Would be a five star chapter…
… but I don’t like Saul surviving. Yes, I can make sense of it. Giants are especially tough, he’s a D, Ice Time Capsule + fire = thawed but scarred, but I’m not a fan of it. With Olvia and Clover and the others staying dead it’s not completely enraging, but it is a disappointing. And I really liked Saul.
Germa cover story is back to boring with the Blackbeards gone.
I did find it a bit odd to realise that while we readers knew about Ohara and their theory, the other Strawhats never actually got told. But yeah, jumped back to check, she just vaguely talked about how Ohara was destroyed. So that’s pretty excusable, especially to remind casual readers of what was being talked about.
Vegapunk’s obviously discovered too much, maybe his latest thing he wants the Strawhats to see, and that’s why he’s getting assassinated now.
The books in the lake are a checkovs gun that’s finally been fired, so that’s pretty cool. Looks like Hajrudin and his crew helped Saul? Hopefully Oda’s finally going to start following through on Dragon’s hype now. So he had some freedom fighters but hated war? Vegapunk’s design is lol, but his motiviation of greed plus decent Navy men is a decent one. Perhaps a founder of Sword, if not the founder?
Definitely off to Elbaf next then, as is Kid and maybe Law, since Saul’s the man marked by flames. If they gathered the Ohara books I think they probably gathered the FI Poneglyph for safekeeping as well.
Is Quaser a character or is it a speech tick that old Vegapunk had but young didn’t? I think a character, maybe the robot, but it’s oddly done.
Seems we’re in line for quite a chunk of exposition chapters, which perhaps explains why Oda stuck in the start of Blackbeard vs Law.