Captain M Entertainment

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

So it wasn’t quite over yet. There’s a fun irony in the cover showing Big Mom kicking ass while she takes her ultimate loss in the chapter, but the cover’ description of her as “a creature beyond the power of science” really drives home the strength she’s showed hanging on this long. I said last week it felt a little like Damned Punk was framed as a finishing move but didn’t quite have the visual impact of one. Maybe I should have guessed there would be one last gasp from Big Mom, but even then, I probably would have limited it to the opening pages, not most of the chapter. Luckily, the events of this chapter feel a lot more in line with what I expected for the fall of an Emperor than the last one.

I really enjoy Kid and Law’s defiance of Big Mom’s ability. Jinbe did it better, but there’s still some great power in their certainty that she’s on her last legs.

The spread of Law cutting Misery in two while Kid blasts Big Mom in the background is absolutely going down as one of Wano’s absolute best pages. I love how Oda managed to frame it so both Kid and Law are in the spotlight, with the two halves of the homie filling the negative space in a memorable way. Absolutely incredible work. I really enjoy Law’s nod to Corazon as well – even if it only further emphasises how random his skillset really is.

I don’t know if I’m totally on board with the logic of Yamato being able to keep the bomb Big Mom touches from setting off the rest of the armoury at point blank range, especially considering how much damage we see it do to the island. But then again, I don’t know if there would have been a more graceful way to blast open the side of the island to let Yamato and Momo talk at the end. The backgrounds showing the whole armoury being iced over certainly helps Oda’s case, but it’s still a lot to justify. It also seems that Kazenbo is ultimately destroyed by one of the bombs it was sent to detonate. The dying scheme of Kanjuro was very, very literally hoist by its own petard. Good job, Oda.

Zoro, concerningly, has been rolled over and left a lot more bloody than when we last saw him. King didn’t really land any hits with his sword on Zoro’s body, so the blood isn’t leftover from the fight. Whatever was looming over him before can’t have been just an illusion or hallucination – it really slashed him! We also see Book still trapped in the castle with Robin, ruling the best guess for friendly reaper. So there’s more to this reaper thing than I thought…

Orochi and Fukurokuju are going forward on the course they’ve had for like 20 chapters now. Of course Raizo endures the fire while Fuku falls. I’m ready for these plot threads to be over in the next chapter.

It speaks to the kind of threat Oda wants these bombs to be that a single one blows out the side of the island, and seemingly another lone bomb creates the huge explosion at the end. Funny that the one we see dropping after her is more of a traditional-looking warhead with no ice on it than the oversized cherry bombs that were front and centre beforehand. Really raises some questions about that nuclear warning sign we saw a couple of chapters back. However, with just a single bomb (and potentially a crate or two of ordinance) dropping, there remains a question about how much of Onigashima’s payload remains in the armoury. Would it feel cheap to still use the bombs to finish off Kaido or destroy the island (as has been speculated) after all of this? Given that Big Mom could just punch through it and trigger an explosion, is the layer of ice enough to keep everyone safe when the island falls? It’s framed like it’s done, but these issues remain.

That said, I do really like the blast as a finishing point for Big Mom. What else to cement the fall of one of the series’ toughest characters than an explosion meant to destroy a whole city? :ninja: But really, it’s big, bombastic and visually memorable, just like you’d want from the last moments of such a major antagonist. Interesting that the it remained silenced though. Oda usually wants the locals to see Luffy overcome the big bad, and the sound of the blast would have been the perfect way to get them looking properly at Onigashima. There’s obviously some part of the bigger picture I’m not seeing yet.

She’s probably not dead, considering this is Oda. I’m definitely not the first to guess it, but a permanent O-Lin conversion and being left behind in Wano feels like a reasonable way to handle her obvious perchant for revenge. It’s hard to say how to break the news to her crew though, or Perospero, if he recovers from his wounds enough to start asking questions. Although, if O-Lin remains and Pero is detained in Wano, it could open the way to Katakuri taking the helm of Big Mom’s empire, which could be very interesting in the long run.

Big Mom’s final lines truly speak to the overgrown and entitled child she is. It reminds me of her exchange with Luffy in chapter 847, when she complained that if only Lola had gotten married she would be King of the Pirates by now, and Luffy tells her off for pushing her unfinished business onto Lola. Now it’s somehow Roger’s fault for setting off a Rube Goldberg Machine of piracy leading to the two Supernovas facing her. His fault for not just giving her the answers she wanted to know right away. She wants her gratification immediately, but can’t let go of other people’s differing goals and opinions. Instead of finding new ways to try again at her dream, she rests on her laurels and rambles bitterly about what could have been if everyone had just danced to her tune.

All Roger did was carry on the will he inherited of Joyboy and whoever else hid the One Piece. Law and Kid fought for their own dreams. Lola put her own happiness first. And, as Luffy observed, Big Mom failed to become King of the Pirates.

Odd wording – “some of it’s in this country too.” No doubt we’re finding big clues in Wano after the battle, but a piece of the actual treasure? We know for sure Roger himself never returned to Wano after getting the treasure (he left the crew before they dropped Oden off in chapter 968), but was Oden allowed to keep something he needed to open the borders? Foreshadowing for a big reveal, or just Big Mom being dramatic?

You can feel the breath that everyone on the Performance Floor had been holding get let out in the page after the explosion. After years of fighting, the main stage of Onigashima finally appears clear of enemies, and there’s a moment to celebrate as Kaido’s castle burns down in the background. phew!

Oda keeps setting us up for big reveals in the post-arc lore dump. He’s just teasing us at this point. Mystery fruits? Zunesha’s crime? Said crime being comitted at the end of the Void Century? Joyboy? Nika? I can’t wait. There’s not really that much new in this last conversation. It’s more of a reminder of what’s coming. I’m not shocked that we’re connecting Zunesha to the Void Century. When we first learned it was over a thousand years old, no one who was paying attention expected anything less. The Lode Ponegyph guarded on its back for generations hinted hard at a Joyboy connection already. But to call it Joyboy’s crew… Hmm…

So let’s look at the Onigashima to-do list.

Kaido
B̶i̶g̶ ̶M̶o̶m̶
Orochi
Fukurokuju
CP0
K̶a̶z̶e̶n̶b̶o̶
Apoo
Inbi
Grim Reaper
D̶i̶s̶a̶r̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶m̶b̶s̶
Evacuate the castle/island

Fuku isn’t going to take a full chapter to deal with. I imagine he’s going down basically the next second he’s onscreen. Big Mom was the last real threat and final truely plot-important remainder before this chapter. The way is clear to focus on Kaido, with small asides to wrap up those final hanging threads. I don’t think there’s quite enough room left in volume 103 to wrap everything up and give Kaido a satisfying defeat, but we could definitely see it ending in the front half of the next volume. That’s a satisfying point to leave us on before break week, knowing that shit is going to absolutely get in gear for the next set of chapters.

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

Welp, it seems like he’s gone and done it. Oda’s finally let an Emperor fall at the hands of the up and coming generation. Big Mom’s defeat isn’t totally confirmed, but it’s hard to deny how this chapter makes it look. We start with a gorgeously adventurous colour spread, ad then it’s right into proving wrong all the musing I jotted down last week about saving this moment to be more or less simultaneous with Luffy’s conquest of Kaido. It’s going to be interesting to see how it feels on a reread to have Big Mom, first put into the seat of a main antagonist 20 volumes ago, five and a half years ago in real time, to be brought down in the first half of a volume, and with Orochi, Fukurokuju, Kazenbo, Apoo, Inbi and CP0 still to wrap up. I’ll be honest, this final hit feels, as a gut reaction, too similar to how King and Queen’s fights were structured and concluded, like she’s just another executive. But it may be the reaction of the world, or even just the people on Onigashima in the next chapter, that sells the gravitas of an Emperor’s defeat.

In the chapter’s one cutaway from the main fight, Momo is almost definitely hearing Zunesha talk to him. Maybe the big elephant still needs his permission to attack the ships off the coast after all, which could explain why it didn’t act against the Big Mom pirates on either of their attempts to get in. It also looks like Momo’s moved Onigashima decently far back from the capital by this stage. Even if the bombs were to go off, it probably wouldn’t cause the kind of mass slaughter threatened previously. That is to say, the island could drop at almost any point from now on.

The first panel on the Performance Floor illustrates exactly what I wrote last week about Corna Dio (does anyone else keep writing Corona Dio for some reason?) needing a better establishing shot. It’s so much larger than I’ve been picturing it! It’s also cool that we can see the castle burning in the background here.

The banter between Kid and Law is a highlight here, as is Big Mom using her power on the inside of her own body to heal broken bones. It makes me wish we could have gone a little deeper into the possibilities and limits of this kind of skill. You have to wonder if these soul buffs did any heavy lifting to keep her body operational and her children safe, considering she will have been pregnant for most of her pirating career.

Is Misery meant to be purely an attack with a life of its own or some unholy fusion of Hera and Prometheus? She’s got Hera’s face but there are a lot of flame effects coming off her body. Either way she looks pretty damn cool.

You know what’s some really cool continuity? The section of building Law uses to hit Big Mom from above is the top of the tower cut by Zoro when he first showed up for the raid all the way back in chapter 980. It all comes full circle.

I actually want to share some screencaps to illustrate this point because I do really enjoy that it happened.

Here’s the towerfall in chapter 980:

The severed tower persists as a background element in a lot of Performance Floor shots over the next nearly-60 chapters, but here’s one good overhead shot from chapter 1006:

And here we are with it breaking over Big Mom’s head. Even the underside of it matches the chapter 1006 overhead shot!

It’s this kind of attention to detail that makes me absolutely fall in love with a story.

Although in looking all this up I found a small continuity goof in chapter 1030 when Kid uses his Awakening on Big Mom – that tower is shown at its full height, even though Oda’s been really consistent with the damage on it previously. Maybe he thought no one would notice if he did it to make a more appealing symmetrical shot. Or maybe it’ll be fixed in the volume version.

I’ll be honest, Law’s Awakening still isn’t totally clear to me. How the growing sword relates to his operation theming or what he gets out of making it that long hasn’t been well-enough communicated. I get that it’s a big deal, but I don’t really get why or how. Props to Law for taking so many point blank and haki-clad blows from Big Mom undefended though.

I think it’s interesting that there’s a hole in the ceiling of the Performance Floor leading to the roof, and there’s now a hole in the Performance Floor going all the way through the island and out the bottom. While I doubt the two line up that well (the ceiling hole should be a lot closer to the castle than this one) but it might be a cool end for Kaido if Luffy managed to literally dunk him through the whole island. And as a bonus, if that’s the finishing blow, it means the Flame Clouds fade and all of Onigashima comes crashing down on top of him right after. It probably doesn’t tick every box a Kaido defeat should and I wouldn’t put money on it, but it’s a fun idea for a memorable finish, don’t you think? Or it could just be a convenient bomb disposal chute like everyone else is saying. That makes a lot more sense, honestly.

And finally, Kid makes what I can only assume is a railgun. The natural endpoint for any character with magnet powers. It really is framed as a finishing move, but the panel doesn’t have quite the oomph I was expecting for one. It looks like the beam is exploding against the front of Big Mom’s body, like they still aren’t quite getting under her skin. Compare and contrast Franky’s beam hitting Sasaki and seeming to go right through him, with the blast coming out the back. Of course Big Mom and Sasaki are very different targets and Kid’s electromagnetic attack is different from a laser. Maybe we’ll get a better perspective of how this thing is hitting and why it’s the end in the opening pages of next chapter.

It’s so good to have the forum back in time for such a landmark moment in the story. I feel like I’ve been saying this for months now, but the time has come for Oda to hit the gas and have the final dominoes fall one after the other. We’re less than halfway through volume 103 now, so there’s a very real chance that Kaido will be the last enemy standing by the time it’s done.

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

I’m pleasantly surprised to see some real fallout and consequences from the sea battle from the end of Whole Cake Island. Now this cover story has my attention. Will Judge go back for Niji and Yonji? How will the timeline for a rescue mission line up with Big Mom’s departure for Wano, which should be only a couple of days after the fight? I’ll be waiting eagerly for the next part.

Raizo and Fukurokuju is proceeding basically exactly as expected. Raizo will endure the flames until their heat makes Fuku drop his jutsu, allowing Raizo to go in for the kill. The only surprise is that it isn’t over yet. This is a lot of anticipation for a pretty obvious conclusion. Maybe Oda will find a left-field resolution to the fight instead…

Jinbe’s moment holding up the ceiling is pretty cool. It’s a small beat, but Jinbe joining so late needs as many of those as he can get. It also shows Oda committing hard to the castle coming down. If a whole floor’s caved in already, the rest can’t be far behind. It also makes for a great panel. There’s a few good shots of the burning and crumbling structure throughout this chapter (the room where Izo had been fighting is another standout). I really enjoy the sense of space we’ve had for Onigashima, and that kind of build-up makes its destruction all the more satisfying.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this Zoro grim reaper sequence is setting up a gag. I only wonder which one Oda will go with. Brook all along? Or Zoro being strough enough to fight off death, or just being shown the path to the other side and getting lose when asked to walk down it. I’d have a great time seeing this Dr McNinja bit played out by Zoro. Oh, and if it turns out Death is real, does that mean we’ll eventually be part of the Vivre Card databook? I wonder what kind of trivia there’ll be for him…

Izo fighting CP0 is one of those “sure, why not” kinds of developments. Certaninly would tie off the CP0 loose end for them to get taken out this way, but it’s way too late in the game to get invested in it as a long-term fight. Maybe Drake gets back up and helps him finish them off? I feel like that could be played with enough gravity to make a satisfying ending to the subplot.

After eight chapters, the saga of Yamato and Kazenbo is finally coming to a head. I was actually close to complaining a lot harder about how long it’s gone on, but the December and January breaks have really skewed my perception of time. I think it’ll be smoother on a binge reread. The armoury is another really great bit of environmental design. Such a detailed background! But wait, are those radiation warning symbols on some of those boxes? Under that pallet of cannon balls? Does the One Piece universe have nuclear weapons? That certainly ups the stakes if it’s true (which it probably isn’t). I bet Vegapunk had a hand in this…

And then the centrepiece scene, the eponymous battle with Big Mom. Oda’s flagging hard that she’ll be going down this arc one way or the other, but this chapter definitely isn’t the one. I don’t see Oda shortchanging her by ending the fight while enemies like Orochi, Fukurokujo, CP0 and Apoo are still running around. She has to be going down either immediately before Kaido or at the same time as him, so while it might look like Law and Kid are making their final push, they’ll have to last a bit longer for the sake of dramatic timing. I’m very curious to see what the finishing blow looks like – how to give it the same, raw knuckle-to-face intensity as if Luffy had done it himself while still letting Law and Kid share the spotlight equally. Big Mom is basically the only arc antagonist to go unbeaten, and will likely be the first Emperor to fall since Whitebeard. That moment needs a bit of gravity behind it!

This is another chapter where the final spread feels hurt by the 17 page limit. Kid’s Punk Corna Dio would probably have had a bit more an impact (and the big spread panel would have read easier) if Oda had found the space to actually show us its appearance unobscured first.

I like that we see a bit more of Kid’s crew than just Heat and Wire again. Wonder if they’ll get names in an SBS at some point. The flip side of the crews’ moment is that a lot of Law’s guys in this scene were last seen on the ground. I’m guessing we’ll get an SBS saying that this one scribble is them clinging to Momo’s tail or something.

Whatever comes next, I’m honestly just happy to be back on consistent chapters for a couple weeks. Looking forward to Oda bringing Onigashima to its finale!

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

The opening pages here cast some doubt on my prediction that 1036 was the start of a new volume. Oda’s opened both volumes 101 and 102 with cutaways to the festival down below, so what’s one more? It’s a good way to lead into the battle, showing what’s at stake. But is it better than the last chapter’s soft recap of character positions and potential failure consequences?

I’m interested to see where these floating lanterns are going. Up, presumably, but will they be contrasted with Kaido’s fall? Or lead the eyes of the populace to the sky to see the final blow? Or will they just reach Onigashima in time to give someone like Momo a second wind at a critical moment?

Back on the roof, I’m feeling pretty vindicated. I’ve said a few times now in a couple of different threads that I think Kaido can be kinda dull personality-wise. For so much of this arc he’s been a grim, stony-faced brick shithouse. And ever time I complained about that, I said he was a lot more vibrant in his post-Zou and early Wano scenes as a sloppy, over-emotional drunkard, and it’s a shame that he never gets to interact with out heroes in that state. He takes one good hit, says it sobered him up, and goes back to normal. Well now Kaido gets snookered mid-fight and gets to take Luffy on a journey through his mood swings and it’s everything I’ve been asking for all this time!

A shame it’s probably only for this chapter, but still great to see it happen at least once. How has One Piece kept me as a dedicated weekly reader for nearly 15 years? Because Oda always comes through eventually.

And what else can you say about this chapter? I’m not one to try to analyse which moves are the strongest, or say what kind of Haki was used where, or try to unravel the whole story through double meanings in attack names. What I’m focused here is how freaking spectacular the art is and how well the choreography flows. This is a great bit of action with some incredible panels showing motion and impact. Kaido’s opening blow on Luffy sells the power and pain perfectly. Hybrid-mode Kaido looks better than ever, jetting forward with his tail undulating behind him. The moment of implied slowmo as Luffy vaults over his club to get that face kick in is exquisite. The not-even-touching headbutt, so intense. Oda gets so creative making the end of Kaido’s club into a volley of spiked balls countering Luffy’s Third Gear assault. He definitely takes artistic licence with the size and shape of it to make that visual work, but it’s impossible to argue with the results.

One Piece, to me, is adventure and worldbuilding over action, but there’s no going past how good some of the action in Wano has been. I thought the Supernovas vs Emperors fight set a benchmark with its sense of scale, but Oda’s hit the mark all over again with the ferocious intensity of this exchange.

Another interesting note here is how quickly Kaido snaps between his hybrid and serpentine form and back again. Even with such a crazy change in mass, the transformation is all but instantaneous. King was doing the same thing between panels of his fight. The time Zoans take to transform has never been a huge deal in a fight, but it feels so much quicker in Wano than it’s ever been before. There could be interesting animation potential in depicting how these flash changes work. I really want the anime to make good on this chapter, since even in manga form you can see it in motion so easily. But unfortunately, I can’t hold my breath about it. Even if they can do it without adding Dragonball auras to the participants or strobing lights to every blow, the need to make each chapter last at least a whole episode will rob the sequence of the bam-bam-bam back and forth atmosphere of the manga version.

And then we have the final two pages. Really it’s just a lot of vague hinting at things we want to know about. The talk of erasing names makes me think of “the light to be erased from history” from the Reverie. I have to wonder what other lights have been erased in the past, and if the fruit belonged to one of them. Despite the framing (and the Elders having up to date enough reports to know CP0 is going after Robin) it doesn’t seem like the elders are speaking directly with the fleet outside Wano as Zunesha appears, so the discussion of a mysterious Devil Fruit is definitely not a reaction to the big elephant’s appearance. If you pay attention to how Oda uses split panels to mark scene transitions, you can see these are two separate scenes being cut back and forth between.

So what Devil Fruit is it? I don’t think we have enough info to say. Luffy’s, Big Mom’s and Kaido’s are all too specific to be renamed. Law’s powers are abstract enough that you could probably rename the fruit without creating problems, and we know from Doflamingo that it has some relevance to the World Government… That would be my best guess, barring some out there, shot in the dark justification like the Elders changing their topic of conversation between the scene breaks and it’s not someone on Wano at all. Maybe Blackbeard, in that case. But even then, why is the fruit only just now, and so suddenly a huge concern? Or it might be a totally new fruit we haven’t seen yet. That’s probably the safest guess, given how nothing currently in play really seems to tick every box the conversation sets up.

I was wondering what Zunesha’s role in the battle was going to be. Too much setup for it not to make an appearance. But what triggered it to move inward and defend Wano’s waters, then? It couldn’t be a standing order from Momo, even if he had the confidence to do such a thing, because it made no moves against Big Mom’s crew.

I’ve got nothing to add for an outro. Just great action and big mysteries. What more could you want?

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

First things first, what the heck is going on with the Jump cover? There’s something about that bread Luffy (call him Loafy) that’s just incredibly offputting. I very much love the the colour spread though – the city of tall buildings flooded and frozen over with the towers protruding from the ice is a beautiful setting. It’s far from the first time we’ve seen these puffer jackets in a cold weather colour spread. Hell, it’s not even the first time in Wano, But damned if they don’t look good. Loving Jinbe’s kimono as well!

We’re back for the probable start of volume 103 and King is confirmed to be down. His little flashback is some cool confirmation of what was hinted by Kaido’s lines after tossing Luffy from the roof: that Joyboy isn’t just a figure, it’s a role that needs to be played, and that Kaido thought it would be him. What I’m interested to know is what new information he was able to find after the Rocks era that confirmed this for him. I wonder if it has to do with the reasons Wano is so important. I’m so ready for the post-battle lore dump. So ready! But I’m trying not to dwell on that, lest I set myself up for frustration with the minimum full volume’s worth of fighting still to go.

A whole double page near the start of this chapter is a recap of character positions and stakes, which is a big part of why I’m reading it as the start of a new volume. It may be worthy of note that the recap makes it clear that Kaido’s defeat will result in Onigashima falling. Momo is focusing only on moving it away from the Capital, not holding it up himself. So here’s an out there theory: perhaps when Luffy beats Kaido, he does so by dunking him off Onigashima, sending him plummeting into a Kaido-shaped hole in the ground, in a mirror to his introduction, before the whole island comes crashing down on top of him. Being stuck under all of that (with it felt ambiguous whether he’s alive at all) might be a fun way to make good on his deathwish without making Luffy an outright murderer.

At last, the final Number is revealed, and he’s another goofy-looking one like most of the pack have been. Interestingly, this leaves one silhouette from the Numbers’ introduction that doesn’t seem to have an exact match in the final designs. Newcomer Rokki has the straight horns and flat head of this last figure, but lacks the underbite and has a much stouter body. Just a yet-to-be finalised design (most likely), or evidence of a secret zeroth Number (tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory)?

I really enjoy seeing Usopp get to make a stand for Kin’s sake given that he was robbed of a big moment against Pageone. Also good that there are some Gifters in the crowd he’s facing off against – it makes sense that word of Tama’s control would start to go around and the smarter ones would avoid her (or that she just wouldn’t be able to reach every corner of this huge fortress), and pushes back against the idea that the dango were a free win for the good guys. And I actually enjoyed Usopp and Izo’s pushback against samurai culture as well. Ideas of harakiri and honourable/redeeming deaths show up a lot in Japanese media and while I get it it’s also something I’ve never been able to sincerely empathise with. People should live! You can do more for your cause, fix more mistakes and help more people over the course of a lifetime than you ever could with most deaths. Dying is a one-off – fighting on is something you can do in perpetuity. Even if you can only take small steps forward, living means that you can keep taking them until they add up! But I’m getting sidetracked. I think the bottom line here is that it’s cool how Oda has written and drawn a huge love letter to Japan and its culture and history but still isn’t afraid to use his main characters to challenge ideas he disagrees with.

I think this ends the idea of any of the samurai dying during the raid. A lot of readers won’t like that, but it’s the message Oda’s decided on. They all came to Onigashima expecting to die, ghosts choosing to join their lord in death, but the point of Luffy’s presence is to derail that narrative. That’s how it goes on every island. The locals and villains think the story is going to go a certain way, and the crew arrives and breaks the script. This can create thematic contradictions across arcs – for example the difference between Vivi thinking she’s found an easy way out of the civil war and Luffy giving her the reality check that she’ll have to struggle and sacrifice to reach the root of the issue, compared to the samurai coming prepared for sacrifice and being made to live on after the crew protects them – but it makes for strong storytelling and dynamic interactions with the heroes and villains of the individual arcs.

So needless to say I’m not one bit worried by Raizo starting to catch fire in the next scene. Not one bit.

It’s also nice attention to detail that Usopp wouldn’t know that Izo is here yet, and a fun touch that Izo calls him by the name on his wanted poster.

As we flash past a few more scenes, it’s a good time to note we’ve had great art this week. Zoro falling with smoke and lightning coming off his blades was cool, as is the low angle shot of Apoo and Inbi running side by side, and that’s not even to mention the final spread. But Izo’s arrival during Usopp’s scene is a great highlight of Oda’s ability to do a lot with a single frame. In the second-last panel of page 11, Izo is seen jumping in from such a difference he’s barely recognisable. And then, in a single panel, he’s landed and spun 360 degrees shooting two guns, mowing down countless minions while Usopp dives for cover. The ring of gunshot flashes and smoke puffs is such a simple effect, but it’s more than evocative enough to get your brain to fill in a lot of action in a very natural-feeling way. Where other mangaka might have used four panels for the landing, shooting, mooks reacting and Usopp fleeing, Oda packs a lot of information into a very litte space.

I’ll feel pretty bad for Drake if he doesn’t manage to pick himself back up for one last attack after this. The guy started out the night getting attacked by Queen, Who’s Who and Hawkins, toppled a Number, parried a hit from Zoro, fought Apoo in one of the arc’s longest fights by chapter count (even if it was mainly offscreen) and managed to leave his CP0 opponent bloodied before seemingly biting the dust here. The man’s put a crazy amount of effort in and it would be a shame for his story to end like this.

I’ve read a couple of concerns about Luffy laughing with Kaido at the end, wondering where the anger and desire to avenge Wano has gone. But my read of the situation is that Luffy sees all that serious stuff as paid for. As shown in Whole Cake Island, even something as serious as shooting a friend can be paid for with a good smack in the face.

Think back to the punch that ended chapter 1000 and the series of Scabbards-centric flashback panels that led into it. That was the moment that answered for the personal harm Kaido did. While the fight has to continue until he can do no more damage to Wano, having the emotional payback sorted up front has given Luffy the freedom to fight the rest of battle for himself – with all the freedom to enjoy the challenge and use it as a proving ground for new techniques that implies.

The scheduling makes January such a hard time of year to be a One Piece fan, especially when it rolls around just as the series penultimate arc reaches its climax. If nothing else, it’s comforting to know the year ahead will be a big one, with the toppling of Emperors and the probable reveal of series-spanning mysteries as Oda starts to set up his endgame. I absolutely cannot wait to see where this story has left to go.

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

Another fight down, and very likely another volume as well, although I guess there’s a nonzero chance it’ll run one more chapter to full confirm King’s defeat and maybe wrap up the Orochi thread as well. And I think with both Queen and seemingly King falling off the island after being beaten, we can finally put to rest the theories that Kaido’s officers will get back up via Awakening or some other nonsense. The bigwigs aren’t just down, they’re gone. Not on the island and not equipped to come back. The end is close at hand for the battle of Onigashima.

The new cover story is a pleasant surprise. Showing the aftermath of the naval battle off Cacao Island though… I was kinda hoping we’d see more of that in a Jinbe flashback later. The Vinsmokes and Jinbe both getting to just sail off, even after Big Mom returned to the fray, feels a little to easy. The long wait for more on the battle had me expecting some kind of a secret cost that hadn’t been revealed yet. Someone dying offscreen wouldn’t be Oda, but someone captured or short a chunk of their lifespan would have been nice. I guess we haven’t seen who’s actually on these Germa ships yet, but I doubt they’d be pulling back if anyone major had been captured. It does also seem to be the morning after the battle already, so I imagine, like Bege’s escape, the cover story will about what the Vinsmokes do next, not the battle. Twenty installments of silliness as they take on a new contract followed by a tantalising plot hook right at the end sounds about right. Given that this is back before the Reverie, I wonder if the last-minute tie-in could involve the SSG or the big moves the World Government is making on the Warlords and other big name pirates.

But that’s getting way ahead of ourselves…

Alright, so Queen is done and dusted, as expected. Some people wanted more back and forth between him and Sanji before it was done, but this battle was a mental one for Sanji, and he won it already. There wouldn’t be any substance in more hitting. The callback to Sanji feeding mice as a kid is a really nice bookend to him choosing his humanity in this bout. There is a question as to what kind of damage Sanji has actually taken, knowing his broken bones heal on their own. Is his collapse just exhaustion, or is there other internal damage not covered by the healing?

Zoro and King’s fighting is flowing a lot better than last time we followed the two of them, with some incredibly well drawn fire and magma effects now in the mix. I’m really looking forward to seeing this one in colour in a few years, all of the clashing with explosions in the background and flaming dragons twisting around. But a feeling lingers that the fight-ending solution doesn’t really gel with the choreography up to this point. I still don’t have a good idea of how the stretchy-headed Imperial Deep Pride Stake is meant to work. The moment in chapter 1033 where King seems to explode entirely because Zoro stabbed the right spot also doesn’t feel like it was ever fully explained. I can appreciate that looking back over the fight we can see the fire going on and off King’s back just like Zoro notices here, but maybe we could have used some moments where Zoro wonders about things that actually play into the solution, like “he bled when I hit him before but he shrugged the last one off, is his durability fluctuating” or “damn, he just got a lot faster all of a sudden.” I really go like how the section of the fight right after the flasback goes, but the battle as a whole can’t help feeling like it wasn’t planned all the way in advance.

We get a little more on Lunarians here, confirming that the World Government is specifically hunting for them. Given the similarities – the World Nobles styling themselves as dragons compared to King’s use of a dragon motif in his fire attacks, Lunarians being known as gods in the past and the Celestial Dragons calling themselves the descendents of gods today, and of course both groups seemingly having inhabited the Redline – it’s becoming clear that the World Government usurped and exterminated the Lunarians. What remains to be seen is whether the Lunarian civilisation is the same important one alluded to by Clover, if they’re the same group that hid the One Piece and the Poneglyphs, and if they’re the same group that gave the world Joyboy back in the day…

King’s subordinates being tempted by the hundred million for a tipoff brings up an angle on bounties that I hadn’t really considered. It’s often noted that there don’t seem to be any bounty hunters at the higher levels, raising the question of “why bother giving bounties that high at all?” But here we see that a fraction of King’s actual bounty in exchange for a tip-off is enough to present a real threat of betrayal. High level bounties pit pirates against each other. And while it doesn’t seem common for pirates to cash in on the bounties of other pirates, we have seen Blackbeard and Law approach the government directly to exchange wanted men for things they want, so we know the government is willing to look the other way if a big enough threat is taken out of the picture.

I loved seeing a flash of Punk Hazard in the past. The first thought I had was whether these old experiments on King were where Judge got whatever Lunarian liniage factor went into Sanji, but I don’t think Judge was ever directly employed by the World Government as a scientist (MADS was before Vegapunk was recruited by them and was broken up by the World Government) and thus he probably wouldn’t be at Punk Hazard. And of course, if it wasn’t Judge getting Sanji’s flaming feet from these experiments, who was working on them and what did they get out of it?

I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of Lunarians and World Government science…

Kaido looks bloody weird without his beard. It’s not surprising he has confidence in his ability to change the world though – it seems he picked up enough important info about the One Piece and the the true history of the world through his position in Rocks’ crew long before he started chasing it himself.

It’s also cool to get King’s real name and confirmation that the card themeing in the Beasts Pirates is all codenames. It’s a shame the Vivre Cards for this lot have come and gone already, we could have had a huge dump of new info like when the Baroque Works agents’ true names dropped. They also missed out on some great lore and killer panels by doing the databook in the middle of the arc like they did. Oh well, maybe in the SBS instead…

And the fight ends on another fairly brutal note with King’s wing being cut off. Between this, King’s arm, Jinbe curshing Who’s Who’s hands and Robin’s assault on Black Maria’s spine, we’ve had some pretty full-on takedowns for the Wano villains. And as I said above, the fact that this has happened to King while he’s off the side of the island is a strong sign he’s not coming back.

The next steps for this arc, as we go into volume 103 and the new year, have to be the resolution of Orochi, Fukurokuju, CP0 and the armoury clusterfuck, but the armoury is the only one of those I think will actually need more than a chapter to wrap up. The two Emperors are a bit more complicated though. A few weeks ago I would have said Big Mom was next on the chopping block after Orochi, but lately I’ve been giving her more thought. It’s tough to picture the arc ending without Big Mom and Kaido both falling, but the first outright defeat of an Emperor of the Sea in the whole series (and who knows how many in-universe years) is going to be such a game-changing moment. Is Oda going to let Law and Kid take the honour of the first Emperor victory from Luffy? Is the arc going to be able to keep its momentum if Big Mom is still fighting after Kaido falls? Or will Oda contrive a way to make their defeats all but simultaneous (leaving room for the three captains to argue about who actually was the first to conquor an Emperor)?

Between the strong action beats, great art and interesting lore snippets, this has turned out to be a great chapter to close out the year with. I’m looking forward to the final battle and post-arc worldbuilding dump in the coming months.

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

Volume 101 continuing a whole lot more endpages than normal and being a chapter short of estimates means we’re actually now at the ninth chapter of volume 102, which definitely puts the progress of the current battles in a different light. That makes me think this is actually the end for Queen, although Oda may wait until after King falls to confirm it, but that should happen in the next chapter or two.

I enjoy seeing Momo find a third option and using Kaido’s flames to move the island instead of totally making his own. I actually speculated that he could save the island by hijacking Kaido’s clouds back in March, and now look where we are.

Some will be disappointed that Oda backed down from Sanji’s attack on Osome, but it was kinda always the most likely outcome. While the end result is Sanji choosing to be okay with his weaknesses as a human being, just having him be confronted by them and having to give up the choice to change is enough for me, especially following the sequence where he calls to Robin for help. Just having to go through that process makes a huge difference to Sanji’s characterisation in my eyes and I’m happy to see it done after souring on guy pretty hard after Ennies Lobby.

Queen copying the Vinsmoke tech is pretty neat actually. It gives Sanji the chance to confront and overcome his father’s weapons that the plotting of Whole Cake Island never afforded. Queen’s Sparking Valkyrie feels a little different from Ichiji’s though. From the way they trailed behind him, I didn’t think the lights in his eyes were part of the actual attack, it seemed more like it was coming from his gauntlets, but Queen has it all coming out the eyes. I wonder if his version will get the same cool iridescent colouring as the original in the digital colour manga… And there is a question as to whether we’ll be seeing Queen’s Poison Pink, perhaps as a last ditch final move, but between the mummy bullets and the ice oni virus, I think Queen’s skill with chemical weapons is more than cemented, and it’s not like Sanji ever needed to overcome Reiju like he did his other siblings.

I wonder if Oda will talk about the more stealthy sound effect used for Sanji disappearing in chapter 1031 now that he’s established that it’s all just faster than sight movement. Was he just trying extra hard to be quiet with that move? And on the topic of stealth effects, I do really like how he drew Queens oxymoronical invisible appearance. We’ve seen that transparency effect before, but not usually for so long and with such extreme expressions.

There’s only so much you can say when the chapter’s two pages shorter than usual and almost entirely action, but I did enjoy this one. Onigashima’s been pretty good for Sanji’s characterisation overall and the weird powers and visuals made the Queen fight a highlight. Though it’s foolish to try to predict Oda with any kind of confidence, I’d bet on the next chapter being Zoro vs King and the last one of this volume, ending with narration boxes that confirm both the executives are defeated, forming a bookend with Jack and Perospero’s simultaneous defeat in the opening chapter. I didn’t expect these battles to end before Fukurokuju and Orochi went down, but this chapter had too much of a finishing move vibe to ignore. But the remaining conflicts shouldn’t last too far into volume 103 – which at this stage I’m hoping could be the end of the Onigashima battle.

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

I really am surprised the Orochi cliffhanger last week didn’t lead directly into a resolution of his arc, but instead we’re getting Lunarian lore, Shimotsuki lore and sword lore, so I can hardly complain. Well, I can a little. Despite the awesome developments and some really great panels, and contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think the actual action of this chapter flowed as well as it could have. Something in the choreography just didn’t click for me this week.

Oda’s obviously making a mystery out of King’s powers. Does he heal with fire like Marco or turn into it like Sabo? Or is his body simply impenetrable and he sparks when struck like Mr 5? It’s all very vague and I think it’s strange how it overlaps with so many Devil Fruits. And then, “jackpot” implies there’s some luck involved in what effect occurs and when. So what’s the deal?

Queen offers some actual information on King’s race and their importance. How interesting that they lived on the Redline and were revered as gods while the current rulers of that continent style themselves as the descendants of gods. Interesting too that the current nobility call themselves “dragons” now that we know the previous deity-apparents could fly and use fire as a weapon. The question then becomes if the Celestial Dragons really did descend from the Lunarians, breeding out the fire and wings over the generations, or if they usurped them violently and took their divine status for themselves. I’d bet on the latter. It’s hard to imagine a species so adaptable goes extinct without a little outside help.

The panel of Zoro cutting through King is spectacular, but unfortunately the action choreography starts to stumble soon after. King uses his Imperial Deep Pride Stake again still without explaining what’s being shot – a stretching attack like Luffy’s? An air-slash type projectile? – which makes the flow of the battle really hard to visualise. He said it’s just a pterodactyl thing, not a Lunarian one, so there’s no need to keep it an mystery the same way. And then Zoro calling it a beam only muddies the water further. But the sequence over the next couple of pages where Zoro loses his swords is where I really take issue.

So Zoro drops all three of his swords when hit, and King’s attack also damages a huge chunk of the island, building up a threat of either Zoro or his treasured swords falling off the side. Seemingly confirming this, Zoro leaps through the debris to save Kitetsu and King says he’s “killing himself” to save the sword. But instead of pressing his advantage and edgeguarding, King quickly circles around and kicks Zoro back toward the safe ground at the centre of the island, into the side of the skull dome. The framing initially suggests Zoro jumped off the island to chase his swords, but he can’t have fallen that far if he can be thrown in a straight line to the wall like that. It feels weird to me that Kitetsu was so precariously flying among the rubble but Wado Ichimonji is just conveniently planted in the ground near where Zoro lands, with Enma not too much further off. I think this sequence really needed a better lead-in panel showing the trajectories of the three swords so we have a better idea of the positioning and stakes ahead of time. But even with that, it feels out of character for King, who previously tried to end the fight quickly by dumping Zoro off the island, to go out of his way to send Zoro flying in the most advantagous direction the disarmed swordsman could have asked for. None of this is helped by King snapping rapidly between human and dinosaur forms between panels, increasing the feeling that we’re missing beats and that each moment is disjointed from the one before it.

And it’s a shame this sequence trips over its feet the way it does because we don’t usually see opponents make a dedicated attempt to separate Zoro from his swords in the middle of a fight. King tried it once with his strange mechanical blade on the Live Floor, but he doesn’t have any follow through now he’s in a spot to literally drop them off the island. And the fact that weapon theft isn’t just a gimmick, that he could still hold his own whether Zoro is armed or not, would have made him all the more unique. It can’t help feeling like a little bit of a missed opportunity.

Finally, King smashes Zoro through the floor and we end up in a basement space that’s probably the same sub-Live Floor level Yamato and Momo used to escape from Right Brain Castle after downing Hacha. Good continuity that it exists to be used at all, but I’m a little disappointed it wasn’t on Yamato’s mental cross section of the castle in chapter 1030 if it was going to come up again so soon.

I really hope to be able to look back on this fight favourably after it’s done. Maybe the rough-feeling choreography will read better after King’s explained his Lunarian and pterdoactyl powers in detail. Maybe we’ll learn a bit more about him to justify him saving Zoro from falling off the side for Kitetsu. Hopefully it’s just a blip in an otherwise robust showdown with enough good on either side to forget this one weak point. But right now the action is being carried by all the interesting exposition that’s happening alongside it. Well, that and some great impact panels, even if the steps between them don’t fully make sense.

The sword lore flashback was genuinely interesting though. The talk of philosophy behind blades, how they’re tools made for murder, feels kinda brutal, almost edgy by One Piece standards, but it makes sense. Where spears, bows and even some guns find dual use in hunting, and axes and many blunt weapons echo craftsmen’s tools, hunting swords are all but unheard of (and even when they do exist, are mostly used to deliver the coup de grace to an already-wounded quarry). Even in the near-deathless world of One Piece, swords are made almost exclusively for people to kill other people with. Putting that in words lends a gravitas to holding the weapon. And the idea of holding a sword and feeling it wanting to fulfill that purpose is a genuinely unnerving thought.

The flashback ties together a few scattered SBS details in a more concrete form, presumably both as a recap and for the magazine/anime only readers. Shimotsuki village. Kozaburo. Kuina’s heritage. (Still nothing about Zoro’s own liniage though.) I think it’s news that Kozaburo was a pirate before founding the village though. And he was apparently good enough at it to be wanted by the Navy. I think the timeline on that one would put him before Roger’s day. I wonder if we’ll hear talk of a legendary samurai crew in history books or flashbacks at some point in the future. Something to keep an eye out for.

I did also enjoy the little flashbacks for Kitetsu and Wado Ichimonji during the chapter. It’s great attention to detail that Zoro doesn’t just have three generic swords, he has swords with names and history and specific moments in the story tied to them that get remembered. The attention to detail is what makes One Piece.

Zoro confirms what was hinted on the roof and unleashes his king’s haki. I don’t think I have any feelings on it that I wouldn’t have gone through in any one of the many moments of foreshadowing, but it’s a really cool moment when he reveals it. What I find interesting is that the smoke that usually comes off Enma is coming off all three blades now. I had kinda figured it was Enma’s thing since no one else’s haki has ever produced quite the same effect. I don’t think it’ll be anything particularly meaningful, no one in a million special techniques, but it’s just interesting how unique the effect is.

And I really did like the final line, whether you take it to refer to just Luffy or him and Kuina both, it’s a sweet note to add to Zoro’s journey up to this point. Despite my complaining that the lost sword sequence wasn’t executed quite right, this chapter can’t help feeling like a celebration of Zoro and his role as Luffy’s right hand. Now that he’s found his feet with Enma, the rest of the King fight should click smoothly into place, and my expectations are high. But I don’t think it’s coming next week. There’s Orochi and Queen at least to wrap up first. I’m gonna be on the edge of my seat to a return to this fight the whole time though.

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

This one definitely feels a little slower compared to the last few. Like going back to a transitional phase of the story. I was expecting to move quickly from the Sanji stuff at the end of last chapter to a quick takedown of Queen and return to Zoro and King soon after, but it seems Oda wants to give these two battles the same treatment as the other crew fights, with an extended period of development intercut with the rest of the battle playing out. Presumably the battle with Big Mom will be handled the same. I mean, I’m glad these important fights are going to get the time they need to breathe, but it’s a slow way to handle things and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little bit of fatigue setting in after a year and a half nonstop fighting. A couple of months ago I would have bet the first half to two thirds of volume 102 was wrapping up these last fights with a transition into Luffy vs Kaido in the closing chapters, now I’m starting to think we’ll be lucky if the book ends on King being felled.

Marco and Izo are back in action for… something. I guess they’re joining the pack of characters rushing toward the armoury conflagration, which is a scene I have no idea how to predict anymore given how many different parties are being funneled in its direction.

Fuga being a centaur is certainly a surprise. Kinda funny that the scientists working on gigantifiation made one 20ish years before Law showed up and made the whole surviving staff into centaurs, but strange that none of the other Numbers were combined with animals the same way. Wait, did Fuga eat a Smile? It would be hard to tell if they were fed to them, given how the Numbers always seem to be laughing anyway. Whatever the lore behind this, I love the detail of his horns scraping through the roof as he tries to keep up with Yamato.

I complained in the last chapter’s thread that Apoo and Drake’s team-up was floated and sunk way too quickly, and now in a third consecutive chapter they’re back on speaking terms. Could not have picked the two of them fighting CP0 though. Not in a million years. I do enjoy how instantly self-serving Apoo’s reaction to CP0’s presence is though. I’m having a hard time getting a read on Drake’s interaction with them here. They say they know who he is, and from these top-level intelligence guys, that would presumably mean SWORD. All good, right? He’s undercover and they’re doing clandestine Government work – we’ve known about Cipher Pol’s shady dealings for so long it feels like an open secret – and all signs pointing to Cipher Pol (especially CP0) outranking Marines anyway. And yet Drake asks them what their excuse is and they try to take him out. Could this be proof SWORD is an alliance working for the greater good from inside the Marines, rather than just another branch of the same broken organisation?

King’s stretchy face doesn’t quite top Queen’s snake trick for the best stupid Zoan power, but it sure is something. And I guess he uses it to shoot a flying slash type attack? The exact thing being done here is super unclear. But hey, we got some hilarious panels out of it.

There’s a lot of talk about King’s race and his powers here, but we don’t actually learn that much about him, it’s all just hyping up the mystery. It speaks to the man’s strength that he defends so well against an attack Zoro brought out against Kaido on the rooftop though. In fact, he seems less bothered by it than Kaido did. But maybe that’s more a consequence of Zoro’s fatigue.

I was pretty dismissive of theories about Enma literally carrying some of Oden’s soul/will/haki inside it, even with Big Mom’s strange reaction to it, but its reaction to the sound of the shamisen has me rethinking that stance. There’s definitely something going on here.

And finally, we get our second chapter in a couple years that ends with the big reveal that it was Hyori all along even though everyone already figured it out a long time ago. I guess there was a little more room for doubt here than at the end of the flashback, but it would still have been a pretty big reach for the silhouette to be Toki. Ah well, at least this means the end has to be close for Orochi. I still think Denjiro’s long absence is part of the setup for this as well and he’ll jump out and have a hand in what happens next – if he didn’t go find Hyori and outright plan this trap with her.

The problem with this setup is that it wouldn’t be Oda to have Orochi drop before his right hand man, so Raizo and Fukurokuju need at least one more scene first. I think the ideal for next week would be half the chapter on them, they half on Orochi, ending with his demise. Then there’s just the whole armoury jumble to sort out, followed by Queen, King, Big Mom and Kaido, presumably in that order. Still a long way to go, and Oda does not seem prepared to rush it. As always, looking forward to seeing how he manages to tie it all together, even if i’m feeling a tiny bit tired.

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

Well, we’re about halfway through volume 102 and… am I dreaming? Is this… actually compelling character development for Sanji? That addresses the issues his women problems have created? Oda must think it’s my birthday or something. Anyway, the colour spread is a little bit of a miss for me. Love seeing more character variety in these things, but I’d rather have the usual style of them all hanging out or doing something rather than all these separate panels. Bepo goes a long way to salvage it though. And it is nice seeing a greater variety of characters than just the Strawhats in these things. But how mean is it to put a Zoro colour spread on what is essentially a Sanji chapter? The guy really can’t catch a break.

Big Mom is looking like a true monster in this chapter. People have been quick to say the Emperors don’t feel threatening enough in this arc, but I think Oda’s figured that feeling out. Law and Kid have both pulled out the kind of upgrade that would be a fight ender in most other arcs and used them together, at great cost to their own stamina, only for Big Mom to decide they’re worth her getting serious about and powering herself up. It’s true that the alliance didn’t struggle as much as expected with the flunkies and officers of the Beasts Pirates at the start of the battle, but in this late stage we’re seeing how that conflict sapped their energy and expended their new tricks, meanwhile the two big bosses have come through to the final round with strength spare. Big Mom is finally selling that “how can they possibly win this” energy readers were looking for, and we can only hope Kaido brings the same force to bear against Luffy when we cut back to the roof.

Just goes to show how well planned out all of this is. People were agreeing with Hyogoro when he said he couldn’t imagine losing and complaining it was too easy for the heroes back in the third chapter after the battle was officially kicked off by the attack on Kaido. We’re now on chapter 45 after the raid commenced and there are now comments saying Big Mom still seems too strong to believably take down here, and that it feels too likely CP0 will actually be able to capture Robin, and that any win could only feel like an asspull. It’s not unlike how most of Luffy’s fights, be especially the Katakuri one, have gone. He took more hits, sure, but he kept getting back up. It’s safe to say now we were feeling exactly what Oda wanted when it felt too easy in the opening chapters; the crew hit the ground running, but the battle of Onigashima is a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s hard to see that kind of pacing reading week by week. It’s the kind of thing that only reveals itself when you look back later on.

Oh, despite seeming resolved last chapter, it seems Drake and Apoo’s fight is back on. Sure, why not. It seems like Drake has the upper hand he needs for a quick win, but I do wonder what the purpose of their truce was, given it’s lasted less than 20 pages. In the volume readthrough, the idea of Drake and Apoo teaming up will be literally blink-and-you-miss-it. An even shorter shelf life than Marco and Perospero’s alliance, somehow. With this, we’ve got a surprising number of characters heading for the armoury. Yamato, Drake, Apoo, Inbi, Fuga, Zanki and Kanjuro’s Kazenbo. Presumably Kin’emon will find a way down there to cut fire one more time, possibly needing to be carried by Usopp to make it. Oda’s got a plan for that arsenal, but I have no idea what it could be at this point.

Cipher Pol’s move gives us nice moment between Robin and Brook and some interesting lore, though I have to wonder how this new conflict is going to fit into the already-strained pacing of the battle.

But the meat of this chapter is Sanji’s transformation. This is exactly the kind of Sanji arc I’ve been hoping for since Ennies Lobby. Whole Cake Island gave us a lot of Sanji backstory, but it didn’t force him to grow as a character at all – it turned out his natural kindness was the best thing for him all along and the skills he needed were the culinary ones he already had – leaving his post-timeskip exaggerated flaws untouched. After all of that, I wasn’t expecting Sanji to ever be confronted by the possibility he had hurt a women, or pick up some self-doubt about his humanity and heritage, or have to honestly ask himself if his inability to face a female opponent makes him a liability. While the conclusions he comes to about these points are far from surprising, I’m so glad Oda finally brought them up.

Obviously Oda’s given himself a lot of plausible deniability for Sanji apparently hurting an innocent woman, what with no one witnessing the deer directly. I’d say it’s fairly likely the scene will be walked back later, but I’m not bothered by that. Sanji just believing he’d done it was enough to get the ball rolling, and that’s all the story needed.

What I wouldn’t have ever guessed is the request to Zoro to kill him if he goes off the rails. Despite all the bickering, the trust there is real. I’m looking forward to seeing how this interaction plays out after the battle, if we’ll really get a dark Sanji who needs to be talked or beaten down (of course he won’t actually die) or if Zoro just humorously looks for an excuse to follow through on the request despite Sanji remaining in his right mind.

I love that Sanji’s change is reflected in his eyebrows. From his very first appearance, with one brow covered, to the reveal that they both go the same way with his timeskip design, to his siblings having theirs in the opposite direction, Sanji’s eyebrows are one of the series’ best long-con gags. And admirable restraint from Oda that their use has never been lampshaded in universe beyond calling them “swirly.”

It’s also not lost on me that Sanji has ended up on the opposite side of the dome to where Zoro’s fighting. The left and right wings doing battle on their respective sides and pirate king fighting on the roof in the middle. Poetic, Oda, very poetic.

Basically the chapter was a banger. The main character I’ve felt has been most mishandled over the past decade is being pulled in an exciting new direction and the tension is really amping up. I have a bad feeling every break from here until the end of the battle is going to be painful, which is a bad point to reach right before the end of year dearth of chapters. But we’ll make it through somehow.