By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

This review contains a few spoilers for the ongoing One Piece manga in Japan, though I try to avoid the big ones, obviously.

The speed-up is over! Welcome to the last of Viz’s 30-volume One Piece blitz, designed to get the series to be remotely close to Japan’s release. (As a reminder, when we began in January, One Piece in North America was seven and a half years behind Japan. When 54 comes out next month, we’ll be down to a mere year behind the volumes, and the Shonen Jump chapters are only about half a year behind now.)

In any case, this is the final volume of Sabaody, and marks a big tonal shift in the series as it moves into the Impel Down arc. I’m trying to spoil as little as possible, but the book begins with Kuma scattering the entire Straw Hat crew, separately, to various places all over the world. (We’ll find out where everyone bar Luffy is next volume). Indeed, as of the current chapters running in Japan, they’re still not together again. This is a big leap of faith for Oda, trusting that we’ll be OK with merely following Luffy and his allies for a year and counting.

It is Luffy that we follow, of course, as he ends up on a mysterious island, which turns out to be populated entirely by women! Women who have, of course, never seen a man before. As you can imagine there’s a lot of humor based around Luffy’s penis, as well as his clothing being ‘fixed’ by the women. I did like that the Amazon kingdom has women of all shapes and sizes. This is not meant to be a Sanji paradise (although there are certainly plenty of shapely women).

But of course, the main part of this volume is simply introducing us to Boa Hancock, another Warlord of the Sea and one of the more memorable characters of recent chapters. She certainly gets a fantastic entrance, stating right off the bat what sort of woman she is supposed to be. Of course, such petty cruelty cannot stand in the way of Luffy’s cheery cluelessness, and she quickly finds Luffy fascinating. And, naturally, she has a horrible past that has ‘forced’ her to become what she is.

Luffy also finally finds out what’s going on with Ace, and makes the decision to go and rescue his brother, figuring the others will be okay without him for a bit. Of course, he has absolutely no way to get there… but that’s OK, as Hancock has totally fallen in love with him, and will give him a ship! I’ll be talking more about Hancock’s feelings for Luffy in my review of the next volume, but suffice to say I think that this is Oda’s answer to everyone who wants the series to have more romance and shipping. And it’s typically hilarious.

This is another transition volume, mostly dedicated to introducing Hancock and getting Luffy fired up about saving Ace. As such, it’s not quite as utterly awesome as the previous two. However, that’ll change soon, as we head for Impel Down!