What a chapter to come back from the break on, this is huge. And we’re not even at the end of volume 107 yet, so what could possibly top this next week?

The Void Century and founding of the World Government continue to be teased in drips and drops, more implication than explicit detail, everything carefully worded. Cobra’s unfinished sentence certainly implies that Imu is one of the WG’s twenty founding monarchs, but I could see it being finished ‘among the first twenty there was a servant’ or ‘an advisor,’ or ‘a concubine,’ or any number of other things that sidestep questions like whether Imu has descendants among the Celestial Dragon families, and if they favour them, or if not why the rundowns of the family lines of the gods given by the likes of Dofamingo wouldn’t snidely question why there are only eighteen family names in the mix when it should only have dropped to nineteen with the Nefeltari’s rejection. We haven’t ruled out the possibility of Imu being someone who connived to gain power rather than one of the original kings who somehow managed to prop themselves up in the ultimate position without arousing the suspicion of the others.

What this does seem to deconfirm is the idea of Imu as some alien or literal demon or other secret otherworldly force that manipulated the founding monarchs. I’ll be very surprised if Imu isn’t one of the native peoples of One Piece’s world, for them to have been among the founders openly enough that the name survived in a history book.

But we do get two confirmations of things that were only at 99.9% certainty previously. First, the D Clan being enemies of the World Government. Yes, this was made obvious by nobles treating them like monsters to scare their kids and spelled out further when the Ds were called natural enemies of the gods, putting them at odds with the Celestial Dragons’ self-styling. But now we have a primary source stating outright that yes, the Ds and the World Government fought as enemies. (This will shortly be muddied by the revelation that there was a D among the Government’s founders, but hey the reasons for that are just one more thing to look forward to finding out.) And we’re also told that the real meaning of the D is not passed down alongside the initial and the current people with it don’t know the truth. Of course, Law’s mission to investigate the D through the Poneglyphs made this more or less guaranteed anyway but now the figure who would know is saying it.

What does fascinate me though, is learning that the Poneglyphs were scattered across the world in a single incident. Previously, my guess would have been they were entrusted to allies of the Ancient Kingdom and hidden away individually as some kind of failsafe, but instead the World Government seemingly had the opportunity to suppress them all at once and failed. The kind of power it would take to shift all 30 stones to precise locations (remembering that some are supposed to give directions to others, so their destinations would have been incredibly specific) at once is a rare thing, even in One Piece’s world. Maybe an ancient user of the Paw Paw Fruit?

Whatever the method, Lily’s motive for letting them go will be an interesting factor in the inevitable Void Century flashback.

I was very surprised to see the Five Elders draw weapons on Cobra (let alone transform). I was strongly in the camp that saw them as pure politicians rather than combatants. But maybe I should have seen the tide turning in the last chapter, with the discussion about guards disappearing. Someone close enough to be in on the Imu secret has to have the power to suppress and dispose of the guards elite enough to be trusted with Pangea Castle.

The Nefeltaris as a D clan is huge. What else can you really say about it? Vivi’s position as a central figure to the final saga is all but confirmed by this.

And then there’s the transformations. Hey, I thought it was the party not in power that was meant to form a shadow cabinet! I don’t think there’s enough information to make strong guesses about the Elders’ powers save for one, who I’ll get to in a moment, although there are some interesting theories going around already. I wouldn’t even say it’s certain that they’re all Zoan types. Karasu has just been showing us how animalistic a Logia can get, let alone the limitless possibilities of Paramythias. But I want to zero in on one guy with a few factors lining up. The arrow that pierces Cobra sure looks like a traditional devil tail. And it comes in from his left side, not directly ahead, so I don’t think it’s Imu’s. When the Elders transform, the silhouette furthest to the left has some pretty distinctive horns. Maybe this is the Human Human Fruit, Model: Devil. And for a bonus, the Elder standing in that position before transforming was Saturn, who is en route to meet the Strawhats in the present, so we might get confirmation on this one sooner rather than later.

That said, the second arrow attack as Sabo and Cobra flee seems to come from a silhouette without horns, either the Elder second from the left or Imu himself. But that might just be a quirk how the scene is framed.

I can see some people bothered by the convenience of a transponder snail recording during such a top secret meeting to get Sabo’s picture, but we saw in the last chapter Imu in their secret room listening to the conversation live through a snail, so it’s probably just that one.

The little Sa D. Bo flashback is a funny one. Never expected Oda to pay homage to that brand of fandom meme so explictly. I’m torn between arguing that it’s just a gag and Sabo doesn’t really have a D, and arguing that in a series that has leaned so heavily on themes of inherited will and found family that it could be as easy as someone with the will saying so to pass it onto a new bloodline. It would definitely help the idea that not all Ds are related. This does raise the question of Sabo’s family name though. Being a noble, he has to have one. Even if he gave it up upon running away like Sanji did with the Vinsmoke name, shouldn’t we have learned it through Stelly? This might be good SBS fodder.

Cobra makes a hell of an exit, dropping lore bombs to the last. I’m surprised we don’t get the near-obligate panel of the D facing death with a smile this time around. Maybe it’s just less of a rule than we were led to believe, or maybe there’s a little more to see before we’re done with this.

While I love Wapol’s return to relevance, I’m actually somewhat surprised to see him landing in this position. If anyone was foreshadowed to creep back into the throne room and witness something terrible it would be Stelly, who stared up at the throne drooling and thinking about how much he wanted to sit on that thing. Are we still coming back to that? Was it just a gag? Or did Oda even intend to use Stelly in this role when he wrote the first part of the Reverie back before Wano, and changed his mind of the past fiveish years?

Nice moments for Issho and the Leo/Sai duo in the Cipher Pol scene. Still not a huge fan of all of CP9 making it to CP0 though. And I have some questions about Issho ‘helping’ the Revolutionaries free slaves during the attack. Surely he wouldn’t get to keep his job after that. At least if it was as blatant as Jabra makes it sound. Has to have been more of a plausibly deniable ‘whoops, didn’t see them going’ kind of thing that Jabra and Aramaki are seeing straight through.

I don’t necessarily have a suspension of disbelief issue with Vivi slipping her bonds to escape alongside Wapol here, it makes sense she’d have been working on something anyway, but like one panel of her palming her old peacock whips to cut the ropes or something would have gone a long way to making things feel comprehensive here. It’s a small enough that that Oda could definitely have found space on the page for it if he wanted to. I think I’m just taking it easy on this scene because of how funny it is for Kinderella to assume Wapol and Vivi are running away together at the end.

With the apparent promise of an Egghead colour spread next week, I think we’ll see the flashback wrapping up fairly soon. We’ve seen all the things I recall being built up as offscreen Reverie events during the Wano intermissions and pre-Egghead chapters, and seems unlikely anything of note would really have happened as Sabo and the Vivi/Wapol duo make the rest of their escapes. And it would be good to see the Strawhats at least one more time before this volume ends – though I’ve got a sinking feeling that might be a cut back to a state of defeat and York proclaiming her victory as an end-of-book cliffhanger, given how long it’s been. But we won’t know until the chapter drops, and weeks like this just show how hard it can be to predict any part of where One Piece is going next.