We get another banger of a chapter to lead into Golden Week here, and I’m thrilled to finally be learning a little more about Kuzan’s motivations and movements in the past couple of years. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to Egghead though.

The colour spread is gorgeous with some wonderful colour choices. It’s low-hanging fruit that everyone on the internet’s been picking since the spoilers dropped, but I have to laugh at Sanji’s COCKING book. But I also love the one squirrel that’s wrapped itself up in Brook’s afro to sleep. It’s a real cute one.

We pick up right where the previous chapter left off, with Garp being a truly loveable badass. Whether he means it or not that he’s lost his edge, it makes a statement just to suggest it. And it’s a clever touch for Gruz to use his clay to cushion the warship’s landing. I get the impression this might be a practiced maneuver. I think the ring of fire around these early scenes is curious just from a staging perspective. By all accounts, Garp’s Galaxy Fist was just a shockwave attack, not a combustible one. We can see some things exploding among the rubble on that first page after the spread, but would that be enough for the all-sides inferno in the following shots? I’m not assigning any significance to this, we’re not claiming a portion of Lunarian blood running through the Monkey family’s veins called forth the fire, it’s just an interesting detail.

Kuzan makes a very cool (heh) entrance and brings us straight into a perspective-changing flashback. I think the general consensus on the guy up to this point was that he was a rogue agent for justice, possibly a top-level SWORD agent. His interactions with Smoker at the end of Punk Hazard could be read to support this impression, and I’m sure Film Z played a part in it as well, despite not being canon, but I get a slightly different vibe from the version we see in this chapter. Kuzan is genuinely commiserating his break with the Marines and didn’t seek Blackbeard out. He obviously shot first and asked later when he first encountered Blackbeard’s men and is quick to start doing it again when he thinks they’re after his fruit. But Blackbeard has a particular charisma to him, a dark mirror of Luffy’s apparent “most dangerous ability” to get people on his side.

I think the banter in this chapter is stronger than it’s been for a long time. Gruz and Kujaku commentating on Garp and Koby’s relationship, and then Kuzan’s hangout with the Blackbeard Pirates in the flashback, alternating between genuine exposition and mocking Sakazuki. Seeing a leg gone and asking if he took an arm in exchange. Kuzan joking that he’s actually burned man. Shiryu’s idle conspiracy theorising. In a series full of explosive reactions and face faults (and there are still more than enough of those here) these scenes of marginally more grounded and naturalistic character interaction really stand out.

The man with the burn scar is a tantalising plot hook. I was never really on board with it being Saul, as many suspected after he was revealed to be alive, and this seems to confirm it’s not him. There’s not a lot here to say who else it might be though. Dragon is compelling, but his ship’s official colours aren’t as pitch black as the monochrome art implies. Plus where would he get the time to sail around sinking Poneglyph hunters in his busy schedule as a Revolutionary leader?

I hope it’s the dude who was drinking with Crokus. No reason. No evidence. It’s just been up in the air so damn long I want to see it wrapped up.

So after all of this it really doesn’t seem like Kuzan joined as a spy. That doesn’t mean he won’t decide to follow his own justice and betray Blackbeard eventually, but it opens a lot of questions about when and how. I think it’s noting that Kuzan definitely wasn’t recruited as the tenth captain he is now. In fact, I’d venture to say that promotion was a recent development – on Punk Hazard Doflamingo says he’s heard some “nasty rumours” about Kuzan’s current allegiances, implying they aren’t public knowledge, and then on Dressrosa the call between Blackbeard and Burgess that Luffy overhears has Burgess saying he still doesn’t fully trust Kuzan while Blackbeard tries to reassure him that the same goes for Shiryu. Maybe this conversation was literally about Kuzan being promoted to the status of captain in the group despite his past Government allegiance (the most obvious thing that would go for him and Shiryu but no one else in the group). It’s not like he showed up to Punk Hazard on a Blackbeard ship, so it could even be that the decision was made even as recently as that. But does that mean there was another tenth captain that preceded him in the role? Or am I totally wrong, he’s had the position for a year, and Doflamingo was just being vague on purpose?

(Also is it just me, or is anyone else getting increasingly certain that the term “Titanic Captain” was a bit of flavour and exaggeration on the part of Corridia Colosseum commentator Gyats in introducing Burgess? Kuzan’s info box doesn’t use it, he’s just a Ship Captain, and looking back over the post timeskip reintroductions of the Blackbeard crew, none of those use the title either. Have we actually seen anyone other than Gyats use the term ‘Titanic’? I think it’s been very mistakenly taken as official when it wasn’t supposed to be.)

I didn’t think we’d be leaving Fullalead with Garp having the upper hand, but his attack on Kuzan makes for a commanding transition back to Law’s fight, and just like what happened to Kid, I feel particularly bad about seeing the end of his ship. The Polar Tang was another great vessel design that you hate to see lost like this. I maybe feel worse about the ship than the actual battle loss. People in One Piece usually survive. Sunk ships generally stay sunk.

I think it’s a really cool connection to have Bepo’s sulong come out thanks to Chopper’s medicine. Can you imagine if they’d unveiled this drug back at Wano though? I remember a big point against Carrot’s inclusion on the crew was the need to for the plot to engineer a full moon in every single future arc for her to reach her combat potential. A handwave solution to that would have thrown the debates into overdrive. And as much as I roll my eyes at the crewmate back and forth and so many other weird fandom things we get into, there’s a part of me that secretly loves the drama.

There’s a few things to take note of here. One is the Rocky Port victims still being alive. I would have figured the Government shoveled those hearts into a furnace or something to get rid of them, but they must be in storage somewhere. The second is the absence of confirmation whether Blackbeard recovered Law’s Poneglyphs or not. With all his officers having Devil Fruits now it won’t be easy to get them back from the wreckage of the Polar Tang. And I also think it speaks to Law’s character that he wants to go back for his crew, despite everything.

The past three chapters from outside Egghead have been a tour de force of worldbuilding, characterisation and dramatic confrontations that threw things into a ridiculous overdrive gear at a point where the main story was still in its building stage. Hopefully there’s not too much whiplash going back to Egghead with an evening to kill before the grand finale. But then, if the Egghead Incident is going to be one of these cutaway clashes written out in long form, it’s going to be well worth the wait.