A lot of interesting things happened this week, so obviously the thing to talk about is cover pages.

Chapter 1161 uniquely has two of them – a colour spread and a cover story. And yes, this is actually unique, though some may think otherwise. We have to distinguish between magazine colour pages and actual parts of the chapter. Maybe you remember chapter 1019 having two colour spreads, but the Where’s Wally collaboration wasn’t part of the chapter and didn’t get included in its volume release. Did chapters 1023 and 1025 have two covers then? Actually, in the volume, all three parts of the WT100 illustration are presented together at the end of the book instead of with the individual chapters they were first published alongside in the pages of Jump. Chapter 1145 was published alongside special illustration for the anime’s return as well as a normal cover page, but hasn’t been placed in a volume yet, so we don’t have the final word on what is actually included in its pagecount, though my guess is that the anime illustration will be at the back of the book. Jumping way back, chapter 217 was published with a colour page that even featured the chapter’s title and number on it, alongside a cover story page, however in the volume, the colour page was moved to the front of the book and the cover story got the number and title like normal.

And a weird outlier case, while we’re on the topic chapter 304 was published with colour pages featuring giant rainbow-coloured eels and two pages of manga showing the Strawhats putting together a band to summon them. These pages are usually considered the cover of that chapter, and yet in the volume, the four-page sequence has its own place in the table of contents labelled ‘Straw Hat Theatre,’ leaving chapter 304 to be one of very few with no official cover at all. It shares this honour with chapters 4 and 6; chapter 817, which is fronted by Oda’s illustrated Film Gold poster in both the magazine and the volume, but the title placement and the volumes table and content confirm that the poster is not part of the chapter; chapter 999, due to the two part colour spread being collected together as part of chapter 1000 in the volume; and 1024 which had the middle segment of the WT100 illustration and was the only one of the three chapters it appeared with not to have its own cover.

But chapter 1161 has no such caveats or special conditions like any of the above. There is no collaboration or special event. It’s just two covers. No reason to think the colour pages will be collected separately. Wild.

Okay, so why and how has this happened? I’ve seen it speculated before that Oda does colour pages in bulk in advance so he can throw one in as often as the magazine needs it. Maybe another author had to miss their colour pages at the last minute so they brought in one of Oda’s reserves. Or it could have been his own choice to handle issues with the structure of the chapter and the layouts of the page. See, because of how the magazine works, the actual black and white portion of the chapter has to start on a left-side page of an open book. Which means you don’t get to follow up the colour spread with a regular spread in normal circumstances. If Oda had the first spread of this chapter planned out, with that wide establishing shot of the island and the other scenes happening around it, knowing the page space for each moment would have to line up to give the Rocks Pirates heavy hitters their own spread in a few pages, he might not have seen a way to make that single first black and white page work in the layout, and just wrote it off with a part of the cover story instead.

The final thought is that maybe the cover story needed to hurry along to coincide with some upcoming event or drop some info before it becomes relevant in the main story, but I don’t really see where that connection would be with things sitting as they are.

All that said, this is the best colour spread we’ve had in a while. What a beautiful and charming work of art. There are so many little stories playing out at once – Chopper stuck in the machine, Brook’s rescue attempt, Franky apparently struggling so hard to save him that he’s running out of coins (you’d think he’d be the best with a mechanical arm), and everyone else trying to collect the plushies of their favourites (but wait, who pulled Buggy?). The chibified toys of all these big names from everyone’s backstories and training arcs are adorable and I want one for every character. It’s perfect.

A side note about shifting colour schemes, we have Gaimon drawn in colour by Oda himself for the first time. What’s different? The frame of the chest is gold instead of steel grey, and his beard is green. Gaimon was actually coloured with a green beard in the digital colour manga, but the anime gave him a brown beard and the Vivre Card databook and WT100 renders altered the digital art to follow the anime. But now it seems the colour manga was right from the start. Or at least until Oda changes his mind/forgets what he established again. I know colour isn’t a priority for the man.

The other cover is a pretty standard Yamato cover story thing. Hyogoro’s wife being memorialised with the fallen retainers is a deep cut, and I’m curious about the obscured Kurozumi lantern. Is it for Kanjuro, or a general memorial for the members of the clan who were unfairly persecuted? It maybe should not be ignored that Yamato has rejoined Kin’emon and Momonosuke for their prayer, truly bringing this story full circle. Ending next week? Please?

Well, that sure was a chapter. What? I’ve only talked about the covers? Alright, let’s keep going. Actually, for most of this chapter, we’re just watching fights that we knew were coming play out, so there’s not a ton of analytical work really to do. It’s all enjoyable, but unless you’re the kind of person who’s deep in the powerscaling discourse, it’s not giving you much you didn’t already know.

I’m glad we get to see more of Dragon’s mission to save the kids. It seem like he was getting away a little too easy last week, and it makes sense someone would have been put on them. I’m sure the misunderstanding on Maffey’s part of it being a single child instead of two makes a lot more sense in the original Japanese, where plurals aren’t as certain in casual speech. That said, I like the official translation’s attempt to play if off in the radio chatter toward the end of the sequence. Clever wording there. Maffey is an excellent character design though, and adds another to our list of known Celestial Dragon family names.

The showcases of all the heavy hitters’ powers here are awesomely drawn and great to see. I wonder why we never saw Big Mom’s Heavenly Fire Blitz at Wano, or was the Maser Cannon meant to be the upgraded version of it?

As the action moves into the middle of the island, I can’t help feeling there’s a missed opportunity in not finding space for a taller panel that really sells the scale of those mountains and the way they create a tight corridor of carnage. Maybe it’s being saved though. We still have to see Roger and Garp teaming up against Rocks.

Sommers is being set up for a truly spectacular downfall in the present. What a bastard. Man, the moment he grabbed Shakky’s leg and raised his club, I thought he was going to break it at the knee, but maybe that would have been too visceral for One Piece, even with Oda in ‘show the horrors’ mode.

Rayleigh making the clutch save and getting the ‘treasure’ puts a bow on the flashback’s Kuja arc, setting him and Shakky up to go into the present. So my question is, what happens next? Roger is ready to go, as he says in the last panel. While the Rocks Pirates might care about that, Rocks himself will want to prioritise his wife and child. So what puts them head to head with each other? What move could Rocks possibly make that would Garp and Roger put their differences aside? Perhaps Rocks witnesses Eris slain and goes on a mad rampage, hurting friend and foe alike? A little cliche, but it could work. Will the God Knights stay involved, or will they prioritise leaving with the Celestial Dragons? And how does this result in the island being literally wiped off the map?

I’m very excited to see what answers we’ve got coming up next week.