Good morning and welcome to 2025. I hope your holidays were pleasant and full of good food. Now it’s time to wind down and relax with everyone’s favorite manga. That’s right, volume 96 has arrived!
We continue where we left off last week, telling Kozuki Oden’s story. Spending time among the Whitebeard pirates hasn’t tempered the man at all, but their journey has taken them to many different strange places. They grow the crew out and create divisions. While all this is going on, Oden and Toki are also blessed with two children, Momonosuke and Hiyori. Toki is not from Wano herself, but her parents were from Wano. This is of course Wano in the far far past, which we know nothing about. Finally, the Whitebeard pirates land on an island where Gol. D. Roger is also staying.
During Oden’s journey, things are happening in Wano as well. Orochi has managed to trick Sukiyaki to take him in and he has become quite close to the shogun of Wano. It turns out that the Kurozumi family was one of the five main groups in Wano but Orochi’s grandfather poisoned his rivals and when this came to light he had to commit Seppuku. The old woman who told Orochi this has the same devil fruit powers as Bon Clay has right now, and the two of them tricked everyone into thinking that Orochi and Oden were close, which was how Orochi got to be so close to Sukiyaki in the first place. Once Sukiyaki passes, Orochi will take over as shogun until Oden returns.
Speaking of Oden, he decides to join up with Roger from here on out as Roger needs him to read the poneglyphs for him. The Kozuki clan is responsible for making them many, many centuries ago. With Oden and his family aboard, the Roger pirates set sail for the their final voyage around the world, gathering the road poneglyphs and making their way to the final island which we as readers have so far known as Raftel but is actually called Laugh Tale, after Roger who “just laughed” when he saw the final island on his journey. We’ve been told by Oda again and again that there truly is an island with treasure at the end of this immense journey, and this is once again reaffirmed. We learn that Buggy and Shanks stayed behind and that Oden’s family was left behind on Wano while Oden continued. It already seemed like something bad was happening in Wano, but Oden decided to continue his journey after all, knowing he would never set sail again if he decided to stay and not go with Roger. With the oceans conquered, it’s time to disband the crew and go home. But not before we get a final ominous message. In ten years, the new sovereign will be born (Shirahoshi) and then fifteen years later the two sovereigns will finally meet again. I haven’t really thought about this line much throughout the years, but I suppose that means that Luffy and Shirahoshi will be the rulers of their respective parts of the ocean by the
time the story ends. Maybe it’ll be different though, I can’t really see Luffy becoming a leader.
With the journey coming to a close, it’s time to return to Wano where we learn that Orochi – with the backing of a pirate named Kaido – has turned Wano into a weapons factory and started suppressing the people. He even got Toki seriously wounded and threatened to kidnap Momonosuke. As much as we all love Oden, when he landed here to drop off his family he really should have chosen them over Roger, or asked Roger for help, but they didn’t and now he has to live with the consequences. Luckily, he’s Kozuki Oden and he’s one of the strongest people alive. But Orochi is no unprepared fool – as we’ve already learned – and his two strongest allies include an old man who has Barto’s barrier fruit. They protect Orochi from Oden’s anger.
After leaving the castle, Oden would spend the next five years dancing naked in the streets with no explanation as to why. After five long years of this, and the destruction of much of the country, including the death of Hyogoro’s wife, Oden finally snapped and led his men into battle against Kaido. They were even winning the fight, but due to trickery Oden was knocked out and the Ayakaza Nine were captured, with only Shinobu getting away. The traitorous samurai were sentenced to boil to death. Oden, never done amazing people, came with a suggestion. Let us all go into the pot at once and everyone that is still standing after an hour is free to leave. Kaido accepted the bet and so they waited, Oden in the pot and the rest of the samurai on a large wooden platform that Oden held in his hands. The people got bored and started jeering Oden, which is when Shinobu gets furious and reveals what has truly happened. Orochi and Kaido were going to sell off the people of Wano and truly turn everything into a factory of death. If Oden danced in the square every week for five years, they would abandon this plan. Of course, that was a lie that Kaido and Orochi concocted, but that means Oden did what he could to save his country.
With Oden boiled to death and the rest of the samurai dispersed into the countryside, fleeing the wrath of Kaido and Orochi. Kozuki’s castle soon gets conquered and burned down. In a final act of desperation, Toki sends her son, alongside Kiku, Kin’emon, Raizo and Kanjuurou, into the future. She then perishes as Kawamatsu takes Hiyori out of the castle and Denjiro gets so angry his hair turns gray. He turns into who we know to be Napping Kyoshiro today and is also the witching hour boy. He is the one who kept Hiyori safe all these years while earning money for the poor people in Wano. He’s not a villain as he seemed to be, but instead a powerful ally. With the curtains closing on this act of Wano, we get the reveal of who the spy was. It turns out that Kanjuurou is secretly a Kurotsumi and has been working with Orochi all this time, playing the role of a loyal vassal while spilling all the information to the enemy. Although all seems lost, the comeback is going to happen in the next volume with the alliance of Luffy, Law and Kid arriving to fight off the Beast Pirates.
Wew, that was a lot to get through. We learned many interesting things about the past of Wano but it feels good to be back to the present. This arc felt incredibly long when I first read it, due to the weekly release and the regular breaks that Oda took. Having read through it again over the span of only two weeks, it’s much better than reading it piecemeal. It’s a trend I’ve been noticing throughout One Piece. Weekly releases are fun, but you get much more out of the story if you read it in larger chunks. So with that in mind, join me here next week for volume 97 in which we’re sure to get into quite a lot of action. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 