Captain M Entertainment

This unseasonably cold and wet Christmas morning, Oda gifts us with yet another heartbreaker of a flashback chapter to close out the year, but also a promise of a return to the present, and maybe some clues about what will happen when we get there. It’s a more relaxed easing into the present than I’d expected – I’ve been predicting for weeks there’d be one last secret tragedy as a stinger to close things out, and maybe the self-destruct switch would qualify, but maybe I should just be happy that Kuma isn’t being made to suffer more.

We pick up where the last chapter left off with Bonney on her adventure. I have to say, this is the most I’ve liked her character up to this point. She’s never been unlikable, but the spirit of getting out there and adventuring and seeing the world while hunting for her lost dad really comes through now that we have the full story. The childlike quality of her ideas of piracy and ways of compromising them echoes Luffy’s own energy. She feels like the main character of her own story here, one with enough substance that it’d be enjoyable even removed from the wider context of One Piece. The vibe of her crew is infectious, and I’m happy to see them living their best lives out in the world. Uh, hope those guys are alright after the encounters with Blackbeard and Sakazuki before the timeskip…

I’m looking forward to paying more attention to Bonney with also info on hand on my next reread.

There was a theory I read a few chapters ago that suggested Bonney’s bounty shot up to Supernova levels because of the need to get her back to control Kuma. This chapter instead suggests a misconception that her crew targets children and the elderly because of her power. Which is funny, but far less interesting. I think I would have liked this more if we’d learned is much sooner. Like in her original introduction she’s talked up as a ruthless attacker of the vulnerable, and it leads toward the first reveal of her Devil Fruit and the joke lands that way. Maybe an idea for The One Piece, right? That’s just going to be my go to for anything that might have worked better with earlier setup now. It’s fine though. We can even still assume that control of Kuma remained a factor for the World Government behind the scenes while also satisfying all the bad PR she has for leaving injured children and old people in her wake.

The bits with Luffy, Dragon, Smoker, Ace and Jinbei are partly fanservice, but they do also serve to keep the timeline in check. They’re synchronising moments. The translation of Sabo’s line in the scans indicated that Dragon was going to Loguetown alone, which would have killed the theory that Sabo had been spotted in the crowd there (pictured below), but the official release makes it ambiguous enough that Sabo might have gone. To be honest I was never big on that theory, even if it would make things more interconnected and foreshadowed. I figure seeing Luffy that close, particularly his apparent execution, would have triggered Sabo’s memories returning.

I’m a little disappointed that the return to the Thriller Bark doesn’t give us anything new about Kuma’s actual intentions should Luffy’s allies have failed what now know to obviously have been a test. Seriously, was the plan to zip him off to Dragon, or just let him go and tell him he needs to find better friends, or given the previous scene with Vegapunk, would it just said to Kuma that Luffy didn’t really have the Nika qualities he’d thought.

But that brings me to something I do like about the montage of Kuma learning about Luffy’s life in the chapter. The rubber power is acknowledged, but only as a footnote. Even having seen a power that matches the myth, Nika can only be assumed to be a myth. Luffy’s actions – declaring war on the World Government, earning the loyalty of the Thriller Bark victims, assaulting the unjust rulers of the world to save a single enslaved friend – are what make him stand out to Kuma. And while I’m sure we’ll see something specific to Luffy, such as the D, the voice of all things, or yes, the fruit, become important to the plot eventually, but it’s good that Oda is laying a foundation now that Luffy acts like Nika just by being himself, regardless of whatever other ways he’s been made into the legendary figure by the narrative.

The next scene gives us two possible paths for things playing out in the present. The first is Kuma’s self-destruct mechanism. Given that I’ve already put money down on Kuma’s death, my immediate thought about this development is that it will be used to fight Saturn in a tragic heroic sacrifice. How ironic for Saturn to be destroyed by the mechanism he insisted Vegapunk install.

(But why wasn’t it activated sooner, like when Kuma was rescued by the Revolutionaries, to keep them from reverse engineering his tech, or when he was rampaging in Marie Geoise? You have to assume there’s a limited number of remotes for the thing, since the Celestial Dragons who’ve been using him can’t be trusted with their impulses, and/or a limited range on the activation symbol.)

But the other curious thing is Vegapunk suggsting a personality switch. Which is odd, considering how impossible a reversion was said to be in previous chapters. And if Saturn really could detect it so reliably and keep it from being installed, why mention it in the first place? This feels like Oda giving himself an out – a way to save Kuma at the last moment just by saying ‘oh, Vegapunk found a way to conceal it after all.’ Which would be lame. The only way I’ll accept this thing’s use in the present is in tandem with the self-destruct so Kuma can go out as himself, and maybe exchange some words with Saturn on the way out.

And it’s especially weird when you put it next to the revelation that viewing Kuma’s extracted memories will consume them, taking off the board popular theories that Kuma would be restored by passing the bubble on to him. In one chapter, Kuma is twice doomed, once saved. Anyone’s guess which way Oda will take it in the present.

The final sequence is the cherry on top of a fantastic One Piece flashback, one that will certainly be remembered as one of Oda’s best. The life affirming message rings true to the broader themes of the series, bringing to mind scenes like Tom and Ace’s deaths. Even the lab assistants are moved (oof, didn’t Saturn order these guys’ escape ship sunk? That’s rougher knowing they were all on team Kuma all along), as the montage of Kuma’s life and loved ones proves Vegapunk correct in calling Kuma a hero. And even in his final moments Kuma thinks first of his daughter. Beautiful stuff.

This is also very strongly framed like a death scene. It’s not hard evidence, but I’m taking it as half a point toward Kuma’s mind being unrecoverable and/or his destruction assured in the present.

And the flashback really does seem to be over. Never in the series’ past have we cut from black panel gutters at the end of one chapter to the normal white ones in the first page of the next one. There’s always a transitional page within the chapter, be it at the start or at the end. (At least for the full, multi-chapter flashbacks, I think one of the small, segmented Zou ones went straight from black to white over a chapter break.) I’m not sure where the fade to grey on the last page here leaves us. It’s not quite the present, but with only a day left to cover, I can’t imagine there being anything else worth showing. Maybe Bonney’s view of the offscreen battle with York? A shorthand version only, though.

Either way, it’s been a hell of a year for One Piece, and with Egghead’s momentum going into its climax, I think the next one could be even better.

I’m very pleased to finally see full colour schemes for all the Vegapunks. Sure, we got a hint at their intended appearances with the vol 106 animated trailer, but I’m glad Oda found the chance to circle back around and give us his vision by his own hands, because there are some differences. Putting this next to the Strawhat outfits and environments on the vol 106 cover and you can see that Egghead is going to be a vibrant piece of work when the colour manga catches up to it a few years from now.

Despite the milestone colour spread, this is another transitional chapter plotwise, continuing to fill in the timeline as the present day looms. Maybe Oda really is just looking to show everything up to Sabaody and/or the present and is fine taking his time with it, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s one last tragic twist to Kuma’s story yet to be revealed. But even without immediate plot progression or huge reveals, this ends up being another emotionally impactful, as so much of this flashback has already managed to be.

Kuma’s visit to Windmill Village ends up not being a huge deal in the long term, something done more to provide a cliffhanger than anything else. As expected, Kuma’s orders have nothing to do with Luffy or Goa. But copout though it might be, it does give Oda the chance to show us a little more of Dragon’s motivations and personality. I get it, the high stakes battle he’s fighting, he can’t afford to give the Government the leverage of using his child against him (as we saw with Roger and Ace, you don’t even have to be alive for them to try it), and he obviously cares enough that he knows it would work.

What’s interesting is that the conversation with Dragon happens in flashback, seemingly when they were in the area for the Grey Terminal fire. Interesting that Kuma has chosen, of his own volition, to check in on Luffy as he passes by. Does he see it as a favour to Dragon, who he can no longer contact, to check in on the kid while he has a chance? Does he feel the similarity between himself and the Revolutionary, both forced to keep a distance from their children, and visit Luffy as penance for not being able to see Bonney. And you would hope this development at least slightly dampens the number of people online memeing on Dragon for being a deadbeat or whatever. Probably not though. Memes are short and snappy and more fun to spread the nuance, even it becomes impossible to have serious discussions on places like Reddit because you can’t tell what level of irony anyone’s on when they seem to be experiencing the story purely through agenda and slander posting.

So, I initially thought I’d dedicate a section of this review to going back over Kuma’s scenes in Thriller Bark and Sabaody and analysing his actions with what we know now. Obviously it was clear from the start that Kuma went into Sabaody intending to save the crew, but somehow I got it in my head over the years that Kuma’s actions and intentions at Thriller Bark were more ambiguous, and that there was a chance he’d sincerely tried to take out the crew before learning more or changing his mind later. But then I rediscovered the scene right after Zoro’s big moment where he says that Luffy has exceptional friends because “he’s your son, after all… Dragon.” So yeah, Kuma knew from the start. Oda knew Kuma knew from the start. There’s no possible retcon or new motive to look closely at, just the same info we’ve actually had since 2008. I love these kinds of discoveries (or rediscoveries in my case); they’re going to make the series so much fun to fully reread when it’s done.

There are some things of note though. I feel very differently about Kuma asking Nami if Ace was really Luffy’s brother having seen the conversation about Dragon’s weakness in this chapter. Ivan would also mistakenly worry that there was a blood connection that would drive Dragon to do something rash when he heard they were brothers during the Impel Down arc.

Knowing that by this point on the timeline Bonney had already escaped does shed a little light on Kuma’s willingness to toy with the crew and let them go, despite Moria deriding him as the only Warlord who follows orders a few chapters earlier. I wonder how differently things would have played out if he’d been put up against Luffy while the knife was still at his daughter’s throat.

My main thought about Kuma at Sabaody is that Sentomaru doesn’t seem like he’s written to be as familiar with Kuma as we know he would be. “But no one knows if that’s true,” he says of the rumour that Kuma’s powers send people flying for three days and nights, as if he couldn’t have just asked at some point. When he calls Kuma out for attacking the Pacifista he calls him ‘bear-man’ instead of his name. But maybe the harshness is something he’s putting on to distance himself, knowing what his boss is going to be forced to do to Kuma in the near future.

But getting back to the chapter at hand, I was caught off-guard by how upset I was when Kuma’s letter was intercepted and destroyed. His message is simple but heartfelt, but you understand how much it would mean to a child still too young to understand why her dad isn’t around and what’s been done for her. Alpha’s choice to destroy the communication is just so callous and unnecessary, far beyond what was needed to keep a hostage, and you can’t help but empathising with how let down and abandoned the young Bonney must have felt. If anything, keeping her satisfied with the promise of going to the sea in the future in the letters must have made it easier to keep the girl under control. But Alpha, as the kind of person who’d take on this kind of assignment for the Government, just needs to be cruel.

I’m not sure what to make of Stussy’s comment about free will. She’s perhaps already gone into Government service, but she also gets to moonlight as an underworld boss, and obviously retains her loyalty to Vegapunk, given what’s happened at present-day Egghead. What parts of this vibrant career did she choose, and which ones were expected of her as one of Vegapunk’s successes?

It’s heartwarming to see the locals and Conny come together to dupe the Government and facilitate Bonney’s escape. The simple joy of getting to go outside for the first time in years is cathartic for Bonney as well. Similar to the fishmen trapped at the bottom of the ocean, Oda uses the absence of the sun as a symbol of oppression, and it didn’t even occur to me how similar Bonney’s indoors incarceration was until she was appreciating the sun in this sequence. No wonder she got so into her dad’s stories about a liberating sun god. Whether you’re a prisoner, a slave, an underclass, a hostage or just unwell, the sun is freedom; its absence, chains.

I actually don’t love what Bonney is able to do with her fruit at the end. It feels too extreme. Ageing like a particular person? Fine. Getting super buff or anything else a human could reasonably achieve in a lifetime? Yeah, great. But I don’t get what the power is drawing on to warp her appearance that much. And while she was kept conveniently unconscious (fainted because of bugs) for the Gear Five sequence in the lower lab and blasted away before the transformation in the upper one to keep her from recognising Nika, she did personally stop Luffy from using Gear Three against a Pacifista near the start of the arc, so you’d think there’d be some kind of conversation to be had there. Could be that she was just too distracted thinking about her dad to connect the dots at the time though.

But weird power-releated stuff aside, it is immensely satisfying to see Alpha cop it after what she’s done. And to see Bonney win her freedom and take to the seas like she always dreamed.

I think the flashback is nearing its end as we close out the year and start exploring volume 109, but there’s still this gut feeling that there’s one last stinger or final bit of info we haven’t been shown yet, maybe relating to the moment Kuma fully loses himself. But even if we’re just taking it slow filling in the time up to the present with Kuma’s perspective of Thriller Bark, Sabaody, protecting the Sunny and the Reverie, Oda’s proven here that he can still make low-plot chapters tug on the heartstrings, cuing up a quick but effective combo of frustration followed by catharsis. Very much looking forward to all this pain and suffering and emotional build-up coming to a head when Kuma arrives at Egghead in the present, presumably in the new year.

We know that aside from 100 and 1000, Oda’s never really written around milestones, but you still generally find something that feels like a big step on each hundred chapters. While we have a pretty damn good chapter of One Piece this week, I don’t think there’s anything that really qualifies it as a giant leap forward for the story. Maybe all the classic Warlord cameos are meant to feel like the reward for the big eleven-hundred. Maybe, given that the celebratory colour spread is slated for next issue, the big moment missed by one. Or maybe that’s just because of how Jump’s scheduling panned out and I’m overthinking the whole thing.

There’s an irony in Borsalino, in the opening pages, contrasting the climates of Egghead and Punk Hazard. He thinks Egghead’s so much colder, but give it a few years and Punk Hazard will be half frozen over and Egghead will be fully climate controlled.

There’s a lot of characterisation on show in this first scene. Vegapunk is painfully naive in failing to check for bugs in his lab, and this still won’t teach him not to trust the Government. Borsalino has a laid-back and personable demeanour at a glance, but he’ll do his job if he has to. And Kuma. Poor, well-meaning Kuma, loses all sense of perspective where his daughter is concerned. I don’t think he heard a single word that wasn’t about Bonney, even as Saturn offers him basically the worst terms ever. There’s a comparison to be made in Kuma’s reaction throughout the scene to Hancock asking Luffy to choose between freeing his friends and getting a boat. That same misdirect on what the initial reaction means and the laser focus on the people who need saving at the expense of all else. Except Luffy’s version played out in his favour whereas Kuma… well, we’re in a One Piece flashback, so you do the math.

Saturn’s character is also front and center here. It’s that he’s a bastard, all pragmatic and cruel.

I really enjoyed the montage of treatments, slice of life scenes and construction work to show the passage of time here. There’s some nice fanservice in seeing the (probable) moment the Vegaclones were conceived, and Vegapunk leveraging more underworld connections that would have to go back to his MADS days, this time with Storage King Umit. It’s cool that all the underworld figures from Big Mom’s party keep sticking their heads up to connect corners of the world.

There’s some wonderfully nostalgic fanservice seeing all the classic Warlords and a few others reacting Kuma being commissioned into their number. Curious that Doflamingo, proclaimed “champion of evil” sees another miscreant in Kuma, buying into the hype completely. Having been involved in World Government info tampering personally, and setting records straight with his crew on the fall of Flevance, you’d think he’d at least acknowledge the possibility of spin on Kuma’s story. I wonder if the apparent interest in another outright bad guy in the crew ever lead Doflamingo to reach out to Kuma. It might explain them turning up to the meeting together back when they were both first introduced.

An Ace appearance is always welcome. We knew he was offered a Warlord spot, but I think it’s new info that he toppled one before that. This is a little bit of a lesson in taking spin-off material as fully canon, because like, you’d think that event would warrant at least a mention in Ace’s novel or its manga adaptation. You know if they’d waited a few years and done those today the authors would be asking Oda for an original design for the beaten Warlord and making the encounter into at least a small scene if not the whole story, and its absence makes those volumes feel all the more secondary in retrospect.

Jinbe noting the growing political power of the Warlords is also a touch I like. We’ve known about powerful figures abusing the Warlord system for their own schemes almost as long as we’ve had One Piece, but I get the sense that the first generation legitimately acted as privateers and over time more and more people with things to hide have forced their way in. The group becomes both more dangerous and harder to control.

It is adorable that Kuma uses Bonney’s drawing as his jolly roger. No notes, just a great touch. You can really see how thin his commitment to being a marauder is. Also, is that a bear ear on the side of his ship? Maybe we all figured as far back as Sabaody there would be more layers to Kuma, but I doubt anyone expected him to do something that cute, especially with his imposing first impression.

There is a strange current of speculation online that Kuma has been sent to Windmill Village to deal with Luffy or something similar in the last page. Are we not paying enough attention to see that Kuma is already there when the orders come in. Whatever the Government wants (if the orders matter to the story and aren’t an excuse for him to namedrop his location) it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with our protagonist. But maybe I shouldn’t get too high and mighty – getting orders relating to something on the island he just happens to be stopping at for a resupply or whatever is definitely not too much of a coincidence for Oda, so we’ll see next week what the deal with all of this is.

Next week, no matter what, we’re somewhere in vol 109, and I think we have to start building up to the climax of this flashback. Right now, it feels like there’s something missing for the ending, a factor we don’t know about yet. Kuma losing his will wasn’t a shocking betrayal, it was a deal he walked into willingly. In fact, it feels like we prettymuch know it all – he spends some time as a Warlord, is made fully into a weapon at the time the Pacifistas are first deployed. Maybe he’s able to leverage that final request to defend the Sunny because Bonney had already escaped and the Government was wary of him running off with all that tech and became more pliable to his requests (or Vegapunk liked him enough to go behind his bosses’ backs). Mission complete, he’s made a slave until the Revolutionaries grab him and run, and we’re basically up to the present. It would be anticlimactic to just play all that out in fast forward, so I think Oda’s going to work some kind of a stinger in there. Probably something to tie into how and why he’s awakened to himself and begun rampaging while the Egghead Arc happens.

Looking forward to colour pages after quite a few chapters without, and for a final surprise gut punch to put the cherry on top of one of the series’ darkest and most effective flashbacks.

I’m glad to see Oda’s break treated him well after the last chapter, because this one is not only completely finished, I’d say it’s one of the cleanest looking we’ve seen in a while. The lines seem very sharp relative to the sketchiness that’s become a trademark of the last few years. There’s areas of roughness, sure, but I think most of the chapter is high quality work. I wonder if Oda came to some kind of realisation or new technique to even out the process, or if he’s simply pushed himself extra hard because he feels like he needs to make up for the state of the last one.

Either way, this is a fairly transitional chapter when you get down to it, ticking off the boxes we knew needed to be ticked and filling in blank space in the timeline. No shock that Kuma traded himself for Bonney in a deal with Vegapunk, nor that his tyrant epithet was propaganda or that he stumbled onto the throne accidentally after confronting Becori. Predictable or not, these developments needed to be shown (in part because not all the casual readers are going to remember the vague statements about Kuma’s past from hundreds of chapters ago that the hardcore fans had used to piece together their existing ideas of his history through implication) and we actually get through them pretty quick, hopefully to set up this flashback’s next big gut punch for chapter 1100.

Bonney getting her Devil Fruit at random at this point is certainly a surprise. I wonder if there’ll be an SBS answer for how it ended up in the hands of a girl who can’t go outside. Or will it just be a mystery forever like Robin and her Devil Fruit.

The misdirect gag between Bonney’s aging and Conny’s appearance is fun, and I was almost not expecting to see an explanation for Bonney being able to impersonate her so easily at the Reverie, but it also feels a bit like evidence of a changed plan. Wouldn’t shock me if there was an early outline somewhere that made Bonney an actual part of the royal family (perhaps Ginny was originally a local, some distant relation of Bulldog who was enslaved after a cruel twist of fate) and Oda decided to go another way when he reached the point of actually doing the flashback and mapping it out event by event. But it still fits together as what it is, this is just me as a writer trying to dissect things.

Could Bonney learning to base her elderly form on Conny be the origin of her distorted futures? It would explain her being able to take on Kuma’s physique despite the lack of blood connection.

There are some awesome continuity callouts in Kuma’s piracy montage, from the islands he scattered the Strawhats to, to Abdulla and Jeet, to the Revolutionary Army regional commanders showing up again. And of course references to the purging of Grey Terminal and the explosion at Punk Hazard around the chapter. It’s also cool seeing Egghead before Vegapunk made it into Egghead. Can you believe the difference in less than seven years?

Vegapunk is frighteningly naive in his ideas about how the clone soldiers will be used by the Government, but it tracks with how we know him in the present as well. it’s hard to say what Kuma’s read on the old scientist is in this scene, especially the panel at the bottom right of page 16, where he looks surprised and concerned by Vegapunk’s declaration of “mighty warriors from the future.” I think Kuma has seen enough that he understands how the World Government would use things like that, but for Bonney’s sake (who we already know matters more to him than the Revolutionaries’ cause) he can’t say no. So he justifies. He falls back on Dragon insisting Vegapunk’s intentions are good (and hey, he was cool about the Buccaneer thing). He hopes against hope something good actually will be made from the clone soldiers. He trusts himself to deal with the fallout if it goes wrong and take the burden on his own shoulders, as he did with the ousting and return of Becori.

Unfortunately, we know it won’t be that easy. Saturn is set to take away Kuma’s mind and rob him of the chance to set right the abuse of his clones. That makes me think that part of Kuma’s agenda when he’s on Egghead and at least partly in control will be to destroy as many Pacifistas as he can, or at least the facilities that make them, to put an end to his own misuse. The Seraphim are likely to be salvaged, as the World Government’s endgame weapons, but the annihlation of the regular cyborgs would be a huge blow.

I don’t think we’re quite close enough to the end here to wrap up the flashback for 1100, nor is it really positioned for a huge lore bomb like some are hoping for. I think the big thing next week is just going to be the tragic but inevitable betrayal of Kuma that makes him what he is. This is also potentially the end of volume 108, but I want to see where 1100 leaves us before I put any final bets in on that front.

This is a big one. Lots to talk about, lots to think about. A lot of… interesting reactions from fans on all corners of the internet that I want to reflect on. The first thing that stands out is the art. While mistakes have happened and corrections have been needed, the is the first time in 26 years we’ve seen Oda submit an unfinished manuscript. Other authors have done this in far rougher states far more regularly, but it’s still a shame to see Oda break his streak. I wonder if something happened. A health issue? Scheduling with the live action? Perhaps a staffing one. The primary inking seems to be done across most of if not the whole chapter. What’s missing is the erasing of pencil shading and sketch lines and the application of screen tones, which I understand to generally be the staff’s job. Whether Oda finished the inks so late that these final touches couldn’t be added, or if something happened to the normal screen tones guy, it’s hopefully a one off.

If it’s not a one-off (and a handful of panels with leftover pencil shading from the last chapter do suggest a slightly more ongoing deadline crunch) we might be back to two weeks on one off from next year to keep this from happening again. But that’s a concern for after the November/December break season.

Oda delves into some heavy topics this week, and the collective gut reaction of the fanbase has been explosive. It’s interesting to look at how much of an impression this particular chapter has made, given that we’ve been able to infer that these sorts of things happen for a long time now, after seeing the Celestial Dragons taking slave wives at Sabaody, the Boa sisters’ slavery-related trauma that left them distrustful of men, and the story of the girl who took her own life after being freed that one commoner sought revenge on the Donquixotes for. Perhaps it was the degree of ambiguity the previous hints afforded. Sure, you have to stretch for it, but you could say those older examples don’t have to lead to sexual assault. Ginny returning with an infant who very obviously takes after her is a tougher hurdle to throw ‘he wouldn’t really put that in a kids’ series’ at. Even so, Oda is careful about nowhere coming close to even using the word ‘rape,’ let alone actually depicting it. The reader is still expected to connect the dots. It’s a nonconfrontational method for putting this dark subject on the page in a way that will hopefully not disrupt its young adult rating or alienate the portion of its audience that’s sensitive to the topic.

Looking over the weekend’s spoiler discussions, some of the fanbase is kinda treating this like Oda put a Berserk-level scene in the series out of nowhere, when the truth is that he’s done everything he can to hold the subject at arms’ length. Never shown or stated, but told through heavy implication. Ginny comes back ravaged by a disease (despite what some people are saying, there’s no real reason to believe it’s an STD) that conveniently disfigures her beyond the point that any distressing physical wounds from her abuse as a slave would be recognisable and kills her outright before there’s any chance to dig into the trauma, the feelings and the ordeal of recovery and living on. One Piece is not talking about rape this week. It doesn’t want to. There’s an almost mystical, stork-like quality to the way Ginny vanishes for two years and returns with a baby and no chance to say more about where it came from beyond what we think filled in that gap in her timeline. The inferred conclusion is easy to see for grown adults like I assume most of us here to be, who’ve seen this subject matter covered before and have no allusions about the small, personal evils humans are capable of inflicting on one another. But I do wonder how much of the series’ younger audience, that makes up so much of the Japanese readership, is going to be able to read between the lines, or what their prevailing interpretation will be. If you’re fanciful enough, (like the people who think Mother Caramel and the other orphans simply ran away and hid instead of getting eaten by Big Mom) you can headcanon up a version of events where Ginny smuggled out the child of another slave, or found an orphan she couldn’t abandon on the way back to Sorbet, and while evidence in canon will strongly resist those ideas, it doesn’t outright contradict them.

And I’m sure debates will rage about whether or not this was an appropriate way to handle a topic so sensitive to so many. I don’t think there’s any such thing as a qualification to objectively judge such a thing. What shocks, what feels blunted and what does and doesn’t scan as sincere is going to vary for each and every one of us. For me, while I definitely wouldn’t point to this chapter as a go-to example of handling rape in fiction, the implications-only, arms-length approach keeps it from feeling like an edgy shock value move. For a series that doesn’t have the tone or the time to go all the way into the tempestuous introspection of real sexual violence-related trauma but still wants to be true to the darker corners of its established world and the history it draws on, this was probably the safest option, and smartly chosen.

It’s a shame to see Ginny go so abruptly and so badly though, right after two chapters of getting to know her. For all my overanalysis and cautioning above, my gut reaction sits as the first reply to the Arlong Park Forums spoiler thread, and holds true to the full chapter release. “Fuck me, that’s dark.” My mouth fell open as I realised the story being told. No one should be surprised that Ginny died, but I expected it at the climax of the flashback, with at least a chapter’s warning that it was all coming to a head. I am well and truly caught off guard by this one, a swift jab in the gut out of nowhere, and the flashback isn’t even done yet.

On Ginny’s death, we have the also somewhat sensitive topic of female characters being ‘fridged.’ That is, being assaulted and killed for the sake of giving a male character something to angst over, a trope that gives some readers a feeling women are being treated as disposable. I may be swinging at ghosts here, but I feel like I’ve seen just enough people mention this (and the following point) on different corners of the internet that it’s on my mind. I’m not going to say that Ginny doesn’t tick the boxes for this trope, but I also have to wonder what the small number of people saying this were expecting. One Piece is an action adventure story that puts death and maiming on the line as the ultimate stake and consequence for its characters regularly. It has a 26-year theme of inheriting the will and goals of loved ones who were unfairly snuffed out before their time. If you’re doing these things in a story, putting death on the line and defining your cast by the vows they made to the fallen, unless you make every character a man, you’re going to end up killing off a woman for the sake of another character’s growth at some point. Ginny joins the likes of Bellemere, Hiruluk, Tom, Olvia, Scarlet and Cora in dying tragically so a more main character can grow. Complaining about this in One Piece is the equivalent of asking for horror movies with more queer characters and calling it ‘bury your gays’ when typical horror movie things start happening to those characters. Context is important for judging the use of tropes like this.

And finally, there’s been some chatter about Bonney’s depiction in the story now that we know her true age. Egghead’s costume design has been very biased towards female fanservice and low camera angles, and it does scan a little offputtingly to have included her so heavily in that. Especially with some people noticing Sanji acting significantly less heart-eyed toward her than most women, implying she’s exempt from some of the stuff normally aimed at adult female characters. But my gut reaction isn’t as visceral as others’ have been. Like, usually the skeevy anime trope is the opposite, the young-looking character who’s really a hundred years old, reading like a truly desperate attempt to justify gawking at kids if they’re just ‘wise beyond their years’ or some shit. But the opposite scenario, someone being this much younger than they appear, is so outside the realm of reality that it’s not really worth discoursing about.

And there is a weird vibe in some of the comments on that. Especially when they’re saying ‘how could Oda draw a 12 year old like this’ but the example used is just her normal outfit, which is just short shorts and a tank top that could easily be worn out in pubic on a hot day. Feels like they’re saying ‘how dare a person I’m ultimately not compatible with initially seem attractive!’ Like it’s somehow confusing that Bonney would look good at a glance and then not be actually appropriate to be with when you learn more about her. Acting led on by it even. Strange and uncomfortable take from certain corners of the internet. How do these people deal with seeing in the real world who look pretty but have an incompatible personality, or interests, or politics, or lifestyle? Sure, the reason isn’t normally going to be ‘turns out she’s mentally 12,’ but you’re going to struggle if you can’t mentally pivot from ‘looks interesting’ to ‘off limits’ easier than that.

With all that heavy stuff out of the way, let’s enjoy some worldbuilding and fun details. Did you notice in the montage toward the end of the chapter that Kuma actually got that iron cage crib built? Cute, but you have to wonder the impact of sleeping behind bars on a baby’s development. How about the crucifix on the church wall? It’s got split ends like the cross seen on Oars’ loincloth and carved on the walls of the secret straw hat room, and where the arms meet is a symbol not unlike Alabasta’s flag and the Kozuki Family crest. Could Kuma’s religion be more than just a stock standard Christianity stand-in?

The contrast between the shots of Kuma’s home life with Bonney and his battles as a revolutionary makes for a fantastic montage through the middle of the chapter. The wartime shot at the top of page 9 is super intense, it’s going to absolutely be a highlight when it’s funny cleaned up. Bonney makes for a cute and charismatic kid, with the emergence of her present-day brashness a comedic highlight. Where does a girl raised almost completely indoors pick that stuff up?

And we go from the extreme gestures right back to scenes of childishness as she grapples with her developing illness and naively misunderstands the timeline she’s been put on. Poor girl. The Sapphire Scales illness is an interesting addition. Like I said above, it doesn’t scan as an STD-analogy. Transmissibility is never brought up as an issue in all of Kuma’s time in close quarters with Bonney, and comparisons are made to White Lead Sickness. That makes me think it’s a genetic issue. And what better kind of malady to bring Vegapunk into this flashback to treat, given his work on genetics with MADS. I don’t think it’s her Devil Fruit keeping her alive in the present. If anything, rapidly aging to appear as an adult would force the disease to advance faster. Having the skill to age up herself while ageing down the disease isn’t outside the realm of possibility for shonen writing, but I wouldn’t expect it of a five-year-old. Plus, the disease didn’t return to an unaged state the same way she did when the sea water (presumably) nullified her powers.

Bonney not being Kuma’s biological child is an interesting development given her distorted future that took on his body shape. But then, it’s not like we’ve seen enough Buccaneers to know for sure that the bulky frame is a trademark of the race. Sure, they’re said to be tough, but this is One Piece. Scrawny characters have shown incredible strength and durability, and many obstinately normal humans have had proportions far more variable and exaggerated. I see no reason a (one Piece world) human couldn’t achieve Kuma’s body type with the right gym routine and a bit of dedication. But we’ll see.

And we end on a stinger for the next chapter, with King Becori’s return. Where did he go, I wonder? Up to Marie Geoise for who knows how many months or years of bootlicking? And who ruled while he was gone? But with this, we can perhaps see the rest of this flashback taking shape. Kuma, in no mood to see his daughter’s limited time get cut any shorter, confronts the king directly, inadvertently ends up put on the throne, perhaps similar to how Dalton was able to be legitimised after ousting Wapol. With Government connections, he’s able to reach Vegapunk and petition to have Bonney’s life saved. But because of his history as a Revolutionary, the Government doesn’t let him have what he wants for free. But who could refuse, in his position?

I remember writing during Oden’s flashback a few years ago that I was enjoying the scenes playing out and seeing the long-hinted at backstory getting filled in, but that I was in no danger of weeping for Oden. There was an emotional investment that I never quite made in that story. Maybe it was because we knew about about Oden’s death in advance that it was too foregone a conclusion, or maybe it just wasn’t the right story to appeal to my tastes. The contrast here is that I’m genuinely feeling things at the twists and turns of Kuma’s flashback. This is not just a good read to quietly enjoy, it’s getting a genuine emotional rise out of me. Highs and lows of Wano be damned, Oda’s still got it.

As a final thought, this installment brings us to the 10th chapter of volume 108, but probably not the last. This doesn’t feel like an ending cliffhanger yet. But I can’t see the flashback ending in one more chapter either. Are we going to get two 12-chapter volumes in a row, or will the volume gap simply cut through Kuma’s story?

I knew it. I knew we’d be coming back to God Valley later. I feel vindicated for not getting my hopes up too high. Oda does a great job of building up what a massive convergence of big names it was, even if we only get a prelude here. At least the fanbase seems to be taking this blueballing better than they did the similar fastforwarding in Kaido’s flashback last year.

Oda takes the chance to show off what he does best here, introducing a ton of striking one-off character designs for the Holy Knights (very interested in the one with the bull’s skull for a headpiece), the nobles participating in the hunt (with Mannmeyer dropped as potentially the tenth of twenty Celestial Dragon family names) and the various pirate and marine crews coming to fight.

The World Government’s dystopia is in full swing here, with emphasis placed on not even the children being spared, and the cruel lie of salvation in three week’s time. While Ivankov is right about false hope being a useful tool for keeping the spark of life alive in prey, I think he misses its perhaps more pertinent utility of pacifying the fodder to prevent exactly the kind of operation Ivan’s group pulls off. People with hope of things working out don’t take matters into their own hands. People with other options, even slim ones, wouldn’t gamble on a million to one shot of successfully raiding the Most Dangerous Game’s prize pool. If you hear there will be some survivors, your point of view as the protagonist of your own life tells you that the story can’t end here, that you must end up in that small number for things to go on. I don’t think humans are inclined to really see themselves losing a death lottery while other options still exist, even if the odds are against us. A shame we can’t all have an Ivan to guide us from the 0% chance the powers that be said was a 3% chance to the 1% chance that is the actual only hope.

Garp’s presence in this chapter is something I’m torn on. I can’t get a read on if he knows the full details of what the Celestial Dragons are really doing, if he thinks it’s just some inspection or pleasure trip for them. If he suspects only that it’s not good but maintains a plausible deniability of what to keep himself from acting out. I love Garp as a character, but he’s always been a protector and enforcer of this world’s most heinous systems despite his sympathetic motivations. And in these days when Roger is his rival, you would think this is Garp at his most wild and rebellious and willing to disobey orders, but he’d still rather face Roger than deal with the slave hunt.

Maybe if he knew what monsters the Five Elders really were he’d actually be interested in measuring his strength against theirs.

At a guess though, I think he doesn’t know the full story, and will find out about the slave hunt only after arriving. Remember that Sengoku’s recollection of Garp and Roger’s teamup at God Valley was to “protect Celestial Dragons and their slaves,” which is an interesting choice of words to say the least. Why make a point at all of protecting slaves that were already (literally) branded for death? Perhaps the truth is that both were protected, but the Celestial Dragons were protected from Rocks, and the slaves were protected from the Celestial Dragons. I’m sure he could find a way to play off giving the slaves a chance to run as “just protecting your property from getting cut down by Rocks, go after then when it’s over” and pretending he didn’t know better. Remember in chapter 957 that right before talking about the teamup at God Valley Sengoku is reflecting on how much Garp’s personal moral compass disagrees with the Celestial Dragons and how close he’s come to being eliminated for insubordination. I think we’re edging closer to the full picture here, and I hope that’s not just my enjoyment of Garp’s character talking.

The cameos as the battle builds up are amazing to see, really tying in 20 years of continuity to make it all feel connected. From the number of Rocks Pirates that ended up being used for Thriller Bark zombies to Boggard finally showing himself again.

I do wish we got to see a little more of the operation to rob the prize pool, and the how of Kuma’s escape. Did he blast other slaves away in different directions before pawing his own group to the one island, or did the rest of the 500 just leave first? I’m willing to buy a teleporting man escaping from the likes of Saturn without having to watch it more than I would most other characters, but at the very least the moment he’s forced to give up on the idea of taking anyone else and leaves the island would have been good to see to make Kuma’s role in this sequence feel closed off. As it is, the end is pretty abrupt.

That said, the dialogue with Saturn lays out the core themes at play fairly succinctly. A lot of people characterise One Piece is being a story about freedom vs authority, which it is in many ways, but it’s also massively (I might even say moreso) about universal personhood vs selective personhood. The heroes of this story, whether they sail free as pirates or rule as kings, are the ones that accept all people as human beings, while the villains, whether monarchs or pirates, are the ones who think there are certain people undeserving of human rights and human status based on arbitrary and uncontrollable things like their place of birth or bloodline. Doflamingo, who was both a cruel noble and the evil kind of pirate, literally stole the human forms of his society’s underclass, if you want to get really on the nose about it.

(There’s an essay in there somewhere, full of choice villain quotes about ‘discrimination creating solace’ and hero quotes about ‘existing never being a crime’ and the series’ most poignant death scenes ending with words of thanks from the departed for showing them love in a world that would not otherwise have afforded it to someone of their origin)

Getting back on topic, we get an origin for Kuma’s bible-carrying habit. Religion is an interesting topic in the One Piece world. Though the World Nobles are self-styled gods running a technical theocracy in their own name, they aren’t really concerned with worship (beyond paying tribute), and there obviously aren’t any public churches of Nika. This vaguely Christian-looking faith shows up often enough to feel like a widespread belief, but there’s almost nothing we actually know about what they believe, how they worship, and what kind of organisation (if any) the church has.

Ivan ducks out. That might be the last of him for this flashback, but I’m not sure if it’s really the last time he’s seen Kuma. Presumably their paths must cross as Kuma’s ties with the Revolutionaries develop. But will Ginny live for that second encounter? My hopes aren’t high. The happiness that grows through the super-cute scenes at the end of the chapter can’t possibly be built to last. Once again, Oda is setting this flashback up to hurt. Badly.

If I’m honest, I was worried I wouldn’t find much to write about for this chapter. The amount of fanservice at the start had me thinking there’d be little to do except list out the deep cut cameos, something other people online already dead based on the scanlation release that wouldn’t interest me to write. But I was happy to find a lot of meat on its bones when I looked a little closer. This is One Piece firing on all cylinders.

Well that’s an escalation I wasn’t expecting to see for at least a few more chapters. It can’t be emphasised enough how brisk the Egghead Pacing is compared to Wano. A problem for the crew like Bonney being stuck down below is raised in chapter 1092 and by just 1094 she’s been rescued and is already being pulled into more important events. The breaks make it all feel like it’s taking longer than it is, but this kind of thing was taking half a volume worth of one panel at a time updates to get done just a year and a half ago. The binge read of Egghead is going to so refreshing comparatively.

There’s some great art for the Jump cover and colour spread this week. Can you imagine if this spread had come out during Wano though? I can only imagine the theories and headcanons and expectations that would have been raised from it.

The scene of the Pacifistas turning on the Marines actually manages to be pretty intense. Oda’s done a good job of not letting these guys feel like fodder, so I have no problem believing that the ability to control them equals control of the battlefield. It would be easy for the power scale of have slipped enough that you wonder how especially first gen Pacifistas were an effective countermeasure against the Whitebeard Pirates at Marineford (and the ease with which Luffy, Zoro and Sanji wiped out two of them for the Sabaody reunion edged on this) but instead they remain consistently threatening as an army more than a decade on.

Sanji sensing Bonney and Vegapunk questioning the scientific validity of his radar is definitely one of the better jokes the series has made of his womanising nature.

I’m still not expecting a full set of fights for these vice admirals, but glimpsing their different Devil Fruit powers and personalities in scenes like Bonney’s one here helps make the scale of the world feel bigger. Oda doesn’t let his characters get away with being nobodies.

And then it happens. I was expecting a slow arrival for Saturn, escorted carefully onto a secured part of the island with some kind of honourguard, not for him to teleport abruptly into the middle of the action with crazy magic powers. And he kills so casually in his bizarre yet intimidating transformed state. I had reservations about the Five Elders being combatants instead of just politicians, but if this is the kind of appearance and entrance we can expect from them all, then I’m on board. I don’t even know what kind of being to say he even is yet. I’ve seen some possibilities thrown around that seem compelling after googling the names, but after Nika, there’s a precedent for important Zoans being based on in-universe deities with whatever powers Oda needs them to have.

Meanwhile Luffy finally lands a solid hit on Borsalino. It’s definitely not the end of the fight though, not by a long shot, even if Borsalino takes a chapter or two to shake off the hit and make it back from where he’s been thrown. And that’s terrifying, actually. I was expecting Saturn’s arrival to wait until Borsalino was mostly or totally beat, maybe forcing an exhausted Luffy into a retreat. Now we’ve got a seemingly haki-spent Luffy with two high level opponents ready to fight him. He could barely keep Borsalino from breaking off to complete his Vegapunk assassination mission when it was one on one. We haven’t seen enough to for sure if there was any hope of taking them both on together in a straight fight (I doubt it) but when the win condition is more complicated, the odds start to seem impossible.

Finally, we get another little hint at what’s coming in Kuma’s flashback, positining the Elders, or at least Saturn, as the guilty party behind Kuma’s mind being wiped. This offers another compelling reason Kuma might have searched through Marie Geoise and abruptly left, if it’s personal between him and Saturn. His arrival on Egghead with a will to fight could end up being the thing that makes it possible to protect Vegapunk while dealing with Borsalino and Saturn both.

Bonney’s attack feels rash, but I’d be willing to bet she’s saved Vegapunk’s life here. We saw what Saturn can do with a glance. He’s not fucking around here. Which means every moment someone is keeping his attention elsewhere is a better chance of Vegapunk’s head not being exploded. She’s definitely going to need a rescue sooner rather than later next chapter though. Good luck, Sanji!

Moments like this are what really makes the endgame feel like it’s in motion for this series. It gets so hard to predict where we could be in a chapter’s time when so much is happening at once in each chapter. And, as at the end of every installment lately, I hope we’re back onto the normal schedule now so we can all enjoy more of this good stuff while it’s coming.

At this midpoint of volume 108, we get a short chapter without much to say except how enjoyable this current battle is. Gear Five has really taken the shackles off and goes a long way to silence any who thought the endgame fights would devolve into haki power scaling.

I love Borsalino’s expression as Luffy winds up to throw him away. He really is just down to see what happens next, it’s hilarious. And very interesting to see Luffy has both the power and the mindset to try and end a fight by just lobbing a dude off the island and into the sea. Of course we’ll never see it happen to an enemy who can’t easily make it back, but I still like seeing it.

Things are developing quickly here, which is great to see. It’s easy to think that in an Onigashima chapter we could take a whole week establishing Bonney’s predicament in the lower level and starting to plan a rescue, at minimum, but here it’s all happening at once, and combined with the idea of retaking the Pacifistas. And that last panel suggests this part of the story isn’t finished developing yet. There’s one last move to be made in the Pacifista tug of war yet, and when it comes there’s now a lot more characters that we like in the danger zone. We’ve been shown already how quickly a Pacifista army can turn the tides of a battle.

Zoro’s fight with Lucci sure is… still happening. There’s not enough of it to say anything substantial.

The meat of this chapter, however, is Luffy and Borsalino. The admiral turning into particles is a really cool effect, and the panel of him returning to Luffy, with all the negative space, is really dynamic. And he makes holograms! It’s such a cool use of the fruit. The implied motion of them lining up to attack Luffy like afterimages, only for him to kick through them all at once is really satisfying. I wish I had enough faith in the anime to look forward to its version of this.

And we see exactly how difficult an opponent Borsalino is to protect anything from thanks to the lightspeed movement and the clones. You appreciate far more what Rayleigh did at Sabaody to hold him back having seen how hard it is for Luffy here. In a fight like this, it’s not enough just to match your opponent, you have to threaten him enough to hold his full attention, which is another task entirely.

And I think I spy a parallel with the crew’s last encounter with the guy in that panel with Usopp and Brook. It’s a shame Oda couldn’t have put them in a slightly better position for contrast though…

And then Luffy eats a laser. Because of course he does. I can almost guarantee there’ll be something in the future related to all this Nika stuff that the way he lights up from the iniside here and has beams blasting from his eyes and mouth (and nostrils) feel like foreshadowing. I mean he looks kinda like a human sun in the second panel of the light show anyway, and that might be the whole thing, but my gut reckons there’ll be something that feels like more of this. I don’t know what. But there has to be something. Oh, but Oda should have given him two more beams coming out of his nipples, just to tie Franky into the whole thing.

Speaking of Franky, I like that he trusts Lilith with the General Franky. I wonder what feedback she’ll come back with after getting to pilot it. Could this be the start of the Franky and Vegapunk relationship so many hoped for?

It’s a shame to work up all this energy just to hit another break. Unless we get back to three weeks on, one week off soon I’m going to just stop hoping for it. We could do worse than two on, one off for a new normal, but if definitely rules out the 2025 finish that was probably never on the table to begin with. I’d rather it take longer and be done right, but I also hate waiting…