The shenanigans continue in volume 69. Nice. Caesar and Vergo quickly realize that the Straw Hats and cohort have escaped from their cage and start working on taking them out again. I love the scene where Brook, Kin and Zoro slice up Caesar’s cronies and they go “it’s cold” “it burns” and for Zoro they just go “it hurts.”
The betrayal of G5 actually feels sort of bad. They’ve been portrayed as good guys throughout the manga and feel like a precursor to some later changes in the marines. Smoker – as hell bent as he is on capturing Luffy – legitimately wants to make the world a better place. They care about each other and the grunts even throw Tashigi to safety at the cost of their own lives. To then be betrayed by their leader, Vergo, has to hurt quite a bit. Luckily Smoker and Luffy soon arrive at the location of the enemy’s boss and Luffy punches Caesar for his actions.
We then meet several of Doflamingo’s people. He gets a call from Vergo and has some upset crew members surrounding him. He tells them to deal with both Law and Luffy before all returning to Dressrosa. He’s even sending two of his members over to help them out, Baby 5 and Buffalo. Baby 5 seems to be the woman who is currently attacking Doflamingo, but we don’t get an explanation about what that is all about. Before this call, Vergo and Sanji clashed, but Sanji realized he was outmatched almost immediately. It was a case of a bad matchup mostly. Luckily Vergo retreated when he heard that Law was targeting SAD, the gas creating contraption. He is now in hot pursuit of Law.
When Law and Vergo clash, Law gets defeated pretty easily. Vergo is the better fighter and on top of that he also has Law’s heart, which he had to give up as collateral to join Caesar. It’s looking bad for Law, but Smoker is there to save the day. These unlikely allies might just be enough to take out Vergo. While Vergo and Caesar are each off doing their own things, Monet tries to keep Luffy distracted for as long as possible, but she knows it’s only a temporary solution. Luffy soon escapes her clutches and finds himself in the secret room where – according to one of the other children – Momonosuke is also currently hiding, after having turned into a dragon. Momo explains to Luffy that he refused the food that Caesar was offering him and only settled for a strange fruit he found when he was super hungry, which turned out to be Vegapunk’s failed experiment to create an artificial devil fruit. The fruit turns him into a small pink dragon and he’s not able to turn back into a boy.
Meanwhile Sanji is leading the G5 people out of danger and has become their leader due to him protecting Tashigi alongside them. They all run past Zoro except for Tashigi, who stays behind to help fight Monet. Monet has turned out to be a formidable foe so far. She is cunning and knows exactly where her ability shines the best, going after the weaker targets and not confronting Zoro directly when she doesn’t have to. She also notes that Zoro is only defending and isn’t attacking her at all which makes her a bit more confident that she can take him on.
Zoro and Tashigi then fight Monet, who makes a mockery out of Tashigi but ultimately is no match for Zoro. He slashes her in half without even using Haki, scaring her so much that she struggles to put herself back together. She ends up being taken out by Tashigi. The two of them really don’t get along and Zoro calls Tashigi inferior.
Everything culminates into three major events. First, G5, Chopper and the rest of the straw hats subdue the kids who have been trying to get candy from Mocha, the girl that’s been helping Chopper out. She swallows all of the candy in an attempt to save everyone else, putting herself in serious danger. Secondly, Luffy arrives at Caesar’s hiding spot after Caesar just told Brownbeard that he was responsible for killing all his men and he was also responsible for the explosion that hurt his people those years ago. It turns out Vegapunk wasn’t the villain he made him out to be but instead he was trying to stop Caesar from committing these heinous crimes.
And finally we get the most interesting scene in this volume. We now know that one of the four emperors is backing Doflamingo who is in turn backing Caesar. Vergo is one of his powerful underlings that is watching Caesar and has a history with Law. Doflamingo thinks Law doesn’t stand a chance at all but he severely underestimated the young warlord. Law gets his heart back through Smoker’s antics and after telling Doflamingo that he’s done for he brutally slices Vergo – as well as the factory – into half. All of Caesar’s powerful underlings have now been destroyed and all that’s left is the gas man himself who so far hasn’t seemed like a major threat to Luffy. We’ll get the thrilling conclusion to this arc in the next volume, which is also the final volume of box set 3. We’re progressing through things very fast now and soon I might have to start buying more volumes to review. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this recap of volume 69 and I hope to see you all here again next week. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 