I knew it. I knew we’d be coming back to God Valley later. I feel vindicated for not getting my hopes up too high. Oda does a great job of building up what a massive convergence of big names it was, even if we only get a prelude here. At least the fanbase seems to be taking this blueballing better than they did the similar fastforwarding in Kaido’s flashback last year.

Oda takes the chance to show off what he does best here, introducing a ton of striking one-off character designs for the Holy Knights (very interested in the one with the bull’s skull for a headpiece), the nobles participating in the hunt (with Mannmeyer dropped as potentially the tenth of twenty Celestial Dragon family names) and the various pirate and marine crews coming to fight.

The World Government’s dystopia is in full swing here, with emphasis placed on not even the children being spared, and the cruel lie of salvation in three week’s time. While Ivankov is right about false hope being a useful tool for keeping the spark of life alive in prey, I think he misses its perhaps more pertinent utility of pacifying the fodder to prevent exactly the kind of operation Ivan’s group pulls off. People with hope of things working out don’t take matters into their own hands. People with other options, even slim ones, wouldn’t gamble on a million to one shot of successfully raiding the Most Dangerous Game’s prize pool. If you hear there will be some survivors, your point of view as the protagonist of your own life tells you that the story can’t end here, that you must end up in that small number for things to go on. I don’t think humans are inclined to really see themselves losing a death lottery while other options still exist, even if the odds are against us. A shame we can’t all have an Ivan to guide us from the 0% chance the powers that be said was a 3% chance to the 1% chance that is the actual only hope.

Garp’s presence in this chapter is something I’m torn on. I can’t get a read on if he knows the full details of what the Celestial Dragons are really doing, if he thinks it’s just some inspection or pleasure trip for them. If he suspects only that it’s not good but maintains a plausible deniability of what to keep himself from acting out. I love Garp as a character, but he’s always been a protector and enforcer of this world’s most heinous systems despite his sympathetic motivations. And in these days when Roger is his rival, you would think this is Garp at his most wild and rebellious and willing to disobey orders, but he’d still rather face Roger than deal with the slave hunt.

Maybe if he knew what monsters the Five Elders really were he’d actually be interested in measuring his strength against theirs.

At a guess though, I think he doesn’t know the full story, and will find out about the slave hunt only after arriving. Remember that Sengoku’s recollection of Garp and Roger’s teamup at God Valley was to “protect Celestial Dragons and their slaves,” which is an interesting choice of words to say the least. Why make a point at all of protecting slaves that were already (literally) branded for death? Perhaps the truth is that both were protected, but the Celestial Dragons were protected from Rocks, and the slaves were protected from the Celestial Dragons. I’m sure he could find a way to play off giving the slaves a chance to run as “just protecting your property from getting cut down by Rocks, go after then when it’s over” and pretending he didn’t know better. Remember in chapter 957 that right before talking about the teamup at God Valley Sengoku is reflecting on how much Garp’s personal moral compass disagrees with the Celestial Dragons and how close he’s come to being eliminated for insubordination. I think we’re edging closer to the full picture here, and I hope that’s not just my enjoyment of Garp’s character talking.

The cameos as the battle builds up are amazing to see, really tying in 20 years of continuity to make it all feel connected. From the number of Rocks Pirates that ended up being used for Thriller Bark zombies to Boggard finally showing himself again.

I do wish we got to see a little more of the operation to rob the prize pool, and the how of Kuma’s escape. Did he blast other slaves away in different directions before pawing his own group to the one island, or did the rest of the 500 just leave first? I’m willing to buy a teleporting man escaping from the likes of Saturn without having to watch it more than I would most other characters, but at the very least the moment he’s forced to give up on the idea of taking anyone else and leaves the island would have been good to see to make Kuma’s role in this sequence feel closed off. As it is, the end is pretty abrupt.

That said, the dialogue with Saturn lays out the core themes at play fairly succinctly. A lot of people characterise One Piece is being a story about freedom vs authority, which it is in many ways, but it’s also massively (I might even say moreso) about universal personhood vs selective personhood. The heroes of this story, whether they sail free as pirates or rule as kings, are the ones that accept all people as human beings, while the villains, whether monarchs or pirates, are the ones who think there are certain people undeserving of human rights and human status based on arbitrary and uncontrollable things like their place of birth or bloodline. Doflamingo, who was both a cruel noble and the evil kind of pirate, literally stole the human forms of his society’s underclass, if you want to get really on the nose about it.

(There’s an essay in there somewhere, full of choice villain quotes about ‘discrimination creating solace’ and hero quotes about ‘existing never being a crime’ and the series’ most poignant death scenes ending with words of thanks from the departed for showing them love in a world that would not otherwise have afforded it to someone of their origin)

Getting back on topic, we get an origin for Kuma’s bible-carrying habit. Religion is an interesting topic in the One Piece world. Though the World Nobles are self-styled gods running a technical theocracy in their own name, they aren’t really concerned with worship (beyond paying tribute), and there obviously aren’t any public churches of Nika. This vaguely Christian-looking faith shows up often enough to feel like a widespread belief, but there’s almost nothing we actually know about what they believe, how they worship, and what kind of organisation (if any) the church has.

Ivan ducks out. That might be the last of him for this flashback, but I’m not sure if it’s really the last time he’s seen Kuma. Presumably their paths must cross as Kuma’s ties with the Revolutionaries develop. But will Ginny live for that second encounter? My hopes aren’t high. The happiness that grows through the super-cute scenes at the end of the chapter can’t possibly be built to last. Once again, Oda is setting this flashback up to hurt. Badly.

If I’m honest, I was worried I wouldn’t find much to write about for this chapter. The amount of fanservice at the start had me thinking there’d be little to do except list out the deep cut cameos, something other people online already dead based on the scanlation release that wouldn’t interest me to write. But I was happy to find a lot of meat on its bones when I looked a little closer. This is One Piece firing on all cylinders.