“Reinforcements Arrive! The Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates!”

While there’s a palpable sadness for Sanji over there being no women in the pleasure halls, it does mean no men either and that group is able to make its way through quickly. Even Chopper’s excited with this as his machine is getting him into the thick of things here. For Sanji, however, it takes some misunderstood encouragement from Carrot to getting him back on track – to finding the women – while everyone else goes running off through things. Everything seems like it’s in their favor, but it just takes that moment when one of the curtains is drawn to the side and then all they see is Big Mom staring out at them. For Chopper, who is literally riding high, it’s one of those worst moments in your life kind of thing and you really do feel for him as he’s so overexposed at this point.

There are a fair bit of smaller plot points being hit here but we get to cover a few different areas. Kanjuro’s smacking around some of the best pirates and that provides for some of the action to keep things tense after getting our brief time with Big Mom. I did like the time we got with Law and his group as they’re moving through things quickly underwater at this point and while it’s not super tense or anything, it has a good flow of people on a serious and straightforward mission. What has me most hopeful is the end sequence here where we get Luffy and Zoro together and getting ready to fight, as both of them are just a delight to watch, whether operating together or separately. Setting that up here is a big positive.

In Summary:

Luffy, Law, Kin’emon, and all the others are trying to infiltrate Kaido’s castle from all sides. Meanwhile, Big Mom’s children are climbing up the waterfall towards Onigashima again, but this time, Marco the Phoenix appears from nowhere and stands in their way!

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

乂⍱‿●乂