Volume 94 has a whopping 11 chapters worth of content which is quite a lot. That means there will be a ton of things happening in this volume so get ready for a long post. Cozy up by the fire with a hot drink as we recap this week’s One Piece volume.
When Kaido, Caesar and Doflamingo conspired together to create the artificial devil fruits known as “smile” they didn’t make some sort of magical alternative that was without flaws. As a matter of fact, the fruit they created only has around a 10% chance of success. In the other 90% of attempts you still get the downsides of having a devil fruit without any powers. To make things worse, it seems that anyone who takes one of these smile devil fruits loses the ability to express anger and sadness, causing them to always smile and laugh. That means the villagers in Ebisu town who laugh as Yasuie – as well as his daughter Toko – can do nothing but laugh at all the misfortune that’s happening to them, while crying on the inside. With Yasuie now dead, everyone is mourning the former Daimyou while Orochi wants to finish off the rest of the family tree by killing Toko as well. This is where the Straw hats jump into the frey and protect both Toko and her father’s body. Sanji takes on X-Drake while Zoro takes on Kyoshiro who protects Orochi. Luffy and Hyogoro are watching all of this play out from the prison while Queen sets up the next round of their game where Killer – who was Hitokiri Kamazo – and Kid have just been captured again and are now serving as hostages. Just as things look dire, someone big, angry and hungry shows up to Udon prison.
While Big Mom and Queen duke it out, Luffy unlocks the next stage of his haki that allows him to take his collar off just like how Rayleigh did way back on Sabaody. They fight a bit more and eventually Queen headbutts Big Mom so hard that her memory returns. Once she’s passed out, Queen ships her off to Kaido, leaving the prison in the hands of Babanuki. But what neither Queen nor Babanuki know is that the Ayakaza nine are slowly gathering with Kiku, Kawamatsu, Raizo and – as an extra bonus Hyogoro – all backing up Luffy in their escape attempt. The wardens desperately want to contact Kaido, but with the help of Caribou, all of the transmission snails have been made useless. The tides are turning. Even despite the use of poisonous weapons, Luffy manages to speak to the remaining prisoners and Udon is pacified ahead of the great battle.
Things aren’t all going well. While Udon is setting up as a stronghold for the resistance and Kin’emon manages to convince Ashura to join the group again, they also find out that the now mountain bandit’s forces have been diminished greatly. Their patience ran out a decade earlier and they tried an unsuccessful rain on Onigashima. Their bodies now lie buried in the hill. And to make matters much worse, Trafalgar Law has been captured, taken hostage by Basil Hawkins through his strange powers linking to Law’s friends. It doesn’t seem like Law has revealed anything yet though.
Finally, we get a reunion of Hiyori, Kawamatsu and the fox who pretended to be a mountain bandit for all these years. It turns out that after Hiyori left Kawamatsu behind – afraid that he would die from giving all his food to her – Kawamatsu looked for a place to die. That’s when he found the fox Onimaru who was guarding his former owner’s turf. The two collected all of the weapons buried there to prepare for the upcoming fight. Eventually – after Kawamatsu was captured and put into Udon – Onimaru continued, turning himself into a human to be able to steal weapons from Kaido’s men and add them to the collection. Hidden under the snow is a vast storage space filled with enough weapons to fuel an entire rebellion. And to make things even better, in exchange for Zoro’s weapons Shusui, Hiyori has now offered her father’s famed sword – Enma – for him to use instead. The set-up for the upcoming raid is only just beginning, so don’t forget to check in here again next week. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 