Rather than committing to the big battle that the last chapter promised, Oda switches gears into a setup mode disguised as a cooldown mode. He even has Sanji lampshade how abruptly things seem to be ending. But the next stage, whatever it’s going to be, isn’t the obvious thing. Should have known Oda wouldn’t be that predictable. I hope I don’t end up sounding like one of those five-act, raid failing Wano people going on about this week after week, but surely there’s no one thinking that was the real final battle this time.

Imu seems to confirm that Loki only targeted the World Government on his rampage, which definitely raises the question of why Shanks had to shut it down. Before we might have assumed that Loki was taking things too far and hurting innocents as well, but now that we know him better and have this confirmation, it’s clear that there’s more to the story. It also makes for an ironic parallel to how Imu used Harald as his knight, an Ancient Giant that emerges from the fog. It must have stung Imu’s pride to see his own monster used against him like that.

The Domi Reversi attempt is a callout for me personally. For thinking it was too obvious. For thinking that an artificial Luffy vs Loki was such a strong bet. For even floating last week that it could be Luffy who gets turned instead. No, Imu hits both of them, and… it just doesn’t work. Huh.

But why didn’t it work? I can see people speculating that a Devil Fruit user can’t be turned, but I think Imu wouldn’t have even tried in that case. He already knows they’re both powered up. Then is it the D? Well, it didn’t protect Rocks and there’s no sign of Loki having one anyway. If it was just a willpower thing, I can’t see Rocks failing his check, so there has to be something more. If not Devil Fruits in general, something about these two specific fruits (and who knows how many others)?

The Ragnir squirrel face on the hammer was a great giggle as this mini fight wraps up. Amazing choice.

But Luffy’s outfit? When he showed up in the default Nika getup before, I assumed he’d just ditched his Elbaph gear down below. After all, we had a Nika version of that outfit! But here the transformation just completely changes what he’s wearing, literally between panels. No little offscreen bit like on Egghead where you could assume he was retrieving his coat after throwing it away to fight, the whole thing just blinks in and out of existence entirely. This is the kind of inconsistency that actually does shit me. Stick with the outfit you established. Grr.

Anyway. I think it’s really funny how Chopper and Zoro’s scene plays out. Yeah, it shuts down any exposition about how that works, but it’s such a great character moment when one’s too dumb to look deeper into it and the other is so blinded by the praise he fully shuts off. It’s a fun way to save the explanation for later.

I’ve got nothing on the how or why of Biblo and the books being gone, but I’m not surprised. Of course Oda wasn’t going to let any real harm come to them. Sommers’ heart (I think that’s what that’s meant to be) is a crazy thing to just drop in like that. Is that what a Covenant does? And is it actually made of metal, or is that the haki-clad texture? Could it be that breaking through a super dense haki shield around the heart is the way to permanently take one of these guys out?

I think in the final page, we catch Oda in a wee bit of an error. The Holy Land did not look like that at the end of chapter 1175, so I guess that’s one to redraw for the volume release. But damn, looks like they were having a real crisis. Riots? Revolutionaries? No wonder Shamrock was called back so quickly.

So what’s Imu’s next move? What can he do in person that his shadow proxy can’t? If that’s even what he’s doing. I don’t know how that plays out for the larger story, fighting Imu directly this early. Oda typically doesn’t give villains losses before their main fight, but it would be hard to have the Strawhats lose at this point without going uncharacteristically dark. Maybe he’s going to bring the Mother Flame weapon around. Flying up through the canopy of the great tree to down a massive airship before it can fire, now that would be a sick finale for the arc.

But if I’ve learned anything this week it’s not to get too bold about predicting Oda. The man’s always cooking a third option. We just have to wait a week to see what it is.