It’s good to be back! To be honest, I had a fairly busy April, so it feels like the big break has gone faster than previous years. I thought I would suffer more. Maybe we’re all just getting more used to this now-annual tradition. Hope Oda’s feeling more rested as well!

This is the chapter that could be the twelfth of volume 109, but I think it’s more likely the first or second of volume 110 instead. Both Dorry and Brogy’s arrival in chapter 1110 and the ancient robot standing in chapter 1111 are incredible end-of-book cliffhangers, but I think maybe chapter 1111 has a better volume opener, easing into its action with the wordless page of Mars breaking from the barrier while Jinbei looks up, awed. But we’ll see, the opening pages here also do a lot to ease a returning reader back into the conflict in its present state. In a matter of panels, Oda reminds us of the Buster Call, Nusjuro’s disabling of the Pacifistas and Bonney’s power over them, and the giants’ goals and location. But it’s possible the return from the break was a motivator for this level of restaging as well.

After those opening two pages we’re right back into the action. Even if it’s brief, it’s great seeing Franky get a win. The long tail of his speech bubble running under Redking’s legs in the anticipation panel is fun as well. Bonney’s methods are pretty funny as well, when compounded with Guillotine’s shock despite having witnessed the transformation happen.

Mars is not wasting any time in the Labophase. There seems to be an electrical effect around his blast of energy, but I haven’t read up enough on his specific brand of yokai to say if that should be interesting or not. It’s cool that we can see the back of Vegapunk’s lab here, and the side structures that looked like speakers from the front are plugged full of power and audio cables like speakers from the back too. I wonder how many design elements here were influenced by the knowledge that it would be used to send an important message really, really far.

Stussy and Kaku’s dialogue in the following scene seems at odds with Lucci’s immediate recognition of and deference to Mars in his bird form a few chapters ago. Maybe he’s better at recognising voices than the two of them are, or he may simply hold a higher rank and have gotten more hints about the true nature of his bosses than the other two. I’m sad for Stussy’s sacrifice, in part because this arc hasn’t at all made the most of her as a character. Her betrayal of Cipher Pol was a compelling early twist, but then she lost her stylish and memorable original outft for the same leotard look every other woman in this arc got, dropped off the map through the middle of the story, just to get finger gunned and now make the ultimate sacrifice. This is a character who’s been lurking on the sidelines of the plot for seven years. That’s getting close to the point where there, at least in Japanese, the series might have readers younger than she is as a character. A minor character, sure, but I hope this isn’t truly the end for her. Oda can offer far better.

That said, I did say a few chapters back that I expected the need for someone in the control room to turn off the dome to be a problem to solve, though I predicted a race against the clock to get on the ship before it launched, not fully staying behind. Careful what you wish for I guess.

And on the topic of sacrifices and problems to solve, I wonder what Edison has planned to help the Sunny make the distance. If you asked me to guess, I’d say something in the junkyard. Not the ancient robot specifically, but I think whatever he’s going to get will be the excuse to bring someone from the Strawhats’ side in contact with it.

It’s a good moment for Usopp rallying the crew here, both to follow the plan and to improvise if it doesn’t work. Confident leadership from a once self-proclaimed captain. Good for him.

The squished up Ju Peter head as he swallows the building is hilarious. Being able to capture the shape of the turret embedding in the back of his skull and the wrinkles of everything folding up around it in monochrome with only the white shading on his back body is some great artistic detail. It cannot have been easy to make that read clearly.

The situation gets more dire after this last little win though. Luffy’s back in normal form, and even if we’re handwaving away the exhaustion effect at the end of Gear Five, Oda is telling us clearly it won’t be enough to stand up to the monstrous Elders. Love the detail of his hand still being on fire from Red Roc even as he clutches it in pain from Warcury’s deflection. It makes such an absurd visual. The question does have to be asked though: was the sheer power with which this attack was rejected relate to haki, a monstrous ability, the strange regeneration that keeps these beats immortal or something else? It can’t just be natural hardness like Kaido’s dragon scales – that wouldn’t hurt Luffy like this did. There needs to be an energy involved for there to be pain on Luffy’s end. I don’t want to sound too conspiracy-minded though; haki is the most obvious bet. Look back to the moment in the Katakuri fight when they meet fist to fist and Luffy’s hands are hurt by his superior haki. There’s a similar trembling effect around the the injured hands, and though they were also swollen there, that would be hidden by the inflated fist in this case.

Saturn’s spider limbs coming over the edge of the Labophase cloud is a wonderfully terrifying visual, as is the silhouette of the centaur Nusjuro, and each of them so bad for the groups they’re confronting. Even with the inevitability of Zoro and Jinbei arriving in time to protect the group with the Sunny and Luffy and the giants close to converging with Franky’s team, we still don’t know how to deal lasting damage to one of these bastards. You have to hand it to them, as villains, they’ve all found their way to the worst places they could be for the heroes very, very efficiently, and at this stage no one is expecting any of them to be felled in this arc.

Mars’ final scene with the snail just emphasises the ‘game over’-ness of the whole last two pages. I don’t think he’ll succeed in stopping it, the broadcast is the most obvious thing to fulfill the promise of a huge, world-shaking event coming from this arc, but there’ll probably be some kind of deception involved in why he can’t cut things off from here. I’m curious to see what the inside of Punk Records looks like as well. Maybe it’s just big computers, but it would be cool for it to be something with a bit more mad science cred, like a giant brain in a jar.

I’m determinedly not getting my hopes too high for a Toriyama tribute in next week’s colour spread. Which isn’t to say it’s not likely, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out that way. With only a minute on the clock, Mars at the broadcast’s apparent source and two groups of heroes being menaced by unstoppable foes, the climax of the arc feels afoot, so it’s going to be time to start the big reveals, cavalry calls and final turnabout moments as the 110th volume escalates. Good time to have that post-break momentum, if you ask me!