Captain M Entertainment

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

Oh man, what a chapter! Wano’s had more than a few spectacular environments so far – the flower capital, the ruined Oden castle and Tama’s empty village coming immediately to mind – but Onigashima is the best of the lot. I love the atmosphere. I love the absurd scale of everything. I want there to be a One Piece video game that has a 1:1 recreation of that entrance area as a mini sandbox so I can walk around and really see how much everything towers overhead when put to scale. I want to climb around and see which ones of the oversized things strewn around I can get on top of. That first spread is going to go down as an all-time favourite.

The possibility of the skull being an actual bone is increased by the skyscraper-sized katana stuck in the ground in front of it. This one’s even bigger than both Oars and the skull on Punk Hazard! The mysteries of the ancient giants are one of the things I’m most interested to get all the answers for. I really hope Kaido’s possible connection to them (suggested by the distinct horns) is genuine and we can start paying off on almost a decade’s worth of hints and foreshadowing. The only thing I’m more curious for in the long run is what the hell is up with the moon, but I don’t think we’re going to get much more on that until after Wano.

Luffy and Zoro are missing their scars in the new outfits Kin provides. Art error, or do his his powers of disguise go further than previously assumed. We’ll probably get a better look in the next chapter. I expect that panel to be touched up in the volume release. Oh, and while it’s a shame to see Luffy’s captain coat disappearing so soon, Oda feeling the need to clarify that damage will make the disguises vanish makes me think it won’t be gone for long.

I would have loved a wider shot of the Onigashima interior, but just from what was shown it already seems like an interesting locale for a battle, with all these bridges, trees and raised blocks ahead of the overlooking castle wall. I could be wrong, but outside maybe some of the vignettes in Law’s flashback, I think this is the first time we’ve seen an enemy crew having a proper end-of-arc-Strawhats-style party. We know Kaido isn’t above letting his underlings become collateral damage or annihilating a few of them in a drunken tantrum, but this chapter makes it seem like morale is at a high within the Beast Pirates. I’m interested to see how much loyalty these guys are going to have when their organisation starts to fall. Love all the Gifter designs as well!

The Tobi Roppo designs are all pretty cool looking, and Oda does his trademark fantastic job of introducing a bunch of characters at once in a way that still gives us a strong impression of who each of them are. Seriously, it looks so easy here but this kind of mass-intro is so hard to pull off without either making the characters feel indistinct from each other or overwhelming the reader. Pay Pay – uh, Page One – looks a hell of a lot different from what his earlier appearance suggested. I wish he wasn’t sitting so bundled up like that so we could get a better view of his outfit. Visually, my favourite is Who’s-Who. He’s got strong F-Zero vibes that make me keen to see what he can do.

The discussions surrounding this chapter have raised some thoughts about translations. For example, Ulti’s speech quirk. My understanding is that in the raw she’s trying to copy the way Komurasaki spoke, but in Japanese this was achieved by adding a term to the end of her sentences. It was the right choice not to do that – it’s the kind of thing that only works in Japanese. I’ve seen translators try to keep things like that in and it’s at best awkward and at worst outright confusing. Problem being, while Komurasaki’s dialogue was written a bit more upper-crust than the people speaking around her, it wasn’t a huge enough difference to make an imitation of her obvious. I don’t think this was a failing on Stephen’s part or anything; who could have guessed her speaking style would ever be commented on in this way? And worse still to have to recapture it in just two lines from Ulti before Page One snaps at her and she stops talking that way. Maybe if there was a way to get Ulti to echo one of Komurasaki’s more memorable lines (“I have only scorn for the poor man” to “Queen just called the Tobi Roppo arrogant punks! I have only scorn for him!” to spitball a possibility), but this is really another one of those things like Oden’s last words that can only be smoothly worked out in hindsight. The perils of having an up-to-date translation.

I have no idea how some people didn’t manage to catch at all that Ulti’s word choices and emphasis were different from everyone around her though. It’s noticeable! Especially coming right after Queen’s more casual hype man dialogue.

The other thing that came up translation-wise was a lot of scan-readers being forced to expose themselves to Tobi Roppo instead of “Flying Six” for the first time, thanks to Oda choosing to write it out himself. And that’s had me thinking – the names of these senior ranks kinda don’t work for me. All of them come from traditional Japanese theatre, but two are different kinds of performers and the last is a specific kind of stage exit, a performance. Why not keep it to just stage movements or just performers? Worse is how hard they are to translate. The two performers lose the traditional Japanese connotations but are at least able to keep the theatre feeling. The most direct translation for Tobi Roppo, on the other hand, sounds more like a group of circus acrobats than stageplay types. I suppose you could keep them all in Japanese. Shinuchi, Okanban and Tobi Roppo at least sound consistent with each other, but it makes for a lot of foreign words to throw at the reader, and wouldn’t be remotely acceptable if the crew wasn’t headquartered in the in-universe equivalent to Japan. And even then they’re going to stand out and sound excessively weeb-y next to the other groups of the crew, the Waiters, Gifters and Pleasures, which are used as English loanwords in the raw because apparently Oda cares a lot less about this kind of consistency than I do. Big, rambly nitpick, I know. I think it just bugs me because I like trying to solve these kinds of langue problems and there’s just no way I can see not to make Tobi Roppo as a name stick out like a sore thumb from the things around it. I truly do not envy any translator trying to deal with all the linguistic and cultural things Oda is doing with this arc.

So it looks like all the pieces (save for the Numbers) are set up and ready to clash. Next week, I think we’ll start to escalate, working in the last few factors like the Numbers, the Big Mom Pirates and Katakuri’s kid one at a time as the tension ramps up. As conclusive as it feels now, I don’t think Onigashima is going to be the place the Wano arc ends. There are twists and turns and unexpected developments in the works, all leading to a flight back to the mainland. There’s probably one more most desperate hour to go as well (and I don’t expect Cat and/or Marco a moment sooner than that) and a lot of manga to go before things ramp down. If the structure of Tottoland is anything to go by, we could barely be past the halfway point of Wano. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next!

This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread. These two chapters were reviewed together because the forum was offline on the week of chapter 976’s release.

We’ve missed two whole chapter discussions and the most exciting new event is Jinbe’s return! The crew is (probably) complete and all together at last! I predicted back when the Arashi colour spread dropped that Jinbe would show up pretty soon after the flashback ended, because it was so obviously meant as a marketing thing that would need a longer shelf life than the standard colour spread, but I didn’t think he’d show up quite so soon… Or quite so easily.

My expectations for Jinbe’s reintroduction included things like a sidequest to free him from the brig of the Queen Mama Chanter or some serious injury or appearance change. You have to really justify a cliffhanger that big that lasted that long. Instead he’s just kind of here all of a sudden, only one tiny new scar. Even his outfit is almost identical to his pre-timeskip one, just with the blacks and whites inverted. Suffice to say, I would be underwhelmed by the way his return was handled… if I thought we’d heard the whole story. Oda really glosses over the details of Jinbe’s escape from a truly desperate situation which makes me think we’ll be getting a surprise when we do hear about it. It could be as simple as it being the Vinsmokes in the brig instead of the Sun Pirates, or it could be something more.

I’ve proposed in the past that the answer could be old man Jinbe. Big Mom’s soul stealing doesn’t seem to instantly affect outward appearance, so Jinbe could be missing most of his lifespan without us knowing it. This could make it a driving conflict to take down Big Mom as soon as possible to get it back, but I think the more interesting route would be if there was no way at all to ever return Jinbe’s life. If he only had, say, one year left, the knowledge that Luffy has to sail for Laugh Tale now or risk not making it with all the crew intact would be a fantastic way to fling him into the endgame and make sure he hits the ground with his feet moving.

As an aside, even though it was over quickly, I loved seeing another naval combat sequence. Oda seems to really be working out what he’s doing with those.

Kaido’s son (sons maybe, I think I read that the raw could be seen as singular or plural) is a big surprise. I do still like the idea of it being a Charlotte, even a specific set of triplets, but that one interview (would Oda lie outright if he was really put on the spot live with a question he didn’t want to answer yet? Someone ask Greg lmao) and the fact that none of them inherited those distinct horns, despite all the other visual matches. Out side of that seemingly-debunked option, I don’t think there’s any real candidates among the existing cast. He’s probably going to be someone new.

I know I can’t be alone in this, but I’m reading a ton of death flags on the Scabbards. Oda’s put a lot of work into emphasising that they don’t belong in this time. They’re already dead. They’re ghosts haunting the landscape. Their luck has run out but they have one last thing they need to do. It’s not Oda’s style at all, and yet it feels like it would be fitting for some of them to fall during the battle, fading peacefully into a death they dodged by twenty years knowing their work would be completed. I think in reality the odds of an actual party wipe, even just for the time travelling half of the squad, are extremely low, but the build up alone is going to have me on the edge of my seat when these guys’ fights start to go bad for them.

I’m expecting a big time setup chapter next week. Lots of character introductions. Oda’s been playing with his arc structure keeping so much of Kaido’s core crew under wraps until this late in the game. Time will tell if it pays off, but it’s odd to be so close to the big fight with so few specific clashes to anticipate, so few skillsets and powers seeded and so few bad guy personalities to want to see taken down (though it’s kind of a quality over quantity thing when you consider Orochi and Kanjuro being in there). Next week seems like it could be the last chance to start setting these guys up if he doesn’t want to juggle that work with the chaos of the battle unfolding. Excited as always to see the master at work.

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

Heyyy the whole crew’s back together! I expected this to be more of a moment, probably something revealed at the end of a chapter with a colour spread, but maybe Oda’s saving that for when they have Jinbe in tow. The new outfits look spectacular as well, with the choice to dress up Zeus as well being a highlight. We’re at the start of a new volume with this chapter (nice that it came out alongside the reveal of the previous volume’s finished cover), so it wouldn’t shock me to see a straw hats cover with all these new outfits on show. I could see it as a parallel to volume 64’s cover maybe.

And speaking of being back together, the big trio of Luffy, Law and Kidd are fight side by side and trying to show off and outdo each other yet again, and I love it. Luffy and Law side by side was great fun on Dressrosa, and throwing the even more volatile and competitive Kid in the mix can only make things better. I’m keen to see more of old Jaggy as the battles in Wano build to their conclusion. Also nice to see that Kidd as Heat and Wire by his side again. Aside from Law and Bege, the crews of the Supernovas often seem to slip into non-existence before the overwhelming charisma of their captains, so it’s good to see a couple of them acknowledged.

There’s a lot going on in the back half of the chapter to resolve the series of shocking cliffhangers set up before the flashback. Some of it works, some of it feels a little contrived but one amazing piece of trademark Oda humour brings it all together. The weakest part is the explanation of the Sunny’s survival. Like, it’s not a plot hole or any kind of contradiction, but “oh the Sunny was never really in danger to begin with” is underwhelming. Especially considering a destroyed Sunny fakeout has been done better fairly recently.

The rest works a bit better. Spare ships? Well Oda made a big point of having Franky say he was building extras just in case, so that works. Bridge attacks timed wrong? Orochi being sheltered isn’t the best explanation, but if you look back to chapter 959, you can see the samurai looking back at the bridge as it’s destroyed, not toward it. That’s some neat foreshadowing! Did anyone catch it at the time? I would have liked a hint of the ships being hidden in the spread of the Shogun’s procession as well, but you can’t win them all. Probably would have been too obvious anyway.

The Japanese linguistics, symbolism and everything else behind the port/warf switcheroo are all stupidly overcomplicated in a really fun way. From what I’ve seen, even in the original Japanese it’s a train of thought that can only barely be followed. It’s almost a send-up of the crazy “I know you know I know” plays and counterplays of something like Death Note, and it’s perfectly topped off by the fact that Kinemon did it all completely by accident. Oda excels at writing moronic characters who fail upward. He doesn’t just make them funny, he makes their blunders important to the plot without the upward momentum that comes from them feeling cheap. It’s one of those little things that One Piece does really well that you rarely even see attempted anywhere else.

Oh, and even though it’s very talky (and how are they all hearing each other from so far apart on the sea in a storm?), I’m glad Oda managed to resolve all the cliffhangers and betrayals without going back into flashbacks. The story is at a point where it needs forward momentum, and this keeps it going just fine.

Finally, there is some spectacular art in this chapter. The way Wano’s seas are drawn is always a treat, but we also have two whole fleets of really detailed ships (the narrow middle panel of page 15 with the ships mostly silhouetted, shown from behind is striking but easily lost in all the stuff going on around it. The three captains look great as they fly into action. There’s a ton of different Beasts Pirates who’re all distinct and expressive, and the amount of detail in that final spread with all the samurai and yakuza ships speaks for itself. Not to mention the detail in Kin’s expression in the final panel. This one was a real treat.

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

As expected, we’re back in the present for the final chapter of volume 96! As much as I loved Oden and our time with him, I’ve been starting to feel desperate for my boy Luffy after all these months. The flashback was hurt badly by the number of breaks that came up in its publication, but as I said a while back, I think volumes 95 and 96 will be looked back on fondly as one of the highest points of the series just for the sheer amount of lore and drama packed into those two books.

Starting out, we get a resolution to Hyori and Denjiro faked Komurasaki’s death and it’s… kinda unsatisfying. Blood bags under her clothes? Really? How did that not get discovered? During that one big feast in volumes 92 and 93 we see that Orochi isn’t shy about putting his arms around her and pulling her close, and neither Hyori nor Denjiro take any drastic steps to enforce a hands-off policy.

Even under all those layers, it would be hard for her to be sure he wouldn’t feel or hear a big bag of blood sloshing around. It’s a super risky contingency to have committed to. And I don’t want to get too deep into the debate about whether or not a woman in Hyori’s position with her title would realistically be sleeping with her clients, but if any part of her job does involve taking her clothes off, this scheme gets twice as hard to conceal all over again! I would have preferred Denjiro to have picked up a devil fruit to facilitate the ruse or using a trick sword with a blunt edge and pump connected to a blood bag on his far less likely to be touched body.

Underwhelming, but not the end of the world.

Next up, we close the last lingering apparent inconsistency between the flashback and the present by showing Kaido make it clear he has questions about the One Piece for the Kozuki survivors. I mentioned when I was talking about last week’s chapter that the wording in the official translation could be read to suggest that it was only an issue after the timejump, and that absolutely is the case. Good to have that squared away.

Then we address the traitor at long last! I saw a few people suggesting the traitor’s origin/motive would be a commitment to Wano’s closed borders, but very few suggesting the Kurozumi persecution as a background. It’s a good angle, I think. Giving the Kozuki Dynasty some blood on its hands is a nice change of pace from the totally idealised, squeaky-clean monarchies of other One Piece nations. A whole lot of fantasy falls into the trap of “monarchy good if you have the right monarch,” so deviations are always appreciated. While Orochi and Kanjuro are scum, the things they’ve been put through early in their lives are inexcusable.

What makes Kanjuro interesting, but also kinda flat, is the fact that he doesn’t seem to hold any hatred about his circumstances at all. It’s not that Orochi’s cause resonated him, it’s just that Orochi was the first person to find him and give him purpose – a role to commit his theatre skills to. Shiebs’ Kandra comparison feels very apt (and I have to shout out a Mistborn reference when I see one).

Kanjuro shows some of his own personality after the reveal, but mostly he seems proud of how perfect his act was and how it fooled everyone, even getting frustrated that no one saw the holes in the act (maybe he should have visited some One Piece forums, a lot of people here figured it out). There’s actually more emotion here than I expected from him after he spoke about not hating them or meaning them harm and the way the inkblot form used to hide his identity before the reveal suggested some kind of tabula rasa.

The best part of the Kanjuro reveal will be spotting all the clues on a reread. It’s been extremely well seeded, even by One Piece’s high foreshadowing standards. I love these moments where almost a decade’s worth of little details all come together. People who wanted something more out of left field will never know these joys.

Loved the art for the arrival of Kaido’s ships. A great spread.

And then we get the volume finale moment. Luffy, Law and Kid fighting side by side after about 12 years. What an incredibly hype thing to end it on. Nothing to say but fuuuuuuck yeeeeah!

I hope Oda keeps this momentum going in the next chapter. There’ll be a temptation, I’m sure, to jump into the past again and show how the Sunny survived the bombing and what play Denjiro has made to keep the plan in motion despite Orochi’s sabotage, but I think unless it can be done in less than two pages, that can wait. After so long in the past already, it would be better to let this naval engagement play out in full and give us the catharsis of a good fight rather than try to explain everything right away. Either way, I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

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

As the last chapter said, the story certainly is hurtling toward the present day. That was probably the right choice, pacing-wise, since most of the things that happen here have been discussed at least once already. I see this being the last full chapter of flashback. There’ll be a few more pages with black gutters at the start of the next one, maybe half the chapter, but then we’re back to the present, probably just in time to use Luffy’s reappearance and the announcing of a present-day counterattack as the end-of-volume cliffhanger.

The history of Wano, Oden, Orochi and Kaido has been something of a puzzle not just for the Wano arc but for almost all of the New World to date. Oda started sowing jigsaw pieces around the place as far back as Kinemon’s introduction all the way back in 2012. Over the past eight years we’ve been getting all these little, vague hints, and this was the point where Oda finally put them together into a picture. While it’s obvious he knew the big moments, like Kaido being a dragon, the samurai being from the past and Oden, we also know that Oda will often sort out the fine details as he goes and make changes as he puts the chapters together, so it must have been just as much of a problem-solving exercise for him as it was for us. How often did he have to reconcile what he established years ago with stuff he came up with on the spot today? How how many of the long-term hints were added on a whim and now had to be worked into the planned framework of the story? I’d love to hear more about the process of planning and writing this whole arc at some point, whether it comes from Greg when Wano is less current and his hands aren’t tied for behind the scenes stuff, or whether it comes up in an interview with Oda or an editor further down the line.

Despite the sheer number of plot points and offhand dialogue hint puzzle pieces that needed to be worked into the final tapestry here, Oda has done remarkably well with continuity. But there are two little points where he has perhaps taken the scissors to his jiggies to make them fit.

The first thing is from chapter 818:

Obviously we know now that Oden’s execution didn’t really have anything to do with his journey with Roger or the secrets he learned about the world. It was a pure power grab from Orochi that Kaido played along with because it benefited his interests. It’s not even as if they used the crime of exiting the country as fodder at Oden’s offscreen mock trial – the narration in chapter 970 says the crime he was tried for was “rebellion against the shogun.” We could maybe take the chapter 818 scene is something disingenuous from Kinemon, who sees the flow-on from Oden’s journey with Roger to trying to open Wano’s borders to the rebellion that got him executed, and is laying out the root cause from his own perspective, but that does feel like a little bit of a stretch to me.

It would also still leave the line about Kaido attempting to get information as an outlier, but I think that actually can be made to work with what we know. Kaido didn’t seem to have any real interest in being King of the Pirates or finding the One Piece in the flashback, but that could have changed over 20 years. I don’t know what the original Japanese says, but Kin says “Kaido is trying to pry information out of us.” Not was, but is. In chapter 819, we get this exchange:

This makes it seem like people trying to learn the secrets of the world from the samurai is mainly a post-timejump problem, something that’s been affecting them mostly as they move through the present, not something that only happened in the past. Suppose Kaido only decided he cared about the One Piece during the past 20 years. Suppose he left standing orders that should the samurai reappear his underlings should grill them for information. The best time for Kin’s group to learn that would be when they were exploring Wano after the jump, maybe from Shinobu having picked it up while spying in the palace.

It’s a little inelegant, and it would be great to have the reasoning set in stone, even by an SBS, but it can be made to work.

The second little issue, from chapter 922:

There are exactly two points in time where Ashura and Denjiro could have confronted Kaido like this, and there were no echoes of this memory in either of them. In the battle in chapter 970, Denjiro is show fighting close to Oden and Kanjuro, but never Ashura, and it can’t have happened after Oden was knocked out, because Ashura was backstabbed and fell almost immediately after. The framing of the memory is similar to the scene in chapter 973 where they drop back to buy some time for the rest, but there they seem to be facing one of the Numbers, not Kaido himself. Even though neither Ashura or Denjiro was sent to the future, this couldn’t have happened during the 20 years due to Denjiro’s transformation. So when did it happen?

Well, it could have happened offscreen in chapter 973. The pair dispatch a Number, then are quickly knocked down by Kaido before he hurries to overtake Kin on the way to Kuri Castle, but it is a little bit of a shame not to have shown it. It wouldn’t totally shock me if the panel was edited to a more Kaido-y silhouette for the volume release.

Overall, Oden’s story has been a strong bit of long-form storytelling, even with its two little continuity glitches here. I look forward to Oda fast-talking his way around the issues and providing bullshit-but-believable explanations in a future SBS.

As for chapter 973 itself, it’s a rapid-fire, dramatic conclusion to the flashback now that the climactic moment has come and gone. Most of the first half served to connect the dots between past and present and tick off the last few plot boxes. I was expecting a little more from Kaido and Momo’s meeting. An interrogation about his father’s travels. The same holding-him-over-a-drop thing but during a dizzying dragon flight to really justify Momo’s fears of dragons and heights. But we have to remember that the child is young and that this night was only a couple of months ago from his perspective. These wounds are still incredibly raw. It can just be hard to keep that in mind because it’s technically been 20 years in-universe, and eight in the real world.

The Kyoshiro reveal is an excellent twist, even if the explanation for the face change is ridiculous. But the layers it adds to Kyoshiro’s previous scenes are amazing. Go reread any of his dialogue to date, especially regarding Orochi and it’s all put in a totally different light. I’ve been saying it again and again over the past few chapters, but Wano really is an arc built for the reread, and this is just another way it’s going to be better the second time around.

Hyori as Komurasaki isn’t really a reveal due to how it’s been framed, but it is important to note that this is the first time it’s been directly stated to the readers. So there you go, another thing confirmed.

As said above, I expect the first half of the next chapter to rapidly bring us up to speed with the present, mostly doing little continuity housekeeping things. I want to see how Cat and Dog managed to get off Wano, given that they were seemingly captured and the country has so few ships. Maybe Kaido’s men chose to toss them over the waterfall like the outsiders they are as a means of execution. I’d like to see Kaido developing an interest in the One Piece and the secrets of the world, just to justify the above continuity issue (but this could come in a later Kaido flashback) and I’d like to see how Denjiro and Hyori pulled off her fake death. Then we’ll probably see Denjiro putting his plan for the promised night into action to get the plan back on track, building up to the reintroduction of the Straw Hats for the last page of the chapter and volume. After all these months, that’s going to be a hell of a feeling.

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

The colour spread truly does look nice, but it’s the second one in a row that’s promoing some collaboration. I really don’t like the idea of the colour spreads just becoming the One Piece ad space. Interesting that everyone is in their classic Fishman Island outfits except Usopp and Chopper. Usopp’s shirt is new, and the numbers of Chopper’s top weren’t there before. It’s probably meaningless, but it’s interesting that it happened regardless.

I was worried about the pacing for this chapter given how little there seemed left to cover before Oden’s death, but it turned out to be a pretty satisfying read. There were a couple of odd things though. The spreading of the news across the land was a weird point, given we’d just been shown Orochi’s guys hemming in all the citizens that heard. How quickly did it get to someone with the authority to send a news arrow out? Given how much of a hold Orochi seems to have on the capital, would there be anyone around willing to send out such damaging news? You almost could have had a whole scene of one loyalist trying to send the message while that one mystery bowman who keeps killing citizens who question Orochi tries to shoot him down first. Similarly, Oden keeping his swords in prison and being able to meet with Toki to hand them over. It’s not the end of the world for it to have happened, but one scene showing how Orochi’s forces tried and failed to stop it would make things feel a lot more thought through. Oda might not have had room, but hey, maybe as anime filler. Hint hint, Toei.

Also, a little translation thing, it feels like the pivotal line would have flown better if the order was reversed (ie “I was born to boil! Because my name is…” “…Oden!”) because that would be a more natural thing for the citizens to cry out as he died. It’s a shame Stephen was forced to commit to one version of the wording four years ago without the full context. There’s really no way we’re going to get a totally ideal translation for One Piece unless it’s started after the series ends. Oda does this to us too often. Also, what was Denjiro trying to say before Raizo stopped him? Not sure I’m following from the start of the line. Not sure if that was Oda’s intent or just how it’s been worded in English here.

Despite everything, I think the pivotal moments of Oden stepping into the pot and first lifting the Scabbards over his head had more of an impact than his actual death. Still, Oda did a really great job of showing him deteriorate over the course of the chapter, with his hair losing his shape, his posture starting to slouch, the blood and rendering, and a subtle screentone to show his body turning red. It’s painful to look at.

I don’t have strong feelings about the prophesised figure the same way a lot of other seem to. One Piece has always been about inherited will in a lot of ways, and it’s obvious that Luffy will eventually be learning and taking on the will of Joyboy. So far, inheriting the will of another has always been something done by choice because of similar ideals, not because it was destined or because someone was a reincarnation of someone else. Luffy is no more a reincarnation of Joyboy now than he was a reincarnation of Roger back when we thought it was only the late Pirate King he was taking on the will of. Of course, this may change when we learn what exactly made Joyboy so sure it would be exactly 800 years before a successor appeared, and that may put more of a reincarnation/destiny spin on things, but like, I’m not going to get mad about that before it’s actually confirmed.

I wonder if there’s going to be more to Cat and Dog’s fight than what we’ve seen here. It’s a good starting point, especially considering the victory Cat was bragging about is going to be stolen from them, but I want to see how it escalates to how they were at the start of Zou.

I was ready to take Raizo’s flashback panel as an error/mistranslation, what with Oden calling him by name in their apparent first meeting. I had to reread chapter 962 to remember the snippet of backstory he was given there, that he used to be part of the Kozuki family’s ninjas and that Oden did recognise him from that. So many little things to keep track of through this arc. Luckily Oda’s memory is better than mine.

Loved the panel tearing away as Toki ripped up the message on the last page, as well as the scraps of it overlapping the following panels. It’s a nice, unexpected touch of the kind Oda doesn’t usually go for.

What I’m not sure about is that last narration box. It strongly suggests the flashback is over, but it’s extremely rare for them to end bang on the last page of a chapter like this. Usually Oda tends to transition from past to present in the middle of a chapter, often over the course of a page or two with the black background fading out. And it seems like there’s a lot left to cover here! Particularly Momo and Kaido’s meeting and the exact circumstances and wording of Toki’s prophecy. Maybe the suggestion is meant to read as the flashback accelerating over the next chapter to go toward the present, given that a lot of these later events have already been discussed at length. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be happy to see Luffy again if we are flashing forward, but I’ll believe it when it happens. And if we actually are going back right away, I’ll be expecting more flashback later on. Maybe when Kaido and Momo come face to face at Onigashima that’ll be the trigger for the last section of this story. Just seems weird to break it up that way after committing so hard to telling the whole story in this one block here.

A good chapter overall, even if the last one really stole the show for raw impact, and I’m concerned about the choice to go back to the present so abruptly, if that is what’s happening on the last page, but we’ll see where we’re at this time next week.

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

Alright, we all knew it was coming, but holy shit that was brutal. A lot more graphic than I expected it to be, especially the random mook who fell in early on. One Piece has never necessarily shied from dark scenes, but I feel Oda has previously tended to show only the start then cut away when something as horrible as a live boiling happens. I wonder if the recent success of darker-feeling series like Kimetsu and The Promised Neverland gave him a bit more confidence in showing the rough stuff.

The flashbacks at the end of the chapter do a lot to put the last few installments of the story into perspective. I think it’s particularly important that we see Oden and Kaido clashing in an apparent stalemate when he attacked the palace. It’s interesting how both sides of that conflict seemed to have come away with a healthy respect for the other’s threat level. Kaido acknowledged that Oden might have been able to beat him if he got all his samurai and yakuza together back then while Oden took a peaceful solution and even when he did choose to fight, chose the uncharacteristically underhanded option of planning to assassinate Kaido while he was drunk. A shame that couldn’t have worked out. And it really goes to show how desperate and terrifying it must have been when Kaido turned out to be waiting in ambush.

Structurally though, I’m not completely jazzed on how everything is coming together. I don’t think the surprise, after-the-fact stakes raising for the ambush adds any more benefit than the full force “oh shit” moment we would have had if we’d known the full context when it first happened. Similarly, the reason for the dancing was close enough to most reasonable guesses that it didn’t really floor me as a reveal. I understand that Oda probably wanted us to feel like the Wanoese citizens – frustrated with Oden’s strange choices then coming to regret that we ever doubted him when the full story came out. I get it. But I’ve spent enough time with Oda’s storytelling not to doubt Oden in the first place. It didn’t feel like the intended journey. It felt more like an eye-rolling “I told you so” reveal. I think I would have liked the frustration of knowing the reasoning while it was happening and feeling unable to do anything about it, as Oden did, more than what we got.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the flashback is bad or anything. I’m having a good time. I just don’t really feel like jumping around the timeline and delivering info out of order has delivered any real benefit over just telling the story chronologically in this case.

Kaido himself is proving to be an interesting character mostly by way of how little we know about him despite his prominence in the story. There’s so little backstory. Suicidal Kaido, emotional drunk Kaido and the just wants a laugh at the public execution Kaido could almost be three different characters. I’ve given up hope of learning more about him in this flashback, but I am looking forward to what comes up before the arc ends.

And speaking of the flasback ending, there’s still so much to do. Dog and Cat aren’t quite enemies yet. Kaido and Momo haven’t had their one on one, nor have we been given anything to back up Kin’s statement that Kaido wanted info about the Poneglyphs from the Kozuki family. And to top it all off, Oden hasn’t yet delivered the “born to boil” line from Zou and still seems to be at least an hour from death. It’s hard to imagine that moment being anything other than the last spread of a chapter, but it’s also hard to imagine the boiling going on another 17 pages without losing its impact. It’s actually starting to feel plausible that the flashback could make it to the end of the volume at this point.

Heard we’re getting a colour spread next week (well, this Friday), I usually don’t think these kinds of things a realistic to hope for, but it’d be cool to get one just for Oden and the Scabbards, especially given what a big event it’s likely to be.

Another strong chapter overall, only issues are how it fits in with the rest structurally, but who knows, maybe it’ll all flow a bit easier in the archive binge.

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

Man, looking at some of the replies to this one in the spoiler threads was a trip. Do some people think being a fan of a character is meant to be the same as barracking for a sports team? Because that’s what it feels like. All that matters is your team’s win, and if they’re looking bad or something’s going wrong, the other team is cheating or the ref made a bad call, and heaven forbid you ever acknowledge the rival team made a good play. Honestly that kinda thing often seems toxic enough in the context of sports, let alone when you try to apply it to a narrative which by design has to give different characters highs and lows and can’t be so all or nothing. I’m not one to tell other people the right or wrong ways to enjoy their media, but it really doesn’t sound like a lot of you guys are having fun.

But anyway, things this week moved a lot faster than I expected them to. I was predicting a bit of introspection during the march to battle, but like Oden himself, I was taken off-guard by Kaido’s unexpected appearance. Kaido mentions a spy in Oden’s midst, and we’re really running out of viable traitor candidates now. The stuff with Shinobi later on goes a long way to take her out of the running, so I’m leaning pretty hard towards Kanjuro for the moment. The showdown is marvelously framed, particularly the hills of minions and Kaido himself coiled around a mountain, and the middle row of page five, where Oden’s group on the hilltop are encircled by the coils of Kaido’s body.

Kaido talks about why things are happening the way they are. We learn that he was worried about the state of affairs five years ago. I would have liked if he’d mentioned how he felt when Oden stopped in and left again for the Poneglyph, as it feels like a significant moment to me, but we do still get emphasis on the idea that the sooner Oden had done this the better it would have gone. The big dragon laments Oden not living up to his reputation, but to be honest it’s amazing that any reputation for aman like that could be enduring. Oden’s been pretty consistent in not caring if he looks foolish or weak or villainous to others as long as he gets to help people, and that IDGAF attitude has been part of what charmed people to him. I wonder what he’s actually heard about Oden, and whether that info came through Orochi, the people of Wano, or things he heard about Oden’s career in piracy.

I don’t know if this is a quirk in the translation or not, but it doesn’t feel right that he says “Newgate and Roger were like that too.” Past tense is alright for Roger, but Newgate should still be a clear present threat to Kaido. Is he just confident? Have they not really clashed yet?

Then we get a scene of epic battle. It’s a shame Pirate Warriors 4 definitely isn’t getting this far, because it feels like a perfect scene for that kind of game. The use of screentones in the Scabbard closeups are odd.During the battle it’s just Kanjuro and Shura shaded in. At the end of the chapter it’s Ashura, Kawamatsu, Dogstorm and Catviper. I don’t think there’s any concrete pattern you could read into either group (or either set of remainders).

There’s a brief and perhaps oddly placed cutaway to Yasui and Oden’s family. Toki is oddly calm, but I guess living for 800 years would give you a bit of serenity like that, while Hyori and Momo clearly haven’t been made aware of how serious the situation is. What a rude awakening they’re in for. Considering how recent this is for them and how much whiplash it must have caused, Momo’s behaviour up to this point makes a lot more sense.

Back to the battle. Good to get some background for Shinobu and why she’s so dedicated but not a Scabbard, but there’s nothing super remarkable about what we learn of her. Does make it very unlikely she’s the traitor though, as mentioned.

The glimpses of the fight we see make me desperately want more, but I’m not going to say it’s a fault in the chapter that we don’t get it because it’s going to happen again with higher stakes and characters I care more about just a few chapters in the future. The hoards of enemies combined with a terrifying dragon Kaido throwing fire down from the sky makes for an incredibly intimidating enemy. Kaido’s dragon form always seems to come with a storm. It’s said that these eastern style dragons have weather powers and fly by climbing along the clouds. Bodes kinda poorly for Sulong forms in the present day battle of Onigashima, doesn’t it?

Kaido takes his wound in an absolutely gorgeous spread page, then Oden goes down fast and hard from a blow to the back of the head after being distracted by the Clone Clone Fruit. Well, Kaido and Orochi did go out of their way to prove Oden would let go of a reckless attack to protect his family. Wonder how we’re going to go from here to the death of the Clone hag though. Also, is that the traitor stabbing Ashura in the back? What a surprisingly blatant move to pull, especially after Oden had fallen and the battle was already won.

Oden’s capture doesn’t seem to have inspired the kind of love for him that things happening in the present have implied. There’s one last big moment to come in this story, somehow involving his execution and the Scabbards’ mad dash to get to Toki and the kids before Kaido and Orochi do. Not sure what it could be considering how firmly against Oden the public sentiment is at the moment, but I’m always interested to find out.

The wait for execution in the Flower Capital prison is a mirror of Yasuie and the rounded up samurai in act 2. It feels weird that Wano has been driven by all these little snippets from and reflections of the past, but we’re only now getting the context to make them all work. It feels like an arc built for the reread, given what a puzzle its present and past have become. Maybe it’s meant to reflect the time travel aspect, maybe it’s just Oda experimenting with structure. The binge reread when all is said and done and everyone knows what’s going on is going to elevate the story a lot, I think, especially for people who aren’t really vibing the structure of the week to week version.

Going to be a long two weeks waiting on the next part. I’m predicting a swift end to the flashback after the next one. A couple of chapters at most.

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

Oof, what a chapter!

I was not expecting another legacy devil fruit to be playing a part here. The need for Semimaru and Higurashi to die before the present day is an interesting plot problem. Any other series, I would confidently be expecting Oden or one of the Scabbards to kill them outright next week or the one after, but Oda doesn’t like making his heroes killers, even for characters so completely irredeemable. I wonder if he plans to twist the plot to have Kaido execute them for failing to control Oden, or have them fall victim to some kind of near-comical accident while the more serious battle goes on around them.

The big mystery of the chapter is of course what Oden and Orochi talked about. I’m sure we’ll get some info on it next week, either through a flashback within the flashback or from Shinobu’s perspective. I would guess from the context in the rest of the chapter that it was a mix of things. The lives of the commonfolk on the line, either through the poisoned arrows (Queen?) and Kaido, a promise to leave Kuri relatively untouched (hence why Orochi still had to “make his move” on the region four years later, and an agreement that Kaido’s operations would result in ships being built and the borders opened. A delicate balance of factors combined with Oden’s trusting nature (given how many loans he gave Orochi back in the day) that resulted in what we see here.

This is the real tragedy of Oden. Unlike most flashback characters, he hasn’t been undone by being too virtuous at the wrong time (Bell-mere refusing to disown her family, Hiruluk taking poison in his attempt to support Chopper’s work, Tom not rejecting the ships he built, Rocinante giving up his life for Law’s), no, Oden has actually been undone by his flaws. He felt too big for the space he was living in and was undeniably selfish about pursuing his dream. He didn’t fail when he made his stand against Orochi and Kaido’s invasion because he wasn’t there to stop them at all. Even when Roger’s crew came for the Poneglyph he chose to look away from the blighted landscape and horrible factories and keep putting his adventure and his dreams first. By the time he was ready to actually give Wano (the land he was meant to be responsibly for) his full attention, Orochi and Kaido had too great a stronghold and too much leverage for him to fight back properly. Oden was a big personality, one of the biggest we’ve seen so far. Massive amounts of virtue, but shortcomings to match. I wouldn’t call him a bad person, especially given that he couldn’t have known the true extent of what Orochi was doing, but he undeniably let Wano down when he chose his priorities, and now it’s come back to bite him.

Although, that brings me to the thought that Oda maybe could have set this up a little better. I think most of us believed until this chapter that it was just Orochi causing trouble in Wano while Oden was off with Whitebeard and Roger. No one thought Kaido was moving in until after he came back, probably until the night he died. A better look at the state of things when Roger picked up the Poneglyph, or some mention that they had to sneak past Kaido’s crew to get in might have made things clearer for the readers and enhanced the dramatic irony of us knowing how badly the country is falling apart while Oden remains willfully ignorant. Eh, we’ve had weeks to overthink it all. Maybe things will read a little easier in the volume binge.

And another slightly critical point, this time about the translation. I liked the thinking behind “Akazaya Nine” at the time it was revealed, but I don’t think it would have been chosen if we’d known at the time it would need to be referenced so literally like this. The price you pay for an up to date translation is not being able to anticipate little things like this. It’s why I’m going to be cautious of any retranslation initiative that comes up before the series is completely or almost completely said and done.

That last spread is incredible though. The march of the scabbards in chapter 955 was a powerful enough moment on its own, but it only gets stronger seeing it reflected here. It’s fun that Oda plays with the time travelly-aspect of the story by making the recreation of this famous moment in the future being the one we see first and the original the one that comes after. Oh, and I can’t wait for the digital colour manga to get this far. I always think it’s at its best with scenes covered in warm hues, and this big sunset with a strong emphasis on red lighting is perfect for that. See ya’ll in two and a bit years for that I guess.

I’m not expecting the flashback to end next week, but I’m expecting it to start accelerating toward an ending. Details of Oden and Orochi’s deal intercut with the trip to Kaido in the first half, some shit going down in the second, possibly closing on Oden and Kaido clashing for the first time. We’ve had some of the most exciting lore reveals in years in the past few chapters, so I expect the trend to continue with some of the hardest hitting drama in the next few. Volumes 95 and 96 in their entirety are going to be remembered as one of the highest points of the series, you all mark my words!

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

Man, I was starting to wonder how close we were to getting an unprecedented whole volume of flashbacks for volume 96, but it’s not even close. This is only the fourth chapter of the book. All the end of year breaks have thrown my sense of time off so badly. Every year, it never gets any easier!

Shanks question to Roger is something we’re definitely coming back to. Is it about what he expected the One Piece to be? Was he hoping the last island would have a cure for Roger’s illness? Does his question and the answer he received have anything to do with his current role in the world and he relationship with the Five Elders?

The treasure being dubbed the One Piece while Roger lives is a really interesting point. I kinda liked the idea of the name coming from his last words (as per the 4kids intro I guess) but it seems to have just popped up on its own. Meh. At least the line “and they have no idea” reads like the name is somehow fitting for what they found. Maybe it leaked from the World Government, after some meeting from the upper echelons who might actually know what it is they’re covering up.

I’m seeing a lot of people feeling real unhappy about the second Neptunian sovereign and the talk of the return of Joyboy and the implication that either or both could be Luffy, but let’s be real, One Piece has always had talk of destiny and inheriting the will of your predecessors. Luffy was accepted as the inheritor of Roger’s will long ago; does it make all that much of a difference if he’s inheriting from Joyboy as well? Or inheriting Roger inheriting Joyboy? And in terms of being a chosen one, we’ve got the Will of the D, the King’s Haki and the Voice of All Things before you factor in being the son of Dragon the Revolutionary and the grandson of Garp the Hero. Listen, I think chosen one tropes are as boring as everyone else, but Luffy has always been a special little guy. The interconnected lore of big fantasy stories always seems to end up tying the hero back to important figures and concepts. It’s something you learn to live with in the genre I guess.

I did see the counterpoint to Luffy being the sovereign/Joyboy that the Neptunians didn’t really care about him being at Fishman Island or making contact with Shirahoshi. They were surprised he could hear them at all, so that doesn’t scan him being the one they’re expecting. What I think would be neat would be a royal sovereign for each of the ancient weapons. Perhaps in form of the three princesses Luffy’s saved over the years. The royal family of Alabasta was entrusted with the location of Pluton, which is interesting, but there’s little to connect Dressrosa to anything else. And also, if the Neptunians knew about two sovereigns it would make sense for them to know about the third as well, but they don’t mention them. Another mystery for the ages.

And then we’re back to Wano and as much as I’ve been keen to see how things got the way they are in the present, it can’t help feeling slightly flat after all the Roger stuff. Especially factoring in the knowledge that the pivotal moment of the story is still five years away. What could possibly come from Oden’s raid on the palace that would be both a satisfying outcome and still allow the next five years to happen. I think we’ve got at least another chapter to get through one way or the other before we’re close to Kaido arriving. That said, the run to the palace was a pretty great sequence, and the storytelling through the damaged environment as Oden makes his way in were pretty great.

I’m looking forward to the next chapter, but not expecting anything super huge from it. Just a transition between where we are now and the climax of the flashback. Gotta adjust my level of anticipation from Roger’s journey back to the Wano plot. Hopefully no breaks until until we reach the final stage of the story.