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

I warn you in advance, this is another One Piece volume consisting primarily of one big fight, with many tiny little fights interspersed therein. Luckily, One Piece is dense enough that there’s still stuff to talk about even if the plot is mostly ‘Luffy hits the villain until he wins’.

One reason that the non-Luffy battles are so inconsequential is this is the big opportunity for Oda to show off how far his cast had improved in the two-year gap before the Fishman Island arc. There are some supposedly impressive mimi-bosses, but it’s notable that the only one who makes a really strong impression is the silliest, Zeo. It’s no coincidence that Zeo faces off against Brook, one of the silliest Straw Hat Pirates. He really is fantastically funny, and helps to liven up what might otherwise simply be a long stretch of battle. Usopp, too, has leveled up, and being who he is, gets to lampshade it. He doesn’t have to use fake balloon hammers or Sogeking anymore, he’s not tough enough to take on these bad guys with ease. Even Chopper has leveled up, coming to terms with his monster form and thus becoming able to control it.

The ongoing Fishman Island plot has been about racism, and this volume is no exception. It notes that Hody’s Fishman Uber Alles attitude may be stronger and angrier, but it’s also more hollow – he has no actual experience with what the Fishmen went through, but has merely grown up surrounded by a culture of hate. That’s not something easily changed, not even with a petition or really good thoughts. It has become, as the translation explicitly states, a holy war, and Neptune’s sons finally ask Luffy to do something that they cannot – wreck the entire island, reduce their past culture, with all its hatred, to smithereens.

This, of course, would fit the prophecy while not immediately spelling doom for everyone. Which is good, as this is also a good volume for seeing the good side of Fishman Island, and of One Piece heroes in general. You can always tell a character that Oda likes (even if they may be a villain) by their tendency not to give up even under the face of the worst adversity. Even the children watching the battle refuse to evacuate. And there’s a difference between this sort of strength and obsession, which is what we see from Hody and Vander Decken, who are perfectly happy with taking out countless innocents as long as they achieve their goals.

That said, I will admit to being a bit exhausted by this arc. It looks like it’s going to wrap up soon, for which I am thankful. I also wish we could have seen Nami and Robin do a bit more, but I can’t have everything. At least Sanji wasn’t too big an idiot this time. Next volume we wrap things up here and set off on a new adventure in the New World. Will we add a new crewman as well? I doubt it, but you never know with Luffy…

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

The Fishman Island arc, considering that we spent such a long time waiting for it to finally arrive, has been n unfortunate mixed bag so far. And that doesn’t really change with this volume, as while there are a lot of cool things going on, some good dialogue and humor, and some interesting bad guys, for once I wish that Oda would try pacing a little more like Bleach and let things slow down a bit.

The Straw Hat Pirates (plus Jimbei) are on the cover of this particular volume, and they do all get to show off their respective skills, in Oda’s standard shonen “see how I have grown stronger!” montage. Indeed, Zoro is captured and put into a cage (along with Usopp and Brook), but you get the sense that he barely treats it as something more than a minor inconvenience – he’s faced off against worse than this. Robin, meanwhile, can seemingly not only duplicate body parts but also herself now (let’s see Usopp try to imitate that!), and Nami gets to steal something for the first time in what seems like forever.

Speaking of Nami, given that we were at Fishman Island we were always going to touch on her past at some point. After the long flashback, Jimbei apologizes to her for not stopping Arlong, but this is an older, more mature Nami, and she can mourn the past while still looking forward to the future, and realizes that she’s met her crew and had grand adventures because of all this as well. It’s very heartwarming (as the rest of the cast seems to note, as several tear up in a “this is so heartwarming!!!” moment).

You would think Oda would have his hands full dealing with the prejudice moral that’s running through this arc, but apparently that wasn’t quite enough, so we also have some drug abuse going on, with the bad guys taking the Fishman equivalent of stimulants to keep going. As for the bad guys themselves, we meet Hody’s four lieutenants here, who are basically all variations on ‘goofy Fish guy Oda thought up to be funny’. There’s the one who adds sound effects to his sentences, the one whose camouflage is so good he gets run over, and the Drunken Master, just for a nice Hong Kong reference. Like Vander Decken, they are there to be bad guys you want to see beaten down but also enjoy reading about.

And so we finally start getting into the big fight about 2/3 through this book. It took longer than I thought – Luffy’s brief battle with Jimbei was particularly pointless filler but it’s here at last. So I’m hoping for some really good fights to take my mind off the fact that this arc is, for Oda, pretty mediocre. I mean, it’s still worth picking up – this is One Piece, and I don’t think Oda is capable of making anything not entertaining – but it’s not as fulfilling as what has come before it.

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

There’s always a risk that Oda runs because he puts everything into his manga. This is not a title like Bleach, where a 5-minute fight can take three months of real time. There’s always at least ten different things going on. The difficulty is in trying to keep all that happening and not confuse or alienate the audience with too much information all at once. And in this volume, I’m afraid a lot of the time Oda doesn’t quite manage it. He’s simply trying to do too much too fast here, using too many characters that we haven’t grown to care about yet.

This is basically a volume in two halves. The first continues the melee battle on Fishman Island, as the Straw Hats get in between a civil war/coup started by Hody Jones and his brand of outlaw scum. Of course, they’re powerful outlaw scum, so King Neptune and his good guys are getting pounded. Meanwhile, Luffy has succeeded in getting Princess Shiratori outside, but this quickly leads to even more chaos. And then there’s Jimbei, who is down by the grave of the princess’ mother, feeling guilt and sadness. There are some nifty fights (Zoro is, as usual, badass) and the odd goofy comedic moment (Sanji seems to finally get better here, after briefly turning to stone (which I’m sure isn’t meant to be metaphorical at ALL.) But mostly the chaos is what’s driving everything, and this does make things incoherent at times.

Some things to note: Nami’s subplot is actually quite interesting. She’s recognized, sort of, as being an ex-member of Arlong’s crew, and certainly Jimbei’s guilt is directed quite a bit in her direction. But we don’t really see her reacting much beyond faraway looks and the occasional sweatdrop. I like to think that it’s Oda showing that Nami is finally starting to move on from her past (we get a nice page-long flashback from Nami for those readers who may have forgotten it), but also we see that she can also see things from the other side now, and is more aware of the prejudice and persecution that fish-people have suffered. Not that she’s forgiving Arlong anytime soon.

Which leads us into the big flashback. This is an unusual flashback in that it doesn’t seemingly stem from a crewmember’s past and end with them joining Luffy – unless that’s meant to be Jimbei. Instead, we meet Fisher Tiger and Queen Otohime, two characters whose dreams and ideals for their people are contrasted against each other. Fisher Tiger knows what’s right and tries to follow that, but the constant abuse of humanity against his people has ground him down. As for Queen Otohime, her naivete is contrasted with her nobility and pure stubbornness, and we learn that even if fishmen and humanity can try to move closer together, it only seems to take one person with different ideas to screw everything up. As you might guess, prejudice is not an easy fix, especially when it involves slavery.

The aftermath of the queen’s death will have to wait for the next volume, as she dies on the last page (Oda even notes there’s no room for extras this time). But it’s not going to be pretty. Oda is showing us that the world is a complex, contrasting, and sometimes horrible place. Even if he’s trying to jam it into a narrative already overstuffed with political battles and revolutions. Next volume should have a lot of fights, which will actually come as a relief after all this buildup, I think.

(Also, Oda’s response to the reader asking who the father of Makino’s child is is classic Odatroll. He clearly knows all about the Shanks/Makino shippers, and is baiting them mercilessly.)