Volume 40 is aptly titled ‘gear.’ If this is your first journey through One Piece, the meaning of this volume title will get clear as we continue, but if you’ve been here before, you know all about the gears. We also continue the baroque works escape cover story this volume but the real meat and potatoes of this arc is about to start, so let’s not waste too much time on this stuff and let’s continue straight into the story, shall we? No wait, before we continue onward, we get a quick view of Bon Kurei (Mr 2) out of his make-up and in a suit and oh no, he’s hot.
The charge on the judicial island of Enies Lobby started last volume and continues in this volume. With Luffy rampaging around, there’s less guards on the main gate. This works out well for the rest of the attack force as they charge on the two giants. They get taken out mostly by the Franky Family and the Galley La forces, who split off from the rest of the party here, but they get a little bit of help from the rocketman which rockets over the gate and into the back of Oimo, knocking him out once more. The straw hats disembark and bicker a little bit before taking one of the King Bulls. We also get a fun moment where Kokoro pretends to be a hostage so the navy hesitates a bit before attacking.
Completely unrelated, but remember when Oda wanted to make power levels a thing because many other shonen did the same thing? Yeah, I didn’t remember, and for good reason. It’s such a bad and uninspired way to do power scaling. Especially because in most storytelling they give super high power levels to enemies and then still end up defeating them, making the numeric value of their powers ultimately irrelevant. It’s much cooler to make your villains imposing by making them scary in other ways. Like Lucci saying he wants to murder people. What a psycho. We get a bit more of Spandam, whose power level is lower than that of ‘man with gun’. That’s pretty funny and makes a lot of sense. He’s a nepo baby for sure and he’s only in power because his arrogance matches his lineage. He’s planning to send Nico Robin to the headquarters and Franky to Impel Down. We also get shown two devil fruits that Spandam has, and there’s several CP9 agents that do not have devil fruit powers yet. But before any of that, we finally get to the first big fight between CP9 and a straw hat. Blueno descends from the high tower to face Luffy head on.
While Luffy is fighting Blueno, the rest of the crew continue their march. We get a little bit of backstory for Sodomu and Gomorah, which means they’re about to be taken out in true shonen storytelling fashion. And of course, both of them get taken down in the next chapters. It’s honestly pretty sad and puts into perspective how much these people are willing to sacrifice for their friends. It’s not a mathematical equation of how many friends they can save, it’s purely the thought that one of their friends needs saving and that’s all that matters. That’s a core part of One Piece that’s always made the story so great. Lots of shonen deal with scheming characters that want to balance their options and then it’s up to the main characters to defy their orders and go save their friends. Think of the Kage in Naruto or someone like Yamamoto or Urahara in Bleach. The greater good is the priority. One Piece doesn’t have those shackles which is why to me it’ll always be a step above the others. There’s someone in danger? Okay, we’ll drop literally everything to go and save them. That’s all there is to it and damn it, if it isn’t the most powerful storytelling tool. We also get a lovely scene of Usopp converting the giants to their team after telling them about his meeting with Dorry and Broggy back on Little Garden.
Everyone converges on the drawbridge that will allow the crew to move to the main island where Robin and Franky are being held. Meanwhile, Kaku and Kalifa each eat a devil fruit and we get some lore about the fruits as well. Some claim that there’s actual devils in the fruits, but Lucci dismissed this claim pretty quickly. It has been confirmed that a person’s body cannot handle two fruits at once, so that’s good to keep in mind. No asking for second breakfast, hobbitses. While the crew marches through Enies Lobby at breakneck speed, Luffy admits he can’t beat Blueno. At least not without powering up his body with this new skill he’s learned after losing to Aokiji. We finally get the reveal of Gear Two or Gear Second. Through using his rubber legs he pumps his blood through his body much faster allowing him to speed up tremendously. He uses this power to absolutely body Blueno and take out the CP9 agent with relative ease. The blowback of using such draining attacks is more severe than any of the damage that Blueno himself did. With that out of the way, Luffy challenges the rest of CP9, yelling for Robin to come out. We end the volume with Kokoro talking to Chimney.
Watch, Chimney. Whether they live or die, they have done what no one in the past 100 years could. This moment will impress the whole world.
When the fight is over the world will ring with the sound of that straw hat boy’s name.
And that brings us to the end of volume 40. We’re about 33% done with the manga now, although I don’t fully believe Oda’s claims about the impending ending of the story. On one hand, he probably knows best, but on the other hand I can’t see this story reaching a satisfying conclusion within the next 3 or 4 years. I hope it lasts for a while longer but not at the cost of Oda’s health or creativity of course. It’s hard to imagine what it feels like to create a story that’s so ridiculously popular and influential. It has to be an amazing feeling but I can also imagine it weighing heavily on you after a while. Anyway, things are continuing to ramp up fast and the next volume has one of my favorite moments in the entire series, so you’d best prepare. I hope you enjoyed this volume as much as I have and as always, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 