Back for the year of the dragon! I’d completely forgotten the zodiac colour spread was coming until I saw it. Franky absolutely wins this one with the hair and the decals on his shoulders. The axolotl-y looking dragon on Nami’s top is also pretty cute.

This was perfect note for returning from the flashback to the present. It puts a bow on the last few emotional beats of the previous sequence. Bonney is emotionally and physically disarmed by what she’s seen, becoming the child we now know her to be for a cooldown chat with Vegapunk, presumably after he was rescued from York. The sapphire necklace she gets for her birthday resembles other sun symbols used previously in the manga, such as Alabasta’s flag, the middle of Kuma’s church’s crucifix and on the Kozuki crest. I’m guessing we’ll see more and more of this imagery as the series builds up to its finale.

And we cut from this moment of wholesome vulnerability between a little girl and a guardian figure, to a much more heartbreaking kind as Bonney, even acting the grown-up again, is helpless in Saturn’s clutches. It’s so frustrating to imagine how she must feel, especially having learned everything we just saw, and not even being able to get a single effective hit in. It’s personal for her. She has every reason to be able to find that last reserve of strength for the shonen emotional powerup, but it’s just too much. But it’s a very One Piece thing to leverage that kind of infuriating feeling of impotency. Unless you’re Luffy (and even then) you’re going to end up in this position, having to ask for help, at some point in your life. There’s no shame in needing to call for help in this series.

The following exchange follows up two nit picks from the flashback sequence, once again exposing the risks of doing a week by week critique without seeing the full story. I actually really like the logic behind the Distorted Futures – wrapping it up in a child’s logic and having it get limited by a more mature view of reality is a really fun view of the ability and would have been cool to see further explored. It can only be overpowered in the hands of someone drastically underpowered. The idea that the power as a whole was the result of an experiment is… eh, it doesn’t actually add much in tangible terms, just ties off the loose end of no one knowing how Bonney got the fruit. And makes Saturn seem like more of a bastard in hindsight, not that he needed it. It’s weird that he implies the Sapphire Scale was a side-effect of his work though. The doctors were talking about it like it was a rare but known-of disorder. Or does that just speak to the number of people Saturn has tried this one then released?

But also, the symbolic value of the bad guys literally creating a disease that makes people unable to walk in the freedom-representing sun is pretty good, so maybe we let this one slide.

And I also like that we’re learning something about alternative Devil Fruit applications in the arc. I still haven’t forgotten Oda’s promise that Vegapunk would explain how inanimate objects could be made to eat Devil Fruits when he appeared in the story (from I think a Water Seven-era SBS) and I’m still waiting on that explanation. Come on, just a little more in that direction.

All evidence suggests it was Borsalino that fed Luffy, which is a fascinating, fascinating move for the character after so long putting his job before his feelings. Was it Saturn’s cruelty that finally inspired a small act of rebellion, or was it just that this was the only opportunity he saw to strike back with some plausible deniability?

Kuma’s rampage is the perfect climax to the chapter and just what the story needed after returning to the present. I would liked to have seen more of the battle damage from his encounter with Sakazuki sticking, but that’s a small complaint in the grand scheme of things. From seeing the guy take more and more pain as the Marines try to gun him down, to Saturn’s firing squad exploding, to the last second save of Bonney, this is a brilliant sequence. And despite his silence, we get a bit of evidence of what’s happening to Kuma. This isn’t some secret program or protocol put in his system by Vegapunk, Kuma truly has pushed through the mind wipe and is able to act on an extent of his own emotions and willpower. He has his Haki, and he has his anger. While I still think this battle ends in tragedy, I’m thrilled to see that punch land and see what happens next.

This is the start of a good year. Promises of Egghead’s climax, the conclusion of Kuma’s gripping narrative and a whole new (likely Elbaf) arc in the next 12 months makes me very excited to be on board for the ride.