Act Three starts on a high with Oden's flashback. With the amount of continuity Oda had to tie together and the number of loose ends that needed resolving in Oden's flashback, it's a goddamn miracle he found the time to tell an actual story and make Oden such an interesting character on top of it all. And he really does commit hard to the idea. Oden had a lot of hype to live up to, so instead of getting right to the critical parts of his life, the flashback opens slow, spending three whole chapters on this mini arc with the Mountain God to give Oden and the version of Wano he grew up in space to breathe before the plot picks up. These are the kinds of choices that can suck reading week to week but strengthen the story immeasurably on the archive binge.
When I was taking mental notes and jotting down reviews for Reddit's Wano reread, I wanted to praise this part of the story for giving us a warts and all account of the society that existed before Orochi, with poverty, xenophobia, organised crime and a whole lawless state to give the land an unsavoury underbelly. I thought the same of Oden himself - though he's charasmatic and never cruel, his list of crimes paint a picture of chaos and destruction caused both through outright selfishness and through good intentions gone wrong. He has virtues, but he also has serious flaws that directly lead to his and his nation's downfall. These kinds of things give a definite flavour to Wano's history, making it feel real and developed, and feel like they should set up some contrast and growth in the epilogue. How does Momo influence his society to make it fairer and kinder than what it had been? If Yamato is to walk in Oden's footsteps, how does he make sure to avoid his idol's mistakes and set right what the Oden of the past could not? There's a lot of squandered potential in Oda deciding not to follow up on either of these things.
But all that said, Oden's story, taken just on its own terms, makes for a great tragedy. Two of Oden's biggest flaws we're introduced to at the start of the flashback are that he's trusting and that he doesn't explain his actions. But these traits earn him admiration and allies when he starts out. Most of the Scabbards are pretty awful people when he first meets them, stealing, scamming, attacking and harassing people, but he takes a chance on each of them and trusts them all the same. He was constantly lending money to the younger, less powerful Orochi. When Whitebeard offers a deal to let him on the ship that anyone else would dismiss as impossible, he jumps at it. Even at the very end he asks for deal for a fighting chance at his execution and just has to hope Orochi sets a survivable amount of time and keeps to his word.
And of course there are no explanations offered for anything he does. It's one of the first things said about him, after he eats over that one guy's funeral pyre. He's constantly leaving his retainers and companions behind to rush into fights without warning. He offers no excuse for letting go of the chain behind Whitebeard's ship, not even trying the completely true reason that he only did it to save Toki.
But then the trusting nature that earned him his Red Scabbards sees him falling for a deal the older Orochi never intended to honour. And his inability to explain himself keeps anyone from intervening in that obviously doomed arrangement and raising a proper rebellion while the samurai and yakuza were still at full power. Oden taking Orochi's deal to dance in the streets was a terrible decision on his part, no denying that, but Oda spent a lot of time establishing Oden as the kind of man who would take a bogus deal at face value and not explain it to any of the people around him who would see through the bullshit. It's painful to watch because there are so many small choices that could have changed the course of history, but Oden simply wasn't built to take those paths.
But the inverse of this, I think, is the Scabbards, who instead go through a redemption arc. Where Oden's first impression is conflicted, most of the Scabbards are genuine bastards when we first meet them. Petty thieves, con artists, kidnappers of women, stealers of hair, whatever the hell Ashura Doji had going on. The ones who begin as adults are horrible, and the younger ones - Kiku, Izo, Kawamatsu, Inu and Neko - are all impoverished or persecuted, caught in the kinds of circumstances that could easily have left them growing up embittered. The introductions to these characters stand in stark contrast to the committed, honour-driven warriors of the present, save for Ashura Doji, who did a full backslide in 20 years but will soon redeem himself. Oden has no interest in picking or training retainers and forces nothing on them, but his presence pulls them up from the bottom rung of society and inspires them to better themselves and be part of something larger all the same.
While Oden barrels toward his ultimate end, his retainers are reforged into the people they'll need to be to avenge him years in the future.
The one criticism there really is to make against Whitebeard and Roger chapters is the absolutely terrible choice to attach the uncanny valley Arashi cross-promo colour spread to the pivotal Laugh Tale chapter. One of the series' best moments paired with probably its outright worst colour spread. Oden's final moments are also paired with a promo colour spread, but at least the Hungry Days one actually looks alright.
And there are a few continuity struggles in the larger flashback. Back in Act One, there's an indication of a clash between Ashura Doji and Kaido during the escape from Oden's execution that's never shown onscreen here. Shinobu's introduction felt to me like it was saying she'd always been close to the Scabbards, but the flashback shows her only joining at the end. And the knowledge that Oden would have had to dive down to reach the Lode Poneglyph (to see it without passing through where Sukiyaki was imprisoned) feels like it should at least have warranted a mention. But considering how much needed to be in this flashback, it's an accomplishment that these are the worst of the inconsistencies.
Wano, we can see now with the benefit of hindsight, follows a three act structure. The introduction establishes heroes, villains, supporting cast and setting in a streamlined form and ends with the heroes getting a plan together to face the villains. The middle part follows the attempts to get that plan together as it's struck by setbacks and diversions one after the other while the story digs deeper into character and setting. Around the end of the second act or start of the third there's a darkest hour where it seems all is lost and the heroes' goals have become unachievable. But then the cast rallies, the cavalry comes, and an altered version of the plan comes together, and there's a climactic action set piece that stills offers challenges to the heroes but generally maintains an upward momentum from the darkest hour. It's standard stuff.
Problem is, that third act battle is generally made short and punchy, rapidly calling back and completing plot threads one after the other. Wano's Act Three is not that. Wano's Act Three is more than half the arc. The darkest hour works because it because it's right before the finale - the reader gets a rollercoaster dip of despair followed by a rush of hope and catharsis. When your finale is so bloated it pushes the darkest hour back almost to the first third of the story's overall length, people start to wonder where it is when they do get closer to the end. And that's not to say nothing goes wrong for the heroes at Onigashima - there are plenty of points in the different battles where the guy we're rooting for is on the backfoot, Luffy is seemingly down and out for good several times, and the prevention of the fire, the virus and the falling island all come right down to the wire - but there's no real point where everything seems to go wrong at once the way it did when the Scabbards arrived at that empty harbour.
But there was a lot that makes the raid fun to read despite its structural wonkiness, especially in this first half of it. The Kanjuro reveal coming out of the flashback is great. There was enough foreshadowing that it made perfect sense in hindsight and leaves plenty of things through out a bunch of past arcs that gain new meaning on reread, but it was never so obvious that the reveal had no impact. I can't think of any way the build up and reveal could have been better executed.
There's thematic consistency through the whole act as well. The first cut down the capital's festival really lays out the thesis statement of Luffy as a protagonist. He's not out to help countries, he's here to help his friends. Tama sealed the deal for Wano when she fed him and it was revealed she only gets decent food twice a year. And her wants represent the nation's wants. The people here say things like "I wish this day would never end" and "Won't have another drop to drink for an entire year once this festival's over" and "today's the day when everyone can speak their dreams aloud." Like Tama, they don't usually get to eat, drink and speak freely. Luffy promised Tama she would be able to eat like she did when she met him every single day. Here we see what every day is going to look like for the rest of Wano too.
In contrast to that, the big theme of Kaido's group is set up in chapter 987 when Kaido warns the Scabbards that pirates would surely betray them. I've seen people who somehow think that this is foreshadowing that didn't pay off, or something that "Oda forgot," saying it should have ended with Luffy's alliance falling apart in some way or conflict between the Supernova group, but that's all nonsense. This idea of pirates and betrayal is Kaido's philosophy, shown everywhere among his crew through the duration of the fight. This isn't the arc's villain telling us how the story will go - it's him setting up the ideology that the heroes will have to prove wrong to win.
Kaido's backstory starts with betrayal. He becomes a pirate after being sold out by his nation as a political pawn. He rises through the criminal underworld via Rocks' crew, which has repeatedly been stated to be a hotbed of infighting and conflict. The crew he runs today is a ruthless meritocracy where officers bear grudges against each other and eye off each others' positions, licking their lips. Good performance is rewarded with an opportunity to challenge a superior in single combat for their position. Who's Who lures Drake into a trap by telling him that he wants help killing another officer, something that should be suicidally stupid to do during an unprecedented attack on their base, but the lie is believable enough to work. I don't think Drake is stupid, I think that's just how bad things are in this group. The higher ups treat the rank and file like dirt and sacrifice them unfeelingly. When King's race is revealed, he feels the need to slaughter his own men because they were tempted by the reward for info about him (even though that reward would be a fraction of his actual bounty). A business partner of twenty years is executed without a second thought. Even between Kaido and Big Mom, when she asks where his Poneglyph is he assumes the worst and accuses her "showing her hand" with the question. This murder and backstabbery and ladder climbing is all Kaido's ever known, and it's the world he's made for those who follow him. It's certainly the world he would make for everyone, if he got to be Joyboy and start the final war he's always going on about.
And somewhat ironically, Kaido, who does nothing but push the idea of betrayal, is rewarded with turncoats and traitors at every turn. Yamato, Drake, most Gifters and a significant portion of the Waiters and Pleasures on the Live Floor all turn to the enemy, while Apoo and Inbi save their own skins instead of fighting to the bitter end. Big Mom takes out one of his high level officers while a spurned Orochi tries to burn his castle down. Meanwhile the alliance holds firm to hope and remains loyal to each other through all the battle's highs and lows.
Kaido says betrayal is inevitable while building a culture that does nothing but encourage it. He is betrayed. Luffy offers trust and commits everything to confirming his trustworthiness. He gains allies as he goes, and loses none save for Kanjuro.
Sticking to the raid's positives, I absolutely love Onigashima as a setting. The spread where we first see the harbour in front of the skull dome is breathtaking, and Oda's commitment to the island as a grounded, consistent place is spectacular. The floor plan is intricate, but Oda sticks to it like glue. There are few if any scenes that couldn't reasonably be placed on a map, characters take reasonable amounts of time to move from one end of the structure to the other, and when the battle on the Performance Floor topples one of the structures there or blows a whole in the main castle wall, that damage remains and can be seen consistently in every shot you would expect to show it. That tower Zoro cuts down a few chapters into the invasion is a great one to make a note of because it's huge, easy to spot, and always exactly where it should be. The slow destruction of the island's interior over the course of the battle has incredible continuity.
The Tobi Roppo are a set of fantastic character designs and entertaining personalities. Oda does a good job of building the Gifters and lower-ranked officers as a force that's formidable enough to slow down even Luffy and Zoro thanks to their large number and unpredictable powers without it making the heroes, who would easily overpower them in a fair fight, look weak or incompetent. Big Mom's appearance on the Live Floor with all her new homies makes her look like a real terror. Kaido's beheading of Orochi still manages to work as a shocking escalation of stakes, even if we have enough evidence to believe that won't be enough to end him. The Strawhats getting to pose as a team is well-earned and super satisfying after they were apart for so long. The Scabbards' doomed rooftop battle with Kaido looks absolutely spectacular, and the moment the tide turns against them is shocking and scary.
Kaido lifting the whole island is such an unexpected and visually striking way to do Oda's beloved ticking clock trope. Kaido's dragon form is an artistic triumph for Oda every time it's onscreen. The scale of it, the intimidating presence, the amount of detail present in every panel, the way its body snakes through the scene to frame the action, it's all incredible. The effort to ink in so many scales every single time is beyond belief.
Even things that seemed slow and frustrating week to week, like Luffy's climb up the castle, are pretty swift on a reread. Luffy's ascent and the random Gifters his group encounters on the way up are a series of fun vignettes we go back and forth to as the larger battle develops. Luffy running around is never the only thing happening and when you can just turn the page instead of waiting a week it's easy to see how minor an issue the climb was.
The Supernovas' rooftop fight is one of the series' all-time best battles. The spectacle of how powerful all these pirates have become and the scale of the battle blow me away every time I look back over those chapters. Kid's scrap mech joins Kaido's dragon form in being a straight up flex on Oda's part for its level of detail and the number of panels it appears in. And the sequence stands out thanks to more than three consecutive chapters without a scene break, when Oda is usually so quick to jump the POV around. He wanted this battle to matter, and it absolutely does. Perfect scores, and probably Wano's all time highlight.
The operation to separate Kaido and Big Mom trades the spectacle of the first half of the fight for cleverness as the group uses their unique skills to fight as a team. Zoro getting his big hit in and Luffy discovering his new Haki to clash without touching are both incredibly cool moments.
I also think Orochi's two "revivals" work well. Constantly slipping away from apparent deaths is totally in-character for him, and being able to lose multiple heads is a predictable ability for his fruit. If you're paying close enough attention to count the heads, you even know he's coming back after the Scabbards hit him and are just waiting for the reveal. He's the kind of villain you love to hate.
Sanji is a surprise favourite in the back half of the raid. I haven't been a fan of how he's been handled since the timeskip, with his least appealing traits cranked up to eleven. After Whole Cake Island put him in the spotlight and failed to address any of his weaknesses I'd given up hope, but Oda confronts the weakness he showed at Ennies Lobby head on and demonstrates actual character development from the Sanji that tried to drive the crew away to solve an impossible problem himself at WCI. He even takes a long hard look at himself after and assesses what parts of himself he's willing to sacrifice to be a better asset to Luffy, managing to make quite the character moment out of destroying the Raid Suit. I'm on every level pleasantly surprised. I haven't been this happy with Sanji's role in an arc literally since he was Mr Prince.
The fire in the castle is a great plot device that makes for the arc's most underrated ticking clock. You can chart its spread floor by floor from chapter to chapter, and because Oda's been so consistent about who's in the castle and on what floor, you know who's in danger and get to see the hazard funnel different sets of characters together as it consumes more and more of the structure. I also happen to really like the way Oda draws flames, so the panels filled with them look great. The solution to the problem with Zou's rain water and Raizo's power is legitimately really clever as well. If I had to nitpick, I would say it might have been better to let Kawamatsu do the water redirection instead of Jinbe, given how lacking he is of a moment to call his own, but that's not a huge deal.
And while I'm sure not everyone will agree, I think Tama's power and plan are well-handled. It's very Oda to have the strongest creature's fearsome beast army be undercut by a little girl with the right power. The fears that she would invalidate the whole battle were assuaded with clever restrictions - it only works on Gifters (making up only 1,000 of the 30,000 enemies) and she needs to verbally give an order that they can all hear before it takes effect. Far from an easy win, the whole thing takes more than 20 chapters to implement and is unable to keep the battle from raging for another 30 chapters after it's done.