing the eyebrow switch and a crueler side of him coming out again though. Look at Sanji actually getting some compelling characterisation lately!

The bubble gun weapon that Lilith tries is pretty cool. Long have fans asked why seastone bullets aren’t more of a thing for devil fruit enemies, so a tool like this is a logical thing to bring into the world. And it gives the Seraphim another weakness besides the hit and miss Lunarian fire game.

We aren’t shown explicitly if Franky is fully petrified at the end of this sequence (though Usopp’s dialogue implies that he is). I hope he’s not. There needs to be more between him and Vegapunk and the tech! Plus there’s going to be no one to fight S-Snake if he’s not still kicking. We do get a clue about how the arc will end in Usopp’s petrification though. The crew’s not getting overwhelmed and barely escaping while the Government seizes the island, they have to sort out this enemy situation and get control of the Seraphim back or there’s no more Usopp. The enemy can’t win. They also can’t really stay an enemy, if the authority rules hold.

With all this in mind, the final scene with Shaka seems to build toward the big reveal. He takes quite a brutal hit, even more than Atlas’s face being smashed earlier. But as with Atlas before, and York, and Lilith, there’s no way this sticks. They’ll fix him one way or another.

So the enemy. With every Seraphim accounted for and more likely to use a laser weapon anyway, it has to be the actual bad guy who shot Shaka. Short of a big red herring like Caribou making his move. I’ve been a vocal advocate of a rogue Punk Hazard, but that doesn’t fit with what’s been shown. That theory always had to compete with the requirement that orders be given to the Seraphim in person. I thought the system might use holograms of the Vegapunks to give its orders, with the Seraphim not being sophisticated enough to tell the difference and that theme of perception making reality coming back. The footsteps on the stairs aren’t very hologram-y, and weilding a physical gun is certainly not hologram behaviour.

You could maybe outfit a gun’s handle and trigger with the stuff from Atlas’s gloves that physically interacts with light, but that’s a stretch. And if the answer is that convoluted we were probably never meant to guess it in the first place.

So it’s a human being. Or at least has pulled a physical humanoid body from somewhere. Has to pass for a Vegapunk or someone of higher authority. Has to not be busy or petrified elsewhere right now. The suspect pool is dwindling rapidly and I really don’t have any guess left I would feel confident in.

It’s a real mystery, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes together (hopefully) for the solution next week.

And it’s a good enough mystery that I’m not dwelling too hard on the things in the chapter that don’t sit the best with me, from the Lunarian mechanics still not feeling fleshed out, to S-Snake and people’s reactions to her still giving off a weird vibe, even accepting that her fruit responds to emotions other than lust, or Oda’s weird extreme of horniness in this arc culminating in Nami’s super blatant ass shot in the middle of her fight. It also wouldn’t shock me, now that this chapter’s out, if volume 106 turns out to have 11 chapters, and this is the start of 107. Gives the previous volume a Shanks cliffhanger and lets a new one open on Sentomaru’s little recap.