Captain M Entertainment

What a chapter to come back from the break on, this is huge. And we’re not even at the end of volume 107 yet, so what could possibly top this next week?

The Void Century and founding of the World Government continue to be teased in drips and drops, more implication than explicit detail, everything carefully worded. Cobra’s unfinished sentence certainly implies that Imu is one of the WG’s twenty founding monarchs, but I could see it being finished ‘among the first twenty there was a servant’ or ‘an advisor,’ or ‘a concubine,’ or any number of other things that sidestep questions like whether Imu has descendants among the Celestial Dragon families, and if they favour them, or if not why the rundowns of the family lines of the gods given by the likes of Dofamingo wouldn’t snidely question why there are only eighteen family names in the mix when it should only have dropped to nineteen with the Nefeltari’s rejection. We haven’t ruled out the possibility of Imu being someone who connived to gain power rather than one of the original kings who somehow managed to prop themselves up in the ultimate position without arousing the suspicion of the others.

What this does seem to deconfirm is the idea of Imu as some alien or literal demon or other secret otherworldly force that manipulated the founding monarchs. I’ll be very surprised if Imu isn’t one of the native peoples of One Piece’s world, for them to have been among the founders openly enough that the name survived in a history book.

But we do get two confirmations of things that were only at 99.9% certainty previously. First, the D Clan being enemies of the World Government. Yes, this was made obvious by nobles treating them like monsters to scare their kids and spelled out further when the Ds were called natural enemies of the gods, putting them at odds with the Celestial Dragons’ self-styling. But now we have a primary source stating outright that yes, the Ds and the World Government fought as enemies. (This will shortly be muddied by the revelation that there was a D among the Government’s founders, but hey the reasons for that are just one more thing to look forward to finding out.) And we’re also told that the real meaning of the D is not passed down alongside the initial and the current people with it don’t know the truth. Of course, Law’s mission to investigate the D through the Poneglyphs made this more or less guaranteed anyway but now the figure who would know is saying it.

What does fascinate me though, is learning that the Poneglyphs were scattered across the world in a single incident. Previously, my guess would have been they were entrusted to allies of the Ancient Kingdom and hidden away individually as some kind of failsafe, but instead the World Government seemingly had the opportunity to suppress them all at once and failed. The kind of power it would take to shift all 30 stones to precise locations (remembering that some are supposed to give directions to others, so their destinations would have been incredibly specific) at once is a rare thing, even in One Piece’s world. Maybe an ancient user of the Paw Paw Fruit?

Whatever the method, Lily’s motive for letting them go will be an interesting factor in the inevitable Void Century flashback.

I was very surprised to see the Five Elders draw weapons on Cobra (let alone transform). I was strongly in the camp that saw them as pure politicians rather than combatants. But maybe I should have seen the tide turning in the last chapter, with the discussion about guards disappearing. Someone close enough to be in on the Imu secret has to have the power to suppress and dispose of the guards elite enough to be trusted with Pangea Castle.

The Nefeltaris as a D clan is huge. What else can you really say about it? Vivi’s position as a central figure to the final saga is all but confirmed by this.

And then there’s the transformations. Hey, I thought it was the party not in power that was meant to form a shadow cabinet! I don’t think there’s enough information to make strong guesses about the Elders’ powers save for one, who I’ll get to in a moment, although there are some interesting theories going around already. I wouldn’t even say it’s certain that they’re all Zoan types. Karasu has just been showing us how animalistic a Logia can get, let alone the limitless possibilities of Paramythias. But I want to zero in on one guy with a few factors lining up. The arrow that pierces Cobra sure looks like a traditional devil tail. And it comes in from his left side, not directly ahead, so I don’t think it’s Imu’s. When the Elders transform, the silhouette furthest to the left has some pretty distinctive horns. Maybe this is the Human Human Fruit, Model: Devil. And for a bonus, the Elder standing in that position before transforming was Saturn, who is en route to meet the Strawhats in the present, so we might get confirmation on this one sooner rather than later.

That said, the second arrow attack as Sabo and Cobra flee seems to come from a silhouette without horns, either the Elder second from the left or Imu himself. But that might just be a quirk how the scene is framed.

I can see some people bothered by the convenience of a transponder snail recording during such a top secret meeting to get Sabo’s picture, but we saw in the last chapter Imu in their secret room listening to the conversation live through a snail, so it’s probably just that one.

The little Sa D. Bo flashback is a funny one. Never expected Oda to pay homage to that brand of fandom meme so explictly. I’m torn between arguing that it’s just a gag and Sabo doesn’t really have a D, and arguing that in a series that has leaned so heavily on themes of inherited will and found family that it could be as easy as someone with the will saying so to pass it onto a new bloodline. It would definitely help the idea that not all Ds are related. This does raise the question of Sabo’s family name though. Being a noble, he has to have one. Even if he gave it up upon running away like Sanji did with the Vinsmoke name, shouldn’t we have learned it through Stelly? This might be good SBS fodder.

Cobra makes a hell of an exit, dropping lore bombs to the last. I’m surprised we don’t get the near-obligate panel of the D facing death with a smile this time around. Maybe it’s just less of a rule than we were led to believe, or maybe there’s a little more to see before we’re done with this.

While I love Wapol’s return to relevance, I’m actually somewhat surprised to see him landing in this position. If anyone was foreshadowed to creep back into the throne room and witness something terrible it would be Stelly, who stared up at the throne drooling and thinking about how much he wanted to sit on that thing. Are we still coming back to that? Was it just a gag? Or did Oda even intend to use Stelly in this role when he wrote the first part of the Reverie back before Wano, and changed his mind of the past fiveish years?

Nice moments for Issho and the Leo/Sai duo in the Cipher Pol scene. Still not a huge fan of all of CP9 making it to CP0 though. And I have some questions about Issho ‘helping’ the Revolutionaries free slaves during the attack. Surely he wouldn’t get to keep his job after that. At least if it was as blatant as Jabra makes it sound. Has to have been more of a plausibly deniable ‘whoops, didn’t see them going’ kind of thing that Jabra and Aramaki are seeing straight through.

I don’t necessarily have a suspension of disbelief issue with Vivi slipping her bonds to escape alongside Wapol here, it makes sense she’d have been working on something anyway, but like one panel of her palming her old peacock whips to cut the ropes or something would have gone a long way to making things feel comprehensive here. It’s a small enough that that Oda could definitely have found space on the page for it if he wanted to. I think I’m just taking it easy on this scene because of how funny it is for Kinderella to assume Wapol and Vivi are running away together at the end.

With the apparent promise of an Egghead colour spread next week, I think we’ll see the flashback wrapping up fairly soon. We’ve seen all the things I recall being built up as offscreen Reverie events during the Wano intermissions and pre-Egghead chapters, and seems unlikely anything of note would really have happened as Sabo and the Vivi/Wapol duo make the rest of their escapes. And it would be good to see the Strawhats at least one more time before this volume ends – though I’ve got a sinking feeling that might be a cut back to a state of defeat and York proclaiming her victory as an end-of-book cliffhanger, given how long it’s been. But we won’t know until the chapter drops, and weeks like this just show how hard it can be to predict any part of where One Piece is going next.

That is a powerful Jump cover this week, Luffy is looking damn good. And then on the flip side we have a very fanservice-y colour spread. We say ‘fanservice,’ but really these things seem to be authorservice as much as anything else. Oda draws like he’s just discovered that the t shirt and bikini bottom combo holds a different appeal to him than just a regular bikini pic and has decided he’s going to explore every angle of the idea (and the actual canon Egghead outfits back that up). There’s some nice details in here – Carrot riding a Napoleon tube, Bonney trying to eat the giant koi, Perona’s Kumacy shirt, the tab on the end of Ulti’s club suggesting the got an inflatable version just to take to the pool.

But there’s also Yamato. Sigh. Look, I think at this stage Yamato in Oda’s mind is just a man and a woman all at once, as the scene requires. I don’t really want to talk pronouns again, but here we go. There aren’t and will never be official pronouns for Yamato as English-speakers understand the term. Because casual Japanese language mostly uses neutral second and third-person pronouns (equivalents being ‘you,’ ‘they,’ ‘that person,’ just calling them by name, etc) and has most of the gendering happen via first-person pronouns (so masculine and feminine forms of ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘myself,’ etc), it isn’t the same social faux pas to refer to someone with the wrong gender in part because it’s much harder to do. And the first-person pronouns are taken as more of a masculine or feminine flair rather than the definitive statement of gender English third-person pronouns are, and will often shift based on the mood and formality of the conversation as well. So the Vivre Card didn’t “confirm” anything except the biological bits we can all see because it wouldn’t occur to a Japanese-speaking author to correct a form of reference that doesn’t really exist in his language. Unfortunately, Yamato’s mode of speech doesn’t confirm one thing or another either, because of the flexibility outlined above. Deciding how to refer to a character like Yamato, or anyone fully androgynous or with a tendency to cross-dress becomes less about translation and more about adaptation because the cultural and social ways gender is expressed and how those expressions are taken just don’t line up 1:1. Oda hasn’t made Yamato a he/him or a she/her or even a they/them, so we have to look at how the character acts and what they say and how others respond to them and decide what the best fit for that is in our own framework. And to me, Yamato in the story (particularly the bath scene) screams someone who wants to be viewed as firmly masculine. Maybe a retranslation with the benefit of hindsight could go back over everything and play Yamato in more of a nonbinary/genderfluid/bigender way that gels better with these noncanon depictions of them as one of the girls, but in the version we have, the in-story Yamato reads male.

With that out of the way, I think we go over a decent bit of familiar ground this week, re-establishing the 20 royal families and the founding of the World Government. I’m getting my hopes up that Oda is trying to remind casual readers of the full context they’ll need for some big impending reveals.

Sabo and Bonney is a fun little teamup for as long as it lasts. It’s fun seeing characters discover mutual connections like Kuma in such a large world. It’s a shame they seem to part ways before the Cobra incident though, so we probably won’t have news of that making it to the group on Egghead. The Lost Chamber is a tantalising tease to namedrop here. I imagine it’s just Imu’s little garden though. The frozen Strawhat is in a massive fault deep underground, far more than a chamber and way too grand and unconcealable to be a lost.

While a lot of people say to new readers to stick with One Piece til Arlong Park for it to get good – and they’re close to the mark – I think the point where One Piece truly becomes One Piece is Alabasta. For that reason it warms my heart to see the Nefeltaris become so instrumental to the series big mysteries and impending endgame. The web of relations between Lily, Imu and the D is going to be speculated in circles until the final reveals. The idea of a letter being passed down makes me think of Joyboy’s apology message at Fishman Island. Are they connected? Is one a reply to the other? And we have to consider that Toki will likely have some major role to play when it all comes to light as well.

Making the Nefeltaris key to it all only redoubles my conviction that if there is to be a final crewmate (and I don’t think there has to be one) it’ll be Vivi. Plot relevance and established presence are key at this stage of the story.

The Charloss beatdown and Kuma rescue are satisfying moments, but there’s not much to say or speculate about them as we’ve seen the fallout to both already. Mjosguard’s promise to take responsibility works out and Sai and Leo’s choice to go pirate insulate their nations from any residual consequences. The phrase ‘attempted murder’ in the chapter title and the newspapers way back when this happened let us know Charloss is okay. A gap in which we didn’t know the exact players and actions has been filled in, but it’s unremarkable in the grand scheme.

And we end on Imu. From context we could already guess they were a top-secret presence, and the guards talking earlier in the chapter confirms what happens to people who get a glimpse of them. I like the detail of them listening in from their secret room as well. Makes sense they’d be monitoring the whole Pangea Castle.

As for their identity… I’m not totally sold on the idea of it being Lily, but it’s not off the table either. The twentieth sword and actual flower lilies in their secret room (though the sword i absent in this chapter and lacked the decay of the others surrounding the throne when seen in chapter 908) could be read either way as echoes of a former life or mementos of a past love, or perhaps even as trophies from a vanquished foe. Was Lily the only of the original royal families willing to speak against the hypocrisy or cruelty or corruption or whatever of the fledgling World Government, taken down before she could share the truth? There’s not much we can fully rule out at this stage but it’s so exciting to be edging closer to real answers every week.

Well colour me surprised that we’re not just continuing straight on with the scene that ended the last chapter but going into what seems to be a full-fledged, multi-chapter Reverie flashback. This is not guaranteed of course – most flashbacks end mid-chapter with the black panel gutters fading back to white, but there were also points in Zou where you can see a black-gutter flashback run right to the end of a chapter and the first panel of the next chapter is right back to white gutters and present day. Anything could still happen next week, but it seems like we’ll keep going with this plot thread. This is most likely the seventh chapter of volume 107 though, and the run of cutaways started in the (probable) second chapter. We’re getting dangerously close to spending a whole volume away from the Strawhats and – as I’ve said repeatedly – it feels like we broke from their story mid-sentence. I don’t know if this structure will stand the test of time.

I really enjoyed seeing a more grounded strategic side of the Revolutionaries this week. The steps taken to besiege and starve out the Celestial Dragons make a lot of sense. I can’t imagine it’s easy to grow food in such rocky terrain at such extreme altitudes and that is a perfectly pragmatic thing to take advantage of. I’d be interested to see the mood inside Mariejoa right now, how much the Roswalds and Charloses of the ruling class are leaning on the Elders over reduced rations.

Sabo’s determined acceptance of Cobra’s death as a step toward his idea of the greater good is a surprisingly morally grey choice for his chapter, and one that I think offers a lot of depth to both him and the Revolutionaries as a whole. And it definitely feels like something neither Luffy or Ace would ever have said, which helps him stand out from the shadows of his siblings. I’ve expressed disappointment in the past that writing the Revolutionaries to only be against “bad kings” rather than the monarchist system that enables them kinda defangs their rhetoric and goals, but moments like this – where there is this event that I feel sad about because I knew Cobra and don’t want to see Vivi hurt by his death and we have Sabo taking the unsympathetic stance of ‘I’m okay with that for the sake of my goals’ – that restore that feeling of more complicated politics and help me trust Oda has a plan for it all.

People were getting really worked up over the Holy Knights thing when the spoilers and scans came out for this one. Personally, I’m astonished at how much of a nothingburger they ended up being in the chapter. The silhouettes seem varied enough that I’m guessing Oda has an idea of their designs already. I guess that one in the middle kinda looks like Shanks. More the sword than anything else, I think. Sure, Film Red implied Shanks might be the wayward child of a Celestial Dragon family, and yeah there’s fun theory potential in it being a sibling or something that met with the Elders during the Reverie, but literally none of that is in the chapter. Could still be true, but it’s not here.

The idea of these guys being mobilised as a real threat to the Revolutionaries in the field is an interesting one. From their first mention in chapter 1054 I’d figured this lot was more for mediating disputes between Celestial Dragon families and keeping the peace among the highest authorities in the world, that no one else could possibly keep in line.

I think some people are being a tad premature predicting these guys to be Imu’s boss crew or whatever. A lot of build up with the Marines would need to be thrown aside for these guys to become the main fighting force that represents the World Government against the Strawhats in the endgame, and we’re all getting very presumptuous about the future roles and powers of a group that have literally been mentioned twice in nearly 1100 chapters. Execution is everything, but we don’t even know what Oda’s trying to execute yet! Literally zero information. I’ll wait and see, thanks.

The Revolutionaries get a great showing here. I love Karasu from a power and design perspective. The idea that he’s just got a normal elemental logia but is adept enough at using it that he makes his transformation into theme-fitting crow shapes, which he can even talk out of, is an absolute game-changer. I want to see more logias using their fluid bodies to show of personal animal motifs and other wild forms! This guy is the only one using his logia correctly. I know we like to speculate that logia Awakenings are a permanent shift to the environment, but Karasu is actually out here doing things no one else with his kind of fruit is doing.

Morley is absolutely out of proportion compared to his first appearance here, but the spread is cool enough that I don’t really care. Going back to chapter 1054 to double check that first Holy Knights mention also let me rediscover a panel which makes a fun parallel with the nobles bickering about collateral damage and CP0 musing about the admirals being held back in the latest chapter.

And speaking of, I’m not the biggest fan of all of CP9 making the jump to CP0. It’s not awful, but it might have been more fun to spread them out, some of them ending up in different divisions or even going their own way after Spandam’s betrayal. Kind of like how most of Baroque Works rediscovered their original dreams and left. Oh well.

As final thoughts on the start of this flashback I have to wonder if we’ll learn anything about Bonney and Kuma in this sequence that will tie immediately back into the Egghead plot. It’s certainly a possibility, and I absolutely love Vivi standing up to Lucci here. It does feel like more setup than substance, but that increases my confidence we’ll be exploring this part of the past for at least a couple more chapters. The original Reverie chapters made for one of the most explosive and exciting times to be a One Piece fan back in 2018, feeling like we were getting more plot and lore in one go than we had for years. If we’re really going back for the unabridged version right now the next month or two could be huge. Hopefully next week we’ll get a clear idea of how far down the rabbit hole Oda intends to take us.

I’m on around my third chapter’s worth of saying let’s get back to Egghead already, but Oda keeps giving me things I’m not asking for that manage to greatly entertain me regardless. I’m starting to wonder how much of volume 107 we’re going to spend away from the main plot at this point. If volume 106 balloons to 12 chapters we could see this one having a single chapter of Egghead for the York reveal, followed by at least half a volume’s worth of the rest of the world.

How typical of Oda, to tease at Jump festa this idea of “I hope no one dies!” as he starts setting up this huge endgame with big name characters making their moves, and the first one to bite it is… T Bone! I don’t think anyone could have seen that coming. It has a similar energy to Ashura and Izo’s deaths, but feels like far, far less of a copout. Still, T Bone was pretty likable as Marines went, and a long-haul character who’s kept making cameos past his first appearance for longer than I’ve been reading the series. I appreciate Sengoku and Tsuru’s conversation on the topic, with the self-awareness about the purpose of bounties inspiring betrayal by the common folk, especially in impoverished areas. What they miss is the high likelihood of the World Government’s Heavenly Tribute creating so much of the poverty that made this tactic so effective in the first place. But if they could connect those dots they might stop being Marines, right?

What’s with the black line across T Bone’s pic in the paper though? I could see it being just a weirldly drawn fold in the page, and it’s not really how I think Oda would depict an attack happening in a still photograph.

The man we see with Cross Guild in the next scene doesn’t look like a match for a Vice Admiral in regular circumstances (which I know has some thinking T Bone faked his death to give him the reward, but that feels cheap to me) but Sengoku alluded repeatedly to backstabbing before, and it would be just like what we know of T Bone to trust in the good in people and let his guard down. I’m inclined to think he really did it, but the line about the cause of death being withheld early in the chapter gives me pause. Perhaps they just didn’t want it to get out that he’d been assassinated by a civilian and give Cross Guild the advertising. If it did happen, the method would have to have been completely without honour, but when you look at the panel of his starving family, you can see how much of a hard choice that would make for the guy.

It’s very interesting to me that Buggy says the guy who killed T-Bone has made himself into a “champion of evil” (or “charisma of evil” if you want a more awkward translation that I don’t think uses the word ‘charisma’ properly in English but whatever), which you might remember being the same thing Trebol claimed he and the other executives raised Doflamingo to be after they recognised his potential as a boy.

You have to wonder where Buggy picked up the phrase from.

The Buggy gags are fun, but they lead into a pleasantly surprising moment of character growth for the guy as he, out of all the pirates present, becomes the one to remember the importance of ambitious dreams. We see explicitly that despite all the bickering Buggy’s affection for Shanks was genuine, which led into real disappointment when their pirating goals diverged. And I think he actually does prove himself as the leader he’s been made out to be in this way that he manipulates the far stronger former Warlords into following his agenda instead of their own using his sway over the crew. Very piratey move.

I feel as we get further in that Oda is using these cutaways to set up each of the Emperors’ runs at the One Piece. Shanks and Blackbeard get decisive wins over the captains with the Poneglyph rubbings. Buggy gets to renew his determination and get us all thinking about how much second-hand info he might have picked up from being so close to the last guy who claimed the throne. This is Oda putting pieces where they need to be for the final race to the treasure.

The question becomes if the Egghead Incident will give Luffy his own chance to fully declare his candidacy to the world, or if we’re taking the defeat of Kaido to be that moment for him.

The newly named Revolutionaries (only newly named, they’ve been hidden in the background of older chapters) are a set of fun designs. I think Ahiru is my favourite. You have to wonder what kinds of weapons are in that arm. And if maybe Lindbergh built it for her, despite her not being his subordinate. Jiron is seen literally eating a telescope, which makes me wonder if he’s got a Devil Fruit power to be revealed at a later date. Something similar to Wapol’s powers, apparently. Far from the first adjacent ability.

Sabo’s reunion with Koala is a sweet moment, and I’m happy to see poor Moda made it out alive. That Lulusian explosion was big enough I was actually wondering if the bit parts from the island were gone forever, but Oda will do as he does.

It took me a bit of looking to find the “three noise” signal Sabo references here. I was expecting to find it floating through the air like normal sound effects, so the first couple of times I scoured chapters 1058 and 1060 for it I totally missed it being right there in Sabo’s speech bubble, with Dragon reacting to it and everything. The official release’s typesetting also makes it look more like two noises than three, but the original Japanese has the sounds looking more intentionally distinct from each other.

I’ve given up on trying to say with any confidence where the story is headed next week, but I know I’m not holding my breath for Sabo’s full Marijoa explanation right away. It sure could happen, I’d love to see it after having this event sitting in the background for so long, but it would be very like Oda to leave us hanging again. But even if we are cutting back to Egghead, that’s still giving me something I’ve been wanting, so that’s cool too. We’ve been getting the Reverie in drips and drabs since 2018, we can wait another few months to get back to this scene if we have to.

We get another banger of a chapter to lead into Golden Week here, and I’m thrilled to finally be learning a little more about Kuzan’s motivations and movements in the past couple of years. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to Egghead though.

The colour spread is gorgeous with some wonderful colour choices. It’s low-hanging fruit that everyone on the internet’s been picking since the spoilers dropped, but I have to laugh at Sanji’s COCKING book. But I also love the one squirrel that’s wrapped itself up in Brook’s afro to sleep. It’s a real cute one.

We pick up right where the previous chapter left off, with Garp being a truly loveable badass. Whether he means it or not that he’s lost his edge, it makes a statement just to suggest it. And it’s a clever touch for Gruz to use his clay to cushion the warship’s landing. I get the impression this might be a practiced maneuver. I think the ring of fire around these early scenes is curious just from a staging perspective. By all accounts, Garp’s Galaxy Fist was just a shockwave attack, not a combustible one. We can see some things exploding among the rubble on that first page after the spread, but would that be enough for the all-sides inferno in the following shots? I’m not assigning any significance to this, we’re not claiming a portion of Lunarian blood running through the Monkey family’s veins called forth the fire, it’s just an interesting detail.

Kuzan makes a very cool (heh) entrance and brings us straight into a perspective-changing flashback. I think the general consensus on the guy up to this point was that he was a rogue agent for justice, possibly a top-level SWORD agent. His interactions with Smoker at the end of Punk Hazard could be read to support this impression, and I’m sure Film Z played a part in it as well, despite not being canon, but I get a slightly different vibe from the version we see in this chapter. Kuzan is genuinely commiserating his break with the Marines and didn’t seek Blackbeard out. He obviously shot first and asked later when he first encountered Blackbeard’s men and is quick to start doing it again when he thinks they’re after his fruit. But Blackbeard has a particular charisma to him, a dark mirror of Luffy’s apparent “most dangerous ability” to get people on his side.

I think the banter in this chapter is stronger than it’s been for a long time. Gruz and Kujaku commentating on Garp and Koby’s relationship, and then Kuzan’s hangout with the Blackbeard Pirates in the flashback, alternating between genuine exposition and mocking Sakazuki. Seeing a leg gone and asking if he took an arm in exchange. Kuzan joking that he’s actually burned man. Shiryu’s idle conspiracy theorising. In a series full of explosive reactions and face faults (and there are still more than enough of those here) these scenes of marginally more grounded and naturalistic character interaction really stand out.

The man with the burn scar is a tantalising plot hook. I was never really on board with it being Saul, as many suspected after he was revealed to be alive, and this seems to confirm it’s not him. There’s not a lot here to say who else it might be though. Dragon is compelling, but his ship’s official colours aren’t as pitch black as the monochrome art implies. Plus where would he get the time to sail around sinking Poneglyph hunters in his busy schedule as a Revolutionary leader?

I hope it’s the dude who was drinking with Crokus. No reason. No evidence. It’s just been up in the air so damn long I want to see it wrapped up.

So after all of this it really doesn’t seem like Kuzan joined as a spy. That doesn’t mean he won’t decide to follow his own justice and betray Blackbeard eventually, but it opens a lot of questions about when and how. I think it’s noting that Kuzan definitely wasn’t recruited as the tenth captain he is now. In fact, I’d venture to say that promotion was a recent development – on Punk Hazard Doflamingo says he’s heard some “nasty rumours” about Kuzan’s current allegiances, implying they aren’t public knowledge, and then on Dressrosa the call between Blackbeard and Burgess that Luffy overhears has Burgess saying he still doesn’t fully trust Kuzan while Blackbeard tries to reassure him that the same goes for Shiryu. Maybe this conversation was literally about Kuzan being promoted to the status of captain in the group despite his past Government allegiance (the most obvious thing that would go for him and Shiryu but no one else in the group). It’s not like he showed up to Punk Hazard on a Blackbeard ship, so it could even be that the decision was made even as recently as that. But does that mean there was another tenth captain that preceded him in the role? Or am I totally wrong, he’s had the position for a year, and Doflamingo was just being vague on purpose?

(Also is it just me, or is anyone else getting increasingly certain that the term “Titanic Captain” was a bit of flavour and exaggeration on the part of Corridia Colosseum commentator Gyats in introducing Burgess? Kuzan’s info box doesn’t use it, he’s just a Ship Captain, and looking back over the post timeskip reintroductions of the Blackbeard crew, none of those use the title either. Have we actually seen anyone other than Gyats use the term ‘Titanic’? I think it’s been very mistakenly taken as official when it wasn’t supposed to be.)

I didn’t think we’d be leaving Fullalead with Garp having the upper hand, but his attack on Kuzan makes for a commanding transition back to Law’s fight, and just like what happened to Kid, I feel particularly bad about seeing the end of his ship. The Polar Tang was another great vessel design that you hate to see lost like this. I maybe feel worse about the ship than the actual battle loss. People in One Piece usually survive. Sunk ships generally stay sunk.

I think it’s a really cool connection to have Bepo’s sulong come out thanks to Chopper’s medicine. Can you imagine if they’d unveiled this drug back at Wano though? I remember a big point against Carrot’s inclusion on the crew was the need to for the plot to engineer a full moon in every single future arc for her to reach her combat potential. A handwave solution to that would have thrown the debates into overdrive. And as much as I roll my eyes at the crewmate back and forth and so many other weird fandom things we get into, there’s a part of me that secretly loves the drama.

There’s a few things to take note of here. One is the Rocky Port victims still being alive. I would have figured the Government shoveled those hearts into a furnace or something to get rid of them, but they must be in storage somewhere. The second is the absence of confirmation whether Blackbeard recovered Law’s Poneglyphs or not. With all his officers having Devil Fruits now it won’t be easy to get them back from the wreckage of the Polar Tang. And I also think it speaks to Law’s character that he wants to go back for his crew, despite everything.

The past three chapters from outside Egghead have been a tour de force of worldbuilding, characterisation and dramatic confrontations that threw things into a ridiculous overdrive gear at a point where the main story was still in its building stage. Hopefully there’s not too much whiplash going back to Egghead with an evening to kill before the grand finale. But then, if the Egghead Incident is going to be one of these cutaway clashes written out in long form, it’s going to be well worth the wait.

Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here!

We are really spending some time away from the main plot of the arc here, aren’t we? I was talking after the last chapter about how weird it is structurally, and getting this whole other full chapter with nothing to do with the Strawhats while they’re all fighting makes it weirder still. But when this is what we get outside the main plot I’m sure as hell not complaining. The longer this goes on though, the more I’m wondering if we’ll switch back to Egghead exactly where it left off, or if things are going to have continued developing while we weren’t looking at them.

Blackbeard’s pirate island feels like an appropriately chaotic Nassau or Tortuga of the One Piece world, now that we’re seeing a tad more of it. Like Jaya amped up to a hundred, which is fitting, given that it’s where we first met the guy. I’m definitely in the camp that’s a tad skeptical of his crew’s new powers though. I think I wrote when the first lot were revealed, back during the start of Law’s fight, that they felt like abilities Oda had decided on early in the series and stuck to his guns on, even as Devil Fruits got more and more abstract and extreme. Pizarro having such an obvious copy of Pica’s power feels especially egregious. I can only hope that having all that time to brew means that the final battles against these powers are going to be next level.

Now, I’m not one to speculate too hard on battle matchups, but it seems to me you could make a case for Zoro being pitted against a number of Blackbeard Pirates. Shiryu because he normally fights a swordsman (though that one’s got a fruit that would draw Sanji’s ire), Burgess because he usually fights the captain’s apparent right hand, and now – I think – it would be interesting to see him as the crew’s heaviest and most regular drinker pitted against Vasco Shot. It could be another “natural enemy” situation. Shot uses his booze-related powers to try and throw Zoro’s swordsmanship off, Zoro declares that he was already drunk. Cue Enel face.

What really has my attention is Blacbkeard trying to make Fullalead into a legitimised nation. I can only guess that it’s a scheme to gain access to Mariejoa at a Reverie or something, the same way he used the Warlord title to access Impel Down. It feels unlikely the Government would fall for it twice, especially given his current reputation. But then again, Shanks shows us that it’s not out of the question for an Emperor of the Sea to get in one way or another.

Interesting that SWORD basically gets to operate as Schrodinger’s Marines, both in and out of the Navy as the Government’s politics require. I can see where the idea came from, offering Marine resources to these kinds of hotheads to keep them close and useful for as long as possible without restricting them so much they just go off on their own as vigilantes, while being able to instantly absolve all responsibility for their actions when it’s convenient. Whether this would actually be a good or smart system to implement in a real military remains in doubt. You’d have to keep it relatively secret and invite-only to avoid the name being thrown around to excuse premeditated insubordination and desertion. Can’t have the rank and file thinking that’s an option. And whether it’s in-character for Sakazuki to accept this kind of insubordination, even if it is planned for, is equally questionable.

Curiously, Kuzan is fully knowledgeable of it. Which could mean SWORD predates Sakazuki’s instatement as Fleet Admiral. Or it could mean that Kuzan still has contacts feeding him intel. Or it’s just because he’s a part of it.

We also, early on, get to see a Cross Guild bounty poster closer up. Hope we get more of these while the series has time to do it, but given that the bounties seem to be based mostly on rank (with exceptions for popular figures) there isn’t the same hype and mystery as the pirate posters. I also appreciate that the rewards are in treasure chests with only an approximate value – it adds a roughness in contrast to the Government’s precise figures. I wonder, though, if the Cross Guild members borrowed their star-based bounty system from a certain former co-worker…?

We actually saw already a small, sketchy preview of the posters in Cross Guild’s introductory chapter, although there seems to be at least one other symbol also being used there. Potentially a crown or a set of big top tents like Buggy’s base. But what does that mean? Something beyond the star rankings, or maybe something less, for ranks below Captain.

And a final thing from early in the chapter, Pizarro implies that Rocky Port is part of Fullalead. And we know that the Rocky Port Incident was masterminded by Law and kept from being a complete disaster by the hero Koby. I know that the Supernovas and plenty of others swept into the New World right after Marineford instead of taking time to train like the Strawhats, but there’s something genuinely strange to me about learning how far ahead of Luffy’s group they’ve all been already. Like, it would make no sense for Law to have just waited around Punk Hazard for two years, but it never crossed my mind while he was travelling with the crew that he might have been on his second or third lap of the New World already.

Perona’s cameo is a welcome surprise, I’m a pretty big fan of her character. Weird that the chapter doesn’t make it clear if Koby was actually able to follow through and free Moria though. I guess he wanted to find his own escape route and Perona went with him.

The G-14 Marines and new SWORD additions continue to be appealing designs with some interesting new powers to go with them. And it’s cool to see Vegapunk’s GP Flowers making a main story appearance as well. What was it I wrote during the cover story? They seem more like a weapon of sabotage than a true tool of peace, and that is exactly how the government is using them. I wonder if that sours the Mobel Prize somewhat.

So we all remember that Prince Gruz and his squad, including the newly named Kujaku made early cameos in Bege’s cover story, but it’s easy to forget that that was far enough back that the colour manga has covered it already.

Not often we get official colours for characters too minor for a volume cover this long before the anime gets near them.

And then there’s Garp. This old guy is actually one of my favourite One Piece characters. The conflict he feels between his career and his adopted family is genuine, and while I’m generally critical of the morality of characters who make themselves complicit in the World Government’s evil, Garp carries enough clout to make genuine efforts to follow his heart over his orders and speak out against the worst of his superiors. He’s still contributing to a very evil organisation, but it helps his case a ton. He’s layered, his conflicts are believable, and you just can’t help liking the way he flies in on his dog-themed ship (with cute little doghouse crows nests, how charming) and levels half the town from above. Brilliant moment to end a chapter on, and the panel of his ship flying over the city is gorgeously drawn.

In fact, if you look close at that panel, you can even see the gouges in the ground from Kujaku shifting buildings around.

Can’t overstate how much I love that kind of attention to detail!

Despite how long we’ve spent away from Egghead already, I don’t think this sequence is quite done yet. Maybe another half chapter to tie up loose ends (like where Moria and Perona ended up, and if Smoker is there alongside Tashigi, and if Boggard is still at Garp’s right hand) and set up a real cliffhanger of Garp and co clashing directly with the Blackbeard pirates before cutting away. And then we can get back to what the Strawhats are up to. Or hell, why not another cutaway? Still haven’t seen Dragon’s powers, since we’re apparently revealing all the heavyweight players right now. The breaks around this Golden Week time of year can be rough, but it’s hard to be too upset when we’re getting chapters like these.