Holy shit, what a chapter. You can’t even get too analytical about a thing like this, it’s just great action and a huge story beat. I think the Jump cover and colour spread here are very nice bits of art (I’m understating it, the colour spread is gorgeous), but they don’t really scream anniversary to me. They feel like ones you could see at any point. I love the detail of the sharks saluting Jinbei and Usopp swimming for his life.

The opening seems to build on the idea that Joyboy and Imu were at one point friends. The speech bubbles are stylised the way Oda does radio chatter, but is this facilitated by snails as it is in the present, or some long lost ancient technology? The dark panels and the tone of someone cautiously calling out into the abyss bring to mind some parts of the Harley text. The world was “shrouded in death and darkness” at the end of the First World, and the Second World then begins within a “void.” Are these the survivors of a world in an apocalyptic state making contact with each other for the first time? Feels like the kind of page we’re going to be looking back at for years.

I loved the first stretch of fighting here. Imu using the demon spirits to extend his arm, then redirect it down took me fully off-guard. A strange parallel between hero and villain, but a reassurance that things are still going to be creative and offbeat, no matter how edgy the bad guys look. But it’s still an anime fight, and nothing says that harder than Imu and Luffy doing flash steps away from each other’s attacks back to back.

The genie transformation certainly is something. We are stretching the limits of rubber and “Nika’s fantasy” combinations. He looks like Cuphead boss. And what was this form even meant to do? It throws one normal punch the goes away!

But we get a good, reliable Jinbei moment, and it’s super cute how Ragnir loves him afterwards.

I like how we see Usopp and Brook try to talk out who Imu could be based on their current world knowledge and don’t quite reach the right conclusion. Keeps it immersive, that the characters don’t automatically know (or conveniently work out) everything the readers do. And it’s pretty, funny Usopp and Nami catching Brook and Franky up on the time Luffy and Robin were frozen. Do they have warm water to ease Gunko into though? And how surprising that Imu would remember Brook posthumously, when he’s seemed fairly detached from humans that don’t resemble ancient figures before this point.

I feel like we’ve learned something about Imu’s powers, seeing the halberd become a spirit and return to the halo, only for a sabre to come out. It’s those black fire spirits all the way down. Were even the book, gun and knife that Imu-as-Gunko summoned earlier in the arc also made of these things?

The withering effect as the sword is drawn makes for a great panel, and the ending is obviously dramatic and shocking, but yikes, the top panel of the left half of the page (pictured below) is one of Oda’s worst ever. Is that meant to be Luffy’s perspective of Imu zooming in from a distance and overtaking the demon spirits already chasing him? Imu spiralling in for the kill? Even with the context clues of what happens after, I’m still not sure. I’m a big defender of Oda’s art, even the rough parts in the modern era, but that panel so badly needs to be redrawn for the volume release.

And it’s a shame to have that dampener of a moment right before the climax, because what a climax. I expected Luffy couldn’t win here. I figured (and figure still) that this is going to end with Imu’s time limit pulling him back to the Holy Land, with the remaining question being whether Luffy would be on the front foot or on the back foot of the fight when it happened. I did not expect such a graphic and brutal loss in a single chapter. Bold, Oda. What is it going to take to get Luffy out of this, let alone set him up to take on Imu for real in a future arc?

We’re nearing the end of a volume, but you’re not going to get a cliffhanger bigger than this, so I expect it will be handled similarly to Luffy being smashed off the roof in the middle of volume 100, where he’s offscreen for a few chapters and then we get a rallying moment to close out the book instead.