Captain M Entertainment

Yes, it’s a short one again and yes, there’s a break again, but I’m just happy to be back doing three chapters in a row, you know? Let’s hope things stay this way for a bit. It’s definitely a good chapter for the idea of ‘please for the love of god wait a week if something feels like it’s ruining the whole story,’ with Bonney pretty easily disproving all of the community’s most reactionary fears about her transformation in one go.

Confronting Wano’s lingering prejudices in the cover story is a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t sure there’d be a way to do it in the near-wordless cover stories, but Oda’s taking it on anyway. This choice helps retroactively justify the slow start to the story because of the contrast it creates with all the people heaping praise and assistance on them in the early installments. I did have, looking at this, a thought about Wano’s culture. Some comments are quick to call out the country’s citizens for not learning from the monster they created in Orochi by blaming blood instead of individual, and I myself was pretty hard on Hiyori on that point back when the arc ended. But we have to remember, the purge of the Kurozumis happened when Orochi was a child, and the man died at 54. So have these kids learned from what happened to Orochi? Hell no, they weren’t around for that. Even Hiyori wouldn’t have seen the events Orochi lashed out over. And yes, there may be older people alive who witnessed the full cause and effect, they might be forgiven for not passing that down fully to their kids considering what’s been happening to them for the past 20 years. You have to solve issues of life and death before people are able to ease their focus toward social problems. Hopefully Wano is now at the point where they can start doing that.

Getting into the chapter proper, Stussy’s trajectory continues to be a mystery. Given how things are going, there might be time for her to reach the Sunny and save herself. I actually feel for Kaku though in this scene. You can tell there’s a part of him that’s not fully cut out for this kind of work. He seemed to regret having to betray Galley La too, although he didn’t take that one quite as hard. Maybe he should have got out during the timeskip while he had the chance.

Mars’s “defeat” on the sea below is something I think could have been choreographed more clearly. Like, the concept works, but it’s spread over so many pages that it looks more like Bonney, Sanji and Franky push Luffy into Mars for an extended struggle before he flies away. Given that the final push seems to be Luffy fully inflating, what was the point of what the others were doing? I think this should have been something more like the launch of a cannonball, where the three hit Luffy simultaneously back near the ship and he flies out and hits Mars full force, carrying the launching power of their attacks. You could still fit the back and forth around using Haki into that in roughly the same number of panels, and the motions of it would actually make sense. Turning things that seem like the should be quick hits int physics-defying pushing struggles is nonsense when the anime does it to draw out scenes, and it’s nonsense when Oda does it too.

But luckily, this one kinda awkward clash actually isn’t the finale of the arc just yet. The Sunny’s group is being held up, presumably by Nusjuro, and the other Elders aren’t giving up yet.

The broadcast is surprisingly still creeping on, but it’s so fragmented and out of context here I’m not sure it’s worth speculating until it’s properly over and we can lay out the whole thing with the gaps exposed.

I’m worried by Atlas’s moment though. That thought to Lilith about York’s monitoring feels really ominous for her survival chances. Are all the good Vegapunks really going to die together on Egghead? I wonder if Atlas and Lilith will work together to take York out of the World Government’s hands as well, ending them all in a blaze of glory. That would be a sad; they’re fun characters, and I really like Atlas’s design. Normally with Oda you wouldn’t worry about this kind of thing, but with Shakka and Pythagoras gone and Edison implied to be down and out as well, it’s starting to feel more likely.

While they’re not outright succeeding at their objectives, I’m still pretty impressed at the Elders’ teamwork here and through the arc. It can’t be understated how bad it has the potential to be that Ju Peter just put the Seraphim back in the hands of the Government agents surrounding the Giants’ ship. Wait, can Bonney control them as easily as the Pacifistas? Stands to reason she could, but as soon as they sense she’s unable to give an order, things start to look really, really bad for Luffy’s group. But anyway, I like the combo of using Ju Peter’s big suck to hold the ship in place while Warcury charges in and sinks it.

And don’t think I didn’t notice his lack of fear about hitting the water after. It doesn’t outright confirm anything – we’ve seen a lot of Devil Fruit users make big risky jumps over open sea in the past – but it’s definitely an interesting addition to the evidence.

(Also the concern about the spat-out Cipher Pol agents “dying on impact” is pretty funny considering they’re only here after surviving the even bigger fall from the Labophase basement, but I guess the Marines on the ships wouldn’t know that.)

And what a note to go out on, that big robot panel. The shadows and shading look great, and we get a delicious little echo of the ancient past as it finally gets its moment in the sun. And the fact that Luffy has leapt back to the island means they could be fighting side by side, at least for a little bit. You can’t see it in the actual chapter because the typesetting is all caps anyway, but the chapter list on Mangaplus renders the name ‘EMET’ in capslock, which they usually don’t do. Curious to see if anything comes from that, like an acronym or something.

There’s the mystery of what makes the time right for EMET now, presumably the same thing Roger was “too early” for, but putting toegether the dots, what was it that made it seem like the time could be right 200 years ago. Have there been multiple opportunities to do whatever the One Piece was intended to do, and all we’re seeing is the one that works?

As ready as I am to see Elbaf, I’m also not going to complain about Egghead taking the extra few chapters it needs to totally put a bow on things. A climax for the remaining Vegapunks. The big escape for the Sunny’s group. A final smackdown on Saturn for all he put Kuma and Bonney through and the definitive last word of the broadcast are going to be worth it in the long run. Will the Elders be allowed to achieve their objectives of capturing Punk Records and the Mother Flame, or will Atlas/Lilith/Stussy perform one final, sacrificial act of sabotage and make it so everyone loses?

With break week nigh again, I’m going to drop volume 2 of my rewrite project at some point in the next seven days, either when spoilers would normally hit or when the official release would be on a chapter week.

A very short chapter here, with kind of not a lot to discuss besides the ending, but I definitely enjoyed it. Egghead is clearly developing to its conclusion with one escape ship away and the other close behind. It’s exciting to think Elbaf is coming so soon, after all these years.

Even with what we were just told a few chapters ago, I was still a little surprised at how far the Iron Giant had to sink in the opening pages. I’m used to the idea of real world landmasses trailing off slowly into the sea, any big shelves a way offshore. But these are mountain summits. It makes sense for there to be a cliff near enough for such a huge descent.

All evidence seems to say Edison is dead. Maybe. If York can switch her Punk Records syncing off to not be caught betraying the others and Vegapunk can do it to record his broadcast privately, there’s no reason Edison can’t also have gone dark to avoid detection. But with the giants’ ship leaving, he doesn’t have much hope of making it off the island, so there wouldn’t really be a point to misdirect us like that. Unless he’s gonna pull himself out of the rubble to start a cover story a year from now. But taking this at face value, it’s kinda similar to the Izo and Ashura situations. Who would have thought the infamously reluctant to kill Oda would now have characters quietly succumb to their injuries offscreen?

Hey, there’s something drawn kinda rough and obscured by the Sunny’s rigging in Nami’s panel. Is that Nusjuro moving between the ship and the sea? Will Zoro have to clash with him one last time to close out the arc?

Okay, so Sanji prevert gags have often gone too far without being funny enough to justify it for a long time now, but the dynamic here, where he proclaims the aid he’s going to give the women while Usopp calls out frantic reminders to save the men too, that’s a pretty good one. This is how I prefer seeing that character trait play out. And great to see Franky adding to it.

And finally, we have the Distorted Future. I’m on the record saying I don’t like Bonney’s powers having this much flexibility, but after the Niki-ish future already established, I’m not totally shocked she gets a more fully Nikafied form to cap things off. Like, I wouldn’t have guessed it a week ago, but it makes sense in hindsight. I want to wait to see her in action before I make any call on if the implications of this form being shared are good or bad. We’ve established she can’t keep a distorted future up for long, which is one limiting factor. Some people are wondering if she could distort the futures of others to make them Nika-ish too, but I think by the established rules, she would need to be able to picture that person as Nika to make them that way. Someone too serious, too mean, too restrained, or just not loose and funny enough just won’t make a good Nika.

While some will argue otherwise, I’m sure, I think this development is bad for Bonney’s chances of joining the crew. Firstly, it creates a double-up in ultimate moves, which I don’t think Oda would go for. And second, it feels a lot like the conclusion of the Bonney story. Where does she go from here for future power ups in future arcs? What else could she want? She’s chased freedom for herself and her father, and she hasn’t just found it, she’s embodied it. That’s a full circle thing. End of the journey. If she slips back to the background with her father between now and the final war no one’s goign to accuse her story of being unfinished.

So where do we go from here? It looks like Oda is setting up two final clashes to throw the Elders off and make the final escape. Nusjuuro has to be knocked out of the way of the Sunny, and Mars has to be smashed down from the sky so he can’t pursue the giants’ ship. Luffy and Bonny are taking on one. Zoro will definitely be involved in the other, possibly with any combination of the group on the Sunny backing him up.

But it can’t be totally that easy. I think there’s lingering threads with the Iron Giant, and with obvious arc villain Saturn. There’s no way the final clash happens, especially one Bonney is part of, without sticking it to him in some way. Maybe he makes spidery jumps from ship to ship to try and come aboard. Or he’s secretly in human form on Mars’s back, ready to jump down and transform. And can the reactivated Iron Giant generate enough thrust to raise itself from the sea floor and make a final move for its Joyboy? That’s maybe not a setup quite on Oda’s level, but the bottom line is that it feels like there’s one last convergence still to happen as we make this arc complete.

Good to be back on three breakless chapters in a row so we can find out the answer without having to wait.

And so ends the Broadcast Era (any Three Body readers here?) after a long few months. The breaks were certainly not kind to this sequence, but I think it will be remembered fondly. One Piece’s biggest strength is how populated and alive its world feels, and emphasising that all these supporting characters are still relevant and it’s all their lives at stake is going to pay dividends when things get apocalyptic in the endgame.

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t felt ready to move on from this bit for a few weeks now, but some of the extreme reactions to this sequence have been surprising. People have been saying for years that Oda rushes, and speculated that fights have been offscreened or cut short with the expectation the anime would expand on them. Well, now we have a moment that’s allowed to breathe and unfold at its own pace, and that’s too damn slow. There were huge (and not totally unfounded) complaints around the end of Wano that we weren’t getting enough reactions from characters who should have had an emotional stake in things like deaths, reunions and funerals, but now we get the whole series learning that their world is ending and it’s “React Piece.” The Reddit crowd in particular for this fanbase has been infuriating. None of these kids would have survived week-to-week Dressrosa.

Anyway, to review the manga instead of the fanbase, it’s sweet to see Neko on the cover page felt comfortable dropping the gun from his stump arm. Even as an apparent yakuza, things are at peace enough that he doesn’t need to be packing. Also the way Yamato’s backpack fits right between their belt loop thingies is a cute detail.

Kreig and Gin are back, which warms my heart. The story won’t be over until Sanji and Gin meet again, but I’m happy just learning he hasn’t been forgotten. I hope Gin’s become the dominant half of the partnership over Kreig since we last saw them. He deserves it. His hair’s come in nice though. And that scene as a whole strikes true to the core themes of adventure and romanticism in One Piece, showing pirates and others being inspired to take to the seas and scour the sea floor for riches. You can’t help seeing the parallel to what Roger did in Vegapunk’s broadcast. The World Government must hate seeing it happen again.

Nice to see Drake still kicking. I’d have been willing to believe he was dead after Wano. I wonder if the broadcast is going to start influencing SWORD to go finally rogue and move all the less-evil Marines into their own, easier to root for faction.

You have to wonder what Stussy’s exit plan is if she isn’t rushing to rejoin the group on the Sunny. Or if she is, no one’s snailed in to tell them hold tight.

Love the panel of Nusjuro looming over the Sunny. Holy hell these guys are huge. And an awesome moment having him clash with Zoro. Isn’t this the second time Zoro’s been thrown at an enemy at the climax of an arc? I wonder if that’ll continue being a trend, since he’s surprisingly cool with it. The presence of another Kitetsu in the fight sets up a tantalising hook for the future.

The attention to detail with the giants’ ship’s figurehead being tied back on after being cut a couple of chapters ago is great. The giants as a whole give us some really fun, evocative pages this week as they lay into the Marine fleet. And while we’re obviously not getting a full set of one on ones for this arc, Oda gives some solid moments to Bluegrass and Doll, perhaps to set them up to be bigger opponents in the future. I certainly didn’t expect Kashii to take such a big beatdown right in the middle of his triumphant return to the story.

The iron giant continues its march despite Luffy very clearly being shown to be back in normal form, which adds to the confusion about what it’s responding to. It’s initial power ups in chapters 1092 and 1106 are obviously implied to be a reaction to Luffy’s transformation, with the heart drums over it and everything. It’s not shown moving, however, until chapter 1111 after all the Elders arrive and after Vegapunk’s broadcast begins. So while it seemed to have previously gone on and off based on Luffy’s transformations, it’s now been disconnected from that and moving on its own, either something Vegapunk programmed to protect his message, or following some ancient reaction to the World Government bigwigs. It does seem to be caught off guard when the Elders attack it in this chapter though, so maybe we can rule out it sensing them…

It feels likely that it was trying to reach Luffy at the cost of all else, but then why does it only sometimes react to Gear Five, and why only at the end was it activated enough to start moving?

And how about Mars seemingly recognising the robot? Definitely gives us a hint that the Elders are older than they appear, despite previous evidence suggesting they don’t go all the way back to the Void Century.

But the final message to the people of the D. This is one of those ones where you definitely feel left out as an English-speaking reader, what with the “mo” syllable from the Japanese version being more likely to be part of a word than a name (according to all native speakers I’ve seen speak on it). But the translation gives us some word choices to chew on. “Within you” instead of the “among you” from the fan versions, implying it could be a power or a will the D people carry. Plus a singular “is” and an “a.” I’ll definitely be tuning into the prodcast this week to hear if there was any behind the scenes info provided to Stephen to help him decide his course.

There is one reoccurring complaint I do agree with, as this marathon segment wraps up: it’s kinda weird there was no visual content in the broadcast, after the emphasis placed on it with the 10 minute lead time. Maybe we take it as part of Vegapunk’s perfectionism – it just wouldn’t feel right to him if he wasn’t being seen, which would track with an artificial devil fruit not feeling right because of its colour, something on one else would care about – but that’s still a little weak. I’m sure Oda wrote out the whole speech in advance and chunked it out chapter by chapter with the cameos and action beats he wanted to accompany it, and he found he decided the preamble was necessary to get everyone where they needed. The arrival of the Elders wouldn’t have had the focus that made it so great if Vegapunk was already dropping lore bombs. Buuuut I’m sure there could have been a better in-universe justification for it. Maybe just saying he wants people to set up recording devices to preserve and repeat the message could have made it easier to swallow.

I think we can all let out a breath with the broadcast over. While I’m sure there’s still some cooldown to go, especially if the Iron Giant means to retaliate, things seem poised to wrap up here. There are multiple calls to get the ships moving throughout the chapter, from Zoro, Luffy and the giants, with the stragglers close enough to jump aboard as they go. And with Vegapunk dead and the broadcast over there’s nothing left on Egghead I can see the crew getting invested in fighting for. It’s kind of a loss for the Strawhats, not being able to protect everything they promised they would and having to retreat from foes they have no idea how to fight, albeit not as devastating a one as Sabaody. Elbaf could end up being a chance to regroup, power up one last time, and make ready to stop these unstoppable monsters in the true final battle. And setting that up is a very exciting prospect.

Aww, I was so hopeful we could get to the end of the broadcast before the next break, but it seems like two weeks on, one week off is just our life now. At least the end does seem to be close.

Yamato certainly seems popular in the Flower Capital, which is probably a good sign that the unfortunate sentiments in the kabuki retelling of the raid haven’t been taken to heart by the citizens. Good news for Tama, right? Urashima has been forgiven as well, so maybe memories are just short in Wano.

Let’s start with Vegapunk’s ongoing speech before going into the stuff surrounding it. This latest set of revelations do his character some actual service, following on from his frustrating need to not point fingers last week. We learn both that the Mother Flame used to power the World Government’s weapon was stolen by York instead of willingly given, but Vegapunk still finds the self-awareness to feel responsible and beg for the world’s forgiveness.

And the stuff towards the end, both about Joyboy preserving the Ancient Weapons and the Roger Pirates choosing not to act, actually clarifies a bit of Vegapunk’s motives and moral views for me. He sees the Ancient Weapons as a force of evil, and since he’s learned that Joyboy’s faction possessed them and intended to pass them on, he can’t see them wholly as the good guys. He wonders if the World Government had a good reason to oppose that. And, he might wonder from his perspective, why would Roger have not carried on Joyboy’s will if it was meant to be such a good thing?

But we know some things that he doesn’t, as did the Roger Pirates. Remember this interesting little bit from Rayleigh in chapter 967?

“It’s not the weapon we’re after … it’s the people who called it a weapon.” What this says is that the Ancient Weapons predated the name we know them by, and likely had a different purpose before they were weaponised for the ancient war. I think it’s pretty likely that the intent of Joyboy wanting the weapons and their will to be inherited was to restore them to their original purpose, whatever that was. And, of course, it’s pretty obvious that Vegapunk’s info doesn’t include the parts that made Roger decide he was “too soon” to fulfill the One Piece’s intended purpose. Maybe if Vegapunk knew these things he’d have firmer judgements to make on right and wrong.

For other things happening around Egghead and the world, we can see the entire basement of the lab was severed from the top and slipped out to the bottom of the Labophase when it was cut. Not that there was any way to tell that had happened from the art last week, but still good to have it clarified now. I’m surprised the Seraphim’s bubbles survived the fall. They have to get loose eventually, right?

Stussy’s scene is exactly what I was hoping for back when it seemed like her arc was about to wrap up with a heroic sacrifice. We don’t get her final decision here, but verbalising her inner conflict between the alies she made undercover in Cipher Pol and the creator she feels indebted to adds so many layers to her characterisation. And Kaku seems genuinely moved by her plight as well. I wonder if he’d vouch for her if she tried to return to Cipher Pol, assuming he still holds any sway after this incident.

Not sure what to make of Ju Peter eating the Cipher Pol agents. That’s some incredibly callous friendly fire, even from the guys comparing human lives to insects earlier in the arc.

I wonder if something is being set up by York’s confusion about the order of events and the contradictions between the things Vegapunk did and didn’t know. Are we setting up some kind of post-broadcast flashback of Vegapunk putting the pieces for his final gambit together?

Aha, and the Iron Giant is the snail’s hiding place. Definitely recontextualises Vegapunk getting stuck inside it at his introduction. Love the panel of it marching through the flames as well. But where is it going, and where are the Elders going to turn up if they’re all about to converge on it. If, as was earlier implied, it really is responding to Luffy’s awakening, that could put him and the giants in a really tough spot it it’s going his way.

And we have Rayleigh at the end. He knows a lot we and even Vegapunk don’t know, which makes it hard to read his reaction. Is there something about the answers he and Roger reached that makes it important to reach them the hard way? And how will this impact the Strawhats, who have already skipped steps on their path to the treasure (by learning about the Lode Poneglyphs at Zou rather than Lodestar, in addition to anything they hear now on Egghead)?

The reveal of the snail’s location I think means we see the end of the broadcast in a maximum of two chapters, probably just in time to leave one final thing unsaid for a big cliffhanger. But with this already being the sixth chapter of volume 110, it’s looking like we’ll still be on Egghead at the end of this book. Ebaf by the end of vol 111 for sure though.

I’m looking forward to reading this run of chapters all in one go without the breaks. The biggest lore bombs since the Reverie, intercut with series-spanning blasts from the past as we can see that everyone we’ve met before this point is impacted by the current story. Every new line of concrete info that gets out before the broadcast is shut down is a bonus from this point. I’m beginning to dare to hope, after the last page of the chapter, that we might actually learn something big about Imu as the climactic line before they shut it down.

The cover story is edging forward. At a glance, I’d thought Oda had mistakenly given Kiku her arm back, but no, that’s Hiyori. Even with Robin gone, there’s too many of these dark-haired (at least in the black and white version) Wano women to tell them apart. Maybe she should have kept it up like in her Oiran persona for the distinctiveness.

And speaking of Wano, it’s cool to see how they set up that enormous Strawhat flag under the palace. I vaguely remember wondering why they made it so freaking big when it was first revealed, and now we know. I also appreciate the attention to detail with the transponder snail being Orochi’s; it wouldn’t make sense for the people of Wano to have one of their own. And we get the sense that the cover story must already be in motion due to Yamato’s absence in the scene. What I’m not so hot on is Shinobu being permanently rejuvinated by her encounter with Aramaki. From memory, Raizo did not get the same benefit, and it should probably have been both of them or none of them.

Demalo Black’s return is not something I had on my bingo card. The fact that he’s changed his idol is fantastic. Drip’s disguise as Killer, just doing face and hair paint instead of actually getting a helmet, is hilarious. I genuinely thought that guy was dead though – he was last seen going limp with his head fully submerged in Caribou’s swamp. People weren’t exactly lining up to save him and the other fake Strawhats at the end of the Sabaody reunion, and Caribou has the reputation of a guy who would finish the job. But this is One Piece; what can you do?

All the reaction cutaways, actually, do a great job of showing without having to tell what these characters have been up to since we saw them last. No one in this world is truly static.

Vegapunk’s speech continues and… man, his naivety can be frustrating. He still can’t take a stand that the World Government is evil? Even after they murdered him? It would be one thing if he was still alive to undergo some character development and eventually denounce them, but the man is dead. He’s going to be stuck in this weird state of pretending the genocide-doing, slave-owning, world-flooding side aren’t the clear bad guys. In another story, I might have taken this as foreshadowing of a conflict written in shades of grey, or even a switcharoo twist that makes Joyboy the plant-flooding villain of the Void Century and says the World Government has only gone mad with power in the centuries since beating him, but that doesn’t feel like One Piece to me. And it certainly doesn’t feel like something Oda would force Luffy to reconcile against. Feel free to make me eat my words in a few years if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s on the table.

Glad to see we’re not done with Stussy. Her last scene would definitely have been a low point if she’d been just left to make her sacrifice there. Finding a life and purpose beyond blind devotion to her creator is a much better arc. The framing suggests Kaku will be important to her future, but that couldn’t possibly mean going back to Cipher Pol, could it?

We get one very cool spread out of Nusjuro slicing the Labophase open, but I don’t understand how it manages to end with the captured agents and Seraphim falling to the Fabriophase. He took the roof off the basement they were trapped in. We can see in the following pages that the pieces didn’t drift far enough apart for any part of the building to hang over the open air. This doesn’t make any sense. Scary to think of the Seraphim possibly being loosed by this, but I wish there had been a more natural setup for it.

More gorgeous art as we learn about what happened to the world in the Void Century. Have I ever mentioned that Wind Waker was my favourite Zelda? I think ocean world settings just speak to me, and a long-lost atlantian
civilisation under the surface is the perfect lategame twist to throw at that kind of story. Interesting that the official release categorises the current world as pieces of a single continent rather than multiple landmasses as the spoiler summary and scanlations did. Does Stephen know something we don’t, or is he guessing? I know Japanese doesn’t always do singulars and plurals as obviously as English, but I’d be interested for someone who knows the language to chime in with what was inferred in the original.

And man, it gets you thinking again about think like the ruins from Jinbe’s cover story, Impel Down and whatever seemingly-impossible mechanism moves the Gates of Justice from under the water. Surely all these things are from the before times. Maybe more.

Relevant to the themes of One Piece, also, is the statement about travel and culture. This flooded dystopia works as hard as possible to keep people separated and their groups homogeneous. The heroes are a group from all corners of the globe who push against this facet of the world to experience as much of it as possible, and in the utopian past it was easier for peoples to mix. It will be interesting to see if the unflooding of the world and the restoration of easy travel for cultural exchange plays into the series’ finale or epilogue.

The near-outright confirmation that the three Ancient Weapons we know of today were responsible for the 200 metre rise makes it almost certain that Uranus is the machine the Government is using Mother Flame to power. But as just a destroying space laser, it doesn’t seem like it has much synergy with the other two. Maybe the original Uranus was just used for altering the sea level, making a world where the sea power of the battleship Pluton and the commander of leviathans Poseidon could reign supreme? But what of the suggestion during Oden’s flashback that the weapons were only ‘named’ as such, as if they originally had another purpose?

I wonder if there’s any chance we can get to the end of this broadcast before the next break rolls around. This would be a great time to keep picking up momentum and get this pivotal sequence for the series on wrap, especially since the need for reactions and dramatic pauses is making it take longer than a normal exposition scene to begin with. My fingers are crossed and my hopes are high.

This chapter really wants to give Vegapunk’s message space to resonate and lean hard on the idea that it’s something that impacts the whole world. It definitely slows things down on the weekly read, but it’s probably going to be best for the long-term pacing and story structure to make sure this section has gravitas. Months or years from now, whenever we all end up doing our Egghead rereads, we’ll be glad this came on slow.

Just something to keep in mind through another break week.

We start with an idea of the route and ultimate goals of Yamato’s cover story. These things don’t always go the way they’re initially set up to be, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a disruption from this path in a few chapters’ time. What worries me here is the emphasis on Yasuie. If there’s one character from Wano I could see Oda yet again reviving, like he did with Pound in Bege’s cover story, it would be this guy. Yeah, his death looked pretty certain at the time, but remember he was carried off to be buried by the traitor Kanjuro, who I believe at some point expressed some kind of desire to use Yasuie’s afro as paint brush bristles. If Yasuie was even barely alive after being shot (and falling) Oda has set up both the means and motive for him to have made it to the present. Remember you heard it here first.

There’s a few nuggets of information to glean from the global reactions throughout the chapter. The Water Seven segment suggests that whatever’s causing this goes beyond just the rising tides they deal with. So it might be more than just the Mother Flame holes like where Lulusia used to be displacing the water. Doflamingo hints at the idea of fleeing to Marie Geoise like he knows what’s up. But on the other hand, we have Shalria never having heard of the Void Century, which says a lot about how much the average Celestial Dragon knows about what’s up.

We also get Saul! Yay! And can we put to rest the idea that he’s the burn scar man now? Sure, we don’t see his face, but if the assumption is that he was either burned by the flames of Ohara or took an ice burn when Kuzan froze him, we’d be able to see evidence of that on his arms and legs too.

And the real man of the chapter: Chou Chou the dog back for the first time since his chapter 619 cover story appearance. Love that Boodle even put Chou Chou’s face on his transponder snail.

Getting into the meat of the chapter, I feel like a little too much stock is put on Vegapunk’s earthquake prediction by the world’s skeptics. I mean, you’re taking him at his word that the message is pre-recorded. I could video myself reading a summary of this chapter and claim I did it weeks ago and perfectly predicted everything. Ah, but I’m nitpicking.

It’s great seeing even more of the Strawhats combining their powers against Saturn, even if it’s over so soon. I don’t have any trouble filling in for myself the other Elders reminding him the broadcast should be the priority and moving him alone, but the transition from him baring down on the lab to being in human form in the Mother Flame room is very abrupt. The darkness in the chamber suggests it’s deep inside the building, not something that can be reached with only a few seconds of smashing. The art for that spread though. That is a stunning machine. And we finally see the fire that powers the whole island. It’s drawn similar to the little coil of flame that burns on the Seraphim’s shoulders, isn’t it? Not to mention the thoroughly discussed resemblence to the murals Enel found on the moon. They’re one of my most anticipated things to learn more about.

Edison’s plan to save the Sunny is clever, I’ll give it that. Despite knowing Vegapunk set the whole thing up himself, I hadn’t thought the answer could be to just make more clouds. We’ll see if he gets pull it off though. It’s always dangerous to discuss a plan so fully so far from its execution.

I didn’t expect Luffy to be back in Gear Five so soon. Even accounting for the food power up for the giants, Oda’s kinda selling short the one weakness this form is meant to have. It wouldn’t fully shock me if Luffy had originally been planned to stay powered down, but the plan was changed last minute either to match him up with Joyboy or because he needs to be in Gear Five for the ancient robot to keep moving.

And finally, Joyboy hints, let’s go! I think the parallel with Luffy making the giants laugh would have worked better if he wasn’t doing the exact same giant flaming sore hand gag he did literally two chapters ago. Come now, Oda, you’ve got more jokes in you than that. But the first pirate; now that is some interesting lore. Of course, in the real world ‘pirate’ basically just means ‘sea criminal,’ so Joyboy probably wasn’t the first of those. There have been people stealing from others on the water for as long as there’s been boats, and there’s no way the ancient civilisation got to Vegapunk’s technology level without working out seafaring. So obviously we’re going to be looking at a more One Piece-y definition of the term, almost definitely much more akin to Luffy and Roger’s freedom-focussed idea of piracy.

The break for next week hurts, as does my suspicion that we’re getting close to the end of Vegapunk’s lore dump. I don’t think Oda means to give away too much of Joyboy’s life before we get the full flashback. Maybe some cliff notes leading into the ancient kingdom’s name before one of the Elders finally pops the snail. But we’ll see. I’ve been wrong before and I’d certainly love to be wrong now.

Hooray, it’s really happening! This is very much a build-up/anticipation chapter most of the way through, but Oda makes a smart choice to drop the first bomb at the end instead of leaving us waiting, so it won’t feel like a total copout even if the broadcast is shut down before it’s complete. And now that the ball’s rolling, the momentum for post-Golden Week is going to be unstoppable.

We start with a gorgeous colour spread full of fun details, perfectly synced to the title of the chapter. I love having Robin as a chessmaster, Jinbe as a rook recalls his time in Big Mom’s crew (remember her using that as a rank?) and the designs of the Chopper pawns are all adorable. Weirdly, they’re numbered up to 16 (despite there only being seven in the image), which is the total number of pawns on a chessboard, but across both sides. Are there some enemy pawns on the Strawhats’ side of the board already? The process video for this one is a treat too. I love that it’s not just building up from rough sketches, they show the moment Oda pauses, goes to a new page to just line up the pieces and develop who is going to be what, then even maps out a chessboard and plans out the moves so that no one’s in an impossible position for the finished artwork. I love that kind of attention to detail for things absolutely no one would have thought to check otherwise.

“Well, it’s been such a short time…” Vegapunk you fricking tease, no it has not. But hey, if the Vegacoffee really stays warm for two months maybe there’s something to it.

I expected a brain in a jar for Punk Records, but I was picturing a Mother Brain kind of situation, having it just be Vegapunk’s giant misshapen forehead is hilarious. And I love all the tubes and cables in the reveal panel. I keep looking at it and assuming the detached portion of head is the same size as it was in the flashbacks to post-Ohara earlier in the arc, then I look down to Mars and realise its true size. Can you imagine if Vegapunk still had this thing attached to his dome?

Seeing so many locations connected to the Strawhats as the broadcast builds up really makes it feel like the world is drawing a breath for the big news. Oda wants this moment to breathe, as frustrating as it can be as a weekly reader. And hey, is that a Thousand Sunny beast in the Baldimore segment? Franky was busy while he was there.

And man, speaking of the scale issue with Vegapunk’s brain, I’m also taken aback by Nusjuro towering over Franky’s group. I know the reveal spread for the Elders’ yokai forms showed them being enormous, but in my mind, Nusjuro’s centaur form somehow ended up proportioned to the human half, not the horse half. The fact that until now he was mostly shown next to the towering Pacifistas definitely didn’t help matters. Sanji’s blow to his jaw is an extremely cool moment somewhat undercut by Sanji’s fixation on Bonney. He doesn’t know. I just have to tell myself he doesn’t know. But it’s still offputting. The depiction of the transformation back to horse mode is unique, with the human parts seeming to burn away, lingering in the background as the hose head snaps at Sanji. His transformation to the centaur mode was depicted as a much more fluid morphing. He also leaves trails of flames as he goes back to human in Oimo and Kashii’s grip a page later.

I’m still not a huge fan of these distorted futures. They really stretch the limits of where it feels like the fruit’s rules should be. The callback to Luffy’s descent through the clouds during the Kaido fight is fun though, I guess.

The true highlight this week is Saturn’s attack on the crew’s weakling squad. We get the ‘bringing things full circle’ reveal that he was the one who spoke to Clover and ordered his death, followed by a truly heart-warming moment of the whole squad forming up around Robin. As someone whose favourite One Piece moment is probably “I want to live” I love these moments where either the crew stands up for her or she affirms her faith in them. And it’s a great page besides, with a ton of moments compressed into a single panel, the flurry of attacks and counterattacks developing as your eye moves over the page.

Oda’s building up that we’re still going to be given a solution to the transponder snail dilemma through Mars and York’s continued search. This probably means that we won’t hear the full backstory to the reveal on the next page. I’ll maintain that even with a decoy in place, I don’t trust Vegapunk to have made his deception *too* extreme. The man has been characterised through this whole arc as naive and perfectionist. He does not have the social skills for a chessmaster manipulation of career politicians and their whole military, and he’d go all in on his first idea come to fruition rather than having numerous redundancies and backups. It would be out of character for him to suddenly be able to bamboozle the whole world, so I do think they’ll find the right snail on the island eventually.

And almost to prove this point, Vegapunk refuses to call the World Government and its leaders outright evil, thinking that because he can’t understand their final intent there is no call to be made about their actions. That is a *lot* of benefit of the doubt in my opinion. While I don’t disagree that extreme circumstances can justify extreme actions, I’ve yet to see the circumstances that justify the World Government’s *multiple genocides*. Vegapunk believes that whatever other mystery he hasn’t solved yet, it must make the cruelty of these people slot into place and finally make sense. It’s a nice thought from a very understanding heart, and it’s exactly the kind of thinking that’s made it so easy for them to fool him time and time again.

And then the bomb drops. “The world as we know it will to sink into the sea!!” A fitting apocalypse for an ocean-covered world, and just the kind of lategame reveal I’d expect from Oda. Just at a glance, it makes a lot of worldbuilding pull together, from the desirability of the Redline to the strange sinking issues of Long Ring Long Land and Water Seven, the impact of the Mother Flame test on the level of the ocean, and even possibly the height of Wano’s walls and the choice to build Zou on Zunesha’s back. We know there’s a lot that Oda can change on the fly, but I’m ready to fully believe this was one of those things that was planned from the start.

Interesting too is the panel of merfolk at the very end of the chapter. They don’t appear to be listening to the broadcast or otherwise connected to the scene at all, but of course they have a symbolic relevance to a flooded world, especially if it turns out a cleansing flood has come and gone already in the past. And let’s not forget the plainly significant to this scenario Noah and Poseidon back at Fishman Island.

So we’ve got one big reveal that sets the course for the remainder of the series already. Anything else Vegapunk manages to get out before being shut down is just gravy. Plus we’ve got a lot of strawhats in rough situations with some escaping to do. The Egghead climax is so far proving to be worth the wait.

It’s good to be back! To be honest, I had a fairly busy April, so it feels like the big break has gone faster than previous years. I thought I would suffer more. Maybe we’re all just getting more used to this now-annual tradition. Hope Oda’s feeling more rested as well!

This is the chapter that could be the twelfth of volume 109, but I think it’s more likely the first or second of volume 110 instead. Both Dorry and Brogy’s arrival in chapter 1110 and the ancient robot standing in chapter 1111 are incredible end-of-book cliffhangers, but I think maybe chapter 1111 has a better volume opener, easing into its action with the wordless page of Mars breaking from the barrier while Jinbei looks up, awed. But we’ll see, the opening pages here also do a lot to ease a returning reader back into the conflict in its present state. In a matter of panels, Oda reminds us of the Buster Call, Nusjuro’s disabling of the Pacifistas and Bonney’s power over them, and the giants’ goals and location. But it’s possible the return from the break was a motivator for this level of restaging as well.

After those opening two pages we’re right back into the action. Even if it’s brief, it’s great seeing Franky get a win. The long tail of his speech bubble running under Redking’s legs in the anticipation panel is fun as well. Bonney’s methods are pretty funny as well, when compounded with Guillotine’s shock despite having witnessed the transformation happen.

Mars is not wasting any time in the Labophase. There seems to be an electrical effect around his blast of energy, but I haven’t read up enough on his specific brand of yokai to say if that should be interesting or not. It’s cool that we can see the back of Vegapunk’s lab here, and the side structures that looked like speakers from the front are plugged full of power and audio cables like speakers from the back too. I wonder how many design elements here were influenced by the knowledge that it would be used to send an important message really, really far.

Stussy and Kaku’s dialogue in the following scene seems at odds with Lucci’s immediate recognition of and deference to Mars in his bird form a few chapters ago. Maybe he’s better at recognising voices than the two of them are, or he may simply hold a higher rank and have gotten more hints about the true nature of his bosses than the other two. I’m sad for Stussy’s sacrifice, in part because this arc hasn’t at all made the most of her as a character. Her betrayal of Cipher Pol was a compelling early twist, but then she lost her stylish and memorable original outft for the same leotard look every other woman in this arc got, dropped off the map through the middle of the story, just to get finger gunned and now make the ultimate sacrifice. This is a character who’s been lurking on the sidelines of the plot for seven years. That’s getting close to the point where there, at least in Japanese, the series might have readers younger than she is as a character. A minor character, sure, but I hope this isn’t truly the end for her. Oda can offer far better.

That said, I did say a few chapters back that I expected the need for someone in the control room to turn off the dome to be a problem to solve, though I predicted a race against the clock to get on the ship before it launched, not fully staying behind. Careful what you wish for I guess.

And on the topic of sacrifices and problems to solve, I wonder what Edison has planned to help the Sunny make the distance. If you asked me to guess, I’d say something in the junkyard. Not the ancient robot specifically, but I think whatever he’s going to get will be the excuse to bring someone from the Strawhats’ side in contact with it.

It’s a good moment for Usopp rallying the crew here, both to follow the plan and to improvise if it doesn’t work. Confident leadership from a once self-proclaimed captain. Good for him.

The squished up Ju Peter head as he swallows the building is hilarious. Being able to capture the shape of the turret embedding in the back of his skull and the wrinkles of everything folding up around it in monochrome with only the white shading on his back body is some great artistic detail. It cannot have been easy to make that read clearly.

The situation gets more dire after this last little win though. Luffy’s back in normal form, and even if we’re handwaving away the exhaustion effect at the end of Gear Five, Oda is telling us clearly it won’t be enough to stand up to the monstrous Elders. Love the detail of his hand still being on fire from Red Roc even as he clutches it in pain from Warcury’s deflection. It makes such an absurd visual. The question does have to be asked though: was the sheer power with which this attack was rejected relate to haki, a monstrous ability, the strange regeneration that keeps these beats immortal or something else? It can’t just be natural hardness like Kaido’s dragon scales – that wouldn’t hurt Luffy like this did. There needs to be an energy involved for there to be pain on Luffy’s end. I don’t want to sound too conspiracy-minded though; haki is the most obvious bet. Look back to the moment in the Katakuri fight when they meet fist to fist and Luffy’s hands are hurt by his superior haki. There’s a similar trembling effect around the the injured hands, and though they were also swollen there, that would be hidden by the inflated fist in this case.

Saturn’s spider limbs coming over the edge of the Labophase cloud is a wonderfully terrifying visual, as is the silhouette of the centaur Nusjuro, and each of them so bad for the groups they’re confronting. Even with the inevitability of Zoro and Jinbei arriving in time to protect the group with the Sunny and Luffy and the giants close to converging with Franky’s team, we still don’t know how to deal lasting damage to one of these bastards. You have to hand it to them, as villains, they’ve all found their way to the worst places they could be for the heroes very, very efficiently, and at this stage no one is expecting any of them to be felled in this arc.

Mars’ final scene with the snail just emphasises the ‘game over’-ness of the whole last two pages. I don’t think he’ll succeed in stopping it, the broadcast is the most obvious thing to fulfill the promise of a huge, world-shaking event coming from this arc, but there’ll probably be some kind of deception involved in why he can’t cut things off from here. I’m curious to see what the inside of Punk Records looks like as well. Maybe it’s just big computers, but it would be cool for it to be something with a bit more mad science cred, like a giant brain in a jar.

I’m determinedly not getting my hopes too high for a Toriyama tribute in next week’s colour spread. Which isn’t to say it’s not likely, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out that way. With only a minute on the clock, Mars at the broadcast’s apparent source and two groups of heroes being menaced by unstoppable foes, the climax of the arc feels afoot, so it’s going to be time to start the big reveals, cavalry calls and final turnabout moments as the 110th volume escalates. Good time to have that post-break momentum, if you ask me!