Shanks Just Declared WAR! (1126)

Shanks did a thing Blackbeard is about to do a thing and the straw hats have now had a thing done to them one piece is pretty wild this week with a little the things and I mean nobody ever expected Lego to be a major plot point in the series ever but here we are to start with the cover story though detective yam is kind of on the missing people's case although it's more that yam keeps incidentally hearing about missing people however what's most notable about this page to me is that I'm almost certain that this

is the exact same spot that Luffy zarama and Kiku were sitting in while we were in okab town at the beginning of wano it might not be because I don't remember it being a SLA store but then again it's probably Under New Management now because suru has packed up and moved to the flower capital I think it would be a very solid Landmark for Yam to be coincidentally visiting though because this would be where Tas started crying over how good the food was and that then became Luffy's primary driving force to bring down kaider something

I've noticed about this cover story is the focus on food yam was eating a part of Oden before now it's so yam is having a Bento on the way out of the F capital and it's really heartwarming because for the vast majority our time on wano everyone was starving the idea of consuming food was an event meant to be cherished by those lucky enough to experience it and more than anything else the abundance of food and the happiness it brings is showing the effect that Luffy has had on this country I also thought that the

person Yamato was speaking to might be Som because she has the same patent kimono and Som was the Geisha who was said by Queen to be the second most beautiful s behind karasaki and who in the anime at the very least had a bit of a crash on Sanji because he saved her pet rat chuji and then fed her delicious sober that makes so much sense actually because s loved Sanji sober and here she is now working in a sober store herself having become a bit of a sober Enthusiast at least that's what I thought

until I looked back and saw that Som I think was already featured in the background of this cover story when yam was leaving the flower Capital because I think that's chuji in her hand it's weird though because this new person has the same kimona the same hairstyle and is working in the SBA store so my only conclusion is what we have here is an impostor starting the chapter proper though we have an explanation about what happened after oo and Kashi left water 7 and I mean a while after they left water 7 because this would

have had to have happened extremely recently however I find this explanation a tiny bit contradictory they state that they went to little garden because they couldn't wait to see Dorian broy again in a fair enough feeling but I'm not so sure about it because I quite vividly remember oo saying that so long as their bosses were still dueling they couldn't go anywhere near little garden as if it was part of the Elba code of honor I guess they changed their minds at some point but it doesn't sound very you know in the spirit of a

mighty proud Elbo Warrior and Dory and brogy were convinced to return to Elbo to pick up weapons so they could continue their Jewel with a set appropriate weapons because the condition of achieving death would never be attained with bare fists alone which I don't know to me again doesn't sound very in the spirit of a warrior it's not like it's the biggest issue in the world but it doesn't feel like one of od's cleaner explanations it's more like he had the idea for Dory and broggy to come together on Egghead and then had to Cobble

together an explanation as to how that happened however what I do like is that their duel hasn't been settled just yet before we encountered them on ID Island I'd always thought that one piece would end where Dory and broggy still fighting on little garden and that this entire massive Journey took place within a tiny fraction of their lives going on to show the full scale of the one piece world and it does look like that's still going to happen to some degree after the final war after the dawn of the world Dory and brogy are

just going to return and resume their Eternal conflict but in start contrast conflict I'm never not going to love this but Oda takes a a couple of panels to show Kuma and Bonnie together during the party and mate Kuma is 100% smiling there's no ambiguity anymore last time it was very subtle like I could just be reading into his face what I wanted to read into it but this time Kuma is happier than I have ever seen him because in the past there have been a couple of occasions where Kuma Has Smiled bigger than this

but he has never looked more content and genuinely happy this man however much is left of this man is living what's left of his best life traveling the world with Bonnie which is accompanied by this wide panel of nothing but clear Open Sky and water there are no barriers there are no obstacles there are no difficulties even in the new world the weather is perfect and this is pretty much the epitome of Freedom that one can attain on this planet and my God dokuma and Bonnie deserve that at the very least although I still can't

help but feel that this isn't going to last and we are heading for another tearful goodbye at some stage not this stage though at this stage what we've got is weird stuff happening as this section also sets up for the end of the chapter by flagging the green mean fairy absence that can cause hallucinations so if I'm reading this correctly essentially what happened is everyone got drunk high and half the crew was separated and we now have the one piece equivalent of The Hangover happening and we'll get to that because the end of the chapter

very intriguing again Lego but now very excitingly we finally have a conclusion to a seveny yearlong story arc between bartolomeo and Shanks it is insane to think about how much real time has passed while this inw world event has been going on apparently this only happened a month month ago in the one piece world so our seven years there one month it's been so long that odor actually needed to recap the entire scenario which was nice because we finally got a name of the island that bartomeo invaded which at the moment is called gartel Island

we'll see if the official agrees and with what we know now about shank's Grand Fleet looking back on the bartomeo cover story is quite funny it makes a lot of sense because after defeating one dude and burning a single building the entire Island surrendered and of course they did because Shanks only takes the very weak under his protection bomeo then declared war on the redhair Pirates by burning their Jolly Roger although Oda didn't recap my favorite part of this event which is that Bart then forced the entire town to buy straw hat merchandise including pins

and stickers the dude sacked the island not with raw strength but with non-consensual capitalism the fiend and right now my personal hope is that chanks has actually kept one of these Luffy pins for himself and he's keeping it in a special place along with a collection of Luffy's bounty posters newspaper rical and all of the other things that makes him ever such a proud Mentor now speaking of proud bomeo he was completely obliterated in this chapter and I could not be more proud of him the scene with the poison was brilliant and watching bartomeo not

only refused to poison Luffy but also willing to ingest the vile that was meant for Luffy is one of my favorite character moments of this year in many ways B was extremely immature which also demonstrates later on by calling Shanks rather soft and naive not truly understanding the situation he was in and his impending doom but when it came down to it as is the title of the chapter bartolomeo took responsibility for his actions he knew he messed up and took the punishment on himself in order to spare his crew and to save Luffy from

the potential Wrath of Shanks which is the thing that used to kid did not do he continued to run his crew into Emperor after Emperor and has taken no responsibility ever so if Bartolo wasn't already a fan favorite he would be after this but I think this has cemented Bart in that Bon clay status because I swear bomeo is more loyal to Luffy than some of the straw hats have been at times and I have to say during this whole section Shanks are some of the weirdest facial expressions I think I've ever seen on him

particularly this one after Bart drank the poison it's such a bizarre face and I think that this is shank's coming to terms with the fact that yes Luffy does have this wonderful support base ready and willing to take him all the way across the Finish Line Of Destiny but also the distinct disappointment that Luffy's support base is such a weirdo it might just be me but there's a tangible air of disgust in shank's expression like when B up during the car of Coliseum battles and disgusted all of his opponents but the redhair Pirates may they

are such a menace because as the BTO Club is sailing away yaso takes aim and blows up their entire ship so aside from creating Usopp this is easily the greatest and one of the only things that yop has ever done and it's amazing because guns generally don't do this sort of thing in one piece in fact they usually portrayed as quite powerless and cowardly so I wonder if Usopp has more in common with the asop than just DNA because whatever this man fired has to be some sort of specialty round to take out an entire

ship in just one small shot and this is of course the second time that the redhair Pirates have now done this sinking ships and destroying semi beloved Crews is that just going to be their signature from now until the end of one piece plowing ahead through all of our favorite characters because the B Club are now facing the same fate as the kid pirates they've been decimated the going Luffy Senpai is completely gone and that that actually hits quite hard because in one piece the symbolism of ships is very important in a world where your

freedom as we just discussed with Kuma and Bonnie freedom is the Open Seas the ship is your dream if you lose that you are out no more freedom for you sir and the BTO club now makes three prominent pirate Crews that have lost that right they'll definitely survive I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that the BTO Club are dead and I imagine that they'll eventually hitch a ride with another faction of the grand Fleet that or the straw hat Grand Fleet will have their own Flagship built at some point which would remove

the Need For The Individual ships perhaps with an even bigger and more Post Time skip Luffy figurehead but what I really would have loved to have seen is how Shanks or the other redhair Pirates got past bolo's barrier abilities because that was a power that stopped even kuki Odin back when the fruit was being used by old man semimaru but then cutting to haosu Blackbeard he's finally returned and there are a lot of great gags Happening Here My favorite is that they've put bandages and Band-Aids on the actual skull itself of the island being controlled

by pizaro and black be is scolding him in the same sort of way that the straw hats get angry at Luffy whenever he does something stupid and we've also got sonan wolf trying to fix the town but causing more damage in the process and after having read this part I don't think I've ever loved the Blackbeard Pirates more than this because in this section they almost seem like the protagonists because we're just getting to see them casually hang out and interact and they aren't really all that different from the straw hats just another band of

morons with Big Dreams and the will to make those dreams a reality very terrible dreams I'm sure but still dream I think in most Shonen series the author would be afraid to give the main antagonist this much comic relief out of the fear that it would undermine their scary presence as villains but I do really appreciate what Oda does with the Blackbeard Pirates because eventually they are going to have to combat Luffy's Ridiculousness which is now his literal power source and to do that they're going to need to bring their own wackiness to the table

here fight ridiculous with absurd and also the other way around this chapter does also confirm that GARP is alive and currently being held by all of the chains in the universe to contain him there's nothing too unexpected there but what is interesting is that this might be sewing some seeds of chaos within the Blackbeard Pirates because Marshall D teach he is not happy with anyone except fusan you know that guy that none of the other crew members trust it might not turn out this way but I can imagine that there may be some jealousy and

plotting due to Kuan becoming the captain's favorite and honestly they'd be very right to do so if there's any element that's going to bring them down at the moment it is the Marine Admiral bomb that they have installed within their crew in this chapter Kuan does say that he was going for the kill with G and I don't you know not believe him it definitely could be a lie but whatever his mission is it would be far easier to earn everyone's trust if he did Kill God so I think that Kuan may have actually been

going for it but I could be wrong and I like this next plot point because it Rhymes but we have lefit with umit a very big development that I don't think we're going to comprehend the magnitude of until we see Le's next steps from what I gather the Revolutionary Army is relentlessly attacking um Shipyard which contains a lot of supplies bound from Mara which are not getting there and do meet in case you forgotten he came up during the egad island Ark as well because his shipping company was seen delivering materials to egad Island for

Vega Punk to construct the lab and we've actually seen him way in the past he's the unwell Emperor who specializes in shipping and has clients from all across the ideological Spectrum in fact I'd be surprised if the Revolutionary Army themselves haven't used um services in the past because he's the man you go to to transport large quantity of goods or even bads very stealthily and seeing leit at this Shipyard means that he's probably either there to sabotage or acquire umit Services the former because umit could be supplying any given Target of Blackbeard at the moment

like say Shanks and then force him into an awkward position when supplies aren't getting to where the shanks needs them to be or the goal is to supply the Blackbeard Pirates themselves for whatever upcoming plan they have in this chapter we have flagged there's a large Force ready and waiting on haosu but they might not have the ships required to set sail with that full force but all right all right we're here now so the end of this chapter it is real trippy for a fair few reasons this is definitely not how I expected Elbo

to begin and you know if anything this feels extremely similar to the start of an anime filler rock you know when the straw hats are on their way to the next Cannon Island and this case ELO but along the way something just weird happens to kick them off course for a couple of days you know make them fight dong or something and that's what this hallucination absent feels like like I'm watching the anime and Nami has now woken up in a bizarre Lego filler off except it's in the manga so I think this is actually

the start of elu at the moment Nami has woken up in Viking attire although it actually reminds me a lot of the Beast Pirates outfits that everyone briefly wore on onig gushima the obvious strange thing is that she appears to have woken up in a Lego room this isn't something that looks like Lego if you look at the floor is just Lego and I guess that Lego does originate from Denmark so it is still in keeping with El's Scandinavian Vibes and my guess is that Nami as well as the other missing straw hats have been

taken by Giant children and put into their Lego Playhouse or Play Dungeon play Mansion whatever it turns out to be well given the idea that Prince Loki could actually be considered a child by giant standards of age this could be a fun way to bring him into the mix as early as possible I'm not sure though because I would have imagined that Loki is on Elbo himself although I guess there's nothing to say that this part of the straw hats aren't currently on elu they could have been taken there well the others were not but

if they're not on Elbo then I think they're still definitely somewhere within warland which is the greater area containing elbaff and potentially a series of of other inhabited giant Islands as well and it has been pointed out to me that warland could consist of nine Islands Each of which corresponding to one of the nine Realms in North mythology so we could have a short stop before Elbo which isn't unheard of would' be like how we briefly stopped at the train station before moving on to water 7 or maybe even a short long ring longland Style

Adventure before hitting Elbo I would say that ladder seems unlikely though because Oda has really been trying to streamline one piece lately but at the same time I could easily see him going mates I want to draw a Lego house this week so po put all of our plans on hold I'm doing that instead and then it takes us 10 chapters to deal with whatever crazy idea popped into his imagination what I love about this situation though is that it feels incredibly nostalgic because the straw hats that are missing are the original six Luffy Zaron

Nami Usopp Sanji and Chopper which I think is also why this is giving me such strong filler Vibes because that early era of One Piece was when many of the full filler ARS took place in the anime and then from around Frankie onwards what they did was they inbuilt the filler into the cannon a lot more but also this original six have shockingly never really had an adventure together because before choppo we recruited Vivy and immediately after Vivy decided to stay on Alabaster was when Robin joined so we've never actually had an adventure with just

these classic six straw hats and this is the part of one piece that I find most exciting the beginning of oxs and the promise of stepping into the unknown because the law drops the action the reveals and the Silhouettes my God the Silhouettes they're all amazing but they are all secondary to Adventure again the idea of stepping into the unknown and discovering a whole new world that was not previously thought possible this is what one piece gets to do at the start of almost every Arc before the plot inevitably takes command and speeds up the

journey so I'm really looking forward to just kicking back and enjoying some classic one piece adventure for a few weeks because realistically this might actually be the last time this happens I don't know how many other Islands after Elbo again have the luxury of this sort of setup it's very hard to imagine LT tail in the final war playing out like this so with that in mind let us begin the last great adventure of One piece