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One Piece chapter 1112 review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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One Piece chapter 1111 review

Last one going into another long break. Potentially but not definitely the end of volume 109. And I think a shift into the final bit of action for the Egghead Arc. While I'm disappointed to have to go three weeks without, I definitely prefer Oda getting the downtime he needs to carry the story through to its end inn the best way possible. And the phrase "scheduled maintenance" in the announcement makes me think this is going to end up being an annual thing, which at least means it won't be a surprise in future years.

We do at least get some gorgeous colour pages for a send-off. The classic piratey vibe of the Jump cover has a whole lot of appeal while the colour spread has some gorgeous lighting for Copic work. The transparency on the jellyfish is stunning. There's cute symbolism in giving Kuma a seahorse shirt, perfect for the series' most dedicated single dad. Bonney and Vegapunk getting to be included is also a good touch, Always nice when current arc characters get to hang out with the crew on these things. I also really like the One Piece logo down the bottom with the jellyfish top and tentacles around the O.

Mars breaks inside the barrier. I initially thought he'd was rebuffed by the lasers last week, but I should have known he'd be able to use his immortality to power through undaunted. And that makes the situation really bad for the crew.

The apparent lack of concern the Strawhats have for Vegapunk's broadcast is interesting. I actually had to go back and double check if they even knew it was happening at all. They do, but it still doesn't really seem to concern them. Escape has become the most important thing, and though I'm sure they'd stand and fight if one of the surviving Vegapunks said it was their greatest dream and the Stella's dying wish to make sure it goes through, but even they seem to be putting their lives first. It's actually kind of funny the number of people complaining last week about Oda using the 'ticking clock' trope in yet another arc, only for the crew to just outright ignore it and continue with their original plan of escaping. All this plus the escape map to lay out the distances and groups involved paint a picture of how the final stage of the arc is likely to play out.

This is an interesting chapter for Lucci. Obviously a commanding show of strength to stay standing after Zoro's big hit and then to remain conscious and clear-headed after Jinbei's subsequent blast, but also to call Kaku his partner and beg for his life to the ultimate authority of the Five Elders. Remember, in Lucci's eyes 'gods are not bound by logic' and 'it is the natural order for gods to have whatever they desire' (chapter 907). He also showed an extreme callousness toward any team member he thought wasn't performing up to par at Water Seven, like the potentially now-dead Nero. To make the request at all, to a man whose desires and whims have complete priority, speaks to a kind of camaraderie I never would have figured he had in him. At some point I'll have to go back over Water Seven properly and see if there's anything that can be interpreted differently with this side of him in mind.

Lucci also looks absolutely terrified when Mars appears, but he immediately recognises the Elder even in his monstrous form and doesn't hesitate to obey. We were told before that anyone below the rank of commodore can't even meet them, but it wasn't clear how much of a secret their specific powers were. York's reaction at the end of the chapter shows that she wasn't aware of the demon forms, despite the Vegapunks having had audiences with the Elders.

The Haki roar is a cool show of power. I'm looking forward to learning more about the limits of the physical effects of Conqueror's Haki and how much they can be controlled. I also loved the visual gag of all of Luffy's stuff blowing off, seeing him stick his scars back on. Amazing comic instincts on that one.

I think one of the big important things to remember for Luffy's characterisation in this chapter is the way the giants talk both with him and about him to Warcurcy. They say that he looks like the god they've heard tales of, but when Warcury asks who Luffy is to them, the only important part is that Luffy is their friend. And we learn concretely that it wasn't even the Nika appearance that inspired them to come intervene, they just saw that he seemed like he was in trouble in a place they were close enough to. Luffy isn't the messiah of the giants (at least not yet), just a guy who makes the right friends.

I try not to dwell on spoilers without the full story, but they definitely coloured my perception of this chapter's baseball bat gag. When I read that Luffy 'conjures' a bat, I was extremely worried. I have raged against the perception that Luffy's new power is literal imagination and that he can magic things into existence or warp reality in any tangible way. I would not want that to be the way the story progresses. Imagine my relief when the outcome is only as absurd as turning a palm tree into a bat with his teeth. I could take or leave the paint and hat. They only interact with Luffy himself and are gone in less than a page, so I can take them as part of the bit. The paint in particular is funny because to leaves the bat looking exactly the same as if it had a layer of Armament Haki (at least as far as Haki is portrayed to the readers). That's like the one part Luffy could have just manifested through willpower and he finds paint instead.

I expected more emphasis to be placed on Ju Peter's revival, but he's just kind of there after the explosion. Do we think the original head reattached to his body, or did he grow a new one? Maybe Oda's saving that reveal for later, when we go further into what the Elders really are.

As much as I want to see Franky get some action, I think the three vice admirals are setting up a Kuma moment, probably his big finale for the arc, whether it's a full awakening or death, or taking his daughter and teleporting away. Borsalino seems to be out for good, understandably overwhelmed by his emotional distress. I wonder if there'll be a tangible difference in the next fight against him, if it happens in a scenario where his heart can truly be in it. And then the robot, with that big, important Joyboy connection promising big things to come. I wonder, if the Strawhats are being characterised as unconcerned with Vegapunk's broadcast, if the robot will then be the force that makes sure it plays in full. Or is there some kind of twist coming about the broadcast's source that we haven't considered yet. Mars asks York about the room Vegapunk is in, as if he thinks the broadcast is actually live. Saturn only said to the other Elders that he thinks Borsalino killed Vegapunk, so they may be operating on the assumption he's somewhere else, especially if the technology to record and repeat a message via snails is not widespread.

But these are questions for three weeks from now. Meantime, I hope Oda enjoys his rest and processes everything he needs to process about Toriyama and comes back to the series refreshed for the home stretch of the arc.

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One Piece chapter 1110 review

This is a chapter that doesn't disappoint. Things are really heating up as we hit the tenth chapter of volume 109 with Egghead's likely final end-of-volume cliffhanger to come in the next chapter or two.

But we start out with a new cover story, and yeah, it's Yamato following Oden's tour of Wano, which is probably the least exciting thing going on this week. However with the last cover story having such a large and immediate connection to the current story, I'm going in with an open mind and considering my hopes. Seeing some of the stuff that got shortchanged in Wano's clipped epilogue would be cool, like Ryuma's grave for example, or passing by Izo's tomb and seeing Kiku visiting. Perhaps a more direct confonrtation of the public's feelings about Tama's Kurozumi heritage. That one might be hard in the pantomime format of a cover story, but you never know. It's going to be a few installments before there's enough info to make any real prediction about the story's trajectory though, we know they never quite stay the course they seem to start on.

Getting back into it, Oda spends a couple of pages building into the big reveals. We also get a timeline update, with 3 minutes down already, which is a brisk pace as Shonen countdowns go. The summoning circles definitely seem closer together and like they're placed in a more rubble-strewn environment than in the final spread of the last chapter, enough to ease my concerns about the space shifting slightly.

And the monster designs that come out when the shadows are pulled back are truly awe inspiring. I don't know a lot of yokai or much about any of them (could tell you a little bit about classic sandworms though), but these are easy 10/10 beasts with all of Oda's best character design ideas on full display. When One Piece ends and he inevitably gets restless after his well-earned break Oda should absolutely do the Toriyama (RIP) thing and design monsters for games. What do you even say to a pair of pages like this? I can't stop looking back to them.

And these guys are made to feel like a threat too. None of them speak in the whole chapter; similar to Saturn's original rampage it makes them feel all the more inhuman. (Saturn did speak when he confirmed the summons in the last chapter, so we know they can but you still get the same effect from how sparse their dialogue is.) They spring immediately into action with no apparent coordination or communication between each other, and they go straight for their goals. There's no posturing or speeches or taking test shots at Luffy to measure his power. Nasjuro is off and running already, cutting down Pacifistas to unblock the Buster Call fleet, solving problems for the bad guys. Mars takes a shot at the barrier, and even though it doesn't work you know he's going to be there the moment it goes down for real. And Ju Peter and Saturn go straight for Luffy. They really don't feel like playtime villains, which is exactly what you need at this late stage of the story.

The absence of Warcury is curious though. Is he also fighting Luffy, or is he going for something else? Charging towards Bonney perhaps?

But what are they? The fact that the odaboxes simply give creature names without specifying a Devil Fruit type is super suspicious. Nasjuro's ice powers mirror Brook's abilities (which allegedly come from having returned from death, rather than being directly a feature of his fruit), which could maybe suggest that he as well has returned from some kind of underworld.

I'm not ready to totally rule out it being a misdirect and them having Devil Fruits of a matched kind, but the weird details are adding up.

Speaking of weird details, I can't quite tell if it's weird scaling/camera angles or not, but it almost seems like Lucci knocks Enma away from Zoro only for it to boomerang back to his hand. I'm not crazy, right, other people are seeing this? At a glance you think maybe it goes up and he catches it as it comes down, but that flight path is curved in every panel. So what, did Zoro just get lucky with the amount of spin, or is there some strange new property of Enma's power/contained Haki being shown here. Or something to do with Zoro's close grim reaper encounter? Stick a pin in this one I think we'll be coming back to it later.

I'm ambivalent about the Zoro and Lucci fight as a whole. The outcome was never in doubt, and it was too offscreen to provide any real character interaction or clash of ideology to add substance. Zoro snapping and finding the motivation to take the win right away when Sanji talks him down is a decent bit for the two of them, but it's not quite enough to make the whole fight feel like more than padding.

Truly, if Lucci had been handcuffed properly after the death game portion and never made his breakout attempt, I don't think the arc would have played out any differently. Even the silly anticlimax of the sliding ship serves the purpose of justifying the Sunny getting from A to B over dry land, but Lucci? Was taking Stussy off the table that important? Was it the only way to make it believable that Zoro wouldn't follow Sanji and Vegapunk down to the Labophase and get involved with the Elders too soon? I'm having a hard time seeing it, but the arc isn't over yet.

The final spread is a fantastic callback and great hype-builder for the next chapter. And I think it's going to prove just how far the Elders' regeneration is able to go. The Elders aren't going down here, definitely not, but with Dorry and Brogy there might just be enough muscle on Luffy's side to hold them back until the broadcast goes ahead.

We're getting colour pages next week, and I have to wonder if an Akira Toriyama tribute is coming. Jump has to do it, there's no way they won't, but the gap between when the pages are finalised and when we see them, and the break between when Toriyama died and when it was announced to the public makes it all kinds of tough to figure out the earliest that could happen. I could definitely see Oda pivoting last minute and trading out a finished colour spread to something in honour of Toriyama, but the timing is tight. We'll see soon, I suppose. May the hits keep on coming for the Egghead finale!

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One Piece chapter 1109 review

Ten minutes? Boo. BOOOOOOO! What a tease. That's, what, 4 chapters of Dressrosa time? 18 chapters of Namek time? Fine. It's fine.

But to get more serious, this is Egghead going full circle. First we were set up to expect a defensive siege of the main lab, then it evolved into an escape sequence, and now for the final leg, we're being set up to defend again. And with this being the ninth chapter of volume 109, the time for a climactic end-of-book cliffhanger is coming up, as early as the next chapter (but realistically on the eleventh or twelfth because there have been a few shorter chapters in this run) maybe we see this wrap up, or at least get ready to wrap up relatively soon.

This is a very transitional chapter. Transitioning into a new cover story (I think Momo moved Onigashima; outside of another Oars having shown up there, nothing else realistic), transitioning through the setup phase for receiving Vegapunk's info, transitioning to the real final set piece. Seeing new characters return in great numbers like this is always good fanservice, but cameos alone aren't a lot to analyse. The acknowledgement of time zones in the Water Seven bit is cool. I know Oda isn't super invested in this kind of thing for his worldbuilding, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to work out if this is an accurate depiction or not.

Haha yeah okay of course I am.

A thoroughly pointless analysis of One Piece timezones

First, we need to all get on the same page about the orientation of the globe. It's a myth with a frustrating amount of staying power that the Grand Line runs along the equator, but this is not actually the case. All evidence in the manga points to the Grand Line and the Red Line forming an X shape across the globe. The first explanation of the Grand Line in chapter 22 comes with a handy compass rose for orientation, and the image of the globe on the following page depicts them as diagonals. The special recap at the end of volume 81 reiterates this image of the globe, and puts Reverse Mountain on the "front" of the planet. Finally, the compass directions offered when the Supernova captains are planning how to leave Wano also place the Grand Line on an angle. This is our canon orientation.

Yes, this means that if you were standing on Marie Geoise, the seat of the rulers of the world, you would have to look west to see the East Blue and look east to survey West Blue. That's kinda silly. Maybe the names of the seas predate the World Government making that their perch.

In the latest chapter, we're shown broadly the time at a few key, identifiable locations. It is, of course, daytime on Egghead. It is explicitly nighttime at Water Seven. Windmill Village, in the East Blue, and Dressrosa have light skies, suggesting day; meanwhile Kamabakka, Marie Geoise and an unnnamed West Blue location all have shaded skies, suggesting nighttime. North and South Blue are both shown with light skies, but their locations on the planet make it almost impossible for it not to be day somewhere in them, so without more data like proximity to the Red Line, the Grand Line or the poles, they can't add anything to this analysis.

First, we have to work out where these locations are on the map. While it's tempting to place Egghead on the globe's front face, in the second half of the New World, for Law's statement in chapter 1056 about northeast being the furthest forward move to be true, this means that Wano, and by extension Egghead (directly southeast of it) have to be on the rear side, in the first half of the New World.

Dressrosa is before Egghead in the New World, easy win.

Water Seven doesn't offer anything as explicit as that for its placement, but for it to be the island that connects to Fishman Island, under Marie Geoise, via Log Pose, you have to assume it's in the second half of Paradise, also on the rear side of the globe.

Kamabakka is only a few days' sail from Lulusia, which was selected by Imu to test the Mother Flame because it was "close" to his location, so the easiest extrapolation is that it too is in the second half of Paradise.

For both Windmill Village and the unnamed West Blue location, it's impossible to tell if they're on the front or rear hemispheres of the world, but I've placed them both on the front because the map was going to get crowded otherwise.

For the sake of simplicity, we're going to assume that daylight moves east to west over the planet, just like the real world. We're also going to ignore things like curvature and axial tilt because they get complicated, harder to work into the graphics, and probably wouldn't have that much of an impact on the result anyway. The proportions of my day/night/dawn/dusk segments are not exact; I just eyeballed them. Excuse the roughness of the graphics.

So, can we make the day and night times shown in the latest chapter's panels work?

Unfortunately, no, we cannot. If it's morning on Egghead it can be dawn on Dressrosa, just before dawn at Marie Geoise and late at night in the second half of Paradise for Water Seven and Kamabakka, there's no way it makes sense for it to be day in the East Blue and night in the West Blue. Oof, we were so close. But Oda's time zones are busted.

The conclusion here is that this stuff doesn't really matter that much. Like travel times, the phases of the moon and the exact day and date the story is taking place, Oda may occasionally make a throwaway reference to these things, but he's also known to forget them and totally happy to fudge them for the sake of the story. I enjoy the mental puzzle of working out details like these and running through the implications, but I don't think they offer any genuine insight into how One Piece has been plotted or where it's going.

Ahem…

Getting back to the chapter at hand though, the bit of action with Luffy is very fun. I enjoyed Borsalino's laser eyes and the big clap attack. Saturn being able to fly around like a frizbee with all his legs out has a familiar vibe to the ancient dinosaur hunting techniques from Onigashima. And on Saturn's abilities, the telepathy between him and the other Elders is very interesting and definitely builds the case that whatever they have going on is beyond just Devil Fruits. As, of course, does the summoning. I'd be curious to see what kind of limits are placed on this to keep them from just showing up at Revolutionary HQ or something. Saturn rode with the Marine fleet until he was close, so maybe there's a proximity limit on unfamiliar areas, but once one is there, he can summon the others to his location from anywhere in the world.

The summoning spread is an awesome page for sure, but in the vein of last week's complaints about characters disappearing and inconsistent staging, it feels like a huge empty space has manifested to fit it in. Egghead's buildings felt a lot closer together than this in previous backgrounds, even accounting for how destroyed they are.

This was something the Onigashima anime (the bits of it I saw anyway) was really bad about. One minute the roof area is an enclosed arena, the next there's an expasive k or two of the pillars around the outside because it's a cool shot for a character sent flying to bust through them one after the other. Establishing shot puts Zoro and King on the crumbling, shrinking outer edge. But in the sakuga cut it grows a mile of extra turf for Zoro to sprint and leap through while flaming dragons tear up everything around him. Cool moments are cool, but I don't like seeing the established setting being compromised to make space for them.

I feel like I've been harsher on paper than I actually feel for this one. Transitions can be a let down, and are definitely hard to write about, but they don't mean the stuff I'm excited for isn't coming. I can wait a week or two for the payoff, after all the years of following this story, that much more isn't a huge deal.

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One Piece chapter 1108 review

Ooh, this is actually heating up right when I was expecting Egghead to start winding down and continue cutting off sources of tension. There was a point a year and a bit ago where the question might have been asked, 'why this arc, on this island?' If Oda is rushing to the finale, what does Egghead offer that Elbaf doesn't, and what will it add to contribute to the macro-level plot? Up til now, aside from wrapping up stories for supporting cast members like Bonney and Kuma, it seemed that maybe the main thing here was getting the scientists in the party and setting up more Void Century teases to develop more later. Well I think now we're getting the big thing that made Egghead unskippable.

But first we've got a Jump cover here, the latest in a long line of 'Luffy is about to punch you' covers, now in Gear Five form, and a very relaxed colour spread. Sure, why not give Uta another appearance in the manga. But what's that going on between Reiju and Tashigi? But my favourite thing here is the dapper canines in the portraits in the background. Cute stuff.

Caribou's scene feels like more of a recap than anything. I'm actually surprised to see him and the Blackbeard Pirates again so soon, I would have been satisfied if their time on Egghead wrapped up with the last chapter. Of course, there's no chance they choose not to take him with them, even if Oda leaves it ambiguous.

Now, I'm not a firearms guy. I don't live in one of those countries where you see them regularly. But is it just me or is Augur's form with the rifle really bad here, with the stock all the way out the back. You're meant to use that thing to brance for the recoil, right? So if he pulls the trigger this weird way he's holding it, the whole thing just slips between his arms and goes flying backwards, wouldn't it? I'll accept corrections for anyone who does know guns on this point.

I love getting names for all the vice admirals here. It's the details. Guillotine is still my favourite design of the batch.

The talk about taking back control of the Pacifistas by eliminating Bonney feels odd though. Is that how it works? So a person of equal rank in the hierarchy can't override orders, but the death of the current top dog will let someone lower down cancel their standing orders? Pacifista control is a mess, and for all the ways Egghead has been a breath of fresh air post-Wano, it's complicated contrivances like this that drag it down in the end-of-arc retrospective.

The giants' meetup with Franky's group has some interesting points. First: they don't recognise Franky because his bounty picutre was changed to the Sunny's figurehead. But that's still weird. It can't have been done just to set up this half-second misunderstanding. Franky's ready to square up, making the at this point safe assumption they've come as enemies, which is great from him. We learn that Usopp's been talking about his time with the giants to the crew since Franky joined. You have to assume that kind of offscreen bonding is happening, but it's always nice getting the little confirmations of it.

Glad to see one of the weaponised sea beasts survived. And Bluegrass and Doll manage to look very cool riding it back to Egghead. I wonder if Doll's connection to Saul is setting up a bigger arc or moment for her, or if it's just an excuse to remind casual readers of his name.

Saturn is truly terrifying in his new form. That's fantastic design. Even before Sanji points it out, you can see something is wrong with his eyes. That is one intense stare. And the fact that he doesn't speak once in the whole chapter makes him feel all the more inhuman. What is this man now, if he's still a man at all?

But where did Borsalino go after the last chapter's standoff. Has there been a little offscreen clash with Luffy and Sanji he's just retreated from? Was he forced to get out of the way as demon Saturn stampeded in? I'd rather have seen either of those things than releared what Caribou knows at the start of the chapter. It's not a hard one to explain, but it still feels like a continuity glitch, which is frustrating. It came up during the 'who fed Luffy' discussions in the past week that Luffy's position changes before and after the flashback, last seen in Franky's hands going in, then lying a decent way away from the group with no apparent action taken by him or Franky after. If there was one thing you could absolutely say in the Onigashima battle's favour, it's that it was intricately and carefully mapped. We had the layout of the whole castle and knew where everyone was inside it. No one teleported from one side to another in a single page, they got at least a little bit of offscreen time to travel before popping up somewhere new. The attention to detail was a highlight there, which makes it all the more disappointing that this battle's staging misses beats like this.

I can't help feeling really bad for Vegapunk as he lays dying here. Not because I'm super personally invested in him, but just because it feels so wrong for the character design. He's so goofy and cartoony with the apple head and forever-lolling tongue that he feels like he should be incompatible with blood. This guy should be giving me the tutorial of an edutainment game, not having his guts blasted out. Like a child, or a housepet, the apparent innocence makes it feel even crueller to attack him. (Apparent innocence only, we all know his morality is questionable at best given the horrors he enabled for the World Government.)

Borsalino getting to finish the job is a shock, and yeah, the monitor at the end does make me think the job is finished. Rough, and unexpected. I was better on Kuma's death and Vegapunk's rescue, but it looks like I got it the wrong way around. Luffy's giant transformation is an awesome panel, with just the intensity you want for a moment like this. No notes. I also love the smaller panel of the page showing him from ground level, towering over the buildings. Would love a bigger and more detailed form of that next week please.

And then the stinger. Vegapunk seems to have set up a dead man switch with some big secrets. This is great. Perfect thing for the smartest man in the world to do, especially considering how long he'd been expecting an attempt on his life was coming. And it has the potential to be huge for the world. A turning point. Potentially the start of a war or several. I don't think we're getting the full Void Century here, of course, but it's hard to imagine it playing out without at least one major reveal. And how will the Government respond? With the Buster Call running too slow, will Imu turn the Mother Flame on Egghead, triggering an escape sequence (and maybe cutting the exposition dump short because this is One Piece). The potential for this is huge. Huge.

I'm always happy to be getting three chapters in a row, but I'm so glad this one didn't line up with a break. See you all next week when the bombs drop.

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One Piece chapter 1107 review

The Egghead climax is definitely in full swing now, but it's still hard to tell how much of a full length, stand-your-ground fight to expect from this arc. Battles lately have left more like skirmishes. They're not about beating down your opponent until they physically can't move anymore, it's enough to make them dazed and in need of a moment to catch their breath so you get the chance to go on to your own objectives or keep them away from theirs. Plenty of other arcs have featured these kinds of 'smack the other guy away and get back to the more important stuff' kinds of confrontations (which people online love to extrapolate into being decisive wins or losses despite the result's lack of staying power) but never as a substitute for the traditional final battle. And I think this feeling that the final 1v1 could still come is the last thing that makes it hard to predict the remaining length of the arc.

Getting started, it's awesome seeing the Giant Pirates in action. With the scale normal humans can reach in One Piece, it's easy to forget how freaking big real giants actually are. They tower over the Marine warships enough to cleave them with single swings. And while there are humans who can also cut a battleship in two with their blades, those are individuals, and generally ones near the top of the food chain. When Mihawk cuts through a ship in an instant, it's a moment of awe. And giants are a whole race of people who can do that just virtue of their sheer size.

Usopp's joy at seeing the great warriors again is a wonderful moment. I get the need for a recap for casual readers, but I'd rather have seen some kind of explanation on the giants' timeline - when and how Dorry and Brogy gave up their duel and reunited with the others.

I feel like I'm starting to see part of the escape taking shape in the sequence with the ship sliding. The talk of Brook 'passing through in a moment' and not being able to stop seems to be setting up the crew on top leaping onboard as the Sunny slips past. There's probably going to be a little bit of tension and last minute saves with Jinbe and Zoro rushing to make the rendezvous and a Vegapunk having to rush inside to turn off the barrier (almost forgot about that) and then have to make it back in time, or just sacrifice themselves so the others can get away. With the giants right underneath, there's people there who could catch the Sunny and break its fall, or it could just do a coup de burst to ramp off the edge and into the hole in the Marine fleet made by the giants' arrival. That's my theory for how things play out from here.

Even though I floated the idea of Bonney being upset with her 'god' for not showing up sooner, I'm not at all surprised that she commits to him as a hero instead. While very dramatic, the other thing wouldn't quite have been Oda's style. I appreciate Luffy's casual dismissal of the Nika idea. He's still himself. But I do wish his reaction to seeing Vegapunk's injuries was a little more personal and had a bit more staying power before he shifted back into fun mode. Gear Five coming with a strong sense of euphoria isn't something I mind, but I want to see the difference split a little more evenly. Or at least give Luffy a chance to see a thing like this before transforming. I was close to writing off the lead-up to the attack on Saturn as well. The back and forth with Bonney almost makes it feel like the move is going to be more about showing her up than avenging Vegapunk, and that, to my mind, made it too much of a game. But after taking the stare attack from Saturn, the old Luffy shows his face. Nika will play with Bonney, letting it be her plan and a souped up version of her punch, but Luffy has a score to settle about his friend. The expression in that panel is good. He's still smiling, but it's a determined, focussed smile, with a furrowed brow that brings a wilder intensity to the wide Gear Five eyes. This is the version of Gear Five I want to see more of.

Vegapunk not being able to move without dying is an interesting complication to add. On the topic of having to stand and fight, it gives Luffy and Sanji a reason to defend this space to the end instead of stunning or knocking back Borsalino and Saturn before fleeing, but what happens after? Can we get Chopper down here to save the scientist? And if Vegapunk has enough medical knowledge to be sure of that, wouldn't Atlas, who shares his brain, have the same medical knowhow to do a patch job? Surely Franky has the strength to carry Kuma in her place.

Then there's the Sanji moment. He doesn't know. We'd thought that maybe because he'd acted less pervy around Bonney in some recent chapters that he had a sixth sense for it, but now we just have to say he doesn't know. This does mildly sour the coolness of the laser kick (as does the fact that he did it already two chapters ago without the big reaction). "Physics as we know it is dead" is a great line though.

I'm very interested to see how the choreography for a 2v1 for Luffy, Sanji and Borsalino will play out, even if it ends up being a short, interrupted one. In his earlier fight with Luffy, Borsalino proved an ability to zip around and attack from offshore one moment, up close the next. That speed makes him a terrible foe to have to protect a wounded ally against. In a tag team, however, one person can protect Vegapunk while the other chases Borsalino across the island. Could be fun, especially with Sanji's speed.

Now, that last scene. That's where it's all at this week. I've been asking questions about that Blackbeard ship tease for a long time, and we finally see the agenda. If that touch is what it takes for Catarina to be able to imitate Saturn (and what else could it realistically be?), shit's really about to get serious. It seems like Teach's go-to tactic is weaseling his way into the good graces of a group that has something he wants (Whitebeard's crew, the Warlords, and now seemingly the Celestial Dragons) and betray them to run off with the prize. Then there's this idea of them acquiring "the world" as an ultimate goal. Do we think it's a mirror of Luffy's own secret goal in some way, possibly relating to Gaimon's shoutout to "buy the world" back near the start of the series?

And then, in a one-two punch, we finally get Caribou's endgame. Oda's been stringing this one out for literally the whole timeskip, putting this slimey bastard in the right place at the right time to learn all kinds of valuable things about the Ancient Weapons and the Poneglyphs (as well as the Strawhats' idiosyncrasies) to make him the perfect asset to a final boss.

What a wild chapter. A finale coming together. Exciting action. Mixed feelings about the balance of goofball fun and genuine emotion in Nika. And the last two scenes feeling like they're bringing things Oda has spent most of the series coming to a head at last. The growing pains of Gear Five's implementation into moments of drama are easily forgiven in the face of these ultimate payoffs manifesting.

Oh, and Zoro's fighting Lucci I guess. There's basically nothing of note here except trash talk. The one clash we're shown isn't even particularly dramatic.

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One Piece chapter 1106 review

Where last week's chapter was all the slow setup, this one is 100% slow payoff. It's the turnaround for all of Egghead's tension, and Oda lets it breathe for an uncharacteristically long time, giving us pages and pages of relishing the Buster Call fleet's destruction and the ultimate demonstration of Kuma's love for Bonney. And I think this truly is the end for the Egghead Arc - Luffy's back on his feet, the Pacifista are completely under control, the giant robot is moving and the freaking giants are here for backup. For Saturn and Borsalino to overcome all of that and put the Strawhats on the ropes again would be a reset on par with Wano's legendary 'raid failing' theory. There's a bit still to do, but it's time to start wrapping up and winding down.

My favourite thing about the Luffy scenes in the opening pages is the gang of Marines who try to cuff him being knocked straight up off the island for their trouble, seen from a great distance. It's such an Asterix gag, and I have tremendous nostalgia for Asterix gags.

The slow lead into Vegapunk's big reveal puts all the weight of the arc on this one moment where the love of a father proves more powerful and is given the chance to overcome the world's greatest authority. In isolation, it's perfect for everything we've seen from Kuma and Bonney, and just the right final act of defiance for Vegapunk to gamble on. The build up of all the inner monologue last chapter about the tragedy of a father being made to kill his daughter only to find that the very same thinking was the inspiration for Vegapunk to turn that possibility on its head. Many have speculated that lineage factor or something like it would lead the clone Pacifistas into joining the original Kuma in defending Bonney, and having it be a deliberate choice from Vegapunk, brings the little found family of labrats from the flashback full circle. On paper, you couldn't do this better. In context, however…

In context, these great ideas are soured slightly by how hit and miss the Pacifista authority settings and Saturn's scientific vigilance have been the whole arc. It's cheapened by Vegapunk pulling out a secret act of defiance already last chapter. Frankly, if I was doing a rewrite I'd scrap the whole self-destruct bit - just make it a shutdown switch implemented as directed and overcome by Kuma's will. Saturn never threatens to check for scientific deceptions, Vegapunk's big choice is only a secret final person at the top of the authority hierarchy and it comes out all at once here. What we have now is one thing too many, and it doesn't let the one that really matters have the power you would want it to.

But either way, it happens, and we spend several pages revelling in well-earned carnage. The destruction of the fleet is beautifully rendered and full of lively detail.

Punk seems badly wounded when we cut back to him, but come on, this is One Piece. I'm not unhappy with the way Gear Five's euphoria overwhelms Luffy's traditional instinct to get mad if his friends get hurt in the way some others are, but it is a noticeable change. I can't help wondering if there's a story beat building over this. If Luffy is properly enraged, or saddened, or otherwise torn from the driving Nika emotion, would he lose access to the form? It would also be interesting to see a scenario come up that can't be resolved unless Luffy calms down and takes it seriously, but with Gear Five's incredible ability to warp the environment and people around it, I have a hard time of thinking what that could be.

Whatever 's been going with him up to this point, Borsalino is done playing. His promise to end it quickly demonstrates some sympathy to Kuma and Bonney left in his system, but he's all in at this point. But with a direct order, right in front of his boss, there wasn't really room for hesitation on this front.

Luffy is back and fully revealed and identified as Nika at last with some great, fun bouncing backgrounds. It's a significant moment for Bonney to finally witness this, but I'm not sure what I expect her to make of it yet. Will she follow him? Idolise him? Or perhaps this little girl is going to be frustrated her god couldn't appear sooner, especially if her father's wounds prove fatal. But that's for the future.

And then, yes, the giants arrive. Dory and Brogy back in action some 900 chapters after Little Garden. Triggers are being pulled on some of the series' longest-haul setups. Very, very curious that they've already fully identified Luffy as Nika, presumably just based on a bounty poster. I would have guessed they were only following Saul's will to prevent another Ohara, but it runs deeper. Seems like we're going to learn a lot about Nika and Joyboy on Elbaf.

As Egghead reaches this conclusive point, I find myself reflecting on story structure in big serialised works like this. Conventional wisdom says you need a darkest hour followed by a turnabout leading into the climax. But it's hard to do that on 20 pages a week with obsessive fans like this. Ideally, the reversal of the situation would happen all at once in a big, sweeping heroic moment, but when your cast is this large and this scattered, and your page time this limited, the reversal comes as more of a cascade, one problem being solved after the other. But that takes weeks in real time, in which people are going to complain that the tension is gone, and then talk themselves into thinking that's because that wasn't the real lowest point yet and it's still coming. Dispelling the tension in a single chapter - with a single moment, without the arc drawing on after and without it being so predictable that everyone sees it playing out - can be done (Shanks arriving at Marineford and Merry appearing at Ennies Lobby are the best examples) but the setup it takes is intense.

Wano suffered really badly for this. So much going on that by the time we start unpicking knots and resolving fights there's still three and a half volumes of content to go. Egghead's conflicts are at least a little more concentrated, so it should be smoother sailing.

And as a final note, the giants' arrival makes the Blackbeard Pirates' ship's presence even more mysterious. I imagine they're being opportunistic, planning to salvage one important thing from the ruins while everyone else is distracted with each other. Oda did allude, in his end of year statement, to having an outline that skipped over Elbaf though, which makes me wonder if Blackbeard was originally going to be used to force the story into a final stage post Egghead and has now been replaced in his role by the giants…

Well whatever. Elbaf is coming, and I can't imagine a more anticipated arc outside of Laugh Tale itself. The next few months are gonna be awesome.

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One Piece chapter 1105 review

After two incredible satisfying steps forward, One Piece 2024 has its first transitional chapter, and at just 13 pages it definitely feels short and soft. Not quite recappy, but just playing through a lot of things that need to be played out based on the last couple of chapters' events. We start with an obligate page of Marine reactions to the Buster Call announcement and the start of their evacuation, all stuff that takes time but is important to show for the flow of the story.

On a first read I wasn't a fan of Sanji's group letting Vegapunk make such a huge sacrifice of staying back to distract Saturn while they all get away, but looking over the chapter again, I decided it's not that bad. Sanji goes right back after seeing the girls and the wounded Kuma to the shuttle, and we can assume that most of this chapter is taking place over a pretty short amount of time. Plus, Vegapunk's got whatever teleportation thing he used in his introduction, the one that got him stuck half in the ancient robot and then took him straight back to Labophase, so the dude maybe had an exit strategy to justify the risks.

Or did Vegapunk just insist, in his naivety, that he could appeal to Saturn's scientific side and save Egghead and genuinely believe it? One or two more times of this guy not realising he can't trust a thing the Government says and it's going to get frustrating that he isn't learning from it.

Saturn shows some classical dictator hypocrisy though, claiming the world needs no more advancement while coveting Vegapunk's advanced weapon systems for himself and the upper class. Fascism loves appeals to traditionalism even if the leaders would never give up the benefits of progress for themselves.

The scenes in the Labophase promise some exciting scenes in the coming chapters, but don't offer much to talk about on their own. Jinbe, Zoro and Lucci sounds exciting, but I'm curious to see where the issue with the ship sliding is meant to be going. Will it just be stopped casually with a gag, or will it fall into the middle of the melee in the Fabriophase, potentially making Kuma's teleportation truly the only way out of here?

The panel of Vegapunk sinking to his knees as his work is destroyed in front of him is a beautiful shot, but I can't help wondering where Saturn went to allow this to happen. He doesn't seem to be the type to just sit back and trust the Buster Call to kill the scientist. Oh, he'll monologue before making the kill, sure, but he had that readiness to step on Bonney and Kuma personally.

The final spread of this chapter is a gorgeous aerial shot, amazingly drawn with the ring of Pacfistas charging up in the corner. Very well composed and the definite highlight of the chapter. There was a similarly impressive spread for Garp's arrival at Fullalead during the cutaways last year, so Oda's either found a taste for these shots, or maybe found an assistant who's good with drawing structures from that high up perspective. Hope he keeps them coming.

Kuma shows another sign of life to once again protect his daughter. Will he stay switched on longer this time?

Luffy at the food machine is… fine. It makes sense that's where he'd go if he found just enough energy to start moving. I think we're still waiting on a reveal for how he got that initial serve of food, but we'll see.

I'm glad to see the escape vessel was allowed to live in the last couple of panels. The final few chapters of the flashback made of point of showing how the researchers were in on Vegapunk, Kuma and Bonney's relationship and cared for them too, and I found it truly dark and tragic that they had seemingly been so casually destroyed. But by who? I mean, we were shown the Blackbeard ship, right? We've been wondering when they'd make landfall and whose side they'd benefit, right? Just about everyone else who has skin in the game is at minimum days of sailing away and would only have heard of anything happening on Egghead at all, let alone how bad it's become in the past few hours, in yesterday's evening edition paper or today's morning one. So the debate I'm seeing over this one is flooring me.

Reading the takes on the various OP subreddits about this chapter after the scan release was, honestly, kinda depressing. The amount of people making top, upvoted comments that either hadn't noticed or completely forgot about Blackbeard's ship being established chapters ago, or Robin getting injured during the cutaway is insane to me. Not even claiming the Blackbeard ship was a red herring for the sake of a bigger off the wall theory, just straight up not knowing that it had been established. I'm fine with there being people out there who aren't as into this stuff as I am, who just kinda skim the chapters and don't analyse or sit with it all. And of course these people have every right to come online and talk the series anyway. But there being enough of them on the dedicated One Piece subs for their confusion to rise to the top, over any reasonable analysis or fully informed reaction, that's just sad. I hope this doesn't read too gatekeep-y, I'm just finding myself increasingly done with Reddit lately.

Anyway, griping about internet reading comprehension aside, I might be whelmed by this chapter but it's great to be getting three without a break again, which means all the exciting stuff this one was needed to set up is coming that much sooner.

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One Piece chapter 1104 review

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.

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One Piece chapter 1103 review

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.

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One Piece chapter 1102 review

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.

#One Piece #OP1102 #One Piece Spoilers #bartholomew kuma #manga review

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In light of the recent announcement, it's a good time to remind ourselves of exactly how far out of step with modern adaptations the One Piece anime really is.

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One Piece chapter 1101 review

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.

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One Piece chapter 1100 review

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.

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One Piece chapter 1099 review

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 annihilation 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.

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One Piece chapter 1098 review

This is your content warning. I assume everyone who goes through these posts has read the relevant chapter first. You know what was in it. You know what I'll be discussing. Proceed at your own discretion.

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?

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[cptn-m]

One Piece 1097 Review

Back on three chapters in a row! I was starting to lose hope, so even this chapter's short length can't take the shine off this win. Ginny has to win some kind of award for being the chapter that took the shortest amount of time between being introduced and appearing on a chapter cover. Excepting maybe Luffy and Zoro at the very start of the series. It's also rare for a chapter cover not featuring the Strawhats to feel so closely connected to the content of the chapter. The last time I remember feeling that was that one time Perona showed up right at the time she made her first appearance in years for one of the Wano interludes.

The start of this chapter spends a long time building our sympathy for Kuma. We've known for a while that he would be a tragic figure, and the noble goals he expressed in a desperate situation last week made us like him, but here, seeing him take on one of the series' greatest acts of self-sacrifice again and again we really get what a good and likable person Kuma has grown to be. There's some fun lore for his fruit here as well, learning that removed suffering would eventually return to its owner. I guess it works differently for his own removed memories though. I think this development also makes it completely clear that Kuma has ended up the way he is in the present as a means of taking on a huge burden for someone else in exactly the same way. The remaining questions are 'who?' and what circumstances resulted in sacrificing his mind being the only way to save them.

Despite the obvious-seeming build-up that Kuma and Ginny's relationship will be the heart of this flashback and her inevitable death will be its climactic moment of heartbreak, Oda leans away from the romance between the pair, with a timejump and a marriage proposal, and a level of ambiguity about whether they're actually intimately involved at this point at all. Romance has never been Oda's strong suit so it's probably smart of him to emphasise the dramatic and desperate circumstances and mutual moral outrage about the state of the world that brought them together instead.

And we go a long time without Bonney here. Maybe those theories about her being mentally and chronologically a child have some weight after all. At minimum she's younger than she appears, barring a massive misdirect.

The next sequence, at 22 years ago, is peak World Government politics. Money at the heart of it all, loopholes for the ultra-rich to save themselves (or at least their wallets) and the denial of human rights all the way through. No accountability or oversight, no compassion for the common man. No wonder the world needs Revolutionaries.

And that's exactly who arrives! The drip feed of Dragon info continues with the revelation that he used to be a Marine. I'd love to see any kind of interaction between him and Garp, knowing this. There must be so many complicated feelings between the two of them. And Dragon is 100% in the right. We can see in this very chapter what the Marines defend. There is no justice there.

What surprises me is how much time we're spending away from Sorbet Kingdom. Some are lamenting the idea that Kuma's 'Tyrant' epithet is just a grandiose name, but we know outright that Kuma is recognised by the public as a ruler of the kingdom. But how (and why) does he become a king after joining up with the Revolutionaries. Does taking the position relate to whatever deal he cut that ended in his cyborg state, or did he seize the country and declare its independence to use as a Revolutionary base and solve their supply issues? Maybe not, considering they're already using Baltigo at this point in the flashback and will remain there until (almost) the present day.

The final page of the chapter, kind of like the escape from God Valley last week, really rush ahead. It's a shame not to see more of what the Revolutionaries got up to in the eight years between scenes, but as with God Valley, this is Kuma's flashback not Dragon's, and there'll be time for the important bits of that later. Still sucks to jump around so suddenly, and to feel like we're ending the chapter mid-scene. I'm glad it's not a break week, because it would well and truly suck to not know what happened to Ginny and have the last panel focus on Dragon's reaction to her predicament instead of Kuma's. Sure, it's a common Oda move to reveal something shocking out of nowhere then flashback to show how it happened, but the pacing of this one feels off. I imagine the next chapter will save it though, with the flashback and Kuma emotional beats the story needs, and when it comes to the volume read the gap between reveal and explanation should be barely noticeable.

My assumption is that Ginny's captivity will be the beginning of the end of this flashback. It seems primed to involve Kuma with the Government and manipulate him into being branded a tyrant and giving up his sense of self. This was something of a transitional week, but the next one should be a big pick up. Looking forward to it.

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