Volume 86 marks the 20th anniversary of the One Piece manga. For those of us who can do math, that’s about 4 volumes a year, with a little bit extra. Oda at this point in time admits that maybe he should start taking the series a bit more seriously. Which he then contradicts almost immediately by having a terrifying mafioso talk to his baby boy all cutesy. Anyway, the emperor assassination plan is in full swing as Bege tells us what the plan actually entails. It turns out that Big Mom is almost invincible but she has a weakness. She had a portrait of someone named “mother Carmel” which when destroyed causes her to scream out so loudly everyone gets disabled for a few seconds. With the help of CC’s rocket they’ll then take out Big Mom. And Bege – against all wisdom – has put Luffy in charge of destroying the picture frame. He already has ideas for a funny entrance. Poor Bege. I can’t believe the manga is going to make me feel bad for a bloodthirsty murderer because he’ll have to deal with Luffy’s crap.
Now we get to what I believe will be the most important part of this arc, although we have some time to get to the ramifications of what some of these characters represent. The underworld emperors all arrive at Big Mom’s territory for her wedding. There are several names but I want to focus on three of them. First up is Stussy. She’s the queen of the red light district although we’re not told what that means exactly. She’s a young woman who looks rather frail but knowing how Oda likes to draw his women, that’s not that strange. The second character I want to look at is Morgans. Morgans is a crucial character in this story who has been looming over us for a very long time without us really knowing much about him. The newspaper that gets delivered everywhere in the world is delivered by his company. He is in charge of the media and he decides what gets shown to the world and what doesn’t. He’s probably also the reason why it was so easy for Big Mom to mess with Sanji’s wanted poster. The company that writes these papers is called the World Economic Journal, which I’m assuming is based on the World Economic Forum in our own world. Lastly, a character that we know very little about to this day; Umit. Pretty much everything we learn about Umit, we learn in this chapter. But the reason I want to pay some attention to him here is because of his epithet. Deep Sea Current Umit. There has been a long running theory about the deep sea currents in the world of One Piece. Many questions are often asked about Shanks’ incredible ability to traverse the world at the blink of an eye, seemingly teleporting all around. We also know that there are some deep sea currents around Fishman Island, as the crew made use of one to get there. So a running theory is that there are certain people (pirates, underworld brokers) who know how to properly navigate these tremendously fast deep sea currents, getting across the world very quickly without being noticed. This explains how Shanks could intercept Kaidou in the New World before arriving at Marineford only a little bit later. It’s also suspected that the Moby Dick traveled a similar way and there’s even a running theory that the reason why Rayleigh became a ship coater is because the deep sea currents will end up being very important at a later date. I’m very curious to see where all of this leads but I recognize that we’ve gone off topic far too much, so let’s return to the actual story being told here.
One big roadblock will be Charlotte Katakuri, the strongest man in Big Mom’s crew whose Haki is so advanced he can even see a few moments into the future. His very first act is assassinating someone before they can start firing their own weapon, so you know he’s a badass. I still remember when we were first introduced to this character and he was so damn cool. This immediately poses to be a problem as his prediction sees how Pudding falls to the ground after Sanji calls her third eye beautiful and she’s shocked by this. He tries to fix the scenario but his deadly attack on Sanji misses, causing the priest’s gun to go off and allowing for Luffy’s funny entrance. Of course it was going to be funny, a whole host of fake Luffys jump out of the cake all at once, surprising everyone at the tea party.
From here on out, shit hits the fan and so much happens that I doubt I can cover it all, so apologies if I miss things. I’ll go over the important stuff. While Jinbe confronts Big Mom about leaving the crew, Brook – disguised as Luffy – shatters the picture of mother Carmel. It’s good that he went in as a backup since actual Luffy was defeated by Katakuri in about a moment. While Caesar is trying to find his moment, Bege pretends to be on Big Mom’s side and takes Luffy into custody. Many of the top officers of Big Mom’s crew get to work because Pudding failed to do her job. They all put their weapons to the heads of the Germa members, who can only laugh while Judge weeps. He caused his own downfall and none of his children really care, they mainly just respect the hustle. Elsewhere on the floor, Katakuri has a grim look on his face which Bege rightfully interprets as a disaster waiting for the Big Mom pirates. He lets Luffy go and he shows the broken picture to Big Mom, causing her to scream out, stunning everyone just like they planned.
We then learn about Big Mom’s past. She was abandoned by her parents at the age of 5, because she was far too dangerous. She outgrew everyone around her and had monstrous strength. She was left on the island of Elbaf where an orphanage fun by Mother Carmel was. This orphanage actually worked on creating spies and soldiers for the navy, but no one outside of Mother Carmel and the navy knew about it. Because the orphanage was on Elbaf, they interacted with the giants and during the period of fasting, Linlin got so angry from her hunger that she attacked one of the two village chiefs, killing him. The orphanage then had to leave the village and went elsewhere on the island where they eventually celebrated Linlin’s 6th birthday. It was during this birthday that Charlotte Linlin ended up eating her croquembouche, the table, her fellow orphans and even mother Carmel, gaining her devil fruit powers in the process. It also earned her the eternal hatred of all of the giants in the world. Back in the present day, she lets out a scream so strong that the weapons don’t work and their escape mirror gets shattered. With no real way out, everyone retreats into Bege’s body.
With no real way out, we have to regroup inside of Bege while Big Mom is back in control over her mind. Gathered here are the Tank pirates, the Straw Hat pirates as well as the now free Germa members who probably aren’t too happy about being saved by Sanji and his friends. I know this was a long one, but a lot happened in this volume. There are even some things I haven’t talked about, like what’s happening with the underworld broker, but we’ll get to that when it comes back in the next volume. I hope you’re enjoying this incredibly chaotic arc and I hope to see you all here again next week to see where the story goes.
Opal Kaharis 