Does no one find it odd that Oda is releasing unfinished work? He could have easily waited another week and announced a break again. He did not do so and I am wondering why… .
The only reason that comes to my mind is, if he does it, because he needs to meet a deadline. If so, than I am wondering, why he is not adapting that deadline and is rescheduling it for later.
Unless Oda cannot reschedule it, because we as the reader know of the deadline - because he already has announced it somehow.
And the only times Oda hints to what the next year will hold plot-wise, is in his Festa-letter from December 2022. He told us there that we would get to see a fight between that person and that person and that this fight would utmost surprise us. I haven’t seen that surprising fight as of now and I think the next chapters will have us seeing Oda deliver on that. Maybe Oda is waiting until chapter 1100, because we know him liking to put important scenes into the chapters ending with “00”.
And yes, if Oda wants to show us that fight, he needs to at least hurry up, or we have still not arrived there until he will have to release the next Festa-letter during December again.
I think I have a very good guess as to who those two fighters will be.
To the chapter:
We actually can pull quite a bit of information out of it.
We can see for example that Oda is already hinting of what is coming next: “I’m afraid it’s simply terminal, going by our current scientific understanding of it.” This “[…] current scientific understanding […]” is what the doctor told Kuma is the reason Bonney cannot be cured. So, one way or another Kuma’s path will lead him to Vegapunk, because he is the only one, who is ahead of `todays´science.
Bonney not meeting Vegapunk before she was at least 5, lets us relatively easy deduct when Atlas became one of the Satellites. Because, Bonney didn’t seem to believe her as she introduced herself as a Vegapunk in chapter 1062, calling it a lie – mentally. This means that Atlas (Vegapunk 5) has not been a Vegapunk 7 years ago. And because 6 comes after 5, the same goes for York. She too, has not been a Satellite 7 years ago.
This also means that York and Atlas were not present, when the Stellar did that trip to Mary Gioise to meet the 5-Elders back after he had won that “Ibell-price” during “Germa 66’s Cold-blooded voyage vol. 31”. He only shared that memory with York as he asked her, if she could remember how cruel the Celestial Dragons were back then.
In fact, even Lilith telling Luffy that she had never left the island of Egghead in chapter 1090 tells us that the Satellites are a very recent invention of the Stellar and `joined´ shortly one after the other. Because Vegapunk had previously resided on Punk Hazard only mere 4 years ago.
So, whatever the Satellites are, they are recently build or joined recently and have not been around 4 years prior.
The only exception would be Shaka – he seems to be the spokesman of the Satellites or some kind of leader to them. He actually could have been with Vegapunk much longer than the others.
I wonder if that piercing of Bonney has something to do with her “face-stones” disappearing and her illness being cured or held at bay.