Captain M Entertainment

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!

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

This chapter was a pretty good note to end the year on, but I’m gonna keep this brief because I’m pretty wiped from a weekend of Christmas events.

Mads are looking cool on the cover. Something about Vegapunk trying to be tough with that ridiculous head and his eyebrows sitting so high just gets me. I guess Caesar’s silhouette lacking horns a couple of chapters ago was a mistake then? The woman has to be Stussy, she knows too much about Vegapunk’s defenses for the resemblance to be a coincidence.

The big set piece of the chapter’s first half feels good in concept, but the execution isn’t quite there to make leaving Sentomaru behind feel believable. Was it really that tight that all of Luffy’s new powers couldn’t pick the guy up and move him fast. A better sense of the space and timing for the rocket departure point, or a last minute play from Cipher Pol he could sacrifice himself to disrupt, or a moment when we see he and Atlas won’t fit and he says to save the Vegagirl instead might have helped. The elements of the ‘why’ are there, but it could have been just a little clearer. But we can forgive this one being done quickly to set up the back half of the arc, where a safe retreat has cost the heroes the strongest weapons on the island and the Strawhats and Vegapunks have cornered themselves for a siege in the upper lab while Navy reinforcements bear down for their attackers. It’s a scenario One Piece hasn’t really done before, and though I’m not expecting a huge, complicated battle from Egghead, I’m curious to see how it plays out.

I’m not a huge fan of the Love Love power still working so well on the child S-Snake. Yuck. I would say we need a soft retcon of what kind of emotional response can trigger the fruit’s power, but the faces of the government agents don’t leave much up for interpretation. Unless that group was Cipher Pol’s designated gulag squad of degenerates, there should be no reason that many grown men in one place should have that kind of reaction to a literal child.

On the flip side, the talk about artificial devil fruits is fascinating, and the confirmation of abilities being taken down from Impel Down inmates is huge for the kinds of battles we can expect in the final stage of the story. The green blood is especially interesting, since it seems like it can be used to transfer powers without the consumption of a fruit, perhaps even temporarily.

I also loved how Luffy fought with Gear Five this week. Coming off the ropes after turning the environment to rubber was always anticipated for his awakening, but the big funhouse head is a surprise. Manifesting goggles puts a new light on the talk of imagination becoming reality though. I’m gonna wait and see until Oda elaborates or puts some firmer limits on that one.

Vegapunk mentioning near the end that he never intended to betray the World Government, despite his ties to dragon, is a tad disappointing. Be a bit bolder, old man! Help your mate tear down the world’s power structures and set up new ones where the sciences get adequate funding instead of arming fascists because they let you do your experiments!

A real fight with Borsalino isn’t off the table this far into the series, which is amazing to me. How far we’ve come! And I suppose the call to send all available battleships to Egghead is how the new and old faces hanging out at G-14 are going to be entering the arc for real. Helmeppo and Tashigi seeing Luffy and Zoro again should be interesting, especially if the bomb about Koby’s status is dropped.

Merry Christmas all, Happy New Year, and I’ll see you all after the breaks for what’s feeling like a it’ll be a great 2023 for One Piece.

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

Oh wow, Luffy and Lucci back in the ring after 16 years, how far we’ve come. The year’s shaping up to end on a really high note with this one. Even the cover story’s worthy of note this time. I love seeing unexpected connections like Du Feld funding the original MADS, it makes it feel like there’s always more going on below the surface than we can know. The Lu Feld name is another example of Oda not keeping track of his romanisations though. It was clearly spelled out as Du back in Whole Cake Island. Unless Feld got married and took his partner’s name since the MADS days lol.

I can’t take credit for it, but I saw a reddit post comparing the MADS ship here to the abandoned ship Franky found right before cyborging himself. They’re not an exact match, but it would an extremely cool way to tie things together and put a bow on Franky’s relationship with the scientist.

Kaku being wary of sparking a war against Luffy is a fantastic inversion of the place the crew was at back in Ennies Lobby. From it being a massive deal that a small fry crew would declare war on the World Government to the World Government acting wary of sparking an open war with Luffy. Our boy’s gotten so big! I like the feeling of progression that comes with Luffy now having so much influence that his actions and the fights he picks have global ramifications, whether he chooses to care about those consequences or not. There’s a final war coming, and any move could be the one that sparks it.

So, what happened to Luffy’s outfit when he started fight Lucci? Would have been cool to see a whitened version of his new Egghead one, but I guess he ditched it during the cutaway to New Marineford? Except in chapter 1063 the clothing machines allegedly undress the user to get the new fit on. Or do only the women get that treatment, Oda? You’d think with all the flipping around during the fight with the Kuma cop we’d have seen a glimpse of the shorts under Luffy’s coat if they were still there…

While there is some debate about whether Luffy felt like he needed Gear Five for this bout or if he just does it for the feeling of freedom, I’d like to put forward that he was just mad about Atlas, at least at first. We’ve already seen him half-shift just from being frustrated at holographic food. The euphoria of Nika’s freedom could have taken over after the transformation. There’s so much we don’t know about how this form works yet.

Lucci’s awakening is a great design on its own, but I can’t help feeling the rules about awakenings, especially Zoan ones, are only getting muddier. How far do we read into the wreath of smoke as a sign of awakening, considering Enel and all Gear Four forms also had it? Lucci’s hair is also standing up and burning like Wano’s koma-animals, but Luffy had that back in Snakeman form, and Kaido and Momo’s dragon forms also both have it. I don’t think there’s any one visual trait we can say for sure is meant to indicate an awakened form, particularly when the ones from Impel Down have so little in common with the recent ones (even accounting for Oda changing his awakening plans over time). Well, I’m sure it’ll all get sorted out eventually.

And the Devil Fruit lore just keeps on rolling with the reveal of their possible origin – an manifestation of people’s desire for change. This remains pretty vague, I’m sure we’re gonig to learn a bit more about this later on, but I think it’s the right way to go, making them something akin to a natural phenomenon. We can see an echo of the Ancient Kingdom’s technology on Egghead, and while it’s sci fi even by real world standards, it doesn’t seem able to recreate the sheer mysticism of Devil Fruit operations. Editing genes to give one person a superpower is fine, but things like Sugar’s ability to erase the memories of people she’s never even seen through a target’s connection to them is literally reality-breaking. That’s not an effect that can be scienced up. While superhuman feats and moments of heightened reality are abundant in One Piece, Devil Fruits remain the lone, one-time exception to its world’s absence of magic. Having them be literally pulled into being against the resistance of regular nature by the collective will of humanity – like any one of the many stories where gods are brought into existence and empowered by man’s belief in them – is a fine evolution of the mythology.

My big lingering questions are when did they start appearing (Toki tells us it must be pre-Void Century) and have any new fruits been brought into being since that first batch. And could a fruit – particularly a mythical zoan – have its powers altered if the lore surrounding the creature changed? On that line of thinking, did Sasaki, King and Queen’s dinosaur powers work the way they did not because it was how dinosaurs hunted, but because this world’s paleontologists are genuinely bad enough that they believed that? Seems to line up with Page One’s tail being retconned purely because the science changed.

So yeah, I’m definitely excited to see were Oda’s going with this.

But I do agree with what’s been said already, that the Nika reveal should have been saved for this scene instead of the Kaido fight. Simply doing the revival and Joyboy comment from Zunesha, then leaving the new form and powers a mystery for a few months before dropping the bomb here I think would have been really effective. Oh well, too late to change that now.

I enjoy the throwback to Luffy and Lucci’s first fight. The paneling certainly isn’t as clean as the first time around, but the context is also different. A major fight against an overwhelming enemy back then is now an enjoyable skirmish intercut with exposition. It would be nice if there was enough room in the chapter to lay it out like the original, but this isn’t a big enough fight to need to breathe the same way.

The arrival of Sentomaru and the Seraphim seems to set up an escalation of the Cipher Pol conflict. We can assume the Strawhats have grown at a much more exponential rate than the agents they fought the first time around, but Oda went out of his way to show us earlier that a single Seraphim is a considerable threat. The authority hierarchy and rule that the commander needs to be present in person set things up for chaos. But… even with Atlas down, there are still six people on the islands who can override Cipher Pol’s orders, plus the possiblity of stealing or damaging the authority chip. A single Vegaclone with a Strawhat bodyguard who knows Cipher Pol will target them is all it will take to turn the tides here, which makes me think even a Seraphim rampage isn’t the final battle or ticking clock for this arc. Or at the very least, Oda’s going to have to rule out a few more solutions first.

Jinbe seems to confirm that S-Shark has the same skin as the others. Lunarian tan overrides Fishman blue. Seems obvious, but I like having confirmation.

Sentomaru’s defeat is the only part of this chapter that doesn’t do it for me. Oh, it’s brutal and shocking and sets up the Seraphim trouble, but after Sabaody, I wanted to see a bit more of how the “most defensive man in the world” stands up to the series’ current skill ceiling. Maybe Oda’s saying Lucci’s just that good, but I would still have liked to see the axe guy’s skills acknowledged first. Maybe there’s more coming, but I can’t help feeling like there just weren’t enough pages in the chapter for him.

To get back on a positive note to out, there was also a log of great humour in this chapter. Luffy getting caught out by Lucci saying Egghead is Government territory was great, and I love Chopper deferring Atlas’s treatment to Franky. Luffy’s Gear Five battle was just as fun and inventive as the first time. You can tell Oda loves drawing this thing.

So we’ve got one chapter left to go this year, if I’m understanding the schedule right, which should be close to the halfway point of volume 106. 2022 is poised to go out on a high note, and if the Egghead momentum keeps going, 2023 could be one of the series’ best years to date.