Captain M Entertainment

Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here.

Well. I don’t think anyone really saw this coming. Not Kid getting annihilated, that was a foregone conclusion, but taking almost a full chapter to show it here and now. We’re around two chapters into a new volume, so it’s not a cliffhanger cutaway or a cold open. I think we’re eventually going to see a small timeskip in the Egghead Arc, given that it’s still daytime and the infamous Egghead Incident isn’t slated until tomorrow, and that would be an ideal place for a big cutaway, but the story isn’t at a point where we can just leave things overnight and assume we’re not missing anything important. There’s no real structural lead-in for this sequence, we just get it, out of nowhere. You can never be too sure what to expect with this series.

But we do still start out on Egghead, following up last chapter’s York reveal. Oda fills in her taking control of the Seraphim and setting up the S-Snake deception. Personally, I’d rather have seen how the Frontier Dome sabotage was pulled off, I thought the stuff we’re seeing here fell into place pretty easily after the reveal, but I do have to remember that the manga’s core readerbase isn’t overanalysing this story the way I am.

Although speaking of overanalysing, there’s a continuity glitch in this scene – Building C is damaged at the top, which shouldn’t happen until after Pythagoras is attacked by these hijacked Seraphim. Only building B should be hit at this point in the timeline. I do appreciate, however, that we’re now close enough to see the damage to the entry ramp’s tubing, which is something that makes sense to have happened in the first Seraphim attack, back when they were in Cipher Pol’s hands.

We’ll see if the volume release fixes building C, I guess, but these things sometimes slip through the cracks even then.

Interesting that York has a counterplay already in mind for the government turning on her. And that it still involves killing everyone. Plenty of us talked about the obvious flaws in her plan and the high chance of this happening last week, so I’m curious about her contingencies.

The lab assistants are very lucky they still have a ship to leave on. And now, I could be reaching here, but I think if you put the Egghead ship, the MADS ship, and the ship Franky made himself a cyborg on all side by side, it’s definitely not unreasonable to take them as iterations on the same vessel. I’m struggling to find a match those prominent rows of large, close-together portholes on any other ship I could think to look up. I’d love to see the decks of either the MADS or Egghead ship to see if there’s any overlap with the machines on Franky’s one.

There’s nothing earthshattering in this, if Franky got his original tech from abandoned MADS gear or if it was a random ship, but it’d be cool to have it confirmed one way or another. And another good reason to let Franky and Vegapunk talk more, damn it!

And finally, in the real wildcard development of the chapter, we see a Blackbeard Pirates ship bearing down on Egghead. Which basically turfs every assumption about what the Egghead Incident could be and how it’ll play out. We don’t even know who to expect to be on this ship – we know Blackbeard has multiple more or less identical ones, so it doesn’t have to be the group that was fighting Law earlier. But imagine if it was, so soon after seeing the apparent end of Kid. But I could also see it only being a lesser Titanic Captain or non-Titanic officer like Kuzan to give us a taste and give Luffy the chance to throw down the gauntlet against Blackbeard in advance of the final battle. But if it does turn out to be the man himself, the hype has just gone up to eleven!

And curious to have him show up in the same chapter that we learn Shanks was keeping tabs on him and expecting an appearance at Wano. I guess in the past two years of being an Emperor alongside him Shanks got pretty used to Blackbeard’s brand of opportunism. The question is, does he know Luffy is at Egghead, or is there something else he wants there?

For just some random spitballing, if we’re doing Ohara parallels, is there a danger of the Blackbeard pirates firing on the evacuation ship for a shocking waste of human life that lets Blackbeard match Sakazuki in terms of evil? I can’t see what he’d gain from doing that though. How about the question of where Blackbeard is keeping his prisoners? Pudding was still in the brig for the fight with Law, so which other recent conquests are riding along for this battle? Koby, maybe? Which would in turn bring Garp and his rescue mission toward Egghead. It’s way too soon to get attached to any one possibility, but the ship’s presence alone opens so many of them up.

And finally we see Shanks and Kid. I stand by what I said for chapter 1076 that the odds of this working out were never in his favour. But I expected to cut back to the result in the post-arc era of Egghead, not so soon and so onscreen. It’s a great sequence with some incredible spread pages and tantalising details about Shanks and his organisation that leave hungry for more. It’s a shame to see the Victoria Punk go at the end, she was a great design. But I’m a big fan of a detailed cross section, and the amount of effort Oda put into showing her interior as she’s cut in two makes that last spread my favourite of the chapter.

I loved seeing the dynamic of Shank’s crew and fleet. It creates a great contrast with Kaido’s military mindset and Big Mom’s twisted family that he just picks up people he likes, regardless of strength, and uses his title to protect them. Not to mention the parallel it makes with Luffy’s own philosophies.

I could be overthinking things, but the chapter seems to be ambiguous about whether Shanks accepts Kid’s Poneglyph rubbings or not. I mean, he probably does, but there’s room to read into it. At a glance I thought they were handing him a stack of four, but given the amount of folding a sheet that large would take, it’s probably only two. I don’t recall if he was specifically offered a copy of Big Mom’s or not, but it would make sense given his role in her defeat. Even the dialogue is deliberately ambiguous about how many rubbings he’s really handing over.

Also I don’t know if I think it’s more fun to picture Shanks flying all the way from shore to the Victoria Punk in a single jump or to have him leapfrogging ship to ship across his fleet. Quite a journey however he did it.

Some parts of the fanbase seem to be reacting to this development like Shanks is being too cruel in his treatment of Kid and his crew. Like it’s somehow out of character compared to the peacekeeper pirate we know he has a way of being at times. And to that, I honestly just say to reread chapter one. And refresh yourself on Kid’s reputation. Whatever you think of Shanks’s morals, he’s absolutely consistent, and thinking outside the perspective of someone who got to enjoy his screen presence on Wano, I totally understand not taking any chances with Kid and his crew.

And you do have to wonder how many of the people who think Shanks or Dory and Brogy or whoever kicked Kid’s crew while they were down by sinking them at the end have previously nitpicked the plot armour in past villains not finishing off Luffy when they had the chance, only to throw him in some prison or labour camp or so on. Did Shanks see in the news that Kaido annihilated Kid, Hawkins and Apoo’s alliance only to taken out by a group with a still-alive Kid as a ringleader a month later?

They’re sure as hell not dead though. The ocean hates Devil Fruit users, but it’s spat them back ashore from further away than where Kid goes down here. Hell, Luffy and Big Mom getting thrown into the sea of Wano from atop the falls looked less survivable.

I also, just personally, think it’s good to see Kid’s attack on Elbaf come to a quick end. I really want to see an actual Wano arc, so if he’d had too much to do there I might’ve started feeling like he was stealing it from Luffy. As it is, we might have a washed up Kid in the supporting cast for Elbaf, but the place remain’s Luffy’s to explore.

This has been a killer chapter to go into a break from. I’m going to be turning these events over in my mind for the whole downtime, I’m sure, and expecting big things when we come back in two weeks.

Watch the video version of this review on YouTube here.

For a short chapter it sure as hell feels like a lot happened this week, and Oda’s building up Egghead to be a much more pivotal arc than I think anyone expected it to be.

With the flashback over, it feels like the cover story should be moving toward an ending soon. It’s already added more to the main plot than most ever do, and I’m interested to see other parts of the world. Beast Pirates? Wano? Kaido and Big Mom? Jump backward and do the Doflamingo Family one that was conspicuously absent? There’s a lot of options.

The opening scene feels like an extension of Sentomaru’s bit in the last chapter, with not much new to say about it. An anime adaptation that wasn’t doing half a chapter per episode might even just run the two scenes together to streamline things and save the back and forth cuts. What a world that would be.

But wait, weren’t Cipher Pol talking about destroying all the ships on the island earlier? Hopefully the good guys got control back before they finished with that or this situation gets dicey real quick. The Sunny runs a skeleton crew (yohohoho) by real sailing ship standards, but I still don’t think there’s room left on it to move the population of a whole island.

One thing I’m not clear on in the S-Snake scene is what exactly explodes for that dramatic ending. It’s not really Pythagoras, is it? Oda has not convinced me he’s staying dead. And what happens with Franky now – too petrified to fight but too conscious to be left alone…

It’s going to take some time, I think, to pin down exactly how much Sanji’s personality changes when his eyebrow flips and his exoskeleton comes back (and I think this chapter makes it perfectly clear that it is back), because the bit about the power of love isn’t something I can see the other emotionless and cruel Vinsmoke kids saying, and it’s hard to say how much of his bloodlust last week was Vinsmoke blood and how much was just the way he gets over an attack on Nami.

One of the big perils of critiquing a series week by week is going on a whole talk about a story element that isn’t feeling right only to have it immediately addressed. Here, it seems the Seraphim are deliberately keeping their flames on and not giving the pirate-CP0 alliance an opportunity to do real damage, as we were all saying they would do if they were smart. We haven’t necessarily solved the issues with the fire system yet, but it’s a step in the right direction and evidence that Oda’s got a plan to make the fight all make sense.

Luffy calling Kaku Usopp and assigning him to babysit Zoro was a great laugh.

So, the Egghead Incident. An attempted repeat of Ohara against an armed nation. A war between the Navy and the science of Egghead crashed by pure chance by the fledgling Emperor Luffy. My question is what exactly is going to make this a battle that shocks the world? Will it just be the magnitude of the people involved – Emperors, Admirals and one of the Five Elders clashing directly? Luffy’s win here would be a huge blow to the World Government’s military and morale in a time of global uprising, which would be a pretty big deal, but things could escalate further still if the narrator actually means the unleashing of ancient knowledge and weapons, perhaps the reactivation of the ancient robot. I don’t want to get my hopes too high, but there are so many exciting possibilities here.

Have we seen the dude with the white stripe in his hair in the Navy officer lineup before? I like his look. Oda finds a way to put memorable character designs in the most random of places.

And we close on the shock reveal of the enemy inside the lab – the traitorous Vegaclone York! So when it comes to writing mysteries, you can do ones where the reveal makes everything slide into place and leave clues that make sense in hindsight. These are generally solvable in advance by design. Kanjuro was this kind of mystery foe. His birds flying away after arriving in the future, his tendency to comically impede his allies and the whole lefthandedness thing gave us what we needed to figure him out. But you can also play your mystery as a straight up twist. No real clues, just something to take the audience totally off-guard. York is that kind of mystery.

And while most (myself included) will say they prefer the first kind of mystery, there’s nothing inherently wrong with keeping readers on their toes with a twist villain every once in a while. Provided it at least doesn’t outright contradict what’s been shown previously.

And I think York mostly passes that bar. The Vegaclone designed for indulgence wants the lifestyle of the most decadent people in the world, I can buy that. S-Snake forcing the others off the walkway immediately after petrifying her and Oda never showing us the top again is a fun misdirect, looking back. Unfortunately, it’s coming out that she was present in the control room at the time the Frontier Dome went down. Did she set something in the system for a timed outage, or did Oda just slip?

And I definitely remember thinking the timing window for the traitor was the hijacking of the Seraphim to start the death game was very tight for a Vegapunk to get away with. There’s something like a 14 page span between the Seraphim being taken out of CP0’s command and asked to stand down and the Vegapunks all being present again in the control room, getting ready to depart. And unlike the Frontier Dome with who knows what kind of wifi or remote terminal access, you have to do the Seraphim in person. But looking at that control room scene, York is on her feet, Sanji is reacting to her like she’s just arrived, and she’s yawning like she just came from a nap. It actually tracks with her going off to do something nefarious. I wouldn’t call it a clue, you’d never catch it on a first reading, but it keeps the continuity in check.

I’m interested to see where we go from here. The vacant expression and cutsey way she talks, even about killing Shaka, makes it easy to forget that York has that Vegapunk intellect. That contradiction should give her a unique stage presence among One Piece villains, if nothing else. But will her deal with the Elders really work out like she hopes? Doflamingo had the blood, similar forbidden knowledge leverage and a whole nation’s military might and was never reinstated. Maybe a big disillusionment here will be key to York turning back to the crew’s side and ordering Usopp and Franky unpetrified. Maybe we get a York redemption where she holds back the Navy so the crew can escape in the style of Flim Z’s final scenes, but that’s getting way ahead of things. We’ll just wait and see how things develop.

Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.

Ugh, I read the title and assumed it was pointing toward an enemy reveal. Oda played the hell out of me on this one. Not that I can be too upset, with the reveal set to happen next week and the Labophase Death Game hurtling towards its conclusion with around four characters taken out of the competition in one fell swoop.

The opening scene takes the time to show us in certain terms that the lab assistants are regular people, something we never really got the chance to establish in Oda’s haste to introduce the Vegapunks and setup the horror scenario in the upper lab. Sentomaru is proving increasingly likable in this arc as he lets them all know what they’re up against and gives them the chance to run.

Bit of an odd place for an Ohara refresher though, right? Wouldn’t this have been best done a dozen chapters ago, before we were flashing back to Dragon and Vegapunk picking through the rubble and showing Saul alive? Strange choice.

Well, I said for the last chapter I wanted the Seraphim fights to have gone a little longer and I sure got my wish. Another thing I’ve said in the past is that the Lunarian defence-speed tradeoff was an undercooked mechanic for Zoro’s fight with King on Wano, but I noted at the time that it could be forgiven if longterm it ended up being a primer for understanding future Lunarian battles. It’s back here and… I still think Oda hasn’t quite worked out what he’s doing with this thing. The Lunarians don’t seem to be inconvenienced at all by their flame being on. Sure, they’re faster without it, but they’ve never been so slow they can’t keep up while it’s on. There’s no apparent drawback to keep them from being, as Zoro says here, “basically invincible” all of the time. Oda needs to give the heroes a way to force the mode switch, or the Lunarians a compelling reason to do it, or every fight against these guys is going to end up feeling like a videogame boss doing that one attack that exposes its weakpoint, just for the player’s benefit, even though you know it could have won if it just stopped using that move.

These battles are ongoing though, so we’ll see where Oda takes it.

And the joke the chapter gets its title from did get a laugh out of me. That’s a great little Zoro moment.

It’s interesting how the Seraphim challenge the crew through their perception of what they are rather than their real purpose, even now that the crew know it. Nami hesitates to attack what is visually a child and sends her apologies to Jinbei. Franky reflexively apologises. Even Bonney, earlier in the arc, despite probably knowing better, can’t stand to see damage done to the Pacifista built in her father’s image. We know that these are obediant killing machines wearing cloned flesh. The characters know it too. But appearances are powerful. What was it Atlas said near the start of the arc? “Whether it’s real or not is for you to decide.”

Let’s hope the crew starts making better decisions while they’ve got the chance!

Sanji was pretty active in the first clash with S-Shark and now he gets to fight him solo. I have a weird feeling this might give Sanji a chance to let off some steam over his bounty issue Jinbei. But I actually wouldn’t be a fan of that happening. When it’s Sanji and Zoro that’s an established rapport with a long history of back and forth. But if he’s getting that petty toward Jinbei you know it’s going to be one-sided, and it’s going to feel a lot meaner of him as a result.

It’s very cool seeing the eyebrow switch and a crueler side of him coming out again though. Look at Sanji actually getting some compelling characterisation lately!

The bubble gun weapon that Lilith tries is pretty cool. Long have fans asked why seastone bullets aren’t more of a thing for devil fruit enemies, so a tool like this is a logical thing to bring into the world. And it gives the Seraphim another weakness besides the hit and miss Lunarian fire game.

We aren’t shown explicitly if Franky is fully petrified at the end of this sequence (though Usopp’s dialogue implies that he is). I hope he’s not. There needs to be more between him and Vegapunk and the tech! Plus there’s going to be no one to fight S-Snake if he’s not still kicking. We do get a clue about how the arc will end in Usopp’s petrification though. The crew’s not getting overwhelmed and barely escaping while the Government seizes the island, they have to sort out this enemy situation and get control of the Seraphim back or there’s no more Usopp. The enemy can’t win. They also can’t really stay an enemy, if the authority rules hold.

With all this in mind, the final scene with Shaka seems to build toward the big reveal. He takes quite a brutal hit, even more than Atlas’s face being smashed earlier. But as with Atlas before, and York, and Lilith, there’s no way this sticks. They’ll fix him one way or another.

So the enemy. With every Seraphim accounted for and more likely to use a laser weapon anyway, it has to be the actual bad guy who shot Shaka. Short of a big red herring like Caribou making his move. I’ve been a vocal advocate of a rogue Punk Hazard, but that doesn’t fit with what’s been shown. That theory always had to compete with the requirement that orders be given to the Seraphim in person. I thought the system might use holograms of the Vegapunks to give its orders, with the Seraphim not being sophisticated enough to tell the difference and that theme of perception making reality coming back. The footsteps on the stairs aren’t very hologram-y, and weilding a physical gun is certainly not hologram behaviour.

You could maybe outfit a gun’s handle and trigger with the stuff from Atlas’s gloves that physically interacts with light, but that’s a stretch. And if the answer is that convoluted we were probably never meant to guess it in the first place.

So it’s a human being. Or at least has pulled a physical humanoid body from somewhere. Has to pass for a Vegapunk or someone of higher authority. Has to not be busy or petrified elsewhere right now. The suspect pool is dwindling rapidly and I really don’t have any guess left I would feel confident in.

It’s a real mystery, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes together (hopefully) for the solution next week.

And it’s a good enough mystery that I’m not dwelling too hard on the things in the chapter that don’t sit the best with me, from the Lunarian mechanics still not feeling fleshed out, to S-Snake and people’s reactions to her still giving off a weird vibe, even accepting that her fruit responds to emotions other than lust, or Oda’s weird extreme of horniness in this arc culminating in Nami’s super blatant ass shot in the middle of her fight. It also wouldn’t shock me, now that this chapter’s out, if volume 106 turns out to have 11 chapters, and this is the start of 107. Gives the previous volume a Shanks cliffhanger and lets a new one open on Sentomaru’s little recap.

Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.

Our colour pages this week feel like a return to familiar territory. After a long run of both colour spreads and Jump covers being taken up by Film Red promos or Gear Five, we finally get some current-arc outfits on the cover and a more traditional colour spread that looks great, despite the lack of animals. The magazine clipping angle is a new and novel one that came out a treat. Hopefully Oda’s been building up some more unique ideas like this while he was doing all the promotional ones. Hang on though, is Sanji wearing a Garfield shirt? Honestly I could see the off-brand Garf with the ill-fitting slogn going the distance in a round of Jackbox Tee K.O.

This chapter is either the first of volume 107 or the eleventh of 106, and I could see the argument going either way. The opening page reiterating Cipher Pol’s offer is a good note to bring returning readers in on, but a big Shanks appearance makes for a very strong ending note. We might not know this one for sure until we get the next volume’s pagecount.

I really like the interactions between the crew and Cipher Pol at the start of the chapter. Luffy being too trusting and Lucci being too blunt while their partners berate them is really fun stuff. How did Lucci manage to stay undercover for so many years with that big mouth though? Or does Luffy just put him that on-edge.

I think it’s interesting that neither Cipher Pol nor Shaka contradict Zoro when he says there must be four Seraphim on the loose. Presumably because he’s right and S-Crocodile, S-Bat and S-Flamingo are being used elsewhere. No more surprise extra clones. But it means we have to wait to see the younger Crocodile, which I’m a little curious about, given the theories about him.

S-Bear does some serious damage to the lab here. This probably won’t be a super protracted conflict then, given that basically every move so far has caused noticable and lasting damage to the structure. It won’t last through much more! Although we can see the two small buildings by the entry ramp looking mostly unharmed here, so what did the Seraphim’s opening volley even hit?

Would have been nice to see more of the different fighting styles here working in tandem, but it also makes sense that big double hits from fighters on this level would be too much for even the mighty seraphim. Not that it’s confirmed that these two are down for good, of course…

Luffy’s coat managing to fit around him in Gear Four makes it all the more egregious that it magically disappeared and returned when he fought Lucci in Gear Give down below.

The scene deep within the lab certainly changes some things. I really was a believer that the Vegapunks were vanishing Cipher Pol ships to keep news of their illegal research getting back to the Government for as long as possible, but we see here that the Stella at least had no knowledge of it. Who or whatever the enemy is though, what goal are they trying to achieve by keeping all these captured agents alive? And what is the enemy’s motive anyway, seeing as they’ve attacked Vegapunk, the Strawhats and Government operatives all, as well as drawing the Government’s suspicion in the first place? Bonney hasn’t been attacked since reaching the upper lab, it’s worth noting, and may even have been led to Kuma’s memories by the enemy making a machine beep at the right time. But she was attacked directly by the PX III cop that conveniently chased Luffy’s group to the Ancient Robot before, so I’m not convinced the local machines are on her side either.

And then we get some Shanks scenes, which is truly unexpected so soon after his end of Wano cameo. Hey, how many kids in bars has he mentored over the years? Dude’s been planting seeds all over the place. It’s cool that we’re getting to see Shanks having a larger fleet and more Emperor-appropriate organisation structure as well. One of those ships seems to have a Bepo figurehead. Distant relatives maybe? The spread of the Red Haired Crew and the giants is one of the cleanest we’ve had in years. I don’t mind busy pages, but it is nice to see a big picture getting to breathe a little more. And ah, the nostalgia of Dory, Broggy, Oimo and Kashii all being there!

Kid’s showing a lot of confidence challenging Shanks directly with his whole fleet there and the giants willing to back him up. I would probably not bet in his favour.

I’m hoping after the break we’re due for at least one solid clue toward the enemy’s identity or nature, but I’m not holding my breath for an update on Shanks and Kid. Whatever Oda puts in the chapter, if he keeps cooking with the same ingredients he’s been using for the last couple, I’m gonna be happy.

Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.

I can’t say I saw this one coming at all. I’ve been setting myself up for a siege arc, first trying to defend the beaches from Borsalino’s fleet, the struggling to hold the lab as the Pacifista and Seraphim are turned by Saturn. Instead, all of those battle lines are being used to pen the crew in for an Among Us style manhunt in the upper lab, which I think is a tremendously fun direction to take it.

The choice to silhouette the Five Elders on the cover is definitely worth taking note of. Is it to hide that they haven’t aged in the 20ish years since this flashback? Or does it instead mislead us from the fact that they have.

Early on in the chapter we get a map for the lab, and there’s nothing I love more than a map. Already what I think is interesting is tracking the damage to the structure over the past few chapters. Look at how most of the Seraphim aim low in the first attack,

presumably destroying the two small structures on either side of the entrance ramp,

but the top of Tower C is smashed open in the next chapter.

Despite the first thought that they took another shot between chapters or Oda retconned what he wanted damaged, I think the falling section of roof slashed by S-Hawk did that. (It gets hit again later when S-Shark tries to shoot Edison, but only in the already-damaged area, so there’s no cosmetic change.) And you can see that Tower B remains untouched until the explosion around Pythagoras last week, which has now blow it open.

I can’t stress enough how great it is when these details are kept track of.

I also think the floors are pretty big. See how many levels of walkways are included in “floor 3” in this establishing shot, and the scale of the crew, the entry ramp and the building as a whole.

So Usopp, Franky and Lilith are probably going to still be considered on floor 3 when we get back to them next week. Probably. It wouldn’t be unlike Oda to play fast and loose with proportions.

While light on story progression, there’s a lot of fun character moments in the different groups wandering around. Nami and Robin were great. Sanji sure is being Sanji, but at least he’s decent enough to remember she was at his wedding. Maybe this is Jojo fan levels of reference reaching, but something about a desperate guy getting called a dog by an icy government woman makes me think Chainsaw Man.

I feel like it’s a missed opportunity that Franky seems to be actually looking for Vegapunk instead of getting distracted by the tech like everyone else. Maybe he just wants it all direct from the source instead.

Pythagoras lives. No one is shocked.

York gives me something I’ve been wanting since that first awful scene with the Cipher Pol goons – an unambiguously innocent interaction with S-Snake that still leads to petrification. I look forward to the SBS where Oda outlines the new emotional triggers now that it’s not just “impure thoughts” like Hancock originally explained.

There are some definite mysteries afoot with the Seraphim turn though. We’re running short on Vegaclones that haven’t either been attacked or been in the control room at every opportunity to take control. Atlas was absent for a long time for her repairs, but one of the others probably would have said something if they took longer than they should have. And interestingly, S-Snake and S-Bear attacked Lucci and Kaku, so the enemy here isn’t in league with the government. The theory I like most is Punk Records itself achieving some kind of sentience and entering a HAL 9000/Skynet phase. It’s a fun sci fi trope, and it solves the problem of what happens to Punk Records after Vegapunk flees.

While it’s not a traditional cliffhanger, I can see Oda leaving volume readers on the question of whether Lucci and Kaku really do get freed to fight alongside the Strawhats. I hope it happens. It’s a great setup likely to lead to bickering and competition and no one being too careful about throwing attacks near their so-called allies. Next chapter could be a really fun one, especially after this one proved surprisingly satisfying for just 15 pages.

I hope we’re due a normal colour spread though. If you go over the last few lots of colour pages we’ve got… a Film Red promo, a Film Red promo, an update of an old poster, a Film Red promo, the Four Emperors, and an Odyssey promo. Give me the crew playing with animals in a whimsical new setting, Oda, please! It’s been like ten months!

Find a video version of this review on YouTube here.

Okay, we’re back, and despite the hype of a long-awaited Vivi appearance, this feels like a slow, transitional chapter with a lot of plot threads and mysteries building, but very little in the way of real answers.

It’s good seeing Sentomaru has a little more to do in this arc than be just a one-scene callback, though the origins of the PX-III line’s bubble shields certainly raise some questions. And assuming the original Pacifistas from back then are the MK. I versions, what did the MK. II ones look like? We also definitely need some clarification about whether these Pacifista follow the same authority hierarchy as the Seraphim. Because with 50 of them on the loose, Saturn is going to make this a pretty terrible situation for the crew when he arrives, as many of us have already predicted.

I’m glad Oda’s taking the time to show how much even a brief activation of Gear Five wore Luffy out, even knowing that this effect is probably going to be applied selectively from this point on (and even if we’re pretending he’s just puffed out from running around on foot).

Vegapunk does seem to have well and truly vanished from the lab. Before the break I thought the narration might have just meant the larger group lost track of him while he was with Bonney, but he’s nowhere to be seen when she comes out of the memory bubble. Might be that whoever hijacked the Frontier Dome picked him up. Contrary to most speculation, I don’t think the insider here is going to be one of the Vegapunks. On the assumption that the enemy behind the walls has grabbed the Stella, most of the clones are accounted for during the window of opportunity. Shaka was in the control room with the Strawhats, Atlas was being repaired and Edison and Lilith were rushing to the front to hijack the Seraphim. I think we can also rule Pythagoras out, seeing him attacked at the end of this chapter. York doesn’t have an alibi, but I’m just not convinced.

(Although I will admit Caribou is a compelling alternative culprit for Vegapunk’s disappearance…)

Speaking of Atlas and Pythagoras, I think the former’s quick repair job is reason enough not to worry for the latter. No matter how robotic these clones are and how rough the government gets with them, Oda seems them as human enough to preserve in his usual fashion.

Zoro and Brook getting proper Egghead outfits is nice. The helmet on Brook is fun, but that jacket is a great fit on Zoro. Stussy’s change just serves to reiterate the difference in how male and female character designs are being treated in this arc though. It’s not even a unique pervy outfit, she’s basically just wearing the same thing as Nami. What a choice, for the jacket to be cropped up to her pits so it doesn’t obscure any of that vital sideboob. Her original outfit was a much better design in my opinion.

All that grumbling aside, the panel after the outfit reveals is one of the best in the arc. Because it’s not just a panel, it’s a whole scene playing out in one frame, with something like sixteen characters all doing different things and playing off one another. The compositional awareness to spread so many characters across the fore, middle and background, to lead the eye across the page so that the interactions make sense and play out properly, is just stunning. It’s the kind of spread few artists are willing to try on this scale, and fewer still could actually pull off on the same level.

Loved seeing the crew convincing Zoro to stay behind. Great character interactions. Good laugh.

The start of Kuma’s memories doesn’t offer much more than tantalising hints. I feel like the implication is that he was a slave once. Can’t wait to see how Oda reconciles that with his present day reputation. And the tragedy of ending up right back where he started, assuming that is the case. The cutaway to the Redline seems to suggest that whatever his mission is there, it relates more directly to his past than it does anything that happened at the Reverie or with the Revolutionaries.

A Morgans-Wapol-Vivi teamup was not on my One Piece bingo card, but I’m a fan of it happening. I hope we get to see the circumstances that led to Wapol of all people taking Vivi in instead of handing her over to climb his own ladder. Following the pattern of the last few outside-Egghead cutaways, I’m not expecting any follow-up on this in the near future. But it’s great setup, and good just to know Vivi’s alright.

(The newsgirl with the crush on her in the back is a cute touch too!)

With the next chapter likely to be the end of volume 106, I’m hoping for a big reveal to pay off all this slow building. Maybe a just shift into the Egghead endgame with Borsalino and Saturn’s arrival. And if we’re really lucky we might even get the volume 105 cover alongside the chapter (or its spoilers) and potentially see some canon colours for the island or the new outfits.

Egghead definitely seems to be heating up, but the direction of the arc remains hard to parse with the state of advantage between the Strawhats/Vegapunks and Cipher Pol swinging like a pendulum from chapter to chapter. Will there be an escape sequence? Will we stand and fight against Borsalino’s fleet? Will Cipher Pol slip their bonds and strike back, turning the advantage once again? It’s exciting to feel like we have so little idea of where the story is going.

Vegapunk’s invention on the cover is certainly an interesting way to reference the famous Flower Power moment of the Vietnam War protests, although it’s a little hard to figure from his imagination what exactly the purpose of creating it was meant to be. Ending wars by having it grow in both sides’ munitions, spoiling them as shown? Sounds a little more like a weapon of sabotage to me. And what’s with his expression while he accepts the Mobel Prize?

I love seeing Stussy weaponising seastone in such a clever way – when you think about how effective it is on Devil Fruit users in such small, concealable amounts, it’s almost strange we haven’t seen more moves like this. But given that assassination and covert ops are a big part of the Cipher Pol playbook, it makes sense for it to be showing up here. People have complained that CP9 was too weak before the timeskip, but their job wouldn’t be to get into straight up fights like they had with the Strawhats. Attacking unaware targets from the shadows like Stussy does here shows how the right tools and intel can level the playing field.

Her not being able to override Lucci’s orders even after he’s knocked out though, that feels like it was decided just to get the clash between Zoro and S-Hawk happening. I’m very curious and concerned about what Zoro said about the Seraphim’s humanity though. Mihawk has always seemed relatively chill to me, but is Zoro here hinting at a darkness we haven’t been shown yet?

Oh? Stussy’s been invited too now? Yeah, somehow I don’t think the last stage of this arc will let Vegapunk’s plans come to fruition that easily. I could always be wrong, but it’s going to be a storytelling chore to manage such a huge entourage for the main crew if that just gets to happen with no complications.

Vegapunk vanishing in a way that earns narration boxes is a bit of a shock though. That makes it feel like a huge event, but I wonder if maybe Oda just felt short on page space and decided this was easier than showing Luffy and Chopper checking a dozen places and concluding they can’t find him while he’s just off in a side room dealing with Bonney. Just a strange plot point to throw up so suddenly…

The Sphinx Island cutaway once again shows the cruelty of the World Government to non-member states while bringing Weevil into the fold for real. I appreciate Oda taking the time to set the Miss Buckin/Buckingham Stussy connection in stone so soon, after I was complaining about people still getting the name wrong last week. Can’t miss it now, no matter how casual you are. All these global events being built up though. Sabo’s desperate situation. Law’s fight with Blackbeard. Kid at Elbaf. Kuma climbing the Redline. Garp rescuing Koby. And now a reason for Marco to try and save Weevil. I don’t think we’re going to see all of this play out in parallel and am adjusting my expectations accordingly. More likely it’ll be like the events built up in the intermissions of Wano, left hanging for a long time to be resolved all at once in the Egghead post-arc period.

But the big news is obviously an Elder making his move in the real world. Whatever comes of this will go a long way to show us how the final battle will be. Are the Elders fighters in their own right, or just figures of authority. I’ve always figured the latter, I think it makes a lot more sense, but I’m open to being proven wrong. He’s great theory fodder either way – all the stuff flying around assigning planet names to the others, keeping in mind the Ancient Weapons and Luffy as the Sun God. Imu as the moon, with their space laser from earlier, if you asked me to guess right now. But I’m not going to be too quick to assume anything deeper about their roles or personalities or abilities based just on possible planet names. Like the lackadaisical but ultimately meaningless Flower Power homage on the cover, Oda will sometimes reference things just for the imagery, just to make something in his story share a name with something he thinks is cool in real life. Not because he’s trying to recreate the mythology behind the gods we named the planets for 1:1. Just worth keeping in mind as the theorycrafting really picks up over the break week.

I’ve never been a big believer in the theories that the pre and post timeskips will mirror each other too exactly. I think you have to really stretch to make it work beyond superficial stuff like the first saga having fishmen in it, the second one being about saving a kingdom (news flash, most arcs are about saving a kingdom!) and so on. But I’d put down reasonable odds at this stage of Egghead concluding with Luffy kicking off a global war by clocking one of the Five Elders in an escalation of Sabaody. I’ll take the loss up front if it comes to that. Things aren’t always the same as other things, but sometimes they are.

It hurts to have another break after such a strong chapter, and so soon after the new years’ off period, but Oda’s health and energy levels matter. At least we’ve got a lot to chew on while we’re waiting.

This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread.

The synergy between the cover story and the main chapter is something I’m really enjoying lately. There’s a great contrast between the scientists working to mass-produce weapons of slaughter on the cover and Vegapunk’s commentary calling it the “lab for peace” on the next page. No wonder that group couldn’t stick together. You do have to wonder how the anime is going to handle the cover stories getting more and more important with their current choice to ignore them entirely.

I think we’re being set up for some tragedy surrounding Bonney and Kuma soon. While Oda jumps aroudn from scene to scene a lot, he doesn’t usually play two in parallel the way he does this week, cutting back and forth between them so rapidly. Bonney is desperately doing what she thinks will save her father, all the while his real body attempts its doomed ascent of the Redline, only to get torn down by the Marines. Kuma’s tough, but he’s obviously not functioning at 100% here. I’m not betting in favour of his plan. And then we’re set up to see Bonney absorbing his memories and seeing the truth – the reasons he made a deal with the Government after they made him out to be a tyrant, why he abandoned Bonney, and what he’s ultimately aiming for – right before his main body is either detained or outright destroyed.

Getting abstract with the Paw Paw Fruit’s powers has some great storytelling potential. My first thoughts were of “feeding” devil fruits to inanimate objects – could the ability factor be pushed between the fruit or a user and the item? – and of a way to show the Void Century and Ancient Kingdom directly – did an ancient user of the fruit leave their own memories behind to be found?

The traitor/ally mystery deepens with Shaka claiming the dome only malfunctioned and the suggestion that it was Stussy that Vegapunk called into action. While she obviously has some insider knowledge of Egghead systems, we can see her with the Cipher Pol group at the moment the dome goes down, looking as surprised as anyone, so we can be pretty sure she didn’t do it. There might be more here, but honestly I could still see Oda saying it genuinely was a malfunction that happened just to keep the plot moving.

Sneaking the Seraphim up is a little cheap either way though. There’s not technically a contraction in it, we don’t see them down the bottom after the dome flickers, but there still should have been some suggestion they were moving in one of the wider shots of Lucci’s group flying up.

Lilith and Edison’s plan to regain control of the Seraphim feels reckless to me. After what happened to Atlas, I don’t like their odds. But it’s still so hard to say what direction this arc is going to go for its climax, I wouldn’t want to commit to any one answer on the Seraphim’s role.

Okay, Kaku is awakened. Sure, why not. We definitely need to learn a bit mroe about what awakening is and what benefits it actually grants in the near future, especially for Zoans. The choice to give them flaming koma-hair and wreaths of black fire is probably going to come around to bite Oda. He got away with leaving haki a mystery then acting like everyone always had it because it was invisible to those not in the know. The reader could fill in the blanks of who they thought it made the most sense to have or not have it before the timeskip. Awakening does not allow the same benefit of the doubt. Adding a visual cue quashes theories that it’s just a strength boost and the Beasts Pirates were using theirs without talking about it. The wreath of flames/smoke muddies things as well. Oda’s used them too often as a plain signifier of power. Luffy wasn’t Awakened yet for Gear Four, but had a smoke one for Boundman and a flaming one for Snakeman. Enel and Caesar, off the top of my head, used them in their elemental forms. Plus Paramythia Awakenings not having any visual of their own that we know of. It’s all just a bit messy in my opinion.

The Stussy reveal is cool though. I’ve thought for years that Patrick Redfield’s Vampire Model Bat Bat Fruit was too fun an idea to stay locked away in the non-canon videogame world. She’s been a fascinating presence since her Whole Cake Island introduction, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s done with her now that there’s an even more fascinating clone backstory attached.

The amount of people still tying Bakkin in comment sections across the internet when the context here makes it crystal clear that the name was meant to be Buckin all along (with the official release even getting it right from the start) is a show that most fans care more about which translation they saw first than they actually do about accuracy. I think if there’d been even one early scan that went with Zolo over Zoro we wouldn’t be able to get people to stop saying it today.

Anyway, really great chapter to come back on after the break with some cool reveals that set up even cooler ones in the coming weeks. Hopefully we get a few chapters in a row now that the new year break season’s over.

This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread.

While the colour spread is nice-looking artistically (the red and white is a great palette) I can’t be alone in feeling a tad Uta’d out. Three of the last five colour pages have featured her or Film Red, not even thinking of Jump covers. I vaguely recall a report of Oda saying he didn’t want to milk the movie by having its theatrical run last forever, which seems a little at odds with all of this here.

Kuma’s arrival at Red Port is an unexpected development, although evidence suggests it might not have been his intended destination. The explosion and the lack of the paw-shaped crater that accompanied Luffy’s landing make this seem like a miscalculation in his power’s use. But that brings us back to the question from when he first teleported: where is he going? Egghead would make sense, but the Red Port would mean he was flying in the wrong direction, right? Maybe he was aiming for the top of the Red Line instead. But for vengeance or because his old masters’ programming was too strong, I can’t say.

With Atlas already down and Shaka saying the satellites’ duty is to defend the main body, I wonder if we’re going to see more of the clones get hurt in the escape. There’s definitely a sense that they’re being built up to be expendable despite their individualities, but I just don’t see Oda following all the way through on that kind of idea. I also don’t see him actually letting the whole pack of them come on the Sunny too. Someone has to stay behind to do whatever needs to be done to keep Punk Records functioning, so there’s probably a third solution we aren’t seeing yet.

I’m not sure what to make of the switching off of the Frontier Dome. People are being quick to say there’s a traitor in the lab, but it stays off just long enough for Lucci, Kaku and Stussy to separate themselves from the larger Cipher Pol force, and the powerful Seraphim. The mysterious stranger Vegapunk called for help might be trying to divide and conquer.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by a Kid check-in after we got Law so soon, but I definitely didn’t expect him to be given Elbaf. You could maybe do the things that need to be done with Elbaf, Loki and the giants story-wise with them being led into the final battle by a third party, but I’d still rather see the Strawhats actually visit the place. But nothing about the post-Egghead era is certain at that point. Garp and Helmeppo setting up a Koby rescue mission to Fullalead from such a nearby base could be a compelling reason for Luffy to go that way, and there’s a high likelihood that Pudding and Law will also end up there. Meanwhile Vegapunk’s research and Saul’s presence point to Elbaf and Kid. It’s probably not the right answer to split the crew again, but there’s multiple flashpoints popping up and I want to see Luffy involved in all of them!

Egghead will probably start building to a conclusion soon, what with Bonney and Vegapunk set to have their actual confrontation about Kuma and Borsalino’s fleet inbound. This (probably) won’t be a big one. But the next stage for One Piece, be it Fullalead, Elbaf or a third location, has so much exciting potential. Looking forward to seeing the final saga continue to escalate over the new year!