New arc is a go… but things aren’t feeling quite right here. I’m not usually one to get on board with conspiracy theories – sometimes a weird detail is just something Oda threw in because he thought it would be fun or funny, not the key to unraveling the plot; sometimes an inconsistency is legitimately a mistake or typo, to be fixed in the volume. But here, I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s because we have so little in the way of context, but things are feeling wrong about the setting we’re shown in this first chapter.

We are not in the Elbaf we thought we were in. From the first page: look at Yggdrasil. Compare it to the enormous tree shown in the backgrounds of Big Mom’s flashback. It’s too small, it’s not the right shape, it doesn’t cast shade over the whole island the way the real one does. Though dressed like giants, the people in the town have roughly the same scale compared to the stingermole and Lego buildings as the Strawhats do. And while the environment certainly looks like a giant child’s Lego playroom, watch the way the castle comes apart during the cat attack: it doesn’t scatter into pieces like a real Lego construction would, the bricks themselves crack and shatter and crumble into shards, suggesting cemented concrete or stone rather something designed to come apart and be rebuilt. Even the title plays up a “Land of Mystery” even though it would be no spoiler at all to say “Land of Giants” or something similar given all the setup this arc has had.

So where are we? Some kind of human settlement on the edge or off the coast of Elbaf? Are they people who came hopeful to emulate giant culture like Usopp has? Or is this a human zoo or pet enclosure run by a particularly cruel giant leader? Maybe whoever is playing the part of a sun god (very intriguing setup by the way) But in either case why the toy look without toy materials?

And then there’s the question of absinthe hallucinations. If the whole scenario was meant to be a trip, we probably wouldn’t have seen the people in the town. That kind of objective POV from people who weren’t drinking wouldn’t fly, we’d have been kept limited to only the Strawhats’ perspective. The animals cause real physical harm, and Nami trips on and interacts with the Lego bumps on the floor, so they’re not illusions. But things are weird here. They keep changing. Both the spiky thing (which has hedgehog ears but more of a porcupine snout, and doesn’t fully match up with either creature) and the cat transform dramatically for creatures without (apparent) devil fruits. And the weapon of Luffy’s back changes between two panels, but that one I could chalk to being a mistake, or a last minute mind change. The panel with the sword also lacks the strap going across Luffy’s chest, which feels like a major detail of this new design to omit. But it adds to the strange feeling all this gives off.

(Luffy calling out the wrong gear, however, is definitely an error. It hasn’t even been that long since the wrong number was used for a Cipher Pol division in the final chapters of Egghead. Sanji winding up with one leg and kicking with the other feels the same, some of these little glitches happen all the time.)

Mysteries and theories all aside, this is a tremendously fun Usopp and Nami chapter. Every single gag landed for me. Nami’s expression at meeting the spike monster sets the tone and the chapter just rolls from there. Usopp taking a hit, assuming the cat is a hallucination (even he’d just been in its mouth, and Nami’s reaction. (Love the cat’s claws curling over the panel boarder there too.) Then she uses the broken and beaten Usopp as a shield before claiming to Sanji he was already dead. I loved it all.

I’ve seen some upset that Usopp is taking such a beating in what they think should be his arc, but I can’t imagine being upset by something like that. You can’t have much of a character arc without the character having things to learn and challenges to overcome from the experience. The last time we had a genuinely designated character’s arc was Sanji at Whole Cake Island, and whatever else you can say about it, that arc brought Sanji low and kicked him while he was down, physically and emotionally. He got no climactic fight. And he lost his memory of getting the girl. But it all set him up to be stronger than ever and face even more interesting character decisions in the next arc. So if we’re going to make Usopp grow on Elbaf, putting him in situations that showcase his weakness and trigger his cowardice is a good starting point.

The Egghead outfits so far are fine. Pretty standard medieval gear. The choice for Nami threatens to follow the Egghead design trends, but I’m going to wait and see on that front. The problem with Egghead’s outfits wasn’t that Nami was showing a lot of leg – her characterisation has always had her comfortable in bikinis and similar pieces that make sense to wear when you’re around the sea. The problem was that every single female character in the arc unquestioningly picked up Nami’s fashion sense and level of comfort, no matter how they were depicted previously. So the amount of variety and how in-character the outfits of Robin, Lilith and (depending on what age she presents as) Bonney will make or break the fur bikini.

As much as it can hurt to be left with a lingering mystery, I’m thrilled to see Oda still finding the inspiration to give us something new and different to start a new arc on. And with a break coming up and the new arc underway, I think now is finally the time to properly reread and review Egghead in full, which feels like a good thing to put in the place of a review next week.