We’re officially in a new phase of the flashback now, leaping forward by years at a time to reach the next pivotal beat. This week represents one of our biggest looks yet behind the scenes of the God Knights’ structure and organisation, providing a few answers and a whole lot of new mysteries. Oh, and the cover page is pretty cute. I’m wondering if this cat is intended to be the same one from the cover of chapter 736. It’s missing the tail stripes, but the resemblance is otherwise uncanny.

The opening pages make me feel pretty confident we’re at the start of a new volume here. They’re a cold open to this new era, building up to the reveal of where our now-central character is at. It’s a nice little bit of building tension – even raising then dismissing the Florian Triangle to keep you guessing – before we learn the results of Harald’s grand gesture. I don’t mind that we gloss over Kaido, Big Mom, Whitebeard and Roger making themselves the faces of a generation in the following pages, but I’m a tad disappointed there’s so little on Marineford’s Giant Squad. Those guys were set up to be a pretty big deal at Marineford, and everything we’ve learned about human-giant relations since raised questions about how they were recruited. There was even spaces left in the Vivre Card databook for more of them to be named! But Oda being Oda, you never know when or how he’ll manage to circle back and fill that gap in, so I’m not really stressed about it.

Learning about the three-tiered contract system used by the God Knights and Imu’s other direct underlings sheds new light on some of the titles used up to this point. Should make for a much clearer reread when the arc is finished. I have to wonder if the Devoted Blade of God title is fully synonymous with Shallows Covenant holders or if you can be either one without the other. We have to assume the Five Elders are the Abyssal Covenant holders and that this is the unageing immortality level and the remaining Depths Covenant holders are the God Knights. But are there other differences between those two levels? And why does Gunko have the agelessness of the Abyssal Covenant without being an Elder? Either way, Harald getting into the system is a pleasant surprise; I’ve wondered vocally how Oda would handle his turn to avoid feeling like a repeat of Rocks’ Domi Reversi, and a direct possession like what happened with Gunko in the present and Saturn in God Valley definitely would be that.

I don’t usually make this kind of comparison and judgement, but I have to say here, the official release’s choice for the names of the God Knight ranks is leagues better than the scanlations’ one. Glad not to be stuck with Dee-deep Sea Contracts for the rest of the series.

Garling orders secrecy over Harald’s work. It’s hard to tell if the God Knights are fully forbidden knowledge or not. I’m guessing they’re not a ‘kill everyone know knows’ secret, someone close enough to the Government would at least be aware of the name, or be able to read between the lines that there’s another force of authority not being mentioned, but the Government doesn’t advertise their existence. Which does make it more reasonable they’d choose to make a hero for God Valley for the lower world instead of giving it to Garling.

Harald and Neptune is an unexpected pairing. Did we get any hints they might be connected prior to this? And damn, how much would it cost to get a ship the size of Harald’s longboat coated for undersea travel? But I can see how they’d bond, both fighting to get their villainised peoples the relative safety of World Government membership.

But then we have the ‘hairy daughter’ joke coming up again. Wow, I’d not put a lot of stock in the theory that Shirahoshi was Loki’s Shaggy, but this is a big moment for fans of that. Lots of questions still to answer about how and why and to what narrative end, but it is a lot more on the table in my mind than it was a week ago.

And then the sequence that has everyone talking: Shanks in the Holy Land as a Devoted Blade. And Fisher Tiger! It’s really interesting that he’s shown as an escaped slave here rather than a warrior who scaled the Redline single-handed. Did he get recaptured when he climbed up to take revenge? Or did he go undercover with a plan to free himself and cause havoc. He’s already on the run before Shanks’s intervention, so maybe it was part of the plan. On the assumption that he failed and was recaptured, did he just go along with the mythmaking that turned his attack into a full-fledged success? Feels a little like a retcon. On one hand, with the Sun Pirates he takes pains to erase the stigma of being a slave, so does it make sense for Tiger have chosen to hide the truth or even spread the lie himself? On the other, Tiger had a hypocritical streak despite his many honourable deeds. He held onto enough hate to reject a human blood transfusion at the end of a lifetime of pushing for equality of races, so maybe it would be an in-character contradiction for him to feel shame over being a slave and let a grander story take the place of that one. Seems like a place where the SBS could shed some more light.

The interaction with Shanks is a little hard to follow, a rare failure in Oda’s choreography. Breaking up the moment of the clash into a couple of panels to make it clearer how Tiger only grazed him enough to rip a bandage loose would have done wonders. As it is, the impact effect for Shank’s hit on the collar reads as part of Tiger’s attack, making it look like he landed a much more solid blow than he really did. I appreciate Oda finding the page space to show us the Boa sisters and Koala though.

I’m very, very curious about Shanks’s time in the Holy Land now. There’s no question that everything he says here is an act, but why? What is he trying to gain from infiltrating the God Knights? What about the dangers? On the assumption that even a Shallows Covenant opens the way to Harald’s possession, that means Shanks is taking a pretty big risk here. How does he mitigate it after he flees, given that we saw the mark intact years after in Scopper’s hot tub. This is all stuff I don’t expect a good answer to for years. Right now, it’s just surreal seeing Shanks and Shamrock side by side like that.

God damn it, not Ida. It almost seemed like she was going to make it, but the odds were just too long for a mother in a flashback. The cruelty of Estrid’s family and the amount of petty hate that still lurks in the culture of Elbaph despite Harald’s attempts to connect and modernise it is stunning. But maybe the rot was concentrated mostly around that one clan and Loki’s rampage represents something like the end of it. I wish I could say I felt a little more strongly about Loki’s declaration that Ida is his mum. The building blocks are there, but they’re few, and in the context of a weekly read they were a long time ago. Seriously, Rocks and God Valley, as amazing as they’ve been, have waylaid Loki’s journey since August, and that makes his emotional arc feel a little disjointed. The reread will soften this blow, but there’s still going to be almost a whole volume between this scene and the last time we saw Loki and Ida interact. Just a consequence of Oda trying to a little bit too much at once.

That said, I like the art on the last page. Estrid’s relative takes a pretty gnarly broken arm there, but the centre panel of the spread, with the large amount of negative space with vignettes of burning houses as a frame, that’s a great bit of art.

I’m hoping from here we’re squarely back in Loki’s zone for the climax of the flashback. Seems reasonable the rest of the God Knights stuff and Shanks’s departure might be saved for a future Shanks flashback. It’s been fun, but it’s time to start getting back to the present. The coming December breaks are going to make sure that takes a while, so I’m glad we have the focal shift now, as a reassurance we’re on track.