My biggest issue with Kaido is that he's been short on depth from moment one. His introduction was hype yes, but it also told us next to nothing about who he is as a person (which is something that every single Yonko introduction accomplished really well).

Orochi being the source of all evil on Wano isn't something that helped Kaido's portrayal either.

Him being so intricately tied to Rocks and his downfall only made Oda's options more limited when presenting his flashback, how do you do that flashback without giving away the goods on Rocks and God Valley?

Part of me feels like this isn't the last we've seen of Kaido, and he will be present in future flashbacks and lore drops ala Whitebeard, but the other part doesn't want to start headcanoning things and getting disappointed later on.

I think Togashi is too fixated on outdoing Chimera Ant (which is an arc that really, REALLY benefits from the amazing Madhouse adaptation, it was honestly unreadable to me in manga form).

Looking at the material so far, I struggle to understand how even Madhouse will be able to adapt this arc, the amount of superfluous and interchangeable characters is just insane at this point, and furthermore, I honestly think the moments where things get truly transcendent have been few and far between in this arc.

I know this opinion doesn't really jive with a lot of what I'm reading here, but I have been, and still am immensely enjoying the past 5-10 chapters, Oda seems like he's genuinely excited for what he's drawing, unlike the last stretch of Onigashima, where you can easily tell that all he could care about is G5 and the rest is basically homework he has to deliver.

In this chapter, Luffy's dream for the future may not have been told explicitly to us*, but it is almost assuredly better than the OP world's current state, where entire countries are now getting wiped off from history in service of whatever dream or vision Im has for the world. It's interesting to me how one immediately follows the other, this has been a trend in the past few chapters, where certain scenes of Luffy are placed right before some of the darker or more off-beat characters in the world to compare and contrast how much they differ even when they are in similar positions.

Jewelry Bonney arrives at the perfect moment imo, Oda is rebuilding his story engine (since the Yonko saga is pretty much what drove the majority of post-skip OP, and it's.. done now), and given her Kuma connections plus being one of the more appealing Supernovas to me (I just can't bring myself to care about Urouge tbh, maybe Oda will change my mind like he did with Bege tho?).

• While I like the dream scene, I personally think it would be far better appreciated by physical readers, since the unseen moment where he talks about his dream is placed between two pages, essentially on the page flip, this is less than a millisecond for us digital readers, so the impact is just far less by definition, the anime will probably do better as well because of editing).

@Cockycent Tserriednich is easily the most interesting new character introduced in this arc and anything connected to him gains from that fact imo.

No way Garp dies without having Luffy witness it directly, especially after how Sabo has been "disappeared" by Imu's giant beam (whether you think he's dead or not is not the point here, the point is that Luffy will likely hear about it after the fact, whether it's from Sabo himself or from some newspaper).

Garp going to Beehive Island likely will hook into whatever lore he had with Rocks and whatever went down on God Valley. He's literally going to the same island Rocks had as his HQ + facing up to a crew and captain that so far has been shown to operate extremely similarly to Rocks' crew. I expect the comparison angle between Rocks and BB will finally be cemented by the one man who has faced up to both in direct combat.

No way Garp dies without having Luffy witness it directly, especially after how Sabo has been "disappeared" by Imu's giant beam (whether you think he's dead or not is not the point here, the point is that Luffy will likely hear about it after the fact, whether it's from Sabo himself or from some newspaper).

Garp going to Beehive Island likely will hook into whatever lore he had with Rocks and whatever went down on God Valley. He's literally going to the same island Rocks had as his HQ + facing up to a crew and captain that so far has been shown to operate extremely similarly to Rocks' crew. I expect the comparison angle between Rocks and BB will finally be cemented by the one man who has faced up to both in direct combat.

@electricmastro All villains have the theoretical capacity to return, that was never in question, the real question here is: Is Oda likely to want to bring back Kaido in the manga?

The answer is No.

All future plot threads that may potentially include Kaido don't require his presence in the here and now (like the Rocks plotline can just be dealt with via flashbacks).

Furthermore, he's one of the only villains that have been given an ending that simply isn't just him being KO'd, the dude was dunked into a volcano for a reason.

@electricmastro All those villains aren't nigh-invincible and don't create nearly the same amount of problems when plotting an arc involving them.

@electricmastro I don't think we will see him in the manga's canon at all. Maybe as a post-OP movie villain (we ARE getting post-series stuff, it's par for the course).

My biggest issue with Kaido is that he's been short on depth from moment one. His introduction was hype yes, but it also told us next to nothing about who he is as a person (which is something that every single Yonko introduction accomplished really well).

Orochi being the source of all evil on Wano isn't something that helped Kaido's portrayal either.

Him being so intricately tied to Rocks and his downfall only made Oda's options more limited when presenting his flashback, how do you do that flashback without giving away the goods on Rocks and God Valley?

Part of me feels like this isn't the last we've seen of Kaido, and he will be present in future flashbacks and lore drops ala Whitebeard, but the other part doesn't want to start headcanoning things and getting disappointed later on.

Really like how DFs are potentially tied into dreams, it's mystical enough to retain the wonder of DFs, yet also hooks into the biggest and most enduring theme of the series.

@Johnny-B-Decent said in Chapter 1069: All Things Are Brought Into This World With Hope:

I know a lot of people now think Imu is the big, bad ultimate villain since it was introduced, but the revelation of this chapter regarding Devil's Fruits strengthens my belief that Blackbeard is instead the true final villain as now even his DF is now the ideological opposite of Luffy's.

Where Luffy's power is to bring hope and liberation, his is simply amoral destruction. That's why he can nullify other DF's, because the Yami Yami no Mi is the wish to consume the world in darkness, destroying everything, even consuming the hopes of others.

This is something I thought of almost immediately when I saw Vegapunk saying what he said.

Blackbeard is a person who can never sleep, so he never really "dreams" in the way a normal person does, it makes sense that the man who can never experience what dreams truly are is the person whose dream is to essentially kill all other dreams and erase all hope.

I really wonder if we will get something from Vegapunk on how he can take in 2 DFs at once, his fight with Law is still raging on in the background for a reason.

@Cockycent Tserriednich is easily the most interesting new character introduced in this arc and anything connected to him gains from that fact imo.

Yorknew is still my personal favorite of HxH, other arcs have had their moments, but I personally liked Chimera Ant the least of all the HxH arcs, there's just way too much grimdark and a lot of the resolutions strike me as the kind of stuff that would be vilified on any other manga, but Togashi gets a pass on them for some reason.

@Alfiere I get that feeling too, but it honestly isn't producing enough for me right now, there are pieces that kinda work, like the actual succession battle, and the Spiders/Mafia/Hisoka storyline has promise, but everything is just far, far too bloated by meaningless characters. Even Chimera Ant had actual movement in its plot from time to time, here we're just lurching from one long-ass monologue to the next with no end in sight.

I think Togashi is too fixated on outdoing Chimera Ant (which is an arc that really, REALLY benefits from the amazing Madhouse adaptation, it was honestly unreadable to me in manga form).

Looking at the material so far, I struggle to understand how even Madhouse will be able to adapt this arc, the amount of superfluous and interchangeable characters is just insane at this point, and furthermore, I honestly think the moments where things get truly transcendent have been few and far between in this arc.

@theackwardstation said in Chapter 1062: Adventure in the Land of Science:

I was still banking on the Blackbeard Pirates being the ones who invaded Cacao Island in the beginning of this cover story, so I'm happy to see Aokiji now confirming my expectations.

One angle that suddenly jumped out at me is the title of this cover story "An Emotionless Excursion) now has a double meaning, now it doesn't just refer to the emotionless Vinsmoke children, but also to Aokiji, who is largely perceived to be cold and emotionless unless you know him well.