@Cockycent
I really love Usopp vs Luffy. It was such well built conflict, things escalated naturally but drastically. It felt like a fight between good friends, with high stakes. Relatable and worrying.

Details:

• Vegapunk's sillouette in prison matches perfectly with the one in Punk Hazard. Now I can understand that what I thought was a skinny arm was actually his tongue under the mustache. Cool to see his design so early.
• Oda knows how to make Sanji sexy in the covers

Hiyori was really interesting in mainland Wano. Her double role as Komurasaki was cool, but loosing her temper at the banquet with Orochi and risking everything a few days before the raid she waited for for 20 years was nonsense. Her character was all over the place.
There was absolutely no need for her not to meet Momo before the raid and still go in secret to Onigashima. There was no reason not to show us her healing the samurai. There was no reason for her to tell Zoro, at the time a stranger, who she really was.
As a meta character, that opened the Acts and told the story as a narrator, thst was fun.
But one of Wano's disappointments was the lack of long waited scenes: we didn't see the moment Kinemon met with Tsuru again, after 20 years passed for her. We also didn't see Momo and Hiyori meeting and talking about their parents and the country's fate.

I didn't see people mentioning this, but hoe crazy was it that Sanji himself aknowledged how close they are to the end of their journey? When he "mourned" Zoro's death so close to the One Piece.
Oda now is so focused on the ending that even the characters are thinking about it.

Also, this is not only the first time we have cuttaways in the middle of the arc, but we also have direct connections between cover story and current chapters. This arc has a new format, that's refreshing

I'm going against the current and say that we will probably get more out of Sabo in the next chapters.
The things he is going to reveal are already known to us in it's broad lines: Im exists and the empty throne isn't empty at all. The great reveal for the readers is about Kobra's assassination, and what part did the Gorousei played in it. And that might be important for Egghead:
A lot of what happened in the Reverie is bound to crash into Egghead: maybe Vivi and Morgans are headed there? Kuma and his Revos. connection will obviously play a part. Bonney was there and had something to do with Sabo.
Also, Oda is setting up the big players for the final fight: Cross Guild, Teach and Shanks (while Law and Kidd are out). Just like they were all presented or teased at the end of Wano, Sabo was also being shown as a big player, being called an Emperor and all. So we need to see what Sabo and the Revos are going to do. Just like we saw Shanks making his move, we are going to see the Revos making theirs, depending on what happens to Kuma and what Sabo has to tell.

Ship's Apprentice seems like a role of someone being prepared for the next generation. For example, like how Shanks was an Apprentice in Roger's Ship, but that never felt "complete" for him, like that was never "his moment". That's why he never went to Laugh Tale, and stayed back with Buggy, because he wanted to return on his own terms, with his own crew. So I don't see the Strawhats having an Apprentice anytime soon, because all of them are having their moment now, and throwing everything on the line for this particular journey. I don't see a character being prepared for a future moment, but all of them living the greatest adventure of their lives in the present.

Using humans as weapons should absolutely have been brought up already. Because this was set up a long time ago with Kuma himself. With King we learned that the Lunarians were experimented upon. So, having lunarian child soldiers is… an issue.
It would be very disappointing if the Seraphim were only used to have the crew fight the Warlords again.

Let’s be honest, there is a cowardly route here, that is to say Vegapunk is an all good character and gloss over his dubious experiments. We had a taste of that with York being the one creating (or delivering) the Mother Flame. And with Vegapunk creating flower-guns during Mads times, as if he never made a weapon in his life and was different from Queen or Judge. We shouldn’t skip on discussing the implications of experiments just to have a character be considered good. Sorry Oda, you made him create child soldiers, now let’s at least recognize this is bad.

So I have this theory about the nature of the One Piece. The Ancient Weapons we know about all have to do with ships: Poseidon was made to call on the seakings to carry Noah and Pluton is a giant boat. So perhaps they were made to carry people all the way to Laugh Tale, uniting the different countries and races, in a giant party. Joy Boy prepared a giant table where everyone in the world can sit and talk and eat together, and that is also Luffy’ s and Roger’s dream. Silly, I know, but that’s how it should be.

It’s telling how much the strawhats have been absent from the story that we think that it’s ok to have Sanji “step back” in Wano because he already had a spotlight in Whole Cake. They should have the spotlight in every arc. Every Strawhat had a “moment” in Skypiea, Alabasta, W7… why not post-timeskip? (Bloated arc, huge cast and time consuming plots, I know, I know…)

I always found suspicious that Bonney was present during the Luffy’d Dream chapter. Doesn’t mean she heard it or that she will join, but it is curious to have her there. Just like Yamato is one of the few characters who knows Luffy’s dream (through Ace)

It’s telling how much the strawhats have been absent from the story that we think that it’s ok to have Sanji “step back” in Wano because he already had a spotlight in Whole Cake. They should have the spotlight in every arc. Every Strawhat had a “moment” in Skypiea, Alabasta, W7… why not post-timeskip? (Bloated arc, huge cast and time consuming plots, I know, I know…)

Thing is Kuma’s personality is 70% his body. He barely speaks, but his design is top notch. So I can imagine him being transplanted to a tiny robot, but I can’t imagine him talking or interacting with everyone

Something I haven’t seen been discussed is that if everything goes according to Vegapunk’s plan and they escape using the Sunny, then the WG will have won Punk Records and Mother Flame, something Saturn already stated as top priorities. So something has to happen to avoid letting them get at least Punk Records. But it could be cool to have the WG with Mother Flame for the last arc.

I think the Fleet will make it’s return like this: saving the ship full of civilians that escaped from Egghead. Saturn already ordered they were followed and destroyed. And I think it would be weird to have them all die without barely appearing in the story. So they fleet meeting them on the way to Egghead would be a cool introduction

Using humans as weapons should absolutely have been brought up already. Because this was set up a long time ago with Kuma himself. With King we learned that the Lunarians were experimented upon. So, having lunarian child soldiers is… an issue.
It would be very disappointing if the Seraphim were only used to have the crew fight the Warlords again.

Let’s be honest, there is a cowardly route here, that is to say Vegapunk is an all good character and gloss over his dubious experiments. We had a taste of that with York being the one creating (or delivering) the Mother Flame. And with Vegapunk creating flower-guns during Mads times, as if he never made a weapon in his life and was different from Queen or Judge. We shouldn’t skip on discussing the implications of experiments just to have a character be considered good. Sorry Oda, you made him create child soldiers, now let’s at least recognize this is bad.

@Cockycent
I really love Usopp vs Luffy. It was such well built conflict, things escalated naturally but drastically. It felt like a fight between good friends, with high stakes. Relatable and worrying.

I would like to see an enemy that is not stronger than Luffy but uses tricks and traps. We just missed a chance of that happening with York, which is sad. But even Cesar was an interesting villain, even being clearly weaker than Luffy from the start. The way he used his fruit and weapons gave the heroes a lot of trouble, and his personality was very entertaining.
A good villain will be interesting, not necessarily invincible-looking

Bonney is now outside the Paw Room and seems to have made her peace with her father’s past. The gimmick of having Kuma’s flashback be done through a paw-memory was so cool, but it seems a little too late for that. How will Egghead gear up to the flashback now? Seems to me the setup will be Kuma himself arriving there.

Yamato is currently fighting the enemies at the shore, there you go

My theory is that Weevil was planned for a mini arc between Whole Cake and Wano. Luffy stopped at Sphinx to recruit Marco and had to face Weevil to help the Whitebeard remainders.
He felt kinda loose in the story, until Buckin got the Stussy connnection and clones became a real thing. No idea what his payoff will be.