Oda couldn’t let two arcs in a row go past without major Zoro and Sanji battles, could he? I really thought we were just going to let Imu be fully in focus for the final stage. I don’t want to sound like I’m making a powerscaling/aura farming kind of argument here, but it’s an observable pattern that Oda doesn’t usually like to show off his villains’ powers, let alone them getting beat, before the final fight. For Sommers and Killingham to get back in the game in such a major capacity is unique.

I’m not sure if a synergy between lightning and ice is really as thematic as Imu claims, and I certainly don’t understand what Ragnir is adding to the Ragnaquintarrow barrage but I can’t deny it makes an awesome looking page. Imu’s little devil face guys are coming in swarms now as well. Interesting thta the narration box is specific about a Squirrel Squirrel Fruit after we were told previously that the soul of an actual living thing transferred itself into the hammer. The mechanics of a real individual/animal being represented as a mythical zoan and then fruits going into objects remain a mystery.

The talk of Nidhogg as a traitor builds on the implication of a Joyboy friendship from the last chapter. Did they defect from Imu’s side together, I wonder…

It’s good that Oda found the page space for Lilith and Bonney’s scene. We’re not being told anything we didn’t know, but sometimes it’s nice to just get to see characters thinking the implications through fully and drawing conclusions. I wonder if she’s made connections to anything uncovered by Vegapunk-stella in his research into the Void Century.

This is also a good Sanji scene. He’s a character with so much potential to be cool when he’s allowed to not be a sex pest for five minutes. And yes, he has to mention the giant women here, but the fact that they get third billing behind the children and Luffy and Usopp’s dreams is fantastic.

The book fakeout is resolved without much surprise, but Oda puts a pin down in Biblo’s true nature/identity to follow up on in the arc’s epilogue.

Sommers has wings now. He definitely didn’t when the Omen boost first hit him, even when he launches himself away at the end of the power up scene. I wonder if that’s an oversight to be fixed in the volume release. As odd as it is to need a round two for him, he acts obnoxious enough to make me happy to see him getting his shit kicked in a second time. Super Sommers indeed.

Gerd’s fingers getting fixed by Chopper doesn’t shock me; as grusome as the scene was, that’s the kind of thing a real life surgeon can do, but I had figured we’d let it sit until the fight was done before the fix happened. What about Stansen’s leg though? But the funny thing about this scene is the way oversized Chopper on the table and the undersize-looking Hajrudin in the foreground in the bottom panel of page 10. Scale is a moving target for Oda, as always.

Imu’s flames turning into bullets instead of just being damaging attacks in their own right is strange, right? Like, no one would question the fire doing harm by shooting forward, One Piece is full of attacks like that. Why justify it like this?(Also does that mean Zoro literally got shot in the head in chapter 1180 and he’s just shaken it off?) It recalls the equally off bit in chapter 1150 where Gunko-Imu summons from flames a book which summons from flames and knife and a gun that were then just used as normal weapons. Is Imu trying to work around a weakness in his own ability by using it to summon items and dominate others rather than spending it in more direct ways? I draw your attention again to the devil face faces on so many of the black fire moves and my thought that they’re an entity rather than an aesthetic.

“Great Imu’s body isn’t meant to withstand the outside” feels like confirmation of the time limit expected since he first arrived. But what’s going on with Gunko? I don’t believe for a second that she’s dead, but does Killingham’s statement mean Imu failed to free her from the ice, or that she’s just remained limp and unconscious since. It sticks out that Imu didn’t send an Omen her way. Whatever the reason, Oda seems to be setting up the justification to leave her behind. I’d wondered if she would end up being a future-arc damsel for Brook, but getting to resolve that and draw some lore from her in the short term is probably better.

And everything this week is capped off by the Zaza reveal. Another ancient god, another of the old Shandian pantheon as well. I’m actually going to have to schedule in a Skypiea reread with a focus on background details after this. Does this god have a Devil Fruit that’s been sneakily renamed somewhere out in the world as well? I love the design though. The arms, the way the translucency has been illustrated, and the shading as well. It’s cool that it reflects the style of the other Sleeptids, but it’s not quite as uneven as theirs, differentiating an adult fear from the crayon-coloured look of the kids’ ones.

But should Killingham be that scared of a little rain? I can understand a regular Celestial Dragon being a bit freaked out by rain, but the God Knights have to be made of sterner stuff to do missions in the lower world. It’s cool that Zaza has a rhythm as well, just like Nika’s drums and the rhythm played by the possessed trees and houses when Imu landed. The Zaza and Imu ones seem to have a little more variety than the Nika drums though. “The rhythm of prayers for rain” brings to mind real world rain dances, but also makes a nice connection with the Dance Powder from Alabasta.

And in this new world of gods, which one does Imu represent, or at least claim to represent? God of the Earth might be fitting for a being seemingly shackled to the planet’s largest landmass, but given the Harley line about “taming demons” I would be inclined to bet on the Forest God for Imu’s power, at least until we get more info.

Zoro and Sanji get a good moment right at the end trusting each other to take care of their respective battlefronts. I’m curious to see how Oda plans to play this out. I’m not expecting long fights, but then I wasn’t expecting to have these fights at all, so what do I know? We’re about halfway through a volume now, so wrapping up these two back to back could be a good finale, and leaves the way open for Luffy, Loki and Imu to be fully in-focus for the arc’s finale in the next book.