The back half of Onigashima is where I think this arc got away from Oda a little bit. It's bloated with a few too many plot threads and characters and ideas it's trying to pull off all at once, resulting in some rough pacing and a few of those threads having dud endings. There's still a lot to love as the arc builds to its climax and conclusion, but a lot to be let down by as well.
The crew fights were hit and miss. The biggest hits are Robin's fight with Black Maria and Jinbe's with Who's Who. Great art, long overdue spotlight moments for those Strawhats, some vital lore from Who's Who. No complaints with either one. Franky's bout was pretty alight, and I can live with Brook only getting to face a Number since he was such an MVP back in Whole Cake Island. Nami and Usopp got badly shortchanged though. Big Mom should not have been allowed to do so much of the legwork for them. Zoro's fight with King was also a bit of a letdown when he spends so much time wondering about King's race and how to handle his unique skills, only for the actual solution (he's tough with fire and fast without it) to not really feel like it relates to the questions that were initially asked, fit with the fight up to that point, or give Zoro much of a leg up in actually winning the battle. There's some nice visuals, but it feels like it needed another draft.
I think the big brawl on the Live Floor is something Oda never quite figured out how to deal with. It's just chaos, nonstop through the whole arc. There's no real measure of which side is gaining or losing ground, or how effective Marco, King and Queen are being at stopping each other from targeting the fodder, just an ongoing eternity of nameless hoards crashing into each other. Occasionally someone like Kawamatsu with no opponent and nothing better to do will be filtered down there to finish off the arc in obscurity. The whole Ice Oni thing feels like an attempt to give that scene a ticking clock leading into an actual conclusion, but that being the case it's actually over too quickly, wrapping up with more than 40 chapters of fighting left to go. The conclusion of Tama's plan has a similar feeling, but comes barely ten chapters later. Either of these events could have been used to at least temporarily clear out that part of the island or see it claimed in the name of the alliance, opening the way to focus more tightly on other battles, but for some reason Oda just let it keep going.
Kanjuro's revivals are less fun than Orochi's. I can deal with him sending his final curse out after being mortally wounded, but the first fakeout death really does not work. He needed to get wounded and fall off a walkway out of sight or something. One of those ambiguous deaths where the characters can reasonably write him off but the audience knows it won't be that easy. That said, revealing he's still alive through the fake Oden was a wonderful bit of trolling on Oda's part. The fanbase reaction to that on the weekly read was wonderfully chaotic.
I like the teamwork from Kid and Law that leads to Big Mom's downfall, but the fight up to that point really fails to make the most of her terrifying abilities. Where's that pack of awesome yokai-inspired homies from her first arrival on the Performance Floor? All those big swings with Napoleon don't use her to her fullest potential. The living girders were a step back in the right direction, but they're barely used and the fight is mostly over by the time they show up. I feel like just one or two more scenes where she cuts loose before the end would have gone a long way to improve the reception of this battle, but as it is, it comes across undercooked.
Yamato comes in as a bold and entertaining character in a lot of ways, but was an immensely frustrating one in others. He goes from nonexistent to vital to the plot of the course of a volume, never once having been mentioned before. At the very least there should have been some build-up to his introduction during Act Two. The choice not to make him a part of the crew is the right one, but the arc that should have led him to that ending from all his promises to sail with Luffy is nowhere to be found. There's a piece missing here. And it really doesn't help that from pronoun battles to meltdowns from people who saw his joining the crew as a foregone conclusion, he's been central to some of this fanbase's worst moments of the past few years.
Oda's ability to mix drama and humour and to turn gags into serious plot points is unrivaled, but he fumbles two key moments with it here. Kin'emon's survival is the obvious example, a ridiculous joke that gives the reader severe whiplash from the near-perfect death scene it follows on from, setting up a second round of whiplash when two much more understated death scenes turn out to be permanent. It's about as classic an Oda gag as you can get, but it was absolutely not the time for it. The second is Momo's efforts to lift Onigashima, which unexpectedly trades 23 chapters of struggle for a single panel of the island shifting a bit to the right with a cartoony ZWOOOP! sound effect. Some may disagree that this is meant to be a joke at all, but the sound effect has me convinced that was the intent. The contrast of titanic effort and a quick, minuscule effect is another thing that could be pretty funny in another scene, but when you're looking for Momo's defining moment in the battle to accompany Luffy and Kaido's climax and get that, it just doesn't work. There's a lot of great humour during the raid, like the Supernova captains' banter and the weird dinosaur abilities, but those two scenes show a complete failure on Oda's part to read the room.
But in contrast to all of that, I was pleasantly surprised by how well Luffy's big defeat and subsequent revival flow on reread. Even knowing what was coming, I was totally taken in by the way Oda built up the idea that Luffy was about to deliver his finishing move in the moments before his shock loss. It really feels like something that shouldn't have happened. Kaido's taken off-guard as bad as we are. No one on the Performance Floor can believe it either. It's wrong. This isn't how the story goes.
CP0 were positioned and framed perfectly so that you think you know their role in the arc and think they're done with after their failed attempt to track down Robin. Like real spies, they manage to totally misdirect our attention and pull off their mission before we even know what's happening. That classy final hat tip from the agent who did it is the icing on the cake. Pure professionalism, these guys. I do still think the moment of terror when it seems like Luffy really is dead could have been drawn out a little longer, but all in all it's a really smooth handling of a risky twist.
The final stage of the battle is one of the boldest choices I've ever seen for a shonen fight. Even by One Piece standards, it's a huge visual and tonal departure, but also so creative and energetic and playful. It's an absolute joy to read all at once. Oda does a great job of balancing the jaw-dropping power of Luffy's new ability with letting Kaido still be a threat. The great choreography here makes it all the more strange that I still feel like the final blow is missing something. In theory, I see how it all works, the island-sized fist as a massive new escalation, the visual match of the first attack Luffy tried on Kaido back in act one, the timing lining up with the lanterns being let loose, the citizens making their wishes unknowing that a battle has been raging for hours to see them answered, but in practice something about this doesn't stick out the way previous finishing moves had. It may simply be that the most memorable part of the battle was 50 chapters earlier when the Supernovas were fighting, or that even with his final moves Kaido never feels more dangerous than he did during his combo attack with Big Mom 40 chapters ago. But whatever the case, it's disappointing that a battle that pushed things so far past expectations stumbles at the finish line.
And I do wish there had been more about Nika before this reveal though. Given where Who's Who heard the legend, the perfect place would have been a bit of graffiti scratched into a cell wall in Impel Down, lingered on for just a moment too long. There's little doubt Oda had this planned for a while, but I would have liked some more direct hints.
Kaido's flashback is nothing revolutionary, but it gives us everything we need to know about the man for now. It's pretty intuitive how the child soldier traded for political capital ended up the jaded, cruel man we see in the present. Of course we aren't seeing God Valley now, but we have more than enough information to make sense of the villain's philosophies.
In true Wano fashion, the epilogue is a mix of highs and lows. Buggy being revealed as an Emperor is incredible, the Pluton reveal is a massive development, and the collection of a third Lode Poneglyph the milestone we've all been waiting for. I loved learning about the old Wano at the bottom of the current one's sea basin. It's a twist so obvious in hindsight I can't believe no one guessed it. Arakami's introduction and Sabo's new status bring great political depth to the world too. But while it starts high, it ends low, with a lot of goodbyes, funerals and development for Wano being skipped over. Obvious moments like the completion of Jinbe's welcoming toast aren't shown. The final line about the Kurozumis, while kinda exaggerated by fans at the minute, is painfully tone deaf and feels really out of line with the rest of the series. It's a sour note to go out on.
Wano is a messy arc with some tremendous peaks, but also its fair share of issues and sticking points. Act One and roughly the first half of Act Three comprise some of the series' strongest material, with little to complain about, but Act Two and the latter half of the third act are absolutely bloated with more characters and subplots than any author could ever hope to perfectly handle, and suffer from bogged down pacing and large stretches that feel hopelessly unfocused. It definitely feels like Oda bit off more than he could chew and didn't have the time to sit down, look at his plans, and rein things in. And then, when the bulk of the tangle was undone, it seems like he felt burned out with the island and rushed on to the next one too soon.
But despite these very real flaws, I came away from my reread with a positive impression. There are more than enough highlights to overshadow the areas of weakness. Backloaded problems and recency bias make it feel worse than it is. I think I'll enjoy revisiting it again in a year or two, when the next arc has had a chance to follow up on some missed opportunities and flashback to glossed over scenes, and after I've had some space from the weekly discussions.
Actually, this arc reminds me of another where Oda set up too many characters and ideas to handle, creating a story that buckled under its own weight and ended up suffering from a slow, unfocused, overstuffed midsection that counterbalanced a lot of genuinely great material. I'm talking of course of Dressrosa, which was in its time the longest arc with the largest cast up to that point. And it was a real trial to follow week to week. I struggled, and even though I like it a lot more now, my perception is flavoured by the first readthrough. And despite that, Dressrosa has gone down as a fan favourite among rereaders and people who caught up only after it was finished. And even if time hadn't improved it, the arc was followed up by the brisk and exciting Zou and the excellent Whole Cake Island. Dressrosa didn't mean Oda had lost touch, and to the doom and gloomers whose memory doesn't go further back than the last 50 chapters of the latest arc's most mixed material, neither does Wano. I have every faith that a year or so from now, Wano will be a fan favourite, and we'll seeing all kinds of posts from new readers wondering why the people who got them into the series underrated it so badly.
But I am, after four years, well and truly done with Wano and more eager than ever to see what comes next. Here's to a strong final saga and Oda taking this chance to learn from did and didn't work here as he goes into it.