One Piece Volume 111

I recognize that I’m quite late with this volume recap, but the initial one I wrote wasn’t very good and thorough so after taking some time away from it I’ve decided to give it another go, before the next volume arrives. I will go over all the important things that happen in the ending of Egghead and beginning of Elbaph. Strap in for volume 111

Vegapunk confirms that the One Piece is real and that the world is going to sink under water. Koby’s conclusion from this message is that Luffy needs to be stopped. With how incredibly evil the World Government has been acting in the past few hundred chapters, it’s making it harder and harder for me to empathize with Koby’s goals. While this message spreads, the five elders finally take out Emet, who releases Joyboy’s Haki to take out the navy and the elders. And with that blast we’re gone from Egghead.

Some important matters throughout the world are discussed, as they so often are at the end of an arc. Vivi and Wapol are still among Morgan’s hot air balloon as the maniacal bird is manipulating the paper to fit his own narratives. Meanwhile in Mariejois a massive shake-up is happening. With Joyboy escaping and the remainder of Vegapunk’s intelligence floating towards Weatheria, still being very much alive in a sense, we see the end of St. Saturn and his replacement by St. Figarland Garling. This guy is a real piece of work who fits right in with the rest of the genocide gang. Opposed to them, the revolutionaries are about to make their move (for the millionth time). This does explain a lot about the giant bridges being built and the location of Mariejois. It’s kind of crazy how much of this Oda likely planned ahead of time. Perhaps not from day one, but Robin visiting Tequila Wolf during the timeskip surely wasn’t a coincidence. Also, Barto and his crew get sunk by Shanks. Idiots. The world is about to change forever but we have one last stop to make before we get there; Elbaph.

The first few chapters we spend in Elbaph are taking place in Legoland, the blocky kingdom built by Rodo of the New Giant Pirates. It’s where he plays god with his living dolls and it’s honestly quite creepy and kind of not a great part of this arc. I don’t like Rodo or these few chapters so I won’t waste too much time on them. Luffy busts out of the prison and they escape from the block kingdom. We do at least meet the remaining members of the New Giant Pirates. We already knew Hajrudin but there’s also Goldberg, Stansen and Gerd, who all seem cool. Rodo is only kept on board for his navigation skills. I’ll stick with Nami instead, thank you very much.

Luffy jumps down to the underworld of Elbaph where he meets with the cursed prince, Loki. We’ve heard of Loki before, quite a while ago actually. It’s the prince that Lola was supposed to marry before she left the Big Mom pirates behind. Loki calls himself the Sun god and speaks badly of Shanks which doesn’t go over well with Luffy, but Loki has a good reason for this. We’ll see more of the accursed prince in the next volume so look forward to that.

And finally for the content of the volume, we have the crew arriving in Elbaph proper. After Robin gets a haircut from Brook and looks absolutely incredible with her old bangs, we make our way into town where disaster has just struck. Saul has fallen and he won’t get up again. Now let me tell you, Robin and Saul reuniting is probably one of the most emotional scenes in the manga to date. It’s up there for me with scenes like Robin wanting to live and Nami asking for help. It’s moments like these where I think that Oda’s penchant for letting characters survive things they really shouldn’t survive is actually not that bad of a thing. Seeing this reunion is worth more than the realism of Saul not making it through the wounds he got at Ohara all those years ago. Dereshishishi indeed. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

One thing still strikes me as odd and that is the fact that famous explorer Louis Arnot talks about how you should not overstay your welcome in Elbaph. His warning hasn’t really been explained and explored yet. I had to google to figure out who he really was, but apparently he’s the author of a book in the One Piece universe that talks about strange locations and although it’s all true, much of it is considered to be myths and tall tales. The fact that his other stories have been proven true means that his warning here very likely holds merit. We’ll have to see what it means before the arc is over.

Now, with volume 111 left behind us, let us take a quick bonus look at the Q&A that’s added at the end of this volume. There are some interesting questions here. Oda confirms a few things here.

• The wreath of clouds is a gateway into Nika’s dreams, and it is where Luffy gets all the fun tools and props from that he uses in his fights, like the goggles he puts on and the baseball bat he uses on Egghead.
• Oda also confirms that Dragon and Luffy have never lived together. At least not during a time that Luffy has memories of. Perhaps they stayed together for a bit when Luffy was still a baby, but Dragon’s position as a revolutionary made him far too dangerous to be around.
• Shanks’ Divine Departure ability is copied from Roger. Roger never directly taught him this ability, but he was the only one on the crew able to copy it.
• Despite being a bit of a loner, Kuzan does have subordinates in the Blackbeard crew.
• Part of the reason why eight countries in the allied nations managed a successful revolution is because of the draft that recruited many powerful soldiers from individual kingdoms into the navy. This included Fujitora and Ryokugyu. In beefing up the navy, this weakened the respective countries, allowing the revolutionaries to win.
• The Rocky Port incident was a chaotic incident we’ve heard about in passing and Oda doesn’t think he’ll touch on it in the story again but he reveals that due to some problems, Blackbeard, Koby and Law all ended up working together to deal with Wang Zhi, former member of the Rocks pirates and leader of the Pirate Island before Blackbeard took over. This also resulted in Koby being hailed a hero and Law taking 100 pirate hearts and becoming a warlord of the sea.

And finally, a reader asks Oda why Blackbeard’s ship is called the Saber of Xebec. Oda tells us that we might learn why it is called that way at a later date, which means you probably have to continue reading. And while we continue reading, I’ll continue recapping each volume for you, and I promise I won’t be this late next time. Even the anime has overtaken the manga volumes by now, and that is with a large hiatus. That’s worrisome, but at least we’re skipping 26 episodes a year now. Hopefully that helps. Thanks for reading!