That is a powerful Jump cover this week, Luffy is looking damn good. And then on the flip side we have a very fanservice-y colour spread. We say ‘fanservice,’ but really these things seem to be authorservice as much as anything else. Oda draws like he’s just discovered that the t shirt and bikini bottom combo holds a different appeal to him than just a regular bikini pic and has decided he’s going to explore every angle of the idea (and the actual canon Egghead outfits back that up). There’s some nice details in here – Carrot riding a Napoleon tube, Bonney trying to eat the giant koi, Perona’s Kumacy shirt, the tab on the end of Ulti’s club suggesting the got an inflatable version just to take to the pool.

But there’s also Yamato. Sigh. Look, I think at this stage Yamato in Oda’s mind is just a man and a woman all at once, as the scene requires. I don’t really want to talk pronouns again, but here we go. There aren’t and will never be official pronouns for Yamato as English-speakers understand the term. Because casual Japanese language mostly uses neutral second and third-person pronouns (equivalents being ‘you,’ ‘they,’ ‘that person,’ just calling them by name, etc) and has most of the gendering happen via first-person pronouns (so masculine and feminine forms of ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘myself,’ etc), it isn’t the same social faux pas to refer to someone with the wrong gender in part because it’s much harder to do. And the first-person pronouns are taken as more of a masculine or feminine flair rather than the definitive statement of gender English third-person pronouns are, and will often shift based on the mood and formality of the conversation as well. So the Vivre Card didn’t “confirm” anything except the biological bits we can all see because it wouldn’t occur to a Japanese-speaking author to correct a form of reference that doesn’t really exist in his language. Unfortunately, Yamato’s mode of speech doesn’t confirm one thing or another either, because of the flexibility outlined above. Deciding how to refer to a character like Yamato, or anyone fully androgynous or with a tendency to cross-dress becomes less about translation and more about adaptation because the cultural and social ways gender is expressed and how those expressions are taken just don’t line up 1:1. Oda hasn’t made Yamato a he/him or a she/her or even a they/them, so we have to look at how the character acts and what they say and how others respond to them and decide what the best fit for that is in our own framework. And to me, Yamato in the story (particularly the bath scene) screams someone who wants to be viewed as firmly masculine. Maybe a retranslation with the benefit of hindsight could go back over everything and play Yamato in more of a nonbinary/genderfluid/bigender way that gels better with these noncanon depictions of them as one of the girls, but in the version we have, the in-story Yamato reads male.

With that out of the way, I think we go over a decent bit of familiar ground this week, re-establishing the 20 royal families and the founding of the World Government. I’m getting my hopes up that Oda is trying to remind casual readers of the full context they’ll need for some big impending reveals.

Sabo and Bonney is a fun little teamup for as long as it lasts. It’s fun seeing characters discover mutual connections like Kuma in such a large world. It’s a shame they seem to part ways before the Cobra incident though, so we probably won’t have news of that making it to the group on Egghead. The Lost Chamber is a tantalising tease to namedrop here. I imagine it’s just Imu’s little garden though. The frozen Strawhat is in a massive fault deep underground, far more than a chamber and way too grand and unconcealable to be a lost.

While a lot of people say to new readers to stick with One Piece til Arlong Park for it to get good – and they’re close to the mark – I think the point where One Piece truly becomes One Piece is Alabasta. For that reason it warms my heart to see the Nefeltaris become so instrumental to the series big mysteries and impending endgame. The web of relations between Lily, Imu and the D is going to be speculated in circles until the final reveals. The idea of a letter being passed down makes me think of Joyboy’s apology message at Fishman Island. Are they connected? Is one a reply to the other? And we have to consider that Toki will likely have some major role to play when it all comes to light as well.

Making the Nefeltaris key to it all only redoubles my conviction that if there is to be a final crewmate (and I don’t think there has to be one) it’ll be Vivi. Plot relevance and established presence are key at this stage of the story.

The Charloss beatdown and Kuma rescue are satisfying moments, but there’s not much to say or speculate about them as we’ve seen the fallout to both already. Mjosguard’s promise to take responsibility works out and Sai and Leo’s choice to go pirate insulate their nations from any residual consequences. The phrase ‘attempted murder’ in the chapter title and the newspapers way back when this happened let us know Charloss is okay. A gap in which we didn’t know the exact players and actions has been filled in, but it’s unremarkable in the grand scheme.

And we end on Imu. From context we could already guess they were a top-secret presence, and the guards talking earlier in the chapter confirms what happens to people who get a glimpse of them. I like the detail of them listening in from their secret room as well. Makes sense they’d be monitoring the whole Pangea Castle.

As for their identity… I’m not totally sold on the idea of it being Lily, but it’s not off the table either. The twentieth sword and actual flower lilies in their secret room (though the sword i absent in this chapter and lacked the decay of the others surrounding the throne when seen in chapter 908) could be read either way as echoes of a former life or mementos of a past love, or perhaps even as trophies from a vanquished foe. Was Lily the only of the original royal families willing to speak against the hypocrisy or cruelty or corruption or whatever of the fledgling World Government, taken down before she could share the truth? There’s not much we can fully rule out at this stage but it’s so exciting to be edging closer to real answers every week.