Captain M Entertainment

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.

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

First thing to say about this one, and it sucks that it has to be a negative, is that someone has really dropped the ball with the release timing for this one. Absolutely no avoiding spoilers. And every year the first issue leaks super early, so Shueisha must have known it would happen here as well. Would have been smart to move up the release of the digital version with that in mind, or at least not let the English release be so many days behind the Japanese one. And the whole thing with taking down scan sites might have gone a little smoother without this long delay so soon after it happening. Give people a bit more time to transition before the annual first issue delay shakes their faith. Just feels like there should have been some way to manage this better.

The colour spread is… not my favourite. The Arashi boys are deeply uncanny, and a lot of the bobble head Strawhats aren’t super appealing either. It is cute the way the Arashi ship is holding hands with Merry and Sunny at the bottom though, and Jinbe’s presence leads me to believe we’ll be getting back to him very soon after the flashback ends. Interesting to put him in his Marineford outfit though. I would have expected the Fishman Island or Tottoland duds to be used as his default appearance going forward, but I guess he changed so little over the timeskip that it doesn’t matter the same way it would if any other crew member got that treatment.

But the rest of the chapter more than makes up for the odd colour spread! The lore! The history! The hints at the endgame! Gold Roger in the flesh! He’s really been cemented as a human being now, after so long purely as a mythic figure, and I like him a lot. It really does feel like he could be the hero of his own story if a prequel was ever done. The chronology of Roger’s adventures is interesting though. From Water Seven to Tequila Wolf and then back to Fishman Island? Are we to assume a long passage of time in which Roger left the Grand Line and started over (even after suspecting at Water Seven that all the poneglyphs would be in the New World)? Something from the past? Or maybe they were distracted by a sidequest we just don’t know about for the moment.

The location of the Fishman Island ponegyph is sure to be a big deal going forward, but the options are far too open to speculate on now. (Maybe Jinbe would remember something about it if given the right hint from Oden’s logbook?). One of the most interesting fragments here is Roger explicitly describing Poseidon as “a weapon that’ll destroy the world one day” which perhaps suggests the Ancient Weapons could do more than simply nuke Mariejoa and Reverse Mountain as some theories suggest. But as to what could be combined with Neptunians and a great battleship to create a global scale threat, who knows. The wording is vague, but the line about “people who called it a weapon” could be read to imply that destruction is only one possible function of the so called Ancient Weapons. And of course, the idea that fulfilling the One Piece’s purpose will take all three and Roger couldn’t do it because he was ten years too early is easy theory fodder.

You almost feel bad for Roger. Too late for Joyboy, too early for the One piece. Makes me think of the old “born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the universe” meme, except Roger did get to explore the world. And, well, he does seem happy with the friends he made things he accomplished in his own time, and isn’t that what counts?

Looking forward to the questions about how hair mermaids actually grow, coming soon to an SBS near you, from the usual gang of pervs

It’s interesting to see how much Wano was already changing when Oden stopped in for the poneglyph. Previously we might have assumed Kaido did most of the damage after establishing himself there but it’s clear now (and from the last chapter) that Orochi industrialised the country on purpose to lure powerful allies like Kaido in, which makes me even more ready to see his downfall when we get back to the present. Kaido is a bad guy for sure, but his evil is an uncaring force of nature. Orochi is malicious and exploitative in a way Kaido just hasn’t been so far.

Genghis Baan! What a name! I do wonder, what is it Cat and Dog told their people to convince every single man, woman and child on Zou their bond with Wano was too important to betray, even in the face of annihilation. I can understand them feeling that way personally, but we aren’t seeing a lot of Oden making an impression on the general mink population. The pack mentality is strong among minks, I guess.

“Several Real Poneglyphs” is interesting to note. It’s been a point of speculation for a while if the full text of the Real Poneglyphs could be found alongside the One Piece. The logbook implies both that Roger didn’t find all of them and that he learned all the secrets of the world anyway. How many poneglyphs were missing from the Pirate King’s set? Would Robin have seen any so far that he never did?

Poor Buggy and Shanks. Hey, it seems Buggy is like the “bad timeline” version of the aged up characters Oda’s been doing in the SBS lately. Wonder if we’ll ever get a good timeline version of him, maybe what he would be if he did get to see the One Piece. Shank’s plot is doing nothing but thicken. Has he visited the last island on his own? If he doesn’t know about the One Piece and the secrets of the world, what’s his leverage with the Five Elders? Too many questions!

So what do we know about the One Piece? It’s a real treasure, but there’s a lot of information in there as well. The Void Century, the Weapons, the People of the D (I can’t wait to for my friends who don’t really follow the series to ask if we know what the treasure is yet so I can say with complete honesty that the secret final treasure is what the D in Monkey D Luffy stands for), and that it has something to do with Wano, given how desperate Oden was to restore the country to its open state after seeing it.

The final spread is a beautiful piece of work which I can see becoming iconic for the series for years to come. In fact, I’d be shocked if there weren’t prints of the manuscript available at Jump Stores already. Interesting that the official release actually went with Laugh Tale as well! I’m glad for it, but I’m aching for the podcast episode to come out so I can hear a little more about how they’re going to handle it.

I assume next week our time with Roger is going to wrap up pretty quickly and the focus will shift back to Wano and Kaido. Our time with him, like his life, feels so much shorter than it should have been, but all the same it was beautiful, inspiring, and a great bit of a laugh. My heartiest congratulations to Oda for sticking the landing on this one. After 20 years of anticipation, seeing Roger as he actually was could easily have been massively underwhelming, but somehow he pulled it off. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for the end of the series!

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

What a beautiful chapter this was! I’m not usually one to focus on powerlevels or the characters’ apparent strength, but this strikes me as a good time to have a think about it, since we’ve likely just seen what the absolute power ceiling looks like. We’ve got so much haki it visibly flows off the weapons. There’s projected advanced armament several feet away from the end of the blade. The lightning and physical shockwave we’ve seen before though not on this scale, but the dazzling white light is new – and looks spectacular! I do wonder if this moment will end up being a little less special in the anime because of the ways they’ve exaggerated things in the past. A shockwave so big it shakes the ocean far off the island? In the anime, King Kong Gun clashing with Doflamingo caused that. A dazzling white light? In the anime, Luffy pushing Kaido’s head into the ground just did that, among a number of other bright flashy things. None of these things will be unprecedented in quite the same way there. But that’s the anime, and this is a manga discussion thread. Time to get back on topic.

Bege’s cover story is all over the place and I have no idea where it’s going to be honest. Is that a member of his crew falling down unconscious in the bottom right of the panel? Who did that if the Navy is coming up from the other direction?

I’m glad to see a bit of weakness from Oden this week. Obviously he’s still an absolute beast in a fight, but he’s not really on the level of Roger or Whitebeard when they’re fighting seriously. We wouldn’t want Oden to be too perfect, after all. (and again, it’s good for the long-awaited fight between the big boys to be something only they could achieve.) Oh, and great attention to detail showing all of the Moby Dick’s furled sails being blown upside down by the shockwave. Feels like the kind of thing a lesser artist might easily overlook.

The next spread has two great examples of things I brought up in the ongoing Mangaplus debates over in the thread for that. An up-to-date translation for a series so driven by lore and secrets is a constantly moving target. The first is Blackbeard’s strange wakefulness. I think Luffy’s talk about people who don’t sleep in Drum still holds up to the reveal, but the current interpretation of Ace’s words to him before their fight absolutely does not. (even the fan translations I’ve seen wrote it as being to do with Blackbeard’s actual age, not his extra time awake, because how could anyone have known?) The other thing is, of course, Lodestar Island. Great name for a place, given its relevance to the lore, but it means the Road Poneglyphs were obviously intended to be Lode Poneglyphs. Feels so obvious now that we have the context, but I don’t think a single person guessed it. At this point I almost expect the Rio Poneglyph to be carved into the shape of a lion and turn out to have been the Leo Poneglyph all along  But yes, this kind of thing is why no one wants to commit to a translation rewrite. I said it in the other thread and I’ll say it here as well. If a revised translation came out in full 13 months ago, fans would have insisted it had Shilliew instead of Shiryu. Eight months ago, there was no way of knowing Mighty Blade was meant to be a reoccurring term. Four months ago and it still wouldn’t have had Laugh Tale. And if it had come out just one week ago, it would still have gotten Blackbeard wrong and we still wouldn’t have Lode Poneglyphs. I think internal consistency is a virtue for any release to have, and I’m not going to boycott or tear down a release if its consistent glossary is out of date just because of how impossible it is to be up to date.

I don’t really know what to say about the Blackbeard reveal. He’s still a very mysterious figure. We’re getting him one piece at a time, but we still don’t have enough for a clear picture. What I do think is that between this and Luffy’s assertion that if he sleeps he will die, we can make a safe guess that his story will probably end, no matter how chaotic the battles leading up to it, with him quietly closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep for the first time in his life. I think that has the potential to be quite the beautiful death.

Also on the lore front, it seems we have confirmation that the One Piece is something Roger found on Laugh Tale, not something he hid there. We definitely knew this previously, but I think it was just from interviews and author/editor comments. It’s good to have it locked into the actual comic.

Given that Roger sailed to the end of the Grand Line already, that basically means he’s on his New Game + run, doesn’t it? No wonder he’s so strong, he’s been thrown back to the starting area with maxed out stats and gear, and this time he’s trying for the good ending!

You almost feel bad for Whitebeard seeing how hard he took Oden’s departure. Poor guy. I hope they got that last chance to meet and exchange stories before Oden died. Gonna be real sad if this is the last time they saw each other.

The message on the Skypiea Poneglyph is a fun callback and nice to have squared away. There’s not exactly any new info in this sequence besides a little hint at the limit of the Voice of All Things, but it just wouldn’t have felt complete without showing it. Next chapter, I have no idea what to expect. Vingettes of places on the Grand Line we’ve seen? The stealing of Big Mom and Kaido’s Lode Poneglyphs? (and which one does Roger have already?) Laugh Tale itself? Or will we just cut back to Wano and get to the meat of the nation’s tragedy?

Frankly, every option is a good one. They’ve all got things I would love to see. This is such a painful time for the Christmas and New Years breaks to come up!