Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here.

Well. I don’t think anyone really saw this coming. Not Kid getting annihilated, that was a foregone conclusion, but taking almost a full chapter to show it here and now. We’re around two chapters into a new volume, so it’s not a cliffhanger cutaway or a cold open. I think we’re eventually going to see a small timeskip in the Egghead Arc, given that it’s still daytime and the infamous Egghead Incident isn’t slated until tomorrow, and that would be an ideal place for a big cutaway, but the story isn’t at a point where we can just leave things overnight and assume we’re not missing anything important. There’s no real structural lead-in for this sequence, we just get it, out of nowhere. You can never be too sure what to expect with this series.

But we do still start out on Egghead, following up last chapter’s York reveal. Oda fills in her taking control of the Seraphim and setting up the S-Snake deception. Personally, I’d rather have seen how the Frontier Dome sabotage was pulled off, I thought the stuff we’re seeing here fell into place pretty easily after the reveal, but I do have to remember that the manga’s core readerbase isn’t overanalysing this story the way I am.

Although speaking of overanalysing, there’s a continuity glitch in this scene – Building C is damaged at the top, which shouldn’t happen until after Pythagoras is attacked by these hijacked Seraphim. Only building B should be hit at this point in the timeline. I do appreciate, however, that we’re now close enough to see the damage to the entry ramp’s tubing, which is something that makes sense to have happened in the first Seraphim attack, back when they were in Cipher Pol’s hands.

We’ll see if the volume release fixes building C, I guess, but these things sometimes slip through the cracks even then.

Interesting that York has a counterplay already in mind for the government turning on her. And that it still involves killing everyone. Plenty of us talked about the obvious flaws in her plan and the high chance of this happening last week, so I’m curious about her contingencies.

The lab assistants are very lucky they still have a ship to leave on. And now, I could be reaching here, but I think if you put the Egghead ship, the MADS ship, and the ship Franky made himself a cyborg on all side by side, it’s definitely not unreasonable to take them as iterations on the same vessel. I’m struggling to find a match those prominent rows of large, close-together portholes on any other ship I could think to look up. I’d love to see the decks of either the MADS or Egghead ship to see if there’s any overlap with the machines on Franky’s one.

There’s nothing earthshattering in this, if Franky got his original tech from abandoned MADS gear or if it was a random ship, but it’d be cool to have it confirmed one way or another. And another good reason to let Franky and Vegapunk talk more, damn it!

And finally, in the real wildcard development of the chapter, we see a Blackbeard Pirates ship bearing down on Egghead. Which basically turfs every assumption about what the Egghead Incident could be and how it’ll play out. We don’t even know who to expect to be on this ship – we know Blackbeard has multiple more or less identical ones, so it doesn’t have to be the group that was fighting Law earlier. But imagine if it was, so soon after seeing the apparent end of Kid. But I could also see it only being a lesser Titanic Captain or non-Titanic officer like Kuzan to give us a taste and give Luffy the chance to throw down the gauntlet against Blackbeard in advance of the final battle. But if it does turn out to be the man himself, the hype has just gone up to eleven!

And curious to have him show up in the same chapter that we learn Shanks was keeping tabs on him and expecting an appearance at Wano. I guess in the past two years of being an Emperor alongside him Shanks got pretty used to Blackbeard’s brand of opportunism. The question is, does he know Luffy is at Egghead, or is there something else he wants there?

For just some random spitballing, if we’re doing Ohara parallels, is there a danger of the Blackbeard pirates firing on the evacuation ship for a shocking waste of human life that lets Blackbeard match Sakazuki in terms of evil? I can’t see what he’d gain from doing that though. How about the question of where Blackbeard is keeping his prisoners? Pudding was still in the brig for the fight with Law, so which other recent conquests are riding along for this battle? Koby, maybe? Which would in turn bring Garp and his rescue mission toward Egghead. It’s way too soon to get attached to any one possibility, but the ship’s presence alone opens so many of them up.

And finally we see Shanks and Kid. I stand by what I said for chapter 1076 that the odds of this working out were never in his favour. But I expected to cut back to the result in the post-arc era of Egghead, not so soon and so onscreen. It’s a great sequence with some incredible spread pages and tantalising details about Shanks and his organisation that leave hungry for more. It’s a shame to see the Victoria Punk go at the end, she was a great design. But I’m a big fan of a detailed cross section, and the amount of effort Oda put into showing her interior as she’s cut in two makes that last spread my favourite of the chapter.

I loved seeing the dynamic of Shank’s crew and fleet. It creates a great contrast with Kaido’s military mindset and Big Mom’s twisted family that he just picks up people he likes, regardless of strength, and uses his title to protect them. Not to mention the parallel it makes with Luffy’s own philosophies.

I could be overthinking things, but the chapter seems to be ambiguous about whether Shanks accepts Kid’s Poneglyph rubbings or not. I mean, he probably does, but there’s room to read into it. At a glance I thought they were handing him a stack of four, but given the amount of folding a sheet that large would take, it’s probably only two. I don’t recall if he was specifically offered a copy of Big Mom’s or not, but it would make sense given his role in her defeat. Even the dialogue is deliberately ambiguous about how many rubbings he’s really handing over.

Also I don’t know if I think it’s more fun to picture Shanks flying all the way from shore to the Victoria Punk in a single jump or to have him leapfrogging ship to ship across his fleet. Quite a journey however he did it.

Some parts of the fanbase seem to be reacting to this development like Shanks is being too cruel in his treatment of Kid and his crew. Like it’s somehow out of character compared to the peacekeeper pirate we know he has a way of being at times. And to that, I honestly just say to reread chapter one. And refresh yourself on Kid’s reputation. Whatever you think of Shanks’s morals, he’s absolutely consistent, and thinking outside the perspective of someone who got to enjoy his screen presence on Wano, I totally understand not taking any chances with Kid and his crew.

And you do have to wonder how many of the people who think Shanks or Dory and Brogy or whoever kicked Kid’s crew while they were down by sinking them at the end have previously nitpicked the plot armour in past villains not finishing off Luffy when they had the chance, only to throw him in some prison or labour camp or so on. Did Shanks see in the news that Kaido annihilated Kid, Hawkins and Apoo’s alliance only to taken out by a group with a still-alive Kid as a ringleader a month later?

They’re sure as hell not dead though. The ocean hates Devil Fruit users, but it’s spat them back ashore from further away than where Kid goes down here. Hell, Luffy and Big Mom getting thrown into the sea of Wano from atop the falls looked less survivable.

I also, just personally, think it’s good to see Kid’s attack on Elbaf come to a quick end. I really want to see an actual Wano arc, so if he’d had too much to do there I might’ve started feeling like he was stealing it from Luffy. As it is, we might have a washed up Kid in the supporting cast for Elbaf, but the place remain’s Luffy’s to explore.

This has been a killer chapter to go into a break from. I’m going to be turning these events over in my mind for the whole downtime, I’m sure, and expecting big things when we come back in two weeks.