#ch 558

Iba indeed never ran away and left Komamura's side after that. He immediately appeared the moment his captain had lost his immortal body and subsequently all his means to fight, to carry him up on his back and carry his will to defeat Yhwach.

What I found most precious is the words Iba said to him afterwards. He reassured him that he did nothing wrong. Words Komamura needed to hear because he basically lost everything and was regretting going down the path of revenge. Komamura is not able to speak but Iba understood what his captain might be feeling at that moment and knew what he should do.

Okay I really could be reading too hard into things on this one, but, listen. 

Luffy’s line is エースはおれの世界でたった一人の兄弟なんだぞ/ēsu wa ore no sekai de tatta hitori no kyoudai nanda zo! Basically, ‘Ace is the only brother I have in this world!’ 

The thing that stands out to me, here, is that he uses 兄弟/kyoudai to mean ‘brother.’ And he doesn’t, usually, when talking about Ace. Every other time he’s introduced Ace or talked about their relationship, he calls him his 兄ちゃん/nii-chan (a particularly informal and imo quite cute way of saying ‘older brother.’)

Kyoudai does also mean brother/sibling, but it’s like... a more general term? Like, in my experience, it’s almost always a plural, used for a group of more than one person. It’s a bigger statement, what Luffy is saying here, placing harder emphasis on Ace being the only one.

(Bonus point: the only time I’ve seen kyoudai used by them before in the story, actually, is here. In the little memory of when they became brothers.)