Greg:
While Zoro wasn’t fighting a dragon on Thriller Bark, here the circle becomes complete as he has performed the technique on an actual dragon in Ryuma’s home of Wano. While it’s a shame he couldn’t use Shusui for the attack, Enma’s history certainly makes it the appropriate tool for the job.
If Zoro hadn’t missed, would he have been an actual dragon slayer?
Chapter 1003 follows that pattern to a T with Zoro’s Dragon Twister technique. It even plays off of our expectations while reading Kaido’s initial attack. Who didn’t read that first spread and think to think to themselves, “Wait! That’s Zoro’s technique! He can do that!” Oda-sensei plays by the rules and gives us a cathartic spread of Zoro unleashing his powered up Dragon Twister technique and we all felt pretty satisfied…until we turned the page.
BOOM!!! YET ANOTHER SPREAD!!!! Instead of Zoro ending with the upper hand, Oda-sensei breaks the rules in order to show us the scale of what they’re up against. Whatever punishment they deal out, Kaido will dole out more. That’s 6 pages of precious material dedicated to a single subliminal story-telling technique and as a long-time reader of manga, seeing Oda-sensei break rules like this is extremely rewarding. It’s as if Kaido stared at Zoro and said, “No son, that’s not a knife, THESE ARE MY KNIVES!”
New theory incoming Zoro is the true son of Kaido