I’m looking forward to reading this run of chapters all in one go without the breaks. The biggest lore bombs since the Reverie, intercut with series-spanning blasts from the past as we can see that everyone we’ve met before this point is impacted by the current story. Every new line of concrete info that gets out before the broadcast is shut down is a bonus from this point. I’m beginning to dare to hope, after the last page of the chapter, that we might actually learn something big about Imu as the climactic line before they shut it down.

The cover story is edging forward. At a glance, I’d thought Oda had mistakenly given Kiku her arm back, but no, that’s Hiyori. Even with Robin gone, there’s too many of these dark-haired (at least in the black and white version) Wano women to tell them apart. Maybe she should have kept it up like in her Oiran persona for the distinctiveness.

And speaking of Wano, it’s cool to see how they set up that enormous Strawhat flag under the palace. I vaguely remember wondering why they made it so freaking big when it was first revealed, and now we know. I also appreciate the attention to detail with the transponder snail being Orochi’s; it wouldn’t make sense for the people of Wano to have one of their own. And we get the sense that the cover story must already be in motion due to Yamato’s absence in the scene. What I’m not so hot on is Shinobu being permanently rejuvinated by her encounter with Aramaki. From memory, Raizo did not get the same benefit, and it should probably have been both of them or none of them.

Demalo Black’s return is not something I had on my bingo card. The fact that he’s changed his idol is fantastic. Drip’s disguise as Killer, just doing face and hair paint instead of actually getting a helmet, is hilarious. I genuinely thought that guy was dead though – he was last seen going limp with his head fully submerged in Caribou’s swamp. People weren’t exactly lining up to save him and the other fake Strawhats at the end of the Sabaody reunion, and Caribou has the reputation of a guy who would finish the job. But this is One Piece; what can you do?

All the reaction cutaways, actually, do a great job of showing without having to tell what these characters have been up to since we saw them last. No one in this world is truly static.

Vegapunk’s speech continues and… man, his naivety can be frustrating. He still can’t take a stand that the World Government is evil? Even after they murdered him? It would be one thing if he was still alive to undergo some character development and eventually denounce them, but the man is dead. He’s going to be stuck in this weird state of pretending the genocide-doing, slave-owning, world-flooding side aren’t the clear bad guys. In another story, I might have taken this as foreshadowing of a conflict written in shades of grey, or even a switcharoo twist that makes Joyboy the plant-flooding villain of the Void Century and says the World Government has only gone mad with power in the centuries since beating him, but that doesn’t feel like One Piece to me. And it certainly doesn’t feel like something Oda would force Luffy to reconcile against. Feel free to make me eat my words in a few years if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s on the table.

Glad to see we’re not done with Stussy. Her last scene would definitely have been a low point if she’d been just left to make her sacrifice there. Finding a life and purpose beyond blind devotion to her creator is a much better arc. The framing suggests Kaku will be important to her future, but that couldn’t possibly mean going back to Cipher Pol, could it?

We get one very cool spread out of Nusjuro slicing the Labophase open, but I don’t understand how it manages to end with the captured agents and Seraphim falling to the Fabriophase. He took the roof off the basement they were trapped in. We can see in the following pages that the pieces didn’t drift far enough apart for any part of the building to hang over the open air. This doesn’t make any sense. Scary to think of the Seraphim possibly being loosed by this, but I wish there had been a more natural setup for it.

More gorgeous art as we learn about what happened to the world in the Void Century. Have I ever mentioned that Wind Waker was my favourite Zelda? I think ocean world settings just speak to me, and a long-lost atlantian
civilisation under the surface is the perfect lategame twist to throw at that kind of story. Interesting that the official release categorises the current world as pieces of a single continent rather than multiple landmasses as the spoiler summary and scanlations did. Does Stephen know something we don’t, or is he guessing? I know Japanese doesn’t always do singulars and plurals as obviously as English, but I’d be interested for someone who knows the language to chime in with what was inferred in the original.

And man, it gets you thinking again about think like the ruins from Jinbe’s cover story, Impel Down and whatever seemingly-impossible mechanism moves the Gates of Justice from under the water. Surely all these things are from the before times. Maybe more.

Relevant to the themes of One Piece, also, is the statement about travel and culture. This flooded dystopia works as hard as possible to keep people separated and their groups homogeneous. The heroes are a group from all corners of the globe who push against this facet of the world to experience as much of it as possible, and in the utopian past it was easier for peoples to mix. It will be interesting to see if the unflooding of the world and the restoration of easy travel for cultural exchange plays into the series’ finale or epilogue.

The near-outright confirmation that the three Ancient Weapons we know of today were responsible for the 200 metre rise makes it almost certain that Uranus is the machine the Government is using Mother Flame to power. But as just a destroying space laser, it doesn’t seem like it has much synergy with the other two. Maybe the original Uranus was just used for altering the sea level, making a world where the sea power of the battleship Pluton and the commander of leviathans Poseidon could reign supreme? But what of the suggestion during Oden’s flashback that the weapons were only ‘named’ as such, as if they originally had another purpose?

I wonder if there’s any chance we can get to the end of this broadcast before the next break rolls around. This would be a great time to keep picking up momentum and get this pivotal sequence for the series on wrap, especially since the need for reactions and dramatic pauses is making it take longer than a normal exposition scene to begin with. My fingers are crossed and my hopes are high.