Captain M Entertainment

If you want evidence of how in-focus Kuma and his family have been in recent months, look at the list of recent chapter titles. Bonney, Kuma (as himself, “daddy,” “Kumachi” and describing himself as a pacifist) and Ginny are mentioned in every title since chapter 1096. Characters in chapter titles is by no means a new thing, but so many who are so closely related in so many back to back chapters feels like an outlier.

Kuma opens the chapter with a punch that’s well worth the wait, counting both the post-New Years days off and the long flashback build-up to this moment. It’s beautifully composed and drawn as well, full of dynamic speed lines that fully emphasise the impact and with incredibly clean panelling that doesn’t let anyone or anything distract from a moment that had to be all Kuma’s. This is chapter two of 2024 and it’s already guaranteed to be a frontrunner for best panel/spread of the year. One thing I’m not seeing much discussion about is the panel on the bottom right, where we see Saturn’s eye narrow into a glare even as his face folds around Kuma’s fist. Where many are saying Saturn won’t be that much of a powerhouse, relying on regeneration rather than defence and durability, this moment of defiance shows that Saturn knows how to take a punch without losing his focus.

Lucky for us, it’s an incredibly strong punch that sends him flying even if it doesn’t fully break his concentration.

The Marines’ lines emphasising the horror of a slave, at the very bottom of the pecking order, attacking a man at the “pinnacle of the world” makes me think of the Emperor Card game in the excellent Kaiji – in which the emperor dominates the citizen cards, who themselves look down at the slave card. But played right, the slave can be the most powerful card in the game, as it has nothing to lose, and can attack the otherwise immune emperor. For a moment here too, the slave stands taller than any free man. Also Kaiji is something everyone should watch because it’s great.

The self-destruct reveal is a bit weak. It’s not quite the copout I feared when Vegapunk pitched a personality switch in the flashback, but it still feels a little unearned for Vegapunk to have just fooled Saturn so easily after he said he’d check. I wonder if a translation difference could have set the right expectation for how this played out – something like “killswitch” instead of “self-destruct,” so that it could be interpreted as as either a killing mechanism for Kuma or an emergency shutdown on a machine, turning Vegapunk’s move into more of a semantic deception rather than an outright lie told to the audience.

The hug with Bonney isn’t as dramatic as the punch, but it’s just as earned and just as cathartic. Like when she debriefed with Vegapunk after the flashback, Bonney becomes a little girl again to emphasise her vulnerability in the moment. It’s simple, but it takes the father-daughter reunion to the next level.

Love the visceral detail of Saturn’s regeneration. If I had any faith in the anime it’s something I’d be excited to see in motion because you could do some cool, messed up things with it. His powers are still hard to pin down. Even with his body full restored, the paralysis has worn off for the main characters and it’s not clear what steps it will take from Saturn to set it up again. I did enjoy Sanji and Franky getting to casually land hits on him now that Kuma and Bonney have set the precedent.

Borsalino continues to be an enigma. I’m falling on the side of him holding back and giving the crew breathing room when he can get away with it, then fighting seriously when his boss’s eyes are on him. I think he knew, from Kuma’s punch, that there’d be no going back and no slipping out of this one anymore, and the line about darker glasses at the end is a very telling piece of dialogue for the character. I kinda wish the illustration packed it up a bit more though. That would have been a good time to reveal some genuine sadness in his eyes, but he retains his trademark neutrality all the way through.

With the advent of the Buster Call, there’s no chance of this arc not being in its endgame. The question is, how are we going to distinguish this arc from the last time the Strawhats faced one of these? Perhaps we’ll see them mount more of a defence and push back instead of wrapping up their fights and fleeing the burning island. Or maybe the presence of Saturn and Borsalino alone is meant to be this one’s defining features.

I’m setting my hopes high for the next few months. Egghead has been on so many levels a breath of fresh air after Wano, and now it just needs to stick the landing to cement its place among the series’ best. After proving he’s still got it in the flashback department, I’ve got a lot of faith in Oda to bring this one full circle.

Back for the year of the dragon! I’d completely forgotten the zodiac colour spread was coming until I saw it. Franky absolutely wins this one with the hair and the decals on his shoulders. The axolotl-y looking dragon on Nami’s top is also pretty cute.

This was perfect note for returning from the flashback to the present. It puts a bow on the last few emotional beats of the previous sequence. Bonney is emotionally and physically disarmed by what she’s seen, becoming the child we now know her to be for a cooldown chat with Vegapunk, presumably after he was rescued from York. The sapphire necklace she gets for her birthday resembles other sun symbols used previously in the manga, such as Alabasta’s flag, the middle of Kuma’s church’s crucifix and on the Kozuki crest. I’m guessing we’ll see more and more of this imagery as the series builds up to its finale.

And we cut from this moment of wholesome vulnerability between a little girl and a guardian figure, to a much more heartbreaking kind as Bonney, even acting the grown-up again, is helpless in Saturn’s clutches. It’s so frustrating to imagine how she must feel, especially having learned everything we just saw, and not even being able to get a single effective hit in. It’s personal for her. She has every reason to be able to find that last reserve of strength for the shonen emotional powerup, but it’s just too much. But it’s a very One Piece thing to leverage that kind of infuriating feeling of impotency. Unless you’re Luffy (and even then) you’re going to end up in this position, having to ask for help, at some point in your life. There’s no shame in needing to call for help in this series.

The following exchange follows up two nit picks from the flashback sequence, once again exposing the risks of doing a week by week critique without seeing the full story. I actually really like the logic behind the Distorted Futures – wrapping it up in a child’s logic and having it get limited by a more mature view of reality is a really fun view of the ability and would have been cool to see further explored. It can only be overpowered in the hands of someone drastically underpowered. The idea that the power as a whole was the result of an experiment is… eh, it doesn’t actually add much in tangible terms, just ties off the loose end of no one knowing how Bonney got the fruit. And makes Saturn seem like more of a bastard in hindsight, not that he needed it. It’s weird that he implies the Sapphire Scale was a side-effect of his work though. The doctors were talking about it like it was a rare but known-of disorder. Or does that just speak to the number of people Saturn has tried this one then released?

But also, the symbolic value of the bad guys literally creating a disease that makes people unable to walk in the freedom-representing sun is pretty good, so maybe we let this one slide.

And I also like that we’re learning something about alternative Devil Fruit applications in the arc. I still haven’t forgotten Oda’s promise that Vegapunk would explain how inanimate objects could be made to eat Devil Fruits when he appeared in the story (from I think a Water Seven-era SBS) and I’m still waiting on that explanation. Come on, just a little more in that direction.

All evidence suggests it was Borsalino that fed Luffy, which is a fascinating, fascinating move for the character after so long putting his job before his feelings. Was it Saturn’s cruelty that finally inspired a small act of rebellion, or was it just that this was the only opportunity he saw to strike back with some plausible deniability?

Kuma’s rampage is the perfect climax to the chapter and just what the story needed after returning to the present. I would liked to have seen more of the battle damage from his encounter with Sakazuki sticking, but that’s a small complaint in the grand scheme of things. From seeing the guy take more and more pain as the Marines try to gun him down, to Saturn’s firing squad exploding, to the last second save of Bonney, this is a brilliant sequence. And despite his silence, we get a bit of evidence of what’s happening to Kuma. This isn’t some secret program or protocol put in his system by Vegapunk, Kuma truly has pushed through the mind wipe and is able to act on an extent of his own emotions and willpower. He has his Haki, and he has his anger. While I still think this battle ends in tragedy, I’m thrilled to see that punch land and see what happens next.

This is the start of a good year. Promises of Egghead’s climax, the conclusion of Kuma’s gripping narrative and a whole new (likely Elbaf) arc in the next 12 months makes me very excited to be on board for the ride.

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?