Captain M Entertainment

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

Loved the colour spread this week, though the perspective on Nami’s legs looks a bit weird. I’m sure there’s a billion theories about the globe, but I doubt it means much of anything. One thing I can’t stop noticing about One Piece globes, both canon and fanmade, is that the Grand Line never seems to have enough islands to make up the seven routes we’re told there were for the first half, and at least three starting paths for the second half. Although, it’s possible some smaller-looking places like Little Garden aren’t big enough to be visible on the average globe.

The other thought is that the landmasses on this one don’t seem to match the infamous seven-mooned Oharan globe at all. Even assuming its the exact opposite side, it doesn’t quite work. It’s likely the consistency of maps, except for the broadest points, isn’t all that important to Oda, but I do have something of a theory that the Oharan globe is meant to show the world as it was in the ancient past. And what with there being an ancient giant who can move continents in the story, there’s plenty of possible justification for landmasses being different between modern and ancient globes.

I wasn’t expecting the story to cut away from the prison again so soon. Not that I’m complaining about seeing a bit of Zoro after he took most of a volume off, but I’d really like to see the prison story moving into its climax.

The haki lore is not at all what I expected. Oh, I remember the weird shockwave deflection the admirals did and the way the elephant foot bounced off Rayleigh’s hand, but I’d attributed the former to haki not being totally defined yet and the latter to a quirk of the art that was just meant to depict the foot hitting Ray’s hand. I’ve been in debates over this. Hoo boy, was I wrong. Of course luffy is going to learn this haki forcefield skill, but I don’t think it’d going to change much about anything aside from justifying him winning some tougher fights, much in the same way future sight is more of a skill milestone than a tangible powerup so far.

Going to the Zoro scene, I still love Gyukimaru as a character. The daruma-like face lines are a great look. I love the way his nose is shaded over, like it’s gone red from the cold to match the face paint. A great touch. I also enjoy seeing a character willing to fight dirty without being a total bastard about it. There’s always been a few too many super-honourable fighters for my tastes in One Piece, taking an unrealistic number of hits voluntarily for the sake of chivalry or whatever. This is a good bit of variety.

And while we’re on the topic of variety, I think Oda has realised that Zoro’s fight choreography has historically been kinda weak, so he’s been making good changes like having Pica be a puzzle boss, and making the fight in this chapter a two on one.

Komurasaki appears to be alive. That’s sooner than I thought; figured we’d at least go through the motions of the funeral before this reveal. Nothing much more to say at this point.

I don’t have much to say about Kamazo just yet. He looks pretty cool, but he’s got basically no personality. I look forward to the rad look being undermined by the colour art making his kimono neon green or hot pink or whatever. The trademark Wano experience.

No comment on black blades either. We barely know anything new about them. This is just another tease, and they’re not the most interesting part of the lore to my mind anyway.

Also two bits of hit and miss translation this week. Someone already mentioned that the wording of the line about Ryuma and souls was off, but I also keep pausing at the panel where Zoro’s saying “Here we go with another weirdo…” Here it’s not that the line is inaccurate, it’s that the tone of it doesn’t match the art at all. Zoro looks mad, like he’s yelling, but the line ending with a “…” makes him sound more resigned or sarcastic. Something more like “What does this new weirdo want?!” would have had less of a disconnect. That’s a nitpick, I know.

The chapter ends fantastically. I like Zoro taking a real hit for the first time in a while, I love him keeping the weapon he was hit with, and I adore that he found a way to make Three Sword Style even more impractical by doing it with a scythe between his teeth. That final panel just exudes power. A solid chapter. Much better than I would have guessed from hearing we were cutting away from the prison again.

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

While I’m enjoying the current plot threads, I think the last few chapters have suffered from the Dressrosa era pacing problems I thought Oda had moved past. What I mean is it would probably have been better to do the bathhouse set piece in one dedicated chapter and the jailbreak in a dedicated chapter instead of doing two chapters with half of each. The pacing, in hindsight, isn’t really that slow, but because each of the scenes we’re cutting between only has time to take a single baby step, it feels a lot slower than it is. Volume readers are likely to have a better time with this part of the story.

The prison scene had some good laughs this week. Luffy’s response to the cuffs coming off was perfect, and yes, I’m among the people assuming he’ll just rubberneck his way out of the Battle Royal collar. Still no Kawamatsu reveal makes me sad, but at least Raizo is still fun to watch. Hyogoro’s a good guy, asking to let Luffy fight alone. I like the old guy. Wonder if there’s something special about him, or if Kawamatsu just thinks he should live because he’s influential in the underworld.

The most interesting bit of trivia from the bathhouse this week is that the Koizuki tattoo is specifically a waning crescent. Over in the timeline thread, where the phases of the moon and their consistency were a topic of debate, there was some question as to whether the crescents Oda drew (they were all pointing the same way) were meant to be waxing or waning (since the phases are already too fast, so why couldn’t they go the other way as well). A new, maximum power happiness punch was not a call back I was expecting, but I’ll certainly take it. I’m not sold on the need for fanservice, but come on, I’m not made of stone. I enjoyed that Nami had the good sense to make fun of Sanji’s outfit, and I’m curious to see where him being recognised as Germa goes. I wonder if the rest of the Vinsmoke clan are in the brig of the Queen Mama Chanter right now?

Not much worth saying about Zoro’s little scene yet. Good to know we’re finally building towards the lore that’s been on the cards for the better part of a decade. Anyone think we’ll get a retelling of Monsters with the Ryuma history, or will Oda let the original one-shot remain the canon version. The weapon collector has a fantastic character design.

We’re about halfway through volume 93 now, which means its a good time for all this buildup to start turning into payoff. Looking forward to next week.

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

Just gonna throw it out there, Solitaire and Daifugo are probably the best smile users so far in terms of appearance/powers. It’s good to see they aren’t guaranteed to disadvantage the users. Babanuki is also interesting. At a glance, I thought the elephant’s lower jaw on the page where it’s shooting was a neck leading out from Babanuki’s belt. Figured the belt might have been some kind of device that helps him control the animal parts and hide them when they weren’t needed, which would have been cool tech. But no, it’s just fixed to his chest like normal.

I wish we could have seen more of Luffy’s breakout attempt. It feels like we cut very quickly from it starting to him being caught and served up for judgement by Queen. I’d even have sacrificed a page of the bathhouse (blasphemy!) for a bit of that.

Queen is… interesting. I hope now that we’ve seen a bit more of him people are going to stop saying he’s an okama. I’ve sung the praises of okama on here before, I’d love to see more of them and have Oda doing different things with them, but Queen seems to have got the reputation of one via the name alone. He doesn’t dress feminine, he doesn’t have different pronouns, he’s apparently straight. It’s like people around the place and out on reddit totally forgot about the deck of cards theme. Overall I like him, the “top three things you’re worried about” bit was hilarious and I’m sure there’s some good backstory behind the robot arm.

Zoro’s sword being stolen again as a way to hook him into a plot thread is meh. I”m sure he’s getting involved in something good, but the setup is meh.

Not sure how I feel about the many pages of bathhouse in the chapter. On one hand it’s easy, shallow fanservice of a kind Oda easily dips into. On another, it was a kind of fanservice I enjoyed, even if it’s not really necessary and not what I come to One Piece for. And Oda wouldn’t be the first fantasy author to use characters discovering another culture has different taboos/lack of taboos about nudity and gender mixing as a worldbuilding thing. Plus it does feel accurate to how Japan was in the period Wano is based on, based on things I vaguely recall reading once. That is an experience that can happen when you travel. Eh, even with the best possible interpretation, I’d say the scene outstays its welcome just a little. Like I said above, I think at least one page of the scene should have gone to the prison instead.

Not much to say about Hyogoro yet. Wait and see if and how he lives up to his reputation and how he fits into everything. Offering up his own life to save Luffy is a great start.

Good to have the fishbone prisoner confirmed at last. If I never read the words “lurking legend” again it’ll be too soon. It’d be just like Oda to subvert expectations with a really weird looking otter monster for Kawamatsu, but I think this time I’d prefer he go traditional and just let a cute otter be a cute otter. And I really hope the actual reveal is next week. After all this build up, it’d be painful to wait any longer now we have the name.

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

Holy shit there’s a map of Wano. I’ve been waiting so long. Interesting how broken up it all is. I wonder if we’ll learn it’s all connected underwater like Long Ring Long Land, or if the different climates mentioned infer that it’s an archipelago of separate islands. Possibly separate islands moved together by a certain ancient giant…

We also don’t really know yet how large Wano is meant to be. It’s implied the journey between Okobore and Udon is far, but the Northern Graveyard is apparently a close and easy spot to escape to after the chaos at the palace, and that map definitely isn’t to scale, so who knows how it all really lines up.

As for the chapter overall. It was short, but the map alone makes up for it. The Sunach thing is… strange. I wonder where all that’s going. But it does hint at what was expected for a while: Koshiro is of Wanonian (Wanoese?) descent. Possibly his family left before all the unpleasantness with Orochi and Kaido, or fled from it. We know this Sunach line hasn’t been used before in One Piece, but does anyone have the raw Japanese text of it to do some searching with? I’d like to see if maybe it was used in the old Monsters oneshot somewhere, making it a Ryuma related thing. Kiku doesn’t seem to think that Sunach is inherently a bad thing, just not something Momonosuke, as a young lord, should be saying, which is interesting.

The rest of the crew mainly take some time to cool down and debrief. It’s good in the long haul, since the story seem to be about to get hectic again, but can make an already short chapter right before a break feel slightly impotent. Still, Robin’s hypercompetence was hilarious. Does she even have to ask if they should worry about the little girl they left back at what I understand to be a brothel though? It should be obvious she’s not!

Nami might be in for a rude shock if they do go on that bathhouse trip; what will the locals say about her tattoo?

The way I see it, this has tow outcomes. The first, she gets turned away and Sanji’s infiltration mission ends in disappointment. Second, she gets drafted into the yakuza because of the assumptions they make. They would be looking for another pretty girl to take in, what with their oiran just being slain. Too bad for Robin, after all that time she spent getting into the role, even if her cover was blown anyway. They can trade places!

I wonder if Oda means to show Komurasaki’s funeral. Closed casket, I assume, to hide how obviously faked her death was.

Luffy in the prison was mostly a setup scene, but I love, love, the scorpion guy’s design. I hope he gets a name and at least a little skimish with Luffy before he bites the dust next week. The old dude being someone important from the good old days is likely to be a big thing in the future, but we just don’t have enough info on the old Hyogoro for it to really have an impact immediately. Just more of an “oh, cool,” development. Queen arriving, Big Mom coming, Kid possibly hanging around, still looking for the handcuff keys, I think the next few chapters will have a lot of fun scenes in the prison.

And that’s basically the chapter in a nutshell. Setup. Lots of little things to make you excited for bigger things later. A breather that feels slow reading weekly, but will be a vital change of pace when reading the collected volumes. It’s a good chapter technically, because it does what it needs to, but it’s not exciting in the way the last few were.

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

Straight up, I loved this chapter. It’s the exact kind of chaos that Oda does best, with so many characters and so much action happening all at once. I wasn’t expecting Wano to get this crazy this soon, even if it’s just a skirmish before the main event, but damn.

So Orochi’s fruit is actually an Orochi model. I really thought Oda would try to avoid that. We’ve seen really on the nose names relating to a character’s powers before, but never anything on this level. That said, I can’t believe that even speculating it would be a hydra model, I guessed dino dino instead of snake snake for the fruit type. That said, I love how the eight heads look on the page. They feel like they’re constantly in motion, slithering around each other and lashing out about the room. They’d look great animated, but I doubt the anime will be able to spare the budget for the kind of constant motion the art infers.

I really wish Oda had taken the time to show the layout of the Shogun’s palace in more detail. It was pretty hard to tell where the stuff with Robin and Brook was taking place relative to the bits with Orochi. Sometimes they seem to be on the outer edge of the same room, sometimes in the adjacent room, and the only shot with both Robin and Orochi makes it look like she’s been on a balcony overlooking the floor Orochi was on. I think I got it by the end, but it just didn’t read clearly throughout the chapter. And while we’re on the topic of things not totally clear, I wasn’t sure at a glance if Brook was physically there or just projecting himself, since we’d never seen a full body apparition from him before.

Kyoshiro and Komurasaki was a surprise. It’s not really clear if the Koizuki plan card is something Kyoshiro had on him, or something he picked up from Komurasaki’s “corpse” (yeah right she’s really dead), is it? Really not sure what to make of Kyoshiro’s alignment at this point. He certainly didn’t seem too invested in a Koizuki Family return back in his intro scene. If he was a sleeper agent, or a protector of Hyori from the start, his whole attitude towards Toki’s curse seems out of place. That said, he seems pretty drunk in that scene, which makes his true feelings hard to read…

Nami using Zeus is something I’m happy to see. Actually, between him and the raid suit, the new stuff the crew picked up from Tottoland are all getting used really quickly. Glad they’re not gonna go to waste or be saved purely for finishing moves, because they do change up what we can expect from Nami and Sanji in combat going forward in some fun ways.

Big Mom plot is running basically as expected. The idea of a prison break, especially Luffy’s reaction, not knowing that she’s turned, is pretty hype. Hey, what he he attacks her on sight and knocks her memories back into place with a blow to the head, messing everything up? It’s hard to imagine the amnesia plot being over that quickly, but it’d still be a fun idea. Big Mom = Carmel theories are dumb and I have no time for them.

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

This was a pretty great chapter. A little recappy in places, but it’s almost to be expected as it’s probably the first one of a new volume, but otherwise really solid. Robin’s been underutilised since the timeskip, and really just in general, so it’s great seeing put all her talents to use. I really hope that Komurasaki turns out to have coloured hair despite it being filled in black, like Tama did, just so future rereads in the colour version become a little less confusing than this was. I’m leaning strongly to the idea of her being Hyori at this point, but we’ll see.

I’m a big fan of Orochi’s design. I can’t decide if it’s too ridiculous to be intimidating, or just ridiculous enough to intimidate; pretty classic Oda work. It would be too on the nose for his devil fruit to be an “Orochi Orochi Fruit” or an “Orochi Model” of something, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Dragon Dragon Fruit: Hydra Model. Which does raise the question of where the ninth head is meant to be…