For the cover story, Yamato dates Inuarashi and they go to the beach to have a picnic while she tells him about the missing people.
Why are they at the beach? Surely, Yamato wasn't casually strolling through the beach rather than keep looking into the disappearances and it was a coincidence to find Inuarashi there with rice balls for two. She must have looked for him specifically. Where at? His place, isn't it obvious? Oden castle being rebuilt or whatever other lordly building he's staying at in Bakura. Therefore, after meeting him, both really prepared for a picnic at the beach and went there before discussing a matter Yamato is not only concerned about but it's also urgent. You could argue Yamato isn't really concerned about the disappearances but simply curious. But, despite what the story's title might say, Inuarashi isn't too concerned either. He's clearly more concerned about eating those riceballs. So much for the brand new daimyō of Kuri.
Also, be it concern or just curiosity, why would Yamato need Inuarashi for? Can't she just investigate on her own and, if anyone other than the missing people, look for others she might've been pointed to that could have valuable information rather than going for someone that knows nothing and she doesn't even have a bond with? Imagine if instead of Denjirō casually appearing where Yamato was, she had looked for him to help her with the kids throwing rocks.
Anyway, let's get to the actual chapter!
We see <somewhere> we don't know. Apparently there's a fire far from where we're shown and there's a specific smell in the air. Someone wonders whether the fire comes from the forest and says that if the flames spread to "Yggdrasil" the country will be done for, then urges to report to "the great sun god". Then another two random people find a couple of giant bees beaten on the ground and wonder what happened to them. And then, yet another pair of random people discuss some tremors felt earlier and gossip about an enormous rabbit called "ear god" having collapsed in the forest. Lastly, in a lego castle Nami fights a giant bee not knowing what happened since being on the Great Eirik.
Yggdrasil is likely the big tree in the back. The name taken out from norse mythology in which it's a tree in whose branches are the nine realms (as in nine different worlds).
The town we see is built entirely in lego pieces just like the place Nami was at the end of last chapter. Even plants are lego pieces. That makes me wonder...
- Why aren't we shown the fire? The perk of this being a manga and not a novel is that we can see the action. If we're told the action without seeing it... what's the point?
- What's exactly burning? Lego pieces don't burn all too well. They say it's in the forest, but even the plants seem to be lego pieces so...
- The lego pieces aren't consistent in size. In the first panel, the round parts are about the size of those viking-like people's face. Regardless of whether they are giants or not, in the last panel, the same parts are bigger than Nami's ass, which is bigger than regular human's face and way smaller than a giant's face.
Oh, and by the way before the next pages, look at Nami in the last panel. We see her from the back. She had a sword in her back and an armband in the left arm last chapter, but she's got no sword and no armband now.
Ooh, nice! Sword and armband are back! Weeeeee!! Although the armband will be missing in some panels. And... one moment. The buckle in Nami's top is now a rectangular frame. Last chapter is was round with a flower (or something alike) design inside.
Nami cries in fear and dispair because she's lost and encountered that bee. She cries for help like a damsel in distress. She then hears Usopp's voice (again), trips on the floor and notices it's lego piece-shaped before realizing there's a giant hedgehog in front of her. Both are startled and the hedgehog starts chasing her. Nami pokes her head over what looks like the bottom of a giant balustrade.
Why is acting Nami like this? She used to board pirate ships to rob them. She gathered 100 million belly just doing that. She should be more than used to be in an unknown and dangerous place and know how to navigate the situation. Yet, here she's just dead weight. Oh, and let's not go over the fact Oda is resorting again to draw ass shots to grab your attention and interest. This actually worried me, because it's the same thing he started doing last arc to compensate for the lack of an interesting story. Hopefully this arc is different.
For some reason, this castle has very peculiar architecture and I really like it.
- The ceiling is vaulted and we can see how tall it is with respect to the floor. Very big for regular--sized people like Nami but definitely too small for giants. Even people like Kuma would have trouble standing up in there. It looks fitting for people like Jinbe or Blackbeard's crew.
- However, the balustrade Nami climbs really is giant-sized. And we can see both in some panels. Even if a bit inconsistent because the first time, Nami looks like simply being on the floor and having her chest above the balustrade, and the second time, it looks like she needs to climb it in order to see past it.
And... wait. Why is she looking for Usopp?? She was already awoke at the end of last chapter having heard Usopp's voice. That means Usopp was with her. How did the two of them get separated without her knowing from last chapter to this one??
At the other side of the balustrade, Nami finds a lower floor, where Usopp is about to be eaten by a giant cat with a crown. Usopp cries for help and Nami abandons him without thinking twice. Yes, just like that. Then she finds courage to face the hedgehog and not knowing how use her own Clima tact, she falls down the balcony. The hedgehog follows her down, Zeus electrocutes it, Nami falls onto the cat's back and from there to the ground with no consequence and the cat lets Usopp go only to be electrocuted together with the hedgehog a second later.
Okay, there's a lot to unpack in these pages.
- First of all, suddenly the balustrade becomes so much smaller than before. Go back to last panel to compare, it's two totally different sizes.
- Nami really is a good friend, isn't she? She was desperately asking for help from her friends and when she finds Usopp in a way more dangerous situation, she just turns her back at him in the coldest of ways.
- Nami, the cat burglar, the one to learn to move like a ninja from Shinobu (even though she already knew to be that agile and sneaky), she loses balance or gets pushed by her own Clima tact extending the wrong end, it's unclear, and falls down. It's pathetic.
On another note, that was startled just as Nami before, as any other regular hedgehog would do, savagely charges through the wall to keep chasing Nami down that fall. Yes, that sounds totally reasonable.
Electricity now works very differently in the One Piece world. After being electrocuted and without further discharge fro mthe climatact, the hedgehog further electrocutes the cat upon contact, for which purpose, the cat conveniently lets Usopp go. WTF?
Lastly, this is Nami's sword (and buckle) from last chapter:
Round guard, with a spherical jewel at the tip and a handle that's thinner in the middle.
Look back for this chapter's sword: Cross guard, with a circle end and a handle that's wider in the middle.
By the way, the sword disappeared again as soon as Nami started falling. But to speak about the good things as well, now we can understand the different sized of some elements of the castle: The castle is built to accomodate both regular-sized people and giants. And there are rooms and corridors suitable for differently-sized people. I don't know why would the castle be this way, but I find that's very cool and thoughtful in any case.
Scared but fine, even after tha fall for Nami and being bitten by the cat for Usopp, both run again to escape the enraged giant cat and they remember the absinthe they drank is said to be able to caus hallucinations. They get to another balcony. An outside one this time. Usopp suddenly feels very confident the giant cat is just a hallucination so he stops running away only to get slapped by the cat's claws.
One thing I'm glad of is Usopp's costume design. It was about time for Usopp to not have that ridiculous hat he came back with to sabaody nor any other cringy outfit. This design is nice. The fakebeard and moustache might be a bit over the top but the clothing is good. I really like it.
Nami's sword disappears again when they get to the balcony. Not the armband, but Usopp's bag disappears too in this case. It comes back again when he's about to be hit, not Nami's sword.
Not stopping in time, the cat charges through the castle walls just like the hedgehog did before, sending Usopp, but also Nami down the precipice with itself. Usopp hits the ground with no further consequence while Nami lands gracefully and safe somehow. Can't tell exactly because it's not shown. When they look at the cat again, it's turned in a giant lion. It roars at them and Nami uses Usopp as a shield.
Nami's sword is still missing and the armband is now missing as well.
Interestingly, down there some skeletons can be seen surrounding Nami and Usopp. What's that supposed to be? Clearly the cat is not responsible for them. He doesn't look like one to be careful not to eat the bones of his prey and we know the cat is neither careful enough to not destroy the whole castle when playing with prey such as Usopp. So... who threw (or left there) naked people until they rotted completely? Regular-sized too.
Have I already mentioned how ridiculous is that Nami fell from that height without consequence?
And what about the cat-lion? This being One Piece, the answer should quickly be that the giant cat ate the lion's devil fruit, but... really? Is this random cat a good fit but a devil fruit that should have been quite iconic? Probably yes. For a long time I thought Oda would reserve certain zoan devil fruits to top-level characters like gorosei and such. The fact that X Drake was semi-retcon'd to be an allosaurus rather than a T-Rex despite he has the apperance of a T-Rex and not one that resembles any drawn or modeled allosaurus before seemed like an indicator of that too. However, with the discovery of mythical zoans as Oda's new favourite toy, a simple lion became nothing special, so a random cat is likely its user.
But c'mon! A cat? Really? After what he did to Blackbeard's crew giving the "super strength" fruit to an already super-strong man, the "disease" fruit to an already bed-ridden doctor and the "flying horse" fruit to a horse; now he gives a big cat a bigger cat's fruit?
Now, the good and interesting part: We were deceived! I'm not talking about the hallucinations. I'll talk about that in a separate post. I'm talking about the lego blocks! Everything is crafted to look like lego blocks, but they're not. That's why the sizes are inconsistent and that's why here (and when the hedgehog destroyed the balustrade too) upon breaking, the walls show they are just rock and not lego blocks. Otherwise they'd be disassembled and that's it. But they're shattering and cracks appearing in the walls. Some stonemason in that town is that much of a nerd, to shape the whole town like that!
Finally, if you look closely at the castle shattering, to me it looks a bit excessive that it would crumble from that. Especially the wall below their floor and the whole roof and even one of the towers in the corner. After all, it was a big balcony. How could the cat damage the floor in that way or the walls at the sides??
Well, it turns out it wasn't a balcony. Nami and Usopp had reached a window. A giant-sized window. It's impossible to know from these panels, but if we go back to the beginning of the chapter we'll see it!
See the big window below the corner towers? that's the one. You can see here too why the whole roof collapsed and one corner fell too. There's actually no roof other than the walls. They weren't in some hall, Usopp and the cat started the chapter in an inner courtyard.
If anything, though, what's problematic is the cat being so massive that it can't fit through the window. Because then most of the castle was just a very tight cell for him.
Another thing to wonder about is why would anyone leave a cat in that castle that could potentially destroy the whole castle just by chasing a mouse.
Sanji, Luffy and Zoro appear to gang up on the lion and go for an overkill to Nami's and Usopp's surprise. The lion loses conscience and goes back to being a cat.
Things to note:
- Nami's sword wasn't just disappearing, it was being transferred to Sanji. He has it now.
- Sanji kicks the lion with all he's got. Ifrit Jambe from the very beginning. It's really really sad what's happened to Sanji since the time-skip. He came back spamming Diable Jambe against fodder as though he couldn't beat them otherwise and now he's using Ifrit Jambe with the first fodder animal as he gangs up on him together with Luffy and Zoro. Beyond ridiculous.
- Even worse, he activates Ifrit Jambe only for his leg to not be in flames when he hits the lion. Also, "Épaule" means shoulder and that's where Sanji is supposed to kick the lion. Not the top of its head.
- Luffy calls for Gear fourth, but actually he performs a Gear third move. Very odd. First Nami doesn't know how to use her clima tact, now Sanji's Ifrit Jambe disappears and Luffy doesn't know how his own moves are named.
- Not Zoro. Zoro might not know how he got there, but he knows his attacks' name. However translators seem to do not. I won't stop calling them out on this: 龍巻 (Tatsumaki) means "dragon roll" and it is a pun because it's also what japanese people call tornados and at the same time is a kind of sushi pieces (because they're rolls). So, if you translate the attack's name (horrendous choice in my opinion), it should be either "twister/tornado" or "dragon roll" but never "Dragon twister". That's like calling "batman" as "batman man".
- I overlooked it the first time when Usopp was about to be munched, but Nami's spamming Eneru-faces now. WTH?
With the cat unconscious, the group relaxes. Iñaki wants to eat it and confirms they killed the "ear god" Sanji was "really worried" about Nami or so he says, Nami thinks Usopp is dead and Zoro seems to be the only one being reasonable and worried about the rest of the crew.
Is this for real? Nami thought Usopp had died??? This is surreal.
Iñaki enjoys the situation and gives exactly 0 fucks about what happened to them or what happened to the others. Classic Iñaki.
Sanji was so worried about Nami, that despite not knowing what might've happened to Robin, he's not worried any more.
These other viking-outfits are nice too. Specially Iñaki's, but also Sanji's. Oh, but look! Nami's sword, that she still lacks, wasn't just transferred to Sanji, Iñaki has it too!! Wait, no. What happened? Iñaki's sword, that he didn't have last page, suddenly turned into an axe!
Zoro's outfit, though, isn't as cool. It doesn't look viking at all. It looks like a Beast pirate outfit with random goggles. And why the goggles? To make him look like the badass Zoro from Skypiea? Well, then it made sense for Zoro to use diving goggles, but now? He lloks stupid que them on.
Interestingly enough, having just arrived there and not knowing anything about their situation, they're already wreaking havoc. If this is inspired by the myth of Ragnarök as I thought, Loki might be the one to have put them there to cause this and funny enough, the soldiers Loki leads into battle are the actual giants of the myth. With a little bit of luck the ear god is not the only god this arc to be erased. Hopefully Nika can be too. And remember one giant talked about the GREAT sun god, not just the REGULAR sun god. So maybe there's a giant with the hito hito no mi, model: Greater Nika.
And that's it! Thank you for reading.
You might have noticed I haven't discussed anything regarding the hallucination topic. There are some reasons to believe that is irrelevant but I'll discuss it in a separate post to not overdo it with this one.