Oh, we’re three for three on Brook’s songs being the chapter titles. I think they’re gonna go for the whole flashback! I would love for Oda to do things like that more often. The flashback steps up its pacing substantially as we cross the midpoint of the volume here, probably setting us up for the necessary revelation about Imu and Reversi so that we can get back to the action for the volume’s climax.

There is an interesting emphasis on etiquette and tone through the early scenes of this chapter. I’m sure it reads even more distinctly in the original Japanese where the contrast between formal and informal modes of speech is more extreme. Still, the contrast between Brook’s urchin manners and the palace environment comes across. I could live without Oda doubling down on panty jokes, but the bits where he refuses to be artistically constrained by a uniform and cuddles up to his guitar while sleeping are super cute. And it all sets up that generational parallel where the adult Brook polices the language of the young Shuri, but also gives her outlets for her more rebellious instincts.

I talked about for the last chapter how there’s a lot going deliberately untold about Reuven’s father and how the throne came to be vacant, and I’m even more certain now. A visit from the Celestial Dragons, Candelle becomes bedridden due to “fatigue” and then Reuven abruptly gets to become king. Later, an unnatural disaster conveniently ruins the country’s prosperity and leaves them deeply indebted to the World Government. You cannot tell me we have the full story there.

At a guess, Reuven’s father cut some kind of deal with the Celestial Dragons for his own benefit, selling out the nation and/or its people. Candelle fakes an illness as an excuse to retreat from the public eye while she (with Reuven’s assistance and blessing) engineers the king’s downfall and clears the way for Reuven to ascend in his absence. I’m not sure if Oda would make assassins out of these sympathetic characters, so perhaps they just arranged some kind of exile instead. Either way, Reuven has no intention of honouring the rotten deal his rather made, so the Government sabotages his reign to put Esperia at its mercy. They just don’t expect Reuven to take such a hard line stance against them. I think that covers all the datapoints we’re currently working with.

It’s a shame to see Candelle killed off so suddenly, and so offscreen. All the speculation, people wondering if she was a Celestial Dragon plant or undercover God Knight and she just goes and dies of One Piece mum disease a chapter later. At least it absolves her, I never really saw the sense in the traitor theories anyway.

On the flip side, Reuven does me proud this week. I’m so sorry your appearance made me doubt you. What a bold move, both to take up arms against the Government and to be completely transparent about the cruelty of their demands. You know they must have hated that. If only he could have made this play in an era where the Revolutionaries could have backed him. How many rulers chose instead to sacrifice the few for the many? How many have made Reuven’s choice and lost their kingdoms, like the West Blue nation citizens allude to (remember, God Valley is still over a decade away)? And things come full circle for Brook. He started alone in a junkyard, singing songs that mocked the king. Now the whole nation is equal among the decay, and Brook’s music rallies them to the king’s cause.

Oda doesn’t spare a lot of page space for the Government invasion, which I think is fair at this stage of the story. We’ve seen these methods. We know from the shorthand what horrors are being carried out. Even in just two pages, Brook gets a great showing as a combatant. I love the panel near the end of the sequence where he spins through a crowd. It looks like a dance as much as it does swordplay.

And then, some mysteries to chew on during break week. Is that Mars? Mars’s predecessor? An old generation God Knight in the back? If Shuri and Reuven both suffered Reversi, why did they fight each other? And didn’t we establish that a fatal blow undoes this kind of thing anyway? Oda is going to have his work cut out for him giving this a satisfying conclusion without Brook learning something that would break continuity with his present-day reactions.

I will be up front that I don’t love the Reversi mystery at this stage. We have all these points of info and so much time to stew on them, but it still doesn’t feel solvable. I trust Oda that there will be internal continuity and rules that separate all these contradictory cases, but they are a long time coming for a weekly reader. But how hard can I complain when such interesting things are being done with the characters?