Ok, I bitched in the spoilers thread going on by just a single picture. Gotta say. . .the end chapter was much better than expected. I actually "felt" things during it.
No, seriously. This is not the same chapter we've been running, I mean, reading for the past two months. We finally got to the Officers entering the fray, something that was much needed. Guys like Dellinger greatly benefited from this chapter. Got their fighting abilities explored and their threat level increased. That's what the Colosseum fighters I expected to be there for: hype the Officers.
BUT, while doing that, Oda still presented the Colosseum fighters as capable beings, so except Suleiman who got taken out, we see them get up after being beaten by the, apparently so far, stronger Officers, and even offer a coordinated battle formation, captained by non other than Dagama, who got a couple of nice moments thrown in too. They threw off their own selfs and paved the way for Luffy.
Just that sold the chapter for me, and made it stand far above these last weeks stuff.
And since I'm happy with very little, concerning One Piece, I'm super biased, I know. . .I actually liked Bian being useful for the second time. Something I'm still expecting Leo and Kabu, the other two DF user dwarves, to be. Useful.
Actually, I feel like every scene in this chapter did a much competent job at "having a point" than the last chapters put togheter. The scene with the citizens? Had a point. Scene with the dwarves? Had a point. Bellamy and Dofla scene? Had a point. Kyros dialogue? Had a point.
The only thing that dragged was repeating AGAIN the "get over the horse/cow cause we're over-capacity", which is getting a bit old. Law did sneak in a good funny comment regarding that, though, which made it a bit better overall.
TL;DR: Not the best chapter ever, but much better than the past 4-5 chapters. Officers doing stuff while not completely undermining Colosseum's bunch worth, dwarves doing something, citizens puting the cards on the table concerning what they plan to do, finally the issue with defenseless Usopp and Riku being out there in the open is brought up and given future possible consequences, and Dofla is given some sort of foreshadowed bigger scheme of things.
Now, if we could've gotten to this chapter 2-3 weeks ago. . . .