That certainly was an entrance worth waiting for. But for all the hype, I’m a little confused about where Oda plans to take this arc’s finale. Things seem a little too set in the heroes’ favour, so I’ve been expecting a reversal from the God Knights to set the final stage of the battle. But Oda has pulled what seems to be his biggest emotional trigger here and now, rather than saving it for the critical moment.

Sommers is fantastic in the opening scene here. What a slimy, self-serving nasty piece of work he is. It’s been building for a while, but I’m now fully sold on his guy you love to hate status. That face he makes when he realises he can get away with watching the kids and their parents die? Disgusting. And the overconfidence that Imu will take responsibility for the plan going wrong instead of giving him the Saturn treatment? And this being so twisted in a way that only presses Saturn’s specifc buttons that even Killingham isn’t into it? man, watching this guy go down is going to be so satisfying. I think there is going to be broad disappointment that the God Knights aren’t as threatening in a straight-up fight as people want from antagonists this late in the series, but Sommers is exempliary of a rich kid who gets nepotism’d into a position he’s not qualified for and makes an unhinged power trip out of it. The man is coasting on borrowed immortality and the best devil fruit money can buy. But he’s having the time of his sociopathic little life doing it.

And then we reach the emotional peak of the kidnapped children storyline. And look, if I’m completely honest, there are things about how recent arcs have played out that give me reservations about the series’ finale. Wano showed that Oda can burn out and drop the ball. Egghead delivered chaos and tension, but was shortchanged of the worldbuilding and feeling of being populated that is such a trademark of every prior island. Elbaph’s flashback compromised on its emotional core to drop the God Valley lore. Sometimes I worry if these cracks will grow. But then you get a scene like this one with the kids that proves in no uncertain terms that Oda can produce a resonant emotional hook in a very small number of pages.

Oda leands toward the biggest and most dramatic character beats, but he makes the right choice by going really, really small with the things the kids think of when word goes up the line that they’re facing divine punishment. The flashbacks are all basic kid stuff. Scuffles, lies, avoiding homework, not eating vegetables and lashing out at people who only want the best for them. All mistakes a child should be allowed to make and then grow to learn from. Nothing that deserves death, but when the mind of a child tries to put cause and effect together to make sense of the world…

Ronja was heartbreaking enough in her spotlight chapter last year, and she hits that note again as she goes from optimism to a breakdown as her father arrives.

Bent feeling guilt just bringing his mum up as his biggest fear is one that feels very grounded to me. I remember once when I was pretty young (early primary school I guess) and had a dispute with my mum, I went and drew a handful of comics that cast an unkind caricature of her as the villain and a few hours later regretted that private act so tremendously I tearfully destroyed them. Tell you what, I would have been pretty distressed too at that age to have been marched off to my doom before I could set a moment of childish cruelty right.

And even as these kids reflect on the acts they think make them most deserving of punishment, the adults swoop in and do what adults should for their kids: put themselves on the line to give the young ones that chance to grow up from their mistakes, and simply provide comfort and guidance when that’s the only thing left that can be done. It’s genuinely touching stuff. Oda makes sure to keep the One Piece theme of surrogateand found families in the spotlight, because it’s not just blood parents; grandparents, teachers and big brothers all go through it the same, sacrificing their own bodies despite the kids’ past rejections.

And I actually hate Sommers even more now, because man shut up and let me enjoy this heartfelt scene, how many times do we need to cut back to you laughing?

I would expect a moment like this to cap off a chapter and leave us hanging for a week (or two) to find out what happens, but Oda obviously had a bigger moment to reach for this one, so find out basically immediately that everyone is safe. I don’t even want to run the numbers on how big Luffy must be here. Actual giants are just dots on top of him, and he still has to be thick enough to provide cushioning. This goes way beyond the giant-size Gear Five we saw on Wano and Egghead.

The prophecy segment that leads into the final pages solves one narrative problem, but rubs me the wrong way. Okay, a lot of us were wondering what power Loki could have that would convince him he was Nika, given that there is an actual Nika power and someone else has it. But when you get down to it, if the giants worship Nika as an actual religion, that would assume he’s a real guy who would get a second coming, not that someone would get his powers from a fruit. They would think that Nika will be reborn rather than remade. I don’t see a hypothetical One Piece Buddhist taking on Sengoku as a spiritual leader just because he has Buddha-themed powers, do you? So when Loki, who’s been outcast and treated as a destroyer all his life, gets powers of ice and lightning and the ability to become a beast that fills the sky, of course it clicks into his head that he’s Nika and he has some prophecies to fulfill. I wonder at this point if the giants even know there is a specific Nika fruit.

But on the flip side, I wish we’d heard this bit of prophecy a long time before this. During the Harley chapter at the absolute latest. I don’t care if it would have made it easier for people to guess Loki has dragon powers, imaging if we’d had the idea of Luffy and this giant beast building for a couple of years. Just like with Nika himself, even a single early hint could have gone a long way to making this feel like a more natural progression.

And while I’m grumbling about Nika stuff, what’s up with Luffy’s outfit? His Elbaph duds have just disappeared entirely. He’s shirtless in the panel after he saves the giants, and then back in his default outfit for riding on Loki’s head in the final pages. It was the same stupid thing on Egghead, where the local outfit just vanishes at random for the transformation, and I thought Oda was past that when we got an actual white Elbaph outfit when Luffy fought in Rodo’s room and at the castle. But nope, back to the generic version. Sigh.

Dragon Loki looks pretty cool though. Freaking huge. Like that you can still see a bit of his helmet on the transformed design. Eye placement is a bit odd, but maybe they were exaggerated to not get lost in the spine of the physical edition. Love Ragnir just being along for the ride. Can you imagine if he’d done more than hybrid mode inside the castle when he first got it? The resmeblance to the dragon on the Harley mural goes without saying, but it’s interesting how much Loki also resembles the Ancient Giant fighting the demon on the left side. I think this supports the interpretation that the mural only shows the first and second worlds and is not a prophetic view of the final battle in the third one. Echoes of these old worlds will feature in the battle to come, but they don’t have to be one to one parallels.

With the next few chapters forming the climax of volume 115, I can’t wait to see what this big beefy boy is going to do. And what the bad guys are going to do about him…