Not this chapter... And you know the zoans are getting back up.
I'm of two halves on this. On one hand, Oda narrated their defeats. It's pretty concrete when that happens. He didn't for Kanjuro so it left the capacity for him to still be annoying as fuck this arc lol.
On the other hand, it just makes so much sense for them to get back up. We had all these explanations about extra toughness and high recovery for these users throughout the arc, and it's weird to not really see that payoff.
One thing I'm hoping for is the fact that Oda wanted this chapter to happen first, essentially to reintroduce awakening as a concept via Law and Kid. Then he can start showing it off with the rest of Kaido's crew. Essentially:
- The F5 and Jack all get back up, all start "rampaging".
- Once Apoo, Numbers, Fuku, Kanjuro, etc have all been taken care of, Oda will start the "real" strawhat fights, 1-2 chapters each.
- P1 and Ulti will continue to pursue Nami and Usopp.
- WsW to Jinbe
- Sasaki to Franky
- Black Maria to Brook/Robin (but this time it's Brook focused)
- Jack to Yamato (by coincidence he stands in her way)
I'm not sure who is going to handle Kanjuro (Denjiro now? Kawa? Asura if he gets up?), but I think Apoo will be soon taken down by Drake and maybe Chopper gets those last Numbers (especially now that the theory that they'd show up with Apoo is right and Chopper needs eventual payoff for this baby shit).
Once you do this, those enemies (F5 and Jack) can display the level of tenacity that we've been waiting for and it takes huge amounts of growth to win. Then you can have Queen/King show off the same shit, except they consciously use their awakening and will be defeated by attacks from Zoro/Sanji that are not recoverable. Then you can get to focusing on BM/Kaido.
HIGHLY doubt this is happening but it's just the way id prefer it to. Nuts is how this doesn't factor CP-0 or BMP and now Kanjuro is back up. Watch fucking Hotei get up so Oda can draw a moment where Kawamatsu has something to do, then he parallels that with Raizo/Fukurokuju lol.
Idk, I'm rambling now, this arc is back to being confusing lol