In the previous volume – towards the end – we learned through Robin, Law and the former lord of Wano – Kozuki Sukiyaki – that there was once a different Wano, much lower down and now fully below the ocean. Not only that, but Pluton, the ancient weapon for which Franky once destroyed the blueprints, is here in Wano. Luffy isn’t interested, but a certain mud-covered villain is still lurking and he wants to hand this information off to “a certain someone”. I wonder if this means that the strife in Wano isn’t quite yet over. Luckily they have two very strong people staying here to protect it, with Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper handing over the crown of Zou to a young Carrot, who will take over while they stay here.
With everything sorted in the land of the samurai, the Straw Hats prepare to take off, with Law and Kid also leaving. Each of the crews is headed towards one of the three islands that come after Wano and they depart by launching themselves off the giant waterfall. Classic One Piece. Meanwhile Yamato commits to staying behind, traveling the land of Wano before one day setting out to join the Straw Hat crew. Even Momonosuke proclaims he wants to be there to see the One Piece and with Luffy’s flag flying high above Wano, they now belong to his territory. All three of the crews have a copy of the Wano road poneglyph and their next challenge will be to find “the man with the burn scar”. Kid lets this information slip to Luffy who probably won’t do anything with it and stumble across this person randomly. With that we close the curtains on Wano and continue on to take a peek at what is happening in the rest of the world while this was going on.
With new journeys come new bounties and those of the Straw Hats have gone up significantly. Emperor Monkey D. Luffy and his nine senior officers now have the following bounties:
- Ship Doctor: Cotton candy lover Chopper → 1000 berries
- Navigator: Cat burglar Nami → 336 million berries
- Musician: Soul King Brook → 383 million berries
- Shipwright: Cyborg Franky → 395 million berries
- Archeologist: Demon Child Nico Robin → 930 million berries
- Cook: Black Leg Sanji → 1.032 billion berries
- Helmsman: First son of the sea Jinbe → 1.1 billion berries
- Master Swordsman: Pirate Hunter Zoro → 1.111 billion berries
And finally their captain, who is now an emperor of the sea, is worth a whopping 3 billion berries. I would have honestly expected Robin’s bounty to be even higher than it is, since besides Luffy she was the highest priority on Wano for the CP0 agents, but perhaps they still don’t want to make it too obvious to the rest of the world how important she is. I don’t know. Also, Zoro’s epithet of “Pirate Hunter” feels a bit outdated. He does still take out pirates, but his bounty hunting days are long gone. From here we move on to check in on the other emperors, to see what they are up to.
The first emperor we pay a visit to in this volume is the newly crowned leader of the Cross Guild: Buggy the clown. This seems like it has to be a mistake and we quickly learn that it is one. When Crocodile teamed up with Mihawk and came to Buggy to collect on his debt, he managed to convince the two former warlords that he’d be a fantastic errand boy because his crew is great at marketing. They accepted him into their ranks and his crew quickly made the mistake of advertising the cross guild with Buggy front and center, causing everyone to think he is the one leading things and not the other two. So, with Mihawk and Crocodile really pulling the strings, Buggy the clown is now one of the four emperors of the sea, alongside his childhood companion Shanks. What a crazy world we live in. One thing that the Cross Guild is doing that is making them so dangerous is putting bounties on navy soldiers. As the story explains to us, there’s been a long era of pirates being hunted, maybe it’s time to start changing this around and hunt the elite instead. Calm down Luigi.
The next emperor of the sea we visit is a lot less pathetic but a lot more meanspirited. Blackbeard – Marshall D. Teach – is in the middle of attacking Boa Hancock’s Kuja kingdom to try and steal her powers. While he is doing so, the navy is also there to arrest her, causing a ton of issues. Things are dire until Silvers Rayleigh shows up to mediate. Despite his age, he still manages to instill fear in Blackbeard to the point where he ends up leaving the island without Hancock. But he doesn’t do so without any prize at all, as he brings Koby with him. The hero of Rocky Port is now a captive of the Emperor of the sea. We also see that Shakky has returned alongside Rayleigh. I don’t think we knew she was the former empress of the Kuja kingdom, but now we know. Meanwhile Luffy reveals his dream to the rest of his crew and we get reunited with a character that has been popping up now and then: Jewelry Bonney.
Right, Sabo. Let’s take a moment to talk about the Reverie, Sabo and the revolutionaries. Sabo was present during the Reverie, trying to save Kuma, who is seen on Kamabakka Queendom, so that part of the mission was clearly successful. Unfortunately things went a bit haywire and the new reports that Sabo has killed king Cobra. Of course this is a lie, but it does seem true that Cobra has died and Vivi has gone missing, causing quite a stir. In the meantime, Sabo is hiding out in Lulusia kingdom, one of eight kingdoms that have rebelled against the government. This is what we call “a bad move” as the world government literally wipes the country off the map, killing everyone who lives there, presumably including Sabo, while telling its soldiers to not report anything they saw. Lulusia simply never existed. Brutal.
Man this is becoming one of the longer recaps, I’m almost tempted to split it into two, but I think I’ll try and cram it all into one extra long post. We will go over the egghead start quickly though, at the end. I’m sure I won’t come to regret that. We learn about Zoro’s lineage, which places him as a descendant of Ryuma and makes the so-and-so samurai that Yamato met as a child his uncle. The man who made Enma and Wado Ichimonji is the old man in his village. What a strange twist of fate.
Here’s an interesting thing to look at. We just had an arc in which two characters had a gender identity that doesn’t fit who they were born as. Oda has been shown to be very clever in his writing before and when I first saw Law as a woman I was worried that Blackbeard had taken Ivankov’s power from him. But it’s Doc Q’s sick-sick fruit that causes his gender to change. I don’t think it’s an accident that Ivankov – a good person – sees the power to change someone’s gender as a good thing while the bad guys see it as a disease. Something to think about. Either way, Law is fighting against Blackbeard’s crew and it’s not going well. Blackbeard has also kidnapped Pudding, but for what end?
We finally arrive at the future island Egghead. This is where Vegapunk and his satellite bodies are vibing out. He’s basically living in the future with holograms and robots and the police all look like Kuma. This is especially painful for Bonney as Kuma is her father. Vegapunk turned him into a mindless robot and she’s here to kill him for it. We’ll explore more of this in the next volume discussion as I’ve kept your attention for far too long. There’s only two more volumes on the shelf, see you next week and as always, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 