tl;dr: Mugiwara pirates arrive at the village of Elbaf by walking on clouds and sailing a rainbow.
There. That's the chapter for those of you who don't like to read lengthy posts. I don't usually do this, so be warned when I say this: This is a long review. So long I'm considering makign it in video format so that it is more easily digestible.
And now, onto the usual stuff.
The obvious connection with the rest of the cover story I suppose it's Minatomo. He could have been abducted and forced to work in this castle or maybe he came out of his own free will and is working in this castle just like he was previously in Oden castle. The important thing here is noticing this doesn't need to have anything to do with the kidnappers Yamato is allegedly investigating nor with the thief of Yasuie's katana.
Why? Because despite what some parts of this cover story say, the truth we can see in them is crystal clear: Yamato hasn't changed her course at all since she departed the Flower capital.
There's further proof in this chapter's cover, because according to the last one, Yamato and the rest were "chasing the thief". However, after crossing a distance that took Chopper, Big Mom, et al almost two full days; there are only three options:
All this is just a ruse of plot convenience and nothing more. Here, in Udon, Yamato will meet yet another member of the 9 Red scabbards (I believe Kawamatsu, Kiku and Raizō are left), probably Raizō since here is where Ode found him in his original travel around Wano. Then she'll eat something or witness some other crime she'll pretend to care about just enough to keep entertaining us through this whole voyage.
Then Yamato will arrive at Enma's shrine in Hakumai where she's supposed to place Yasuie's katana for... some reason. But this doesn't make much sense actually. Placing that katana somewhere is the sole purpose of this voyage, however, Hakumai it's not the last stage of the route. There's Ringo left. IT would've made more sense to start in Ringo and tour around the country all the way to Hakumai being the last stop. Imagine, uninteresting as it is this first part of Yamato's pilgrimage, how the second part is going to be once there's not even a goal at the horizon. This alone is obvious enough for me, but there are more reasons to think Yasuie's katana won't end in the Enma shrine.
Thus, we come back to the question about the thief. It should be clear by now who it is. Someone who already stole a katana in front of Yasuie. Someone who had two jobs: Steal weapons and protect katana marking graves. Someone who was abruptly cut off the story for no reason (this is irrelevant yet worth reminding). That someone is none other than...
What? Did you say something? Oh... hehe, the abductions you say? Well, you see... Oda will probably just pray so that once this cover story ends, you'll have forgotten about that part. ^_^" For now, Yamato is looking away knowing this is it for now.
So... about the actual chapter and all that.
I was so so waiting for this. First of all, at this point you're plenty familiar with Nami's sword and other elements that disappear from panel to panel, right. Well... Given the shape of Elbaf (the island), is obvious that no matter where from, as long as a the view is a bit distant, the Adam tree will be seen. At least part of it.
Hahaha! First panel and Elbaf has no giant tree now! It vanished. Only the sky above or beyond the mountains. Great!
And now, we have a bar, a popular one among giants, in the so called Realm of the Dead: A prison, an execution ground, a place no one dares to approach where you'll find countless bones of giants and humans because the creatures in the woods kill them. But we have a bar here as well with kids even. There's no village. Not even close by, but we have a bar in the coast. The country is hostile towards... anyone who comes (proven because Saul said Elbaf giants were all savages and Shanks' subordinates all left when their boss did. Not one of them stayed once the yonko wasn't there to protect them.)
YES, there is a bar in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a place reserved for criminals to rot. OKAY, suppose it makes some sense. Why wouldn't Dorry and Broggy dock there? They're supposedly looking for Luffy and the next. In the case they had arrived at Elbaf, the lowest level should be the first one to be searched.
"Ripley" and "Colon's father" are mentioned in the second page as Colon leaves for the upper level of the tree. And since there's not much in the page, Shanks gets a panel because: why not?
How is the kid supposed to go up, though? He has to cross the woods and climb mountains full of murderous giant beasts first. Why is the manga acting like it's no big deal when just a chapter ago it told us it is a huge deal?
But first of all, I want to address a concept that introduced last chapter and will be emphasized later in this one: Elbaf is a massive island.
This is as false as it can be. There was a time when One Piece had islands, true islands, like Sandy (Arabasta), Drum, Gekko (Usopp's homeland) and possibly Dawn (Luffy's homeland), but all others1 have ranged from small to tiny and in the real world would be called "islets" for how small they are. Elbaf included.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can fit the whole width of the island in a single panel (or a very significant part of it for this matter) and still see recognizable buildings, let alone human-sized things, then that is a very small island. In this case, we can see half the island and the bar in the coast is recognizable. Let's imagine the bar has two floors with each one being twice the height of the tallest known giant, in this case Dorry at almost 23m. So, being very generous the bar would be 92m tall (way more than it actually surely is). Now you can take a ruler and do simple maths: Half the island is 24 times longer than the bar is tall. Therefore 92m✕24✕2=4,416m = 4.4 km. Elbaf is about four and a half kilometers wide. Usopp could cross it from one side to the opposite in an afternoon walk. I, myself, who am moderately fat and out of shape, can still run this distance in about half an hour. It'd take me less than two hours to run one lap around the whole island's coast. The whole island fits inside Central Falls (Rhode island) which is the smallest city in the USA. That makes for a very very tiny island. And I was generous with my calculations. So, bare this in mind the next time you read that Elbaf is massive.
Read this and this for a detailed explanation.
And now, shall we talk about the rainbow? Let's talk about the rainbow!
As many other elements in this arc, the rainbow is borrowed from norse mythology, in which it's called Bifröst and it's exactly what we see here. A rainbow bridge used to cross between Midgard and Asgard (ie. between the land of humans and that of gods). Hence why sea level is being called the "realm of the dead" (because humans are mortal, so they eventually die) and the second level of the tree is called "realm of the sun" (because Oda is shoehorning "the Sun God" narrative at every chance in hope that we forget that Dorry and Broggy were originally fighting because it was a "demand of the God(s) of Elbaf" and they didn't spoke of the sun and were obsessed with it even less.)
But how does this bifröst fit into the One Piece world? Well, we'll work with what we get in this chapter and maybe we have enough to make a judgement or maybe we don't.
For starters, Brook's claim that he's never been so close to a rainbow is on point because it shouldn't be possible to get close to a rainbow. A rainbow is not an actual object occupying a specific place. A rainbow is only an image in your eyes. If you're on a vehicle while you see a rainbow and moving not towards it or away from it, you can check how the landscape moves but the rainbow remains in the same position as long as you don't move your eyes. It's because the rainbow is not "there", it's in your eyes.
A rainbow will always be centered at your antisolar point (ie. the point in your shadow where your eyes would be), so not only you can't get close to it because your shadow moves with you, but since different people are at a different position, different people see a different rainbow.
Also, Jinbē's question is relevant for the same reason: Rainbows are always perpendicular to your gaze. You won't ever see a rainbow that "appears" coming from a place closer to you than where it ends. Therefore, you can't see rainbows from "the side".
Conclusion, in real world, you can't approach a rainbow, and specially not from that angle. But this is not "the real world", it's One Piece, so, why does Oda have these two characters subtly point at this? Because it's still relevant.
Fantastic literature ranges between science-fiction and surrealism with respect to how the fantastic elements are treated in it. Science-fiction if there are only a finite number of fantastic elements all of which are "scientifically justified" even though that justification is obviously fictional, hence the name (eg, Star Trek). And surrealism if anything goes and there's no explanation whatsoever for anything (eg, Adventure Time).
The key of this spectre is that it defines how much can readers rely in what they're being told. If it's close to sci-fi, they know what the "rules of the game" are and based on that they can draw conclusions ad make guesses about implications and future development. If it's more surreal, then readers can enjoy the comedic nonsense going on and still appreciate allegories, subtext or morals of the story, but they can not take the literal story seriously, that's for sure. Hence why surreal works are almost exclusively comedies.
Early on and practically all of pre-time skip, One Piece was very close to sci-fi with some minor typical shonen tropes that are purely aesthetic like walls and ground always being crushed despite people's skulls do not and things like that being further into unchecked fantasy. But the fantastic elements that drive the story always had pseudo-scientific explanations2:
And this is exactly what starts happening in this page with Brook and Jinbē raising valid points only for Broggy answering "hey, it's no big deal". Compare this with an earlier similar plot device: The Knock-Up Stream. It was explained as a huge geyser. The only fantastic elements in it were exaggerated numbers: amount of water, height it could reach... something well within the base standards of shonen manga where people kick walls down and tank a sledge hammer's hit with so much as a bleeding eyebrow. And then Broggy one-ups the bullshit saying the bifröst is painted into existence with a stone. Okay, give me a break.
If you'd like to read a story in which Color's Trap is justified, you can do so here. But let's not lose focus.
You have in your hand a stone that paints magic, solid and navigable rainbows?
Then why the hell didn't you (or anyone else for this matter) ever used one??? I mean, right out of the top of my head, one such rainbow would have been useful for the Mugiwara pirates to solve their problem in Egghead regarding how to get down from the Labo-stratum. I'm quite sure it would have been useful too in avoiding that silly mist that put all of you to sleep and you knew it was there beforehand. Why did no one ever consider using a "sun stone painter"?
Why isn't it known around the world? You sell Adam tree wood. Why wouldn't you sell rainbow painters? Why would "sun stone painters" be unique to Elbaf?
I like how Broggy warns the Mugiwara pirates to hold onto something as the ships is about to rotate 90º upwards and otherwise they'll fall, but not Broggy, Dorry, other giants and certainly not a single Mugiwara hold onto anything as the ship does just that and no onw falls or is even drawn like they lost their footing at all.
As I said, there was no need to include Broggy making us aware of that detail, yet after making us, Oda proceeds to completely disregard it in the very same page. He's rubbing it in our faces. If Broggy hadn't said anything, most readers wouldn't even notice. But Oda wants us to notice. To notice he doesn't give a shit about a single thing he's writing any more.
The rainbow meets the sea at a 90º angle. The ship can't just do what it appears to do in the right panel of the middle row. It should just crash against the rainbow, or get through it, ¿who knows? We're can't possibly know what the rainbow is because the author doesn't want us.
Robin asks about this. A rainbow is just refracted light, so what are they actually sailing on? And here come Dorry and Broggy, who are nothing more than Oda's avatars right now: "What're you talking about? Rainbows are meant to be crossed!" Translation: "Hey! I'm making all this shit up on a week to week basis. Did you really expect me to write something that makes sense? to have explanations? Details? Hell no! Shut up, turn your brain off and give me your money!"
OK. Let's assume the ship can turn 90º upwards on the spot. Are we really supposed to buy that some tail wind is going to bring the ship up just because "rainbow currents" offer no resistance??? Again what we discussed before. Will the Merry sail the Knock-Up Stream? Then it'll need a huge burst below it that lifts it and gives it a lot of momentum, a very strong upward wind that keeps it going and be remodeled with wings. But hey, the Great Erik can sail upwards just because. Apparently some tail wind (one so weak that wouldn't even disturb a liquid rainbow that offers NO resistance) beats gravity any day of the week.
By the way, despite the "no resistance" thing being a good thing for sailing by wind, it would be terrible for doing so by rowing as Broggy says. Because that same "no resistance" would make the rows go through the rainbow as though there were nothing, therefore completely failing at moving the ship forward.
Even worse. This "no resistance" feature of the rainbow makes it impossible to navigate because it renders the rudder useless, making it impossible to steer the ship. Therefore, unless the rainbow is strictly a straight line, the ship gets on it perfectly parallel to it and there's no wind ("tail wind" hehe) that can push the ship to one side even if just a little, the ship is going to leave the rainbow at one side at some point exactly the same way bowling balls do if you're not good enough at throwing them.
So, near 100% of times, taking this bifröst should result in ships jumping off it at a very bad moment and shipwrecking near the coast of Elbaf. But hey, these giants take it like it's nothing. They don't even have to make the smallest of efforts to sail the rainbow safely. It just happens magically.
In any case, I'd be willing to buy this "no resistance" characteristic if we had at least had some explanation about WHAT is the rainbow made of given it's clearly not light.
So... How can it be painted? I mean, I know the answer already: It can't be painted.
Also, as the rainbow it is, its surface is perpendicular to sea level at all points, meaning it always has the same "position" as a wall. It's never a floor. However, in the last panel it's clearly seen the rainbow is acting as a floor. How is that possible??
Only thing I want to point out here is: In the first panel, Gerd doesn't have her axe in her back. Goldberg doesn't have his club either. In the big panel Gerd does have her axe. No one is surprised I think. At this point this is just a staple of the arc.
Post is too long, so, the rest is in another one!
There. That's the chapter for those of you who don't like to read lengthy posts. I don't usually do this, so be warned when I say this: This is a long review. So long I'm considering makign it in video format so that it is more easily digestible.
And now, onto the usual stuff.
Ch. 1132 p1
Yamato, Tama, Speed and Komachiyo arrive at the old prisoner's mine and find a castle is being built there.
The obvious connection with the rest of the cover story I suppose it's Minatomo. He could have been abducted and forced to work in this castle or maybe he came out of his own free will and is working in this castle just like he was previously in Oden castle. The important thing here is noticing this doesn't need to have anything to do with the kidnappers Yamato is allegedly investigating nor with the thief of Yasuie's katana.
Why? Because despite what some parts of this cover story say, the truth we can see in them is crystal clear: Yamato hasn't changed her course at all since she departed the Flower capital.
Ch. 1114 p1
The path Kin'emon planned for her is the one she follows. She met Denjirō in Kibi, passed through Bakura town and Amigasa in Kuri and has now arrived at the Prisoner's mine in Udon. Kidnappers and thieves have had nothing to do with where she's gone or what she's done.
There's further proof in this chapter's cover, because according to the last one, Yamato and the rest were "chasing the thief". However, after crossing a distance that took Chopper, Big Mom, et al almost two full days; there are only three options:
- The thief was slower and got captured. This clearly wasn't the case. And that says a lot about the thief considering Yamato is superpowerful overall and Speed is superfast.
- The thief was faster and escaped. So... How did they know where to look for him? Why would a thief come all the way from Udon to Amigasa to steal something he couldn't possibly know was there? It would make more sense to look for the thieve in Kuri.
- The thief and them ran all the way at similar speed and they stopped at Udon castle because the thief hid there. Then, why is Yamato looking elsewhere? It really seems as though she knows the thief is not in the castle, but then, why stop?
All this is just a ruse of plot convenience and nothing more. Here, in Udon, Yamato will meet yet another member of the 9 Red scabbards (I believe Kawamatsu, Kiku and Raizō are left), probably Raizō since here is where Ode found him in his original travel around Wano. Then she'll eat something or witness some other crime she'll pretend to care about just enough to keep entertaining us through this whole voyage.
Then Yamato will arrive at Enma's shrine in Hakumai where she's supposed to place Yasuie's katana for... some reason. But this doesn't make much sense actually. Placing that katana somewhere is the sole purpose of this voyage, however, Hakumai it's not the last stage of the route. There's Ringo left. IT would've made more sense to start in Ringo and tour around the country all the way to Hakumai being the last stop. Imagine, uninteresting as it is this first part of Yamato's pilgrimage, how the second part is going to be once there's not even a goal at the horizon. This alone is obvious enough for me, but there are more reasons to think Yasuie's katana won't end in the Enma shrine.
- It's the ENMA shrine, not whatever-the-name-of-Yasuie's-katana-is shrine. It has the same namesake as one of Oden's katana, now magically shrinked to fit Zoro's hand. Why does the shrine have that name is anyone's guess. Most likely it belonged to an idea that was dropped at some point. But the point remains. It makes no sense for some other katana to be given that place.
- Yes, Yasuie was the last daimyō of Hakumai, but, for some strange reason, Oda chose to, first, bury him in Kuri and then unearth his corpse and relocate it to Ringo.
Ch. 1052 p8
- They had a tradition in Ringo about marking the graves of the dead with their katana.
Thus, we come back to the question about the thief. It should be clear by now who it is. Someone who already stole a katana in front of Yasuie. Someone who had two jobs: Steal weapons and protect katana marking graves. Someone who was abruptly cut off the story for no reason (this is irrelevant yet worth reminding). That someone is none other than...
Ch. 1052 p8
And that's my hypothesis: Yamato will only find the thief (Onimaru) once she gets to the graveyard in Ringo where she'll also meet Kawamatsu who'll explain it all. The katana will be left there marking Yasuie's grave and then the pilgrimage will be finished having seen all the regions in the country.
What? Did you say something? Oh... hehe, the abductions you say? Well, you see... Oda will probably just pray so that once this cover story ends, you'll have forgotten about that part. ^_^" For now, Yamato is looking away knowing this is it for now.
So... about the actual chapter and all that.
Ch. 1132 p2 & p3
The Great Erik is about to arrive. At the bar, Colon asks whether they'll stop by and Broggy says no.
I was so so waiting for this. First of all, at this point you're plenty familiar with Nami's sword and other elements that disappear from panel to panel, right. Well... Given the shape of Elbaf (the island), is obvious that no matter where from, as long as a the view is a bit distant, the Adam tree will be seen. At least part of it.
Hahaha! First panel and Elbaf has no giant tree now! It vanished. Only the sky above or beyond the mountains. Great!
And now, we have a bar, a popular one among giants, in the so called Realm of the Dead: A prison, an execution ground, a place no one dares to approach where you'll find countless bones of giants and humans because the creatures in the woods kill them. But we have a bar here as well with kids even. There's no village. Not even close by, but we have a bar in the coast. The country is hostile towards... anyone who comes (proven because Saul said Elbaf giants were all savages and Shanks' subordinates all left when their boss did. Not one of them stayed once the yonko wasn't there to protect them.)
YES, there is a bar in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a place reserved for criminals to rot. OKAY, suppose it makes some sense. Why wouldn't Dorry and Broggy dock there? They're supposedly looking for Luffy and the next. In the case they had arrived at Elbaf, the lowest level should be the first one to be searched.
"Ripley" and "Colon's father" are mentioned in the second page as Colon leaves for the upper level of the tree. And since there's not much in the page, Shanks gets a panel because: why not?
How is the kid supposed to go up, though? He has to cross the woods and climb mountains full of murderous giant beasts first. Why is the manga acting like it's no big deal when just a chapter ago it told us it is a huge deal?
Ch. 1132 p4
There's a big rainbow coming out from the middle level of Adam and the Mugiwara are surprised that they're actually getting close to it. Broggy, on the other hand, acts like it's a very common thing and says someone has "painted" that rainbow with a "sun stone painter".
But first of all, I want to address a concept that introduced last chapter and will be emphasized later in this one: Elbaf is a massive island.
This is as false as it can be. There was a time when One Piece had islands, true islands, like Sandy (Arabasta), Drum, Gekko (Usopp's homeland) and possibly Dawn (Luffy's homeland), but all others1 have ranged from small to tiny and in the real world would be called "islets" for how small they are. Elbaf included.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can fit the whole width of the island in a single panel (or a very significant part of it for this matter) and still see recognizable buildings, let alone human-sized things, then that is a very small island. In this case, we can see half the island and the bar in the coast is recognizable. Let's imagine the bar has two floors with each one being twice the height of the tallest known giant, in this case Dorry at almost 23m. So, being very generous the bar would be 92m tall (way more than it actually surely is). Now you can take a ruler and do simple maths: Half the island is 24 times longer than the bar is tall. Therefore 92m✕24✕2=4,416m = 4.4 km. Elbaf is about four and a half kilometers wide. Usopp could cross it from one side to the opposite in an afternoon walk. I, myself, who am moderately fat and out of shape, can still run this distance in about half an hour. It'd take me less than two hours to run one lap around the whole island's coast. The whole island fits inside Central Falls (Rhode island) which is the smallest city in the USA. That makes for a very very tiny island. And I was generous with my calculations. So, bare this in mind the next time you read that Elbaf is massive.
Code:
Note 1: I'm excluding Wano because it simply makes no geographical sense. Inside it's drawn as though it's quite large, but then drawn from the outside as though it's tiny. The way characters move through it is also very inconsistent.And now, shall we talk about the rainbow? Let's talk about the rainbow!
As many other elements in this arc, the rainbow is borrowed from norse mythology, in which it's called Bifröst and it's exactly what we see here. A rainbow bridge used to cross between Midgard and Asgard (ie. between the land of humans and that of gods). Hence why sea level is being called the "realm of the dead" (because humans are mortal, so they eventually die) and the second level of the tree is called "realm of the sun" (because Oda is shoehorning "the Sun God" narrative at every chance in hope that we forget that Dorry and Broggy were originally fighting because it was a "demand of the God(s) of Elbaf" and they didn't spoke of the sun and were obsessed with it even less.)
But how does this bifröst fit into the One Piece world? Well, we'll work with what we get in this chapter and maybe we have enough to make a judgement or maybe we don't.
For starters, Brook's claim that he's never been so close to a rainbow is on point because it shouldn't be possible to get close to a rainbow. A rainbow is not an actual object occupying a specific place. A rainbow is only an image in your eyes. If you're on a vehicle while you see a rainbow and moving not towards it or away from it, you can check how the landscape moves but the rainbow remains in the same position as long as you don't move your eyes. It's because the rainbow is not "there", it's in your eyes.
A rainbow will always be centered at your antisolar point (ie. the point in your shadow where your eyes would be), so not only you can't get close to it because your shadow moves with you, but since different people are at a different position, different people see a different rainbow.
Also, Jinbē's question is relevant for the same reason: Rainbows are always perpendicular to your gaze. You won't ever see a rainbow that "appears" coming from a place closer to you than where it ends. Therefore, you can't see rainbows from "the side".
Conclusion, in real world, you can't approach a rainbow, and specially not from that angle. But this is not "the real world", it's One Piece, so, why does Oda have these two characters subtly point at this? Because it's still relevant.
Fantastic literature ranges between science-fiction and surrealism with respect to how the fantastic elements are treated in it. Science-fiction if there are only a finite number of fantastic elements all of which are "scientifically justified" even though that justification is obviously fictional, hence the name (eg, Star Trek). And surrealism if anything goes and there's no explanation whatsoever for anything (eg, Adventure Time).
The key of this spectre is that it defines how much can readers rely in what they're being told. If it's close to sci-fi, they know what the "rules of the game" are and based on that they can draw conclusions ad make guesses about implications and future development. If it's more surreal, then readers can enjoy the comedic nonsense going on and still appreciate allegories, subtext or morals of the story, but they can not take the literal story seriously, that's for sure. Hence why surreal works are almost exclusively comedies.
Early on and practically all of pre-time skip, One Piece was very close to sci-fi with some minor typical shonen tropes that are purely aesthetic like walls and ground always being crushed despite people's skulls do not and things like that being further into unchecked fantasy. But the fantastic elements that drive the story always had pseudo-scientific explanations2:
- Grand Line's navigation due to special magnetism of the islands.
- Kairōseki's effect on devil fruit users due to its intrinsic relation with the sea.
- Artificial drought as the result of rainfall being redirected somewhere else with the use of a smoke that helps condense water drops in the air.
- Dials not as magical sources but only as containers (even if they conveniently never run out when someone needs to use them).
- Super-powers all as result of "devil fruits", which are a finite set of unique elements with known mechanics and restrictions.
And this is exactly what starts happening in this page with Brook and Jinbē raising valid points only for Broggy answering "hey, it's no big deal". Compare this with an earlier similar plot device: The Knock-Up Stream. It was explained as a huge geyser. The only fantastic elements in it were exaggerated numbers: amount of water, height it could reach... something well within the base standards of shonen manga where people kick walls down and tank a sledge hammer's hit with so much as a bleeding eyebrow. And then Broggy one-ups the bullshit saying the bifröst is painted into existence with a stone. Okay, give me a break.
Code:
Note 2: In all honesty, pretty early in the manga there were some exceptions too. Miss Golden week fought using "Colors' Trap" and, although funny, that is complete nonsensical bullshit just like most of the writing these days.You have in your hand a stone that paints magic, solid and navigable rainbows?
Then why the hell didn't you (or anyone else for this matter) ever used one??? I mean, right out of the top of my head, one such rainbow would have been useful for the Mugiwara pirates to solve their problem in Egghead regarding how to get down from the Labo-stratum. I'm quite sure it would have been useful too in avoiding that silly mist that put all of you to sleep and you knew it was there beforehand. Why did no one ever consider using a "sun stone painter"?
Why isn't it known around the world? You sell Adam tree wood. Why wouldn't you sell rainbow painters? Why would "sun stone painters" be unique to Elbaf?
Ch. 1132 p5
The Great Erik approaches the rainbow and climbs it. Franky and Robin also question how that is possible and Broggy further explains while Dorry laughs.
I like how Broggy warns the Mugiwara pirates to hold onto something as the ships is about to rotate 90º upwards and otherwise they'll fall, but not Broggy, Dorry, other giants and certainly not a single Mugiwara hold onto anything as the ship does just that and no onw falls or is even drawn like they lost their footing at all.
As I said, there was no need to include Broggy making us aware of that detail, yet after making us, Oda proceeds to completely disregard it in the very same page. He's rubbing it in our faces. If Broggy hadn't said anything, most readers wouldn't even notice. But Oda wants us to notice. To notice he doesn't give a shit about a single thing he's writing any more.
The rainbow meets the sea at a 90º angle. The ship can't just do what it appears to do in the right panel of the middle row. It should just crash against the rainbow, or get through it, ¿who knows? We're can't possibly know what the rainbow is because the author doesn't want us.
Robin asks about this. A rainbow is just refracted light, so what are they actually sailing on? And here come Dorry and Broggy, who are nothing more than Oda's avatars right now: "What're you talking about? Rainbows are meant to be crossed!" Translation: "Hey! I'm making all this shit up on a week to week basis. Did you really expect me to write something that makes sense? to have explanations? Details? Hell no! Shut up, turn your brain off and give me your money!"
Ch. 1132 p6_7
This double page... Well, it's just to make a beautiful drawing of the Great Erik sailing the rainbow. Other than that it has some characters all of which disguise themselves as Captain Obvious and add nothing of value. But really, what is the rainbow made of? Is it solid? And that's why it has a specific shape; or is it liquid? And that's why the ship can sink a little bit on it and sail through it. ¿?
OK. Let's assume the ship can turn 90º upwards on the spot. Are we really supposed to buy that some tail wind is going to bring the ship up just because "rainbow currents" offer no resistance??? Again what we discussed before. Will the Merry sail the Knock-Up Stream? Then it'll need a huge burst below it that lifts it and gives it a lot of momentum, a very strong upward wind that keeps it going and be remodeled with wings. But hey, the Great Erik can sail upwards just because. Apparently some tail wind (one so weak that wouldn't even disturb a liquid rainbow that offers NO resistance) beats gravity any day of the week.
By the way, despite the "no resistance" thing being a good thing for sailing by wind, it would be terrible for doing so by rowing as Broggy says. Because that same "no resistance" would make the rows go through the rainbow as though there were nothing, therefore completely failing at moving the ship forward.
Even worse. This "no resistance" feature of the rainbow makes it impossible to navigate because it renders the rudder useless, making it impossible to steer the ship. Therefore, unless the rainbow is strictly a straight line, the ship gets on it perfectly parallel to it and there's no wind ("tail wind" hehe) that can push the ship to one side even if just a little, the ship is going to leave the rainbow at one side at some point exactly the same way bowling balls do if you're not good enough at throwing them.
So, near 100% of times, taking this bifröst should result in ships jumping off it at a very bad moment and shipwrecking near the coast of Elbaf. But hey, these giants take it like it's nothing. They don't even have to make the smallest of efforts to sail the rainbow safely. It just happens magically.
In any case, I'd be willing to buy this "no resistance" characteristic if we had at least had some explanation about WHAT is the rainbow made of given it's clearly not light.
So... How can it be painted? I mean, I know the answer already: It can't be painted.
- Where does the matter that makes up the rainbow come from? It's supposedly "painted" with a stone, not magically created through a devil fruit's ability.
- Does the stone painter lose matter as it paints a rainbow? Like an actual pencil. It doesn't look like such a small stone (as the one Broggy showed) could dissolve into that massive rainbow.
- Talking about size, even if the stone didn't had to decompose into the rainbow, how can that rainbow be painted with that stone? It's very wide (the rainbow, I mean).
- Considering the rainbow is painted on air, how come the sun stone painters isn't permanently painting? What makes the stone paint or not paint? I didn't see a cap on it?
- Does the painter have to invoke the painting? Like shouting "Paint me a bridge, oh mighty sun stone!"
- How is the rainbow painted at all? Does someone have to rub the air with the stone and the rainbow starts magically appearing? Or do they throw the stone and the rainbow magically appears along the trajectory? It makes no sense either way.
Also, as the rainbow it is, its surface is perpendicular to sea level at all points, meaning it always has the same "position" as a wall. It's never a floor. However, in the last panel it's clearly seen the rainbow is acting as a floor. How is that possible??
Ch. 1132 p8
Back at the rope bridge, Luffy suddenly appears there, maybe as a result of a Gomu Gomu no Rocket, sees the Thousand Sunny and falls in Gerd's hands. And she immediately tries to appear non-associated with Rodo.
Only thing I want to point out here is: In the first panel, Gerd doesn't have her axe in her back. Goldberg doesn't have his club either. In the big panel Gerd does have her axe. No one is surprised I think. At this point this is just a staple of the arc.
Post is too long, so, the rest is in another one!