@Robby:

Katakuri DID say that… just not as explicitly. Doflamingo did too.

Oda put that clue there but he obscured it SO much it didn't register as an actual mystery or clue. Like I get he was trying to hide the surprise and that's his prerogative, but it would be nice if we could with hindsight go "oh, it was obvious! We just didn't know to look!" rather than "Well, I guess he sort of did it there... kind of."

Dang it!
I had a feeling there was going to be something I missed, now to re-read the entire manga to discover just when Oda first started planting the seeds.

Got my Collection 29 set today.
Should've switched to Collections years ago! They just seem better somehow, it's hard to explain.

@Robby:

Imagine if we HADN'T gotten that cutaway to the elder star info dumping this and we were just as in the dark as everyone else, and Kaidou was the first one to notice it was weird and like a zoan. If we'd been able to see and put together the pieces ourselves and have a mystery of the fruit being "weird" before someone later info dumped the true lore of it.

Learning its a renamed Nika fruit might have landed better later on, when say, Vegapunk was info dumping all sorts of fruit stuff. Ah well.

I think spreading out the reveal a bit more would've worked wonders. Like instead of Kaidou mentioning it just a couple of chapters ago, what if, when Luffy's Snakeman form first appeared, we had Katakuri saying something like "He's evading my Future Sight by changing the direction of his punches in mid-air? Impossible! That's not how rubber works!". Just makes it feel more planned out and less last minute.

I may not be happy with how we got here, but I am loving what Gear 5 brings to the fight visually. Only problem is that it's hard to tell now if either side is actually being hurt, Luffy especially is giving me Blackbeard vibes where you get this really exaggerated reaction, but you kinda feel like he's faking it.

I think it would've worked better for me.
If Luffy started off with this supposed "Legendary" fruit, that everybody thought was a bit of a joke because all it did was make you a bit rubbery compared to what other Mythical Zoans can pull off, and over the course of the series manages to do more and more incredible things with it, until he finally fully unlocks it, it would've felt more like he'd earned it.

I mean, that's basically the same story anyways, it just lands better and feels less like a last minute addition (IMO).

Need to get back into Part VI.
It hasn't been a bad season (although I think the other two "modern" seasons have been better), but I just can't seem to stick with it for some reason.

I'm disappointed Oda didn't do more with Ussops 'Sogeking' persona.
After Thriller Bark, I could see Ussop increasingly relying on masking up to get him through fights and stuff, until the mask is eventually destroyed and he's basically forced to accept he was this heroic King of Snipers all along.
Massively cliched I know, but I think it would've been a better character arc for him than whatever he's on at the moment.

Pig God for MVP! He's been working his butt off saving people this arc.

@pariston_hill:

Word down here is that UK, Canada and Netherlands are gonna act outside NATO and send mercenaries to Ukraine. If confirmed truth, and in fact exposed, we could jump from the frying pan to the fire.

Don't know about other countries, but here in the UK there are apparently a handful of serving British soldiers who have gone AWOL to fight in Ukraine and people are absolutely freaking out about what could happen if Russia captures them. So I just don't see the British Government going the mercenary route, but who knows?

Dang it! Must have missed a chapter somewhere, when did Pig God slim down?

Garou does love jumping through monsters!