Chapter 1109: Interception

[Deicide]

Chapter is out!

https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1020362

BREAK NEXT WEEK
Next chapter comes March 17th

[Logia]

Cover series is finally back yay!

Unfortunate that the message is being dragged out.

The rest of the elders showing up??

[The Franky Tank]

As soon as we started seeing reactions around the world for people getting ready to see/hear the announcement, I knew nothing of note was going to be said, and with the other elders arriving, it's going to be a little longer yet. With everything presented in this chapter, my previous theory feels like it will be mostly bunk, since it would've taken them time to get everything put together, so more recent information in the world probably would not have occurred yet. With Oda withholding the information from readers, there needs to be some sort of payoff involved. If all this happens and nothing major is revealed, then the weekly readers are going to not be happy prolonging a nothing announcement.

One major question that will need to be answered is where was York during all of this. IF she was present, seemed like something she would have mentioned when sending the info to the Elders. Then again, the fact her functions were more for sleeping, eating, and using the bathroom, can be easy to assume she was in a long phase being away to not be there. Or she happened to be away from Egghead during that time.

[electricmastro]

@Logia said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Cover series is finally back yay!

Unfortunate that the message is being dragged out.

The rest of the elders showing up??

They delay is prob the excuse Oda looked for to show off more of the Elders' devil fruit designs and moves.

[Rean]

Interesting that Vivi wants to know where Luffy is going next.. She might be meeting them again sooner than I expected.

[Deicide]

We still need to see if Oda will follow through, but as of 1109's ending, the tension went through the roof!

• The vice-admirals are targetting Bonney while all named giants went to other places. Only Franky and Atlas are there with her.

• The Sunny is approaching the cloud's end and can't stop to wait for everyone. Whoever is not there, wont be picked up.

• Zoro is still busy with Lucci. Jinbe is on the way, but both are likely to miss the Sunny. And Labophase is about to be targetted anyway...

• Vegapunk's heart stopped, so he he's at death's door.

• Kizaru may be torn by his own emotions, but we all know he's not defeated yet.

• 5 Elders just came in. Even if Luffy is able to hold them, can G5 last for 5 minutes against foes that can't be harmed?

We went from the heroes having the clear advantage to them now being overwhelmed while the villains regroup and counterattack. The heroes need something to even the odds. "Evening the odds" is important here, it can't be the inversal of odds we've seen with the Buster Call, or else the tension is busted again.

And escaping is not the objective anymore. The Straw Hats may not know it yet, but the goal now is to hold the line for 10 minutes.

Let's see how that will play out. But color me happy with this outcome!

This arc is clearly going to be longer than people expected. I was counting on that, thought. The difference is that I thought the Seraphim would be released. Having 4 more Elders and forcing the heroes to not run away has an even better effect!

[cavendishsama]

Is the first time we've seen time zones in One Piece? It's night time in Water 7, Marijoa, Kamabakka and day time elsewhere. Definitely the first time I've noticed it, though tbf I guess there's not that many 'around the world' sequences that have to necessarily have happened at the same time

[electricmastro]

When did Onigashima start sinking towards Ancient Wano?

[Deicide]

Death glare, paralysis, regeneration, weakening touch, telepathy, summoning...

Even before Saturn landed on Egghead I was suspecting that they'd be not be strong in the same physical sense as the Emperors, but rather they'd be like "sorcerers" with powerful spells.

What we need to ask now is: how those powers work? What are their origins? What are their weaknesses? Is this another level to zoan DFs? Since we are talking "devil" fruits, maybe theres a level of understanding that turns the user more into a "devil" himself? Is this some new form of haki? Can super-duper observation send thoughts? Could armament grow to a point you regenerate? I dunno, this feels like the worst explanation. Or is this actual magic?

Mind you, we've seen magic in One Piece before. Hawkins' powers can't be explained by his DF alone. Think about how he can seal others' lives into his straw puppets to ward off damage from himself. Or how his wickerman gains new powers as he draws cards.

Isn't that somewhat similar to what the Elders do? What if they regenerate because they are stealing slaves' lives in Mary Geoise? What if they can read each other's thoughts because they are a coven of warlocks?

[The Light of Shandora]

Wow Manga+ added German to the simulpub.
That's a huge investment from Carlsen, I wonder why it took them so long, but I'm glad it's here.
Not sure if I am making the switch though, Stephens is the version I'm used to for years.

New cover story is Wano as expected, but we don't know who we will follow. With so many unanswered questions, I do hope that the cover story focuses on multiple protagonist, similar to the Grandfleet.

Chapter itself is cool, action is nice, its goofy and Luffy seems to be on top of his game.
Vegapunk has to be dead, at least the OG and all the others are still alive, so how are they all connected? The first page shows what I assume is an electrocardiogram. It's flat, so he has to be dead, right?
Anyways the summoning of the other 4 Elders makes me wonder, who summoned Saturn to Egghead, or was he able to do so because he was already close by?
Something must be able to hurt them, at the moment I'm going with that all of them are some weird form of projection, similar to the force ghost of Luke in Starwars 10.

[electricmastro]

@The-Light-of-Shandora said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

New cover story is Wano as expected, but we don't know who we will follow. With so many unanswered questions, I do hope that the cover story focuses on multiple protagonist, similar to the Grandfleet.

Would be surprised if Oda didn't pick Yamato to frame the story more, given how she's traveling around.

[Mr. Prinz]

@The-Light-of-Shandora I read the german version first, then the english one.
They got Antje Bockel, the official translator for the german volumes, so I cannot pass on this!

[Sengokusgoat]

@Rean She was there in Little Garden and knows Dorry and Broggy, so I think it's pretty likely she'll be there for Elbaf.

I love how even Saturn can't be certain of a death that he witnessed with his own eyes. He's just like us.

I think this chapter does a lot to justify Vegapunk's position of working within the system. It's because he's a well-respected public figure that his words carry much more weight with the people than Dragon's ever could.

[electricmastro]

@Sengokusgoat said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Rean She was there in Little Garden and knows Dorry and Broggy, so I think it's pretty likely she'll be there for Elbaf.

I love how even Saturn can't be certain of a death that he witnessed with his own eyes. He's just like us.

I think this chapter does a lot to justify Vegapunk's position of working within the system. It's because he's a well-respected public figure that his words carry much more weight with the people than Dragon's ever could.

Morgans has links with Stussy. Stussy being with the Straw Hats would be a great way for Vivi to track where they are and possibly meet up at Elbaf.

[Deicide]

• I was wondering if Morgan's HQ could be hovering near Egghead, but this chapter confirms they don't have sight of what's happening there and are relying on navy communications alone.

  Vivi planning to go where the crew would be is a very expected action, I was just wondering if she could be nearby already or even have a role in this arc. This chapter makes those possibilities unlikely.

• Dragon's panel is really ambiguous. It has no background, and the lines in front of him could be interpreted as either light from the projected screen or as movement lines. Likewise, is he reacting to the broadcast, or unaware of it but thinking about Vegapunk by coincidence?

  (Oh, and @StrawHatJedi called my attention to the sfx in Dragon's panel, which I had ignored. In the official translation, they imply there's people talking around him, making it even more clear he's still with the Revolutionaries.)

  The problem is how Oda set this up. I just don't find it possible for Dragon to appear in Egghead, except if he or someone in the RA can teleport. There's a 10-minute countdown, and Dragon was last unambiguously seen in Kamabakka, on the other side of the Red Line, when Kuma arrived in Egghead.

  Moreover, Kuma, with the fastest non-teleport travel we know so far in the series, took several hours to travel from Mary Geoise to Egghead. We saw he leaving MG during the past day (and it wasn't nighttime), so it took him the whole night, since he arrived in the morning. For Dragon to arrive within 10 minutes, he'd need to move dozens of times faster than Kuma.

  I made this calculation in Twitter to show how absurd would be Dragon coming: Let's pretend OP world has Earth's circunference (40,075 km). Suppose Egghead is near the mid point of New World, so from Mary Geoise to there you travel 1/4 of the circunference (10,018.75 km). To reach there in 10 min, you need to move at 60,112.5 km/h, or 37,352.18 miles/h.

  That's over Mach 48! Since people expect Dragon to have wind powers: the fastest recorded wind on Earth reached just 253 miles/h. In the whole solar system, the fastest estimated wind was in Neptune, reaching 1,600 miles/h.

  Really, if Dragon shows up, then either he can teleport or Oda will make the biggest asspull in the entire series.

• Chapter 1110 is likely Vol. 109's ender, so expect a huge reveal or cliffhanger at its conclusion.

[King Cannon]

@Deicide said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

I made this calculation in Twitter to show how absurd would be Dragon coming: Let's pretend OP world has Earth's circunference (40,075 km). Suppose Egghead is near the mid point of New World, so from Mary Geoise to there you travel 1/4 of the circunference (10,018.75 km). To reach there in 10 min, you need to move at 60,112.5 km/h, or 37,352.18 miles/h.

That's over Mach 48! Since people expect Dragon to have wind powers: the fastest recorded wind on Earth reached just 253 miles/h. In the whole solar system, the fastest estimated wind was in Neptune, reaching 1,600 miles/h.

This goes without saying and I don't expect Dragon to show up anyway, but Oda is not beholden to normal physics, otherwise Kizaru would be impossible to react to.

He could definitely make Dragon move at absurdly fast speeds if he so wanted. If anything, it would be the impressive feat that Dragon could use at some point

[Deicide]

@King-Cannon The calculation is more to convince people who still think Dragon is showing up despite the story showing him in Kamabakka again and again.

When Kuma takes hours to reach Egghead, it's absurd to expect Dragon to do the same in minutes. If Dragon had such a capability, some moments in the flashback would be different (like when Kuma responded to a distress call from another island, but Dragon couldn't).

[Chams 0]

I loved the little detail of Fuchsia Village not having a visual snail, because it is so expensive and it needs constant feeding. It really shows the limits of applying Vegapunk’s techs to the rest of the world. There is an engineering barrier and an economic one to produce stuff everywhere.

The countdown makes me sure that the Elders will somehow intercept the ending of the message. It will be the same as Clover’s announcement, the revelation will be cool but cut short. Maybe even cut at the same point, the name.

[Deicide]

Some don't like Vegapunk giving himself 10 minutes instead of broadcasting the message over and over.

Yeah, I get it, it's dumb. But it feels in-character. Vegapunk is a genius, but he's also short-sighted and perfectionist. He wants to put up a show to everyone simultaneously.

[Nectar]

I finally understand why Oda had Dorry and Broggy heading for Luffy's location even though he (and Sanji) didn't need help against Saturn and Kizaru. Might even throw in the Ancient Robot if it can fully activate and fight.

I'm still waiting for York's time to shine. Maybe not in this arc but there's too much potiential having an evil Vegapunk for her not to be important later in the story.

@Deicide
For now, I like to think the Elders all have devil fruits that are the inverse of God fruits. Basically, Demon devil fruits.

[electricmastro]

Do you guys think the Elders could summon Garling and his God's Knights to back them up too?

[Cockycent]

Still feel like a lot of this is going away from Bonney and centering back around VP. Not saying Bonney/Kuma has nothing left to explore. Just the immediate conflict as of now is back to this guy and his "escape" isn't priority. His message getting out is more important.

I was a bit surprised, but not really surprised when WB said the others should escape while he said there's no ship to take him into the new age. I can see VP passing it on, but Oda will need to do a lot more work to make that have proper impact if any at all. Maybe blow up the power plant or something as well.

Man, where is York and Stussy?

[black-leg jex]

No, I think it's a feature exclusive to the Elders. I also like the idea that these are their souls and we have to defeat their real bodies. It means someone has to go to the Navy ship and defeat Saturn there, which Kizaru could do if we do get to the point of him giving up on everything.

[King Cannon]

@Deicide said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Mind you, we've seen magic in One Piece before. Hawkins' powers can't be explained by his DF alone. Think about how he can seal others' lives into his straw puppets to ward off damage from himself. Or how his wickerman gains new powers as he draws cards.

For Hawkins, the damage redirection just seems like a general property of his straws. All his moves have it, like when Zoro cut the Straw Man demon and that caused damaged to Hawkins. It's all based on the hour of the ox ritual.

The card powers are probably just coincidences of fate (like how he predicted someone assisting Luffy, which turned out be just Tsuru) or stuff Hawkins does in accordance, although it's intriguing that he can make them float.

[Captain M]

Ten minutes? Boo. BOOOOOOO! What a tease. That's, what, 4 chapters of Dressrosa time? 18 chapters of Namek time? Fine. It's fine.

But to get more serious, this is Egghead going full circle. First we were set up to expect a defensive siege of the main lab, then it evolved into an escape sequence, and now for the final leg, we're being set up to defend again. And with this being the ninth chapter of volume 109, the time for a climactic end-of-book cliffhanger is coming up, as early as the next chapter (but realistically on the eleventh or twelfth because there have been a few shorter chapters in this run) maybe we see this wrap up, or at least get ready to wrap up relatively soon.

This is a very transitional chapter. Transitioning into a new cover story (I think Momo moved Onigashima; outside of another Oars having shown up there, nothing else realistic), transitioning through the setup phase for receiving Vegapunk's info, transitioning to the real final set piece. Seeing new characters return in great numbers like this is always good fanservice, but cameos alone aren't a lot to analyse. The acknowledgement of time zones in the Water Seven bit is cool. I know Oda isn't super invested in this kind of thing for his worldbuilding, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to work out if this is an accurate depiction or not.

Haha yeah okay of course I am.

A thoroughly pointless analysis of One Piece timezones

First, we need to all get on the same page about the orientation of the globe. It's a myth with a frustrating amount of staying power that the Grand Line runs along the equator, but this is not actually the case. All evidence in the manga points to the Grand Line and the Red Line forming an X shape across the globe. The first explanation of the Grand Line in chapter 22 comes with a handy compass rose for orientation, and the image of the globe on the following page depicts them as diagonals. The special recap at the end of volume 81 reiterates this image of the globe, and puts Reverse Mountain on the "front" of the planet. Finally, the compass directions offered when the Supernova captains are planning how to leave Wano also place the Grand Line on an angle. This is our canon orientation.

Yes, this means that if you were standing on Marie Geoise, the seat of the rulers of the world, you would have to look west to see the East Blue and look east to survey West Blue. That's kinda silly. Maybe the names of the seas predate the World Government making that their perch.

In the latest chapter, we're shown broadly the time at a few key, identifiable locations. It is, of course, daytime on Egghead. It is explicitly nighttime at Water Seven. Windmill Village, in the East Blue, and Dressrosa have light skies, suggesting day; meanwhile Kamabakka, Marie Geoise and an unnnamed West Blue location all have shaded skies, suggesting nighttime. North and South Blue are both shown with light skies, but their locations on the planet make it almost impossible for it not to be day somewhere in them, so without more data like proximity to the Red Line, the Grand Line or the poles, they can't add anything to this analysis.

First, we have to work out where these locations are on the map. While it's tempting to place Egghead on the globe's front face, in the second half of the New World, for Law's statement in chapter 1056 about northeast being the furthest forward move to be true, this means that Wano, and by extension Egghead (directly southeast of it) have to be on the rear side, in the first half of the New World.

Dressrosa is before Egghead in the New World, easy win.

Water Seven doesn't offer anything as explicit as that for its placement, but for it to be the island that connects to Fishman Island, under Marie Geoise, via Log Pose, you have to assume it's in the second half of Paradise, also on the rear side of the globe.

Kamabakka is only a few days' sail from Lulusia, which was selected by Imu to test the Mother Flame because it was "close" to his location, so the easiest extrapolation is that it too is in the second half of Paradise.

For both Windmill Village and the unnamed West Blue location, it's impossible to tell if they're on the front or rear hemispheres of the world, but I've placed them both on the front because the map was going to get crowded otherwise.

For the sake of simplicity, we're going to assume that daylight moves east to west over the planet, just like the real world. We're also going to ignore things like curvature and axial tilt because they get complicated, harder to work into the graphics, and probably wouldn't have that much of an impact on the result anyway. The proportions of my day/night/dawn/dusk segments are not exact; I just eyeballed them. Excuse the roughness of the graphics.

So, can we make the day and night times shown in the latest chapter's panels work?

Unfortunately, no, we cannot. If it's morning on Egghead it can be dawn on Dressrosa, just before dawn at Marie Geoise and late at night in the second half of Paradise for Water Seven and Kamabakka, there's no way it makes sense for it to be day in the East Blue and night in the West Blue. Oof, we were so close. But Oda's time zones are busted.

The conclusion here is that this stuff doesn't really matter that much. Like travel times, the phases of the moon and the exact day and date the story is taking place, Oda may occasionally make a throwaway reference to these things, but he's also known to forget them and totally happy to fudge them for the sake of the story. I enjoy the mental puzzle of working out details like these and running through the implications, but I don't think they offer any genuine insight into how One Piece has been plotted or where it's going.

Ahem...

Getting back to the chapter at hand though, the bit of action with Luffy is very fun. I enjoyed Borsalino's laser eyes and the big clap attack. Saturn being able to fly around like a frizbee with all his legs out has a familiar vibe to the ancient dinosaur hunting techniques from Onigashima. And on Saturn's abilities, the telepathy between him and the other Elders is very interesting and definitely builds the case that whatever they have going on is beyond just Devil Fruits. As, of course, does the summoning. I'd be curious to see what kind of limits are placed on this to keep them from just showing up at Revolutionary HQ or something. Saturn rode with the Marine fleet until he was close, so maybe there's a proximity limit on unfamiliar areas, but once one is there, he can summon the others to his location from anywhere in the world.

The summoning spread is an awesome page for sure, but in the vein of last week's complaints about characters disappearing and inconsistent staging, it feels like a huge empty space has manifested to fit it in. Egghead's buildings felt a lot closer together than this in previous backgrounds, even accounting for how destroyed they are.

This was something the Onigashima anime (the bits of it I saw anyway) was really bad about. One minute the roof area is an enclosed arena, the next there's an expasive k or two of the pillars around the outside because it's a cool shot for a character sent flying to bust through them one after the other. Establishing shot puts Zoro and King on the crumbling, shrinking outer edge. But in the sakuga cut it grows a mile of extra turf for Zoro to sprint and leap through while flaming dragons tear up everything around him. Cool moments are cool, but I don't like seeing the established setting being compromised to make space for them.

I feel like I've been harsher on paper than I actually feel for this one. Transitions can be a let down, and are definitely hard to write about, but they don't mean the stuff I'm excited for isn't coming. I can wait a week or two for the payoff, after all the years of following this story, that much more isn't a huge deal.

Blog!

[Shiebs]

Where the hell is this cover story going?

[King Cannon]

@Captain-M said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Unfortunately, no, we cannot. If it's morning on Egghead it can be dawn on Dressrosa, just before dawn at Marie Geoise and late at night in the second half of Paradise for Water Seven and Kamabakka, there's no way it makes sense for it to be day in the East Blue and night in the West Blue. Oof, we were so close. But Oda's time zones are busted.

If you put the sunlines just a few milimeters to the right, it could make sense. We could assume Foosha and that West Blue Nation are closer to the Red Line and the sun is just a bit past Reverse Mountain to get both Foosha (at late noon) and Dressrosa (at early dawn).

Oda has made some maps of the East Blue before but it's obvious they've never been to scale. And we can assume that the first 5 Straw Hats just sailed through a tiny portion of their sea.

One possible evidence that Goa is not close to the Mary Geoise portion of the Red Line is that Sterry went to Loguetown pre-Reverie, so it must have been close enough to his kingdom to make the detour worth it. I doubt his escort would allow him to use the Reverse Mountain route.

[Captain M]

@King-Cannon That's true. And it's definitely possible Egghead is closer still to the end of the first half, right next to where it curves around and starts going south. That would allow a little more room for a corner of the west to be in darkness and a section of the east illuminated. It's tight, but it could work. Maybe I need to revise the verdict to plausible.

I'm not sure whether tilt and curvature would help or hinder this thinking. I've basically done a 50/50, 12 hour split of day and night in my super rough, not-to-scale format but in the real world those factors can result in days or nights up to 18 hours depending on the time of year, and at the poles, nonstop periods of one or the other. A more advanced model of the globe could probably finagle it, but I threw this together in a couple of hours with Photoshop.

[King Cannon]

@Captain-M said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@King-Cannon That's true. And it's definitely possible Egghead is closer still to the end of the first half, right next to where it curves around and starts going south. That would allow a little more room for a corner of the west to be in darkness and a section of the east illuminated. It's tight, but it could work. Maybe I need to revise the verdict to plausible.

I'm not sure whether tilt and curvature would help or hinder this thinking. I've basically done a 50/50, 12 hour split of day and night in my super rough, not-to-scale format but in the real world those factors can result in days or nights up to 18 hours depending on the time of year, and at the poles, nonstop periods of one or the other. A more advanced model of the globe could probably finagle it, but I threw this together in a couple of hours with Photoshop.

Don't worry about it. Scale is always a bitch to deal with, and writers without a good sense of math like Oda tend to struggle more than others, let alone with other astronomical intricacies included. And your model is very useful as well, since we had a similar talk in the spoiler thread.

We also don't know how much ground the SH tend to clear in their voyages. I can believe they only scoured a fragment of the East Blue because the Going Merry is not a big ship. There's also stuff like the SH taking weeks to reach Zou from Dressrosa, but for all we know, they could have gone in circles because of either Zunesha also going in circles or the Barto Club's incompetency, meaning Dressrosa could very well be a few days from where they are.

At the very least, there is a way for your model to make sense, with a few assumptions so Oda probably thought this over more than we give him credit for.

[Cockycent]

Maybe York and the Seraphim play a part here. Priorities on what is kept safe might change and York might just sick the Seraphim on the Gorosei if the deal is off.

[Deicide]

@Cockycent my guess is that the Blackbeard Pirates gave abducted the Seraphim by now. They could even have abducted York as well, but I feel Stussy is guarding her in the control room, while waiting for comms to take down the barrier so the crew escapes.

[danie]

Yeah i'm sticking with the idea that the unexpected hero of Egghead will be...Borsalino! The dim monkey will finally see the light after Vegapunk's message... He's clearly struggling, and i don't think the reason for that is entirely because of Luffy, to say the least.

[electricmastro]

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Where the hell is this cover story going?

I suspect it's meant to start off with Momo, training with his flame clouds by throwing Onigashima into the water.

[black-leg jex]

@Deicide said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Cockycent my guess is that the Blackbeard Pirates gave abducted the Seraphim by now. They could even have abducted York as well, but I feel Stussy is guarding her in the control room, while waiting for comms to take down the barrier so the crew escapes.

I don't think they did. How would they have even snuck them out? I think the Seraphim are just in the basement still, and York is still with kaku in the Labophase.
Stussy is a weird one though. Lucci took her out. We saw her collapse. I originally thought that Nami et al had taken her with them because of a panel in 1094, but actually that's Robin they took and Oda just forgot to colour her hair in (middle panel here: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/one-piece-chapter-1094/chapter/40395?action=read).

So did they just abandon Stussy in the lab? That doesn't seem like something Vegapunk or the crew would do. But it would be weird if she was up and find, given the last thing we saw from her was that she got stabbed in the gut by Lucci, who was going in for a killing blow. And I can't imagine Oda would've actually killed her off then and there. It would feel like a waste of a character.

[electricmastro]

@Captain-M said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Ten minutes? Boo. BOOOOOOO! What a tease. That's, what, 4 chapters of Dressrosa time? 18 chapters of Namek time? Fine. It's fine.

But to get more serious, this is Egghead going full circle. First we were set up to expect a defensive siege of the main lab, then it evolved into an escape sequence, and now for the final leg, we're being set up to defend again. And with this being the ninth chapter of volume 109, the time for a climactic end-of-book cliffhanger is coming up, as early as the next chapter (but realistically on the eleventh or twelfth because there have been a few shorter chapters in this run) maybe we see this wrap up, or at least get ready to wrap up relatively soon.

This is a very transitional chapter. Transitioning into a new cover story (I think Momo moved Onigashima; outside of another Oars having shown up there, nothing else realistic), transitioning through the setup phase for receiving Vegapunk's info, transitioning to the real final set piece. Seeing new characters return in great numbers like this is always good fanservice, but cameos alone aren't a lot to analyse. The acknowledgement of time zones in the Water Seven bit is cool. I know Oda isn't super invested in this kind of thing for his worldbuilding, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to work out if this is an accurate depiction or not.

Haha yeah okay of course I am.

A thoroughly pointless analysis of One Piece timezones

First, we need to all get on the same page about the orientation of the globe. It's a myth with a frustrating amount of staying power that the Grand Line runs along the equator, but this is not actually the case. All evidence in the manga points to the Grand Line and the Red Line forming an X shape across the globe. The first explanation of the Grand Line in chapter 22 comes with a handy compass rose for orientation, and the image of the globe on the following page depicts them as diagonals. The special recap at the end of volume 81 reiterates this image of the globe, and puts Reverse Mountain on the "front" of the planet. Finally, the compass directions offered when the Supernova captains are planning how to leave Wano also place the Grand Line on an angle. This is our canon orientation.

Yes, this means that if you were standing on Marie Geoise, the seat of the rulers of the world, you would have to look west to see the East Blue and look east to survey West Blue. That's kinda silly. Maybe the names of the seas predate the World Government making that their perch.

In the latest chapter, we're shown broadly the time at a few key, identifiable locations. It is, of course, daytime on Egghead. It is explicitly nighttime at Water Seven. Windmill Village, in the East Blue, and Dressrosa have light skies, suggesting day; meanwhile Kamabakka, Marie Geoise and an unnnamed West Blue location all have shaded skies, suggesting nighttime. North and South Blue are both shown with light skies, but their locations on the planet make it almost impossible for it not to be day somewhere in them, so without more data like proximity to the Red Line, the Grand Line or the poles, they can't add anything to this analysis.

First, we have to work out where these locations are on the map. While it's tempting to place Egghead on the globe's front face, in the second half of the New World, for Law's statement in chapter 1056 about northeast being the furthest forward move to be true, this means that Wano, and by extension Egghead (directly southeast of it) have to be on the rear side, in the first half of the New World.

Dressrosa is before Egghead in the New World, easy win.

Water Seven doesn't offer anything as explicit as that for its placement, but for it to be the island that connects to Fishman Island, under Marie Geoise, via Log Pose, you have to assume it's in the second half of Paradise, also on the rear side of the globe.

Kamabakka is only a few days' sail from Lulusia, which was selected by Imu to test the Mother Flame because it was "close" to his location, so the easiest extrapolation is that it too is in the second half of Paradise.

For both Windmill Village and the unnamed West Blue location, it's impossible to tell if they're on the front or rear hemispheres of the world, but I've placed them both on the front because the map was going to get crowded otherwise.

For the sake of simplicity, we're going to assume that daylight moves east to west over the planet, just like the real world. We're also going to ignore things like curvature and axial tilt because they get complicated, harder to work into the graphics, and probably wouldn't have that much of an impact on the result anyway. The proportions of my day/night/dawn/dusk segments are not exact; I just eyeballed them. Excuse the roughness of the graphics.

So, can we make the day and night times shown in the latest chapter's panels work?

Unfortunately, no, we cannot. If it's morning on Egghead it can be dawn on Dressrosa, just before dawn at Marie Geoise and late at night in the second half of Paradise for Water Seven and Kamabakka, there's no way it makes sense for it to be day in the East Blue and night in the West Blue. Oof, we were so close. But Oda's time zones are busted.

The conclusion here is that this stuff doesn't really matter that much. Like travel times, the phases of the moon and the exact day and date the story is taking place, Oda may occasionally make a throwaway reference to these things, but he's also known to forget them and totally happy to fudge them for the sake of the story. I enjoy the mental puzzle of working out details like these and running through the implications, but I don't think they offer any genuine insight into how One Piece has been plotted or where it's going.

Ahem...

Getting back to the chapter at hand though, the bit of action with Luffy is very fun. I enjoyed Borsalino's laser eyes and the big clap attack. Saturn being able to fly around like a frizbee with all his legs out has a familiar vibe to the ancient dinosaur hunting techniques from Onigashima. And on Saturn's abilities, the telepathy between him and the other Elders is very interesting and definitely builds the case that whatever they have going on is beyond just Devil Fruits. As, of course, does the summoning. I'd be curious to see what kind of limits are placed on this to keep them from just showing up at Revolutionary HQ or something. Saturn rode with the Marine fleet until he was close, so maybe there's a proximity limit on unfamiliar areas, but once one is there, he can summon the others to his location from anywhere in the world.

The summoning spread is an awesome page for sure, but in the vein of last week's complaints about characters disappearing and inconsistent staging, it feels like a huge empty space has manifested to fit it in. Egghead's buildings felt a lot closer together than this in previous backgrounds, even accounting for how destroyed they are.

This was something the Onigashima anime (the bits of it I saw anyway) was really bad about. One minute the roof area is an enclosed arena, the next there's an expasive k or two of the pillars around the outside because it's a cool shot for a character sent flying to bust through them one after the other. Establishing shot puts Zoro and King on the crumbling, shrinking outer edge. But in the sakuga cut it grows a mile of extra turf for Zoro to sprint and leap through while flaming dragons tear up everything around him. Cool moments are cool, but I don't like seeing the established setting being compromised to make space for them.

I feel like I've been harsher on paper than I actually feel for this one. Transitions can be a let down, and are definitely hard to write about, but they don't mean the stuff I'm excited for isn't coming. I can wait a week or two for the payoff, after all the years of following this story, that much more isn't a huge deal.

Blog!

It is interesting if the One Piece world is meant to have East Blue and Dressrosa during the day while Water 7 is at night, as opposed to having East Blue at night.

[Deicide]

@black-leg-jex Augur can teleport things, so abducting the Seraphim, with bubbles and all, is an option. There’s the question of how he could touch the bubbles without losing his power, but maybe he can do so indirectly, like using his rifle as a medium.

As for Stussy, she was hurt but OP characters are hardy. I can see her volunteering to remain in control room. Her powers are still mysterious, maybe she can turn into a bat and fly away later.

[King Cannon]

@black-leg-jex said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Deicide said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Cockycent my guess is that the Blackbeard Pirates gave abducted the Seraphim by now. They could even have abducted York as well, but I feel Stussy is guarding her in the control room, while waiting for comms to take down the barrier so the crew escapes.

I don't think they did. How would they have even snuck them out? I think the Seraphim are just in the basement still, and York is still with kaku in the Labophase.
Stussy is a weird one though. Lucci took her out. We saw her collapse. I originally thought that Nami et al had taken her with them because of a panel in 1094, but actually that's Robin they took and Oda just forgot to colour her hair in (middle panel here: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/one-piece-chapter-1094/chapter/40395?action=read).

So did they just abandon Stussy in the lab? That doesn't seem like something Vegapunk or the crew would do. But it would be weird if she was up and find, given the last thing we saw from her was that she got stabbed in the gut by Lucci, who was going in for a killing blow. And I can't imagine Oda would've actually killed her off then and there. It would feel like a waste of a character.

I think Augur could have warped them out, but that would also require them knowing about the secret underground lab somehow. Not many people know about it and there was no way for someone on the outside to know the Seraphim were there to begin with.

[black-leg jex]

@danie said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Yeah i'm sticking with the idea that the unexpected hero of Egghead will be...Borsalino! The dim monkey will finally see the light after Vegapunk's message... He's clearly struggling, and i don't think the reason for that is entirely because of Luffy, to say the least.

That's what I'm hoping. At the very least, I want Luffy and Kizaru to have one final stand-off, given he might be aware of Nika and the legends through Kuma and Bonney. There could be a great scene brewing where a completely deflated and mentally exhausted Kizaru faces Luffy and says Luffy has to defeat him once and for all to prove he's really the liberator they've all been waiting for. I think it could make for an epic double spread.

[electricmastro]

Do you guys think Luffy will be fighting all five Elders at the same time?

[Shiebs]

@electricmastro said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Where the hell is this cover story going?

I suspect it's meant to start off with Momo, training with his flame clouds by throwing Onigashima into the water.

I was thinking it was Black Beard sinking Wano, but it’s way to early for him to know about the ancient weapons yet since they haven’t even brought Caribou to him

Unless the cover stories aren’t time adjacent to the regular story

[black-leg jex]

Maybe for a bit in the next chapter but I think they're going to scatter. Dorry and Broggy will fight one each, one will go after Kuma and Bonney and the other two will make their way into the Labophase (assuming Kizaru comes back to keep Luffy busy. Otherwise he'll be stucking fighting Saturn still).

it's really going to depend on what their powers are, which I imagine we will see in the next chapter given how big those summoning circles are and that Saturn spawned already in his hybrid form.

Also, the cover story is one of two things imo: Momo training to become stronger (and this is him dropping Onigashima into the ocean, showing he has improved his flame cloud control) or the focus is on Jack given that he's a fishman and could survive being at the bottom of the sea (although I'm not sure why he would still be in Onigashima at this point).

[electricmastro]

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@electricmastro said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Where the hell is this cover story going?

I suspect it's meant to start off with Momo, training with his flame clouds by throwing Onigashima into the water.

I was thinking it was Black Beard sinking Wano, but it’s way to early for him to know about the ancient weapons yet since they haven’t even brought Caribou to him

Unless the cover stories aren’t time adjacent to the regular story

I get the feeling Oda would have showed the process of him going to Wano since it's that big. Until he decides to act on Caribou's info, he currently doesn't seem as if he has any reason to go there.

In any case, I'm excited, because that means I get to see Yamato again!

[Captain M]

@King-Cannon Yup, the distances and travel times are probably the toughest thing to reconcile. Alabasta's 50km river throws the scale of the whole globe out of whack, and there's really no way to account for, like you said, sailing in circles or otherwise taking the scenic route. There needs to be an acceptance that some things will just move at the speed of plot.

And you're right, it's close enough that we assume Oda has thought about these thing. I still maintain that they're low on his priority list and he doesn't mind them slipping in favour of moving the story forward, but it would be too harsh to say he doesn't care about or consider them at all.

[Rean]

From what I remember, this cover story seems like it will not be the same as most other ones.

Normally Oda goes "Cover Arc X, Vol. 1: Y does whatever" in the title of the very 1st one, I checked the wiki and cross referenced with past openers of cover stories and they are almost all the exact same.

I think we're in for something substantially different here.

[electricmastro]

@Rean said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

From what I remember, this cover story seems like it will not be the same as most other ones.

Normally Oda goes "Cover Arc X, Vol. 1: Y does whatever" in the title of the very 1st one, I checked the wiki and cross referenced with past openers of cover stories and they are almost all the exact same.

I think we're in for something substantially different here.

I suspect Oda would be inclined to cover various things he would have liked to cover during Wano, but saved them for later for the sake of moving the Straw Hats on, like MADS in the Germa story.

[Rean]

@electricmastro He did that before, but he always gave us the name of the story in advance, even the vignettes that cover minor characters around the world were given a unifying name, "From the Decks of the World" or "Where are they now".

[.access timeco.]

@Rean said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

From what I remember, this cover story seems like it will not be the same as most other ones.

Normally Oda goes "Cover Arc X, Vol. 1: Y does whatever" in the title of the very 1st one, I checked the wiki and cross referenced with past openers of cover stories and they are almost all the exact same.

I think we're in for something substantially different here.

Oda is not consistent on that, many times he doesn’t state the name of the story on the first cover and only starts using the title on the second one.
The most recent stories were all like that.

If you are talking about not stating “Vol 1” on the first cover, he also did it some times. Last one was Caribou’s.

[King Cannon]

Yeah, Oda usually doesn't name the first installment nowadays, likely to keep us guessing who's gonna star in it (although in Bege and Germa's case, it was obvious).

In this case, there are many characters that have an association with Onigashima, including Momo just dropping it from above.

[electricmastro]

@Rean said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@electricmastro He did that before, but he always gave us the name of the story in advance, even the vignettes that cover minor characters around the world were given a unifying name, "From the Decks of the World" or "Where are they now".

I guess we'll have to see what he's keeping the overall title back for then.

Of course there's a part of me that's hoping for some more Yamato focus after feeling like it was lacking during the main Wano arc. So I guess I would have expected something like "Yamato's Travels in Wano" or something, but I can't complain. lol

[Shiebs]

@electricmastro said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@electricmastro said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

@Shiebs said in Chapter 1109: Interception:

Where the hell is this cover story going?

I suspect it's meant to start off with Momo, training with his flame clouds by throwing Onigashima into the water.

I was thinking it was Black Beard sinking Wano, but it’s way to early for him to know about the ancient weapons yet since they haven’t even brought Caribou to him

Unless the cover stories aren’t time adjacent to the regular story

I get the feeling Oda would have showed the process of him going to Wano since it's that big. Until he decides to act on Caribou's on info, he currently doesn't seem as if he has any reason to go there.

In any case, I'm excited, because that means I get to see Yamato again!

How many people have the power to submerge Wano though? Shiroshi definitely could but she definitely wouldn’t, Black Beard but he hasn’t learned about the ancient weapons yet, the man with the burn scar was said to be able to make whirlpools with water so it’s possible he might be able to do this, but that seems far fetched and really random and not his mo, maybe enel bringing the moon down lol

So yeah I’m excited to see more of this cover story since I have no idea what’s going on

Unless it’s just overflow from them destroying that island with the mother flame and i’m just overthinking things