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

I am still a little mindboggled that I get to review a sixtieth volume of a manga that’s been released in North America. Yes, it’s true that without Naruto’s success, I likely wouldn’t be reading this, but honestly without Naruto’s success I wouldn’t be reading ANY Viz manga. This volume wraps up Luffy’s flashback sequence, and then takes us back to dealing with the aftermath of the Marineford debacle.

As with most volumes of One Piece, there’s so much going on that you simply have to stop and focus on a few things that jump out at you. Sabo is an interesting character to add here, especially gives he has an explicit connection to Luffy’s past – *and* he’s the son of noblemen, who once again are shown to be thoroughly corrupt and evil. Sabo is the exception, of course, and his “death” halfway through the volume, unlike Ace’s, feels more like the deaths of One Piece past – i.e., you get the sense we’ll be seeing Sabo again at some point. This does not diminish any of the heartbreak, of course, especially following the disastrous fire which destroys the city.

The flashback now finished, we move back to the fates of those affected by the previous 7-8 volumes. It’s great to see Makino again, who seems to be the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a mother figure for Luffy, and she points out that just because someone is not sobbing on the ground in despair does not mean that they are suffering. And Luffy, who has been feeling that he has lost everything, is reminded of the one thing he still has and that he can still take heart in – the other Straw Hat Pirates. Who we finally *see*, after so many volumes missing. They aren’t reunited yet, no, but we get some nice ‘epilogues’ to their cover page stories, showing them getting Luffy’s mysterious ‘message’ and understanding it.

There is then what amounts to a montage of characters we have known, as Luffy, Jimbei and Rayleigh decide to GO BACK TO THE BATTLEFIELD (a sequence, I note, we are told about but don’t see – very smart, considering how long this arc has gone on) and everyone reacts to this. Highlights include Coby discovering that his screaming at everyone to stop fighting wasn’t just being really loud – he has haki now! Well, he has to keep up with Luffy somehow. Various pirates are off to the New World, including some of the Supernovas and Crocodile. Even Buggy is reunited with his crew. And it’s always wonderful seeing Vivi again.

The back half of this manga is filled with nostalgia, but it’s also pointing the way forward. The next volume will finally wrap things up and get our crew back on their way to adventure – OK, maybe the volume AFTER that – but Oda has built a world so strong that we are content to follow his plots wherever they may meander. Especially if it means we see Ace and Luffy as kids fighting giant bears.

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

First of all, a warning: this review talks about that spoiler. You know the one. The one One Piece fans have been patiently waiting TWO YEARS to be able to talk about. It’s been out for months via the Shonen Jump magazine, but that’s still not good enough. And so now, Vol. 59 is out, and we can discuss it. I’ll put the spoilers after the image, just so you don’t see them by accident.

And so. The title of this volume, as well as the first chapter, is The Death Of Portgaz D. Ace. And for once – finally, in fact – Oda’s not messing with us. Yes, folks have died before in flashbacks, but for the most part, like Bleach, One Piece was well-known for having characters almost but not quite die. The classic example of this is Pell during the Alabasta arc, who flew into the air carrying a bomb, which then exploded in the air, and still managed to survive. One wondered what a person had to do to get killed in Oda’s universe. Well, here we have a one-two punch of death. First, Ace dies. This was implied at the end of Vol. 58, and it’s heartbreaking, though at least it gives Ace time to bid his brother farewell. Then, two chapters later, Whitebeard falls, having taken so many mortal wounds it boggles the mind. Oda knows how significant these two deaths are, and the weight they get is entirely appropriate.

Unfortunately, their deaths do not end the battle. Akainu is quite happy to keep killing until he runs out of things to kill, and the marines and pirates are almost all filled with bloodlust. (The ones who aren’t are notably the ‘good’ marine characters: Smoker, Tashigi, and Koby.) And for those who’ve been complaining that we’ve only had Luffy from our main cast for the last few volumes… now we don’t even have him. He’s so far gone after his brother’s death that his straw hat falls off and gets left behind. It’s shattering seeing Luffy simply frozen in catatonia. Instead, we get 4-5 chapters of pure chaos, not helped by the arrival of Blackbeard and his crew, who are there to gloat and declare a war of their own.

Honestly a lot of the first half of this book reads almost incoherently at times. I’m not entirely sure if this is deliberate. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, but it certainly gives the feel of being in the midst of a battle like this, where it would indeed be chaotic and incoherent and most soldiers or pirates would be just staring blankly at one event after another while trying not to die. It becomes less of a battle and more of a “rumble”, just with superpowers and a lot more death. To everyone’s surprise, putting a brief stop to it… is Koby! Yes, somehow Koby has found his inner volume control (or is this related to the Haki we saw Luffy use earlier?), and points out how they’ve achieved their objective and are only adding to the pile of bodies. It’s a great moment.

And if you’re going to have one legend go down in defeat, it makes sense to have the fight ended by another legend. Red-Haired Shanks arrives and not only stops a rabid Akainu from killing Koby, but declares the war over, and says anyone who wants to keep going can take on him. Shanks finishes what Koby started – everyone pauses, realizes what they’re doing, and the battle finally stops. As I said in my review of the last volume, it’s a battle that read better in weekly installments than it does in a big volume chunk, but either way it’s hard not to feel relief – this was exhausting.

Lastly, we finally get a flashback telling us the story of Luffy’s past – the one crewmember who had never had one. Needless to say, it’s not a happy and fun one, especially as his “new brother” Ace is acting like a complete asshole towards him. But Luffy is nothing but not stubborn, and we see him starting to win over Ace and his friend Sabo, who hasn’t been mentioned till this point and who screams “dead meat” to me. Of course, no doubt Oda knows this as well. In any case, the flashback will end in Volume 60, and perhaps we’ll finally see the rest of the crew again? They’re doing another speedup, so you can either find it online now for $4.99, or wait a month and get it in January. Still great stuff no matter what you choose, though.

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

First off, I can’t help but note that Vol. 59 is solicited in the back of this book for Feb. 2012. Oh Viz, you caught up with One Piece so well and now you fall behind again… sigh. However, first we get to read Volume 58, which is filled with one gigantic melee fight… again. This is a classic case where the release schedule is hurting the arc, as seeing these volumes so infrequently makes us more frustrated that the battle is moving, for Oda, relatively slowly.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot going on here, because there is. Whitebeard continues to have his forces inexorably move towards Ace’s execution scaffold, even as he takes mortal wound after mortal wound. Akainu proves to once more be a completely insane rabid dog (I was chilled when he asked “which platoon was that traitor with”, and the other marines desperately pointed out it was a pirate in disguise, clearly seeing that he planned to kill the whole platoon out of spite). And Luffy is leveling up with something called Haki, which we’ve seen before on occasion but really gets pointed out here. On the surface, it would appear to be ‘shouting so that people stop’, but is more about force of personality, I think. It’s something Luffy would have to develop instinctively, I think, and fits him well.

Our minor characters get stuff to do as well! Mr. 3 really astounded me here, not only disguising himself as a marine and making hi way to where he was one of the two men there to execute Ace (!!), but when asked about it reluctantly admits he’s pissed off about what happened to Mr. 2. We’ve seen gangs of villains turn out to have strong loyalty to each other even within Baroque Works before, but honestly, I was not expecting Mr. 3 to be one of them. I hope he makes it out of this. As for Coby… well, poor Coby. He really should have known better. If it helps, Coby, Garp also got punched out (though that was clearly deliberate).

And finally (FINALLY) Ace is freed… once he has admitted to himself that he doesn’t want to die, and allows himself to be freed. There’s a bit of a callback to Nico Robin in Ace’s arc, with his desperate please turning out to be a very deep self-hatred, but like Robin he is now ready to be proactive. Unfortunately, like Luffy, he is also ready to be impulsive, and is easily baited by Akainu, who starts tearing down Whitebeard as a useless failure in front of Ace. I’ll give Akainu credit, he may be the nastiest villain the series has ever had, but he’s no dummy. He knows exactly which buttons to push. And, in the end, we get… well, the final shot of the volume. Yipe.

This is a solid shonen volume of One Piece, but like some of my fellow reviewers, I think I’m getting a bit of arc fatigue, and would like Nami, Zoro and the others back in my story now. One Piece is the opposite of Bleach – it reads well weekly, and sometimes suffers in Volume form. Ah well, if it helps, the next volume will conclude the battle.