After two incredible satisfying steps forward, One Piece 2024 has its first transitional chapter, and at just 13 pages it definitely feels short and soft. Not quite recappy, but just playing through a lot of things that need to be played out based on the last couple of chapters’ events. We start with an obligate page of Marine reactions to the Buster Call announcement and the start of their evacuation, all stuff that takes time but is important to show for the flow of the story.

On a first read I wasn’t a fan of Sanji’s group letting Vegapunk make such a huge sacrifice of staying back to distract Saturn while they all get away, but looking over the chapter again, I decided it’s not that bad. Sanji goes right back after seeing the girls and the wounded Kuma to the shuttle, and we can assume that most of this chapter is taking place over a pretty short amount of time. Plus, Vegapunk’s got whatever teleportation thing he used in his introduction, the one that got him stuck half in the ancient robot and then took him straight back to Labophase, so the dude maybe had an exit strategy to justify the risks.

Or did Vegapunk just insist, in his naivety, that he could appeal to Saturn’s scientific side and save Egghead and genuinely believe it? One or two more times of this guy not realising he can’t trust a thing the Government says and it’s going to get frustrating that he isn’t learning from it.

Saturn shows some classical dictator hypocrisy though, claiming the world needs no more advancement while coveting Vegapunk’s advanced weapon systems for himself and the upper class. Fascism loves appeals to traditionalism even if the leaders would never give up the benefits of progress for themselves.

The scenes in the Labophase promise some exciting scenes in the coming chapters, but don’t offer much to talk about on their own. Jinbe, Zoro and Lucci sounds exciting, but I’m curious to see where the issue with the ship sliding is meant to be going. Will it just be stopped casually with a gag, or will it fall into the middle of the melee in the Fabriophase, potentially making Kuma’s teleportation truly the only way out of here?

The panel of Vegapunk sinking to his knees as his work is destroyed in front of him is a beautiful shot, but I can’t help wondering where Saturn went to allow this to happen. He doesn’t seem to be the type to just sit back and trust the Buster Call to kill the scientist. Oh, he’ll monologue before making the kill, sure, but he had that readiness to step on Bonney and Kuma personally.

The final spread of this chapter is a gorgeous aerial shot, amazingly drawn with the ring of Pacfistas charging up in the corner. Very well composed and the definite highlight of the chapter. There was a similarly impressive spread for Garp’s arrival at Fullalead during the cutaways last year, so Oda’s either found a taste for these shots, or maybe found an assistant who’s good with drawing structures from that high up perspective. Hope he keeps them coming.

Kuma shows another sign of life to once again protect his daughter. Will he stay switched on longer this time?

Luffy at the food machine is… fine. It makes sense that’s where he’d go if he found just enough energy to start moving. I think we’re still waiting on a reveal for how he got that initial serve of food, but we’ll see.

I’m glad to see the escape vessel was allowed to live in the last couple of panels. The final few chapters of the flashback made of point of showing how the researchers were in on Vegapunk, Kuma and Bonney’s relationship and cared for them too, and I found it truly dark and tragic that they had seemingly been so casually destroyed. But by who? I mean, we were shown the Blackbeard ship, right? We’ve been wondering when they’d make landfall and whose side they’d benefit, right? Just about everyone else who has skin in the game is at minimum days of sailing away and would only have heard of anything happening on Egghead at all, let alone how bad it’s become in the past few hours, in yesterday’s evening edition paper or today’s morning one. So the debate I’m seeing over this one is flooring me.

Reading the takes on the various OP subreddits about this chapter after the scan release was, honestly, kinda depressing. The amount of people making top, upvoted comments that either hadn’t noticed or completely forgot about Blackbeard’s ship being established chapters ago, or Robin getting injured during the cutaway is insane to me. Not even claiming the Blackbeard ship was a red herring for the sake of a bigger off the wall theory, just straight up not knowing that it had been established. I’m fine with there being people out there who aren’t as into this stuff as I am, who just kinda skim the chapters and don’t analyse or sit with it all. And of course these people have every right to come online and talk the series anyway. But there being enough of them on the dedicated One Piece subs for their confusion to rise to the top, over any reasonable analysis or fully informed reaction, that’s just sad. I hope this doesn’t read too gatekeep-y, I’m just finding myself increasingly done with Reddit lately.

Anyway, griping about internet reading comprehension aside, I might be whelmed by this chapter but it’s great to be getting three without a break again, which means all the exciting stuff this one was needed to set up is coming that much sooner.