This week we are headed to Egghead. The arc that started with a ton of theories and ideas and where we finally learned about a lot of what has been happening in the world of One Piece for the past millennium. It feels like we’ve finally reached the part of the story where we get our pay off for 30 years of loyal reading. Because I opted to leave out a little bit of the coverage of Egghead in volume 105, I’ll quickly go through how we got to this point before picking up this volume. I’m sure it won’t be another lengthy post, right?
After meeting up with Jewelry Bonney the crew heads to Egghead where Lilith and a giant robot await them. Lilith is one of the seven Vegapunks that roam the island besides the Stella. After a tense meeting, they are let into the island and quickly start becoming a problem by attacking holograms and stuff. Since Vegapunk is the one responsible for turning Kuma – who is Bonney’s father – into a mindless cyborg, she has a bone to pick with him. And I would say fair enough.
We also meet the other 6 Vegapunks, Lilith, Shaka, Edison, Pythagoras, York and Atlas.
While Shaka contacts Dragon to tell him something before the good scientist dies – as he senses his end is near – Luffy, Jinbe and Bonney stumble across an old robot from far in the past. What secrets are Vegapunk and Egghead holding? This is where we move on to volume 106 proper.
The hits don’t stop. We find out that the knowledge on Ohara was preserved by a combination of Saul and the giants from Elbaf. There to witness this were Monkey D. Dragon – who would create the revolutionary army later that year – and Dr. Vegapunk who is on friendly terms with the revolutionaries despite working for the government. Back in the present day, Luffy and his companions meet the “real” Vegapunk, who is an old man with an apple for a head. While he requests a ride off of the island, CP0 arrives elsewhere and Kuma – who is being repaired by the revolutionaries – has started to move. Things are heating up so fast it’s crazy.
With Lucci, Kaku and Stussy getting onto the island and damaging Atlas severely, they now get to fight against Luffy. Lucci was one of the biggest antagonists of the first half of the series and he surely powered up since. One of the big things on their side is S-Bear, the Kuma seraphim. Luckily for Luffy, his favorite Axe Boy – Sentomaru – shows up and he has higher clearance. Knowing this, Lucci takes him out, angering the rubbery sun god. Luffy clearly has the upper hand here, but since his aim is to get to the Labophase, the closed off facility at the top of Egghead, he makes a run for it instead, allowing Lucci, the Seraphim and a quickly approaching Kizaru to all join up with each other.
It’s an interesting situation for the Straw Hats to be in. In a lot of arcs they have a big, difficult goal to accomplish on the island. Now their only real goal is to get out of here before they’re caught. That’s usually the easy part in other arcs. Of course, with this being One Piece, there is no easy part, but it does feel like the odds are much more in their favor compared to previous arcs where they were serious underdogs. We do have one of the five elders approaching alongside Kizaru, so for how long they can hang around, we don’t know.
Bonney and Vegapunk have their fight, with Vegapunk refusing to answer her questions, since he promised Kuma he wouldn’t. They were good friends and the rampaging cyborg being in the state he is in right now is hurtful to Vegapunk too. Bonney isn’t having it and opens the door to Kuma’s memories. With CP0 approaching the lab, Stussy reveals who she really is. A clone of Buckingham Stussy who is a former Rocks pirate and the mother of Weevil. She takes out both Kaku and Lucci before handing them over to the Straw Hats. We learn that Weevil has been protecting Whitebeard’s hometown in Marco’s absence, so that’s nice of him. The navy was trying to raid it and kill the people living there.
While Bonney and Vegapunk are fighting, she finally touches the memories of her father, seeing some of the horrible things he had to go through as a child before being shunted out of there again. He was already a large person at birth, perhaps a giant? I’m sure we’ll find out more about Kuma in the next volume. Luffy and Zoro fight alongside the CP0 members as the Seraphim are set to attack the punks and the Straw Hats, really not caring about killing Lucci and Kaku in the process. With a tense fight happening on Egghead, we’ll jump back out to have a quick look at the rest of the world. We see a familiar face that we haven’t seen in a while. Both Vivi and Wapol are currently aboard the flying airship of Morgans, who runs the World Economic Journal. They’re doing some propaganda while they’re at it. Finally, we see the start of a confrontation between Kid and Shanks. Having come to Elbaf, it’s time for him to settle the score with the emperor that took his arm on their last clash.
That’s Volume 106 in a nutshell. Law and Kid are each facing off against an emperor, Vivi is alive but in a strange place and Kuma is climbing the red line.
Bonney is learning about her father’s past while Luffy and the crew are dealing with a complicated web of problems on the future island of Egghead, trying to get out of there with Vegapunk’s main body before the admiral and one of the five elders land there to make things much more complicated. Saul, Dorry and Broggy are all alive and well and have reached Elbaf while Dragon is a former friend of both Vegapunk and Dr. Clover. Things are really moving ahead at a breakneck speed and there’s no slowing down from here on out. I’ve tried keeping this post relatively short, but next week is going to be a long one again. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 