uh oh

We open today, on a climactic clash of gods. Yes. Big spooky Satan Imu and our great stretchy hope in Luffy who just rocked his royal badness Sabaody style. And we get some predictable flashback from Imu connecting Luffy yet again to this figure of Joyboy. What was crazy to me at first then just kinda cool was the framing.

It was almost like a transmission or Snail call which you don't really expect from such a deep flashback like that. Until of course, you remember Vegapunk's major assertion from the last arc. The past was "the future" in terms of being more technologically developed. Even if it doesn't mean much it's a good bit of world building for the past. That said, remember this. The framing and it almost seeming like Joyboy called Imu accidentally? Now there's a lot of potential given the recently departed Loki and his friend Mosa. Yes, very sad.

Like yes the obvious surface level implication is that despite everything, despite reaching the peak of his power (as far as his Devil Fruit is considdered at least), despite how far he has come, Luffy is still so far from reaching the level required for him to become Pirate King, that he's not going to be able to beat Imu. He's not going to be able to beat any of the Elders either, not yet.

The situation feels so 50/50 now-- we know Imu is on a time limit and can't stay on Elbaf too long, so he and potentially the other God Knights will have to retreat sooner than later.

I am just concerned if they're going to get away with the kids, that's all.

So two story directions we could be heading are A) The Strawhats somehow manage to force the rest of the God Knights out after Imu runs out of time, saving the kids B) Imu and co manage to snatch the kids and flee

Scenario B) makes me wonder if THAT could be like, the Inciting Incident for the Final War; Luffy feeling like he can't go forward with trying to find One Piece without rescuing the kids from Marijoa, 'cause I don't see why Luffy would go to direct war with the WG without a more personal motivation like that. Like yeah the WG sucks but he's not a hero, he's not a Rev, he's a stinky lil pirate so without a personal motivation (like helping friends) he wouldn't go pick up a fight or join a war against the WG, would he?

At the same time, there's a part of me that's still wondering if Elbaf could go down the Sabaody Route. That the only way to save everyone on Elbaf, including the kids, is by everyone fleeing the island, probably with the help of Kuma's power (if he's in a state where he has just enough brain power to let his DF do it's thing as long as somebody's just holding his hand up to boop people/ships away) I talked about this just like two months ago though so I'm not gonna repeat myself too much, but would the crew still stick together through this? Probably? Bare minimum I'd imagine they could get split into 2-4 groups (Luffy potentially being one group by himself), maybe the crew all managed to stick together on the Sunny and it'd be just Luffy who could get flewn away somewhere by himself. (Curious what'd even happen to Loki...) Thing is, if this happened and Luffy did get yeeted somewhere by himself, that could give him another opportunity to maybe train and get stronger-- not strong enough to face Imu just yet, but maybe strong enough to face one of the Elders (the Elder acting as a warm-up the same way Blueno was a warm-up before Lucci, y'know)

IDK man...

I think what is really getting to me about the parallel of those panels is that... Like I wonder if there's more to it than Luffy not being ready yet... Like there's a part of me that believes so hard that there's More To That Parallel Than That but I can't figure out what on earth that could even be. (It could be just sleep deprativation making me delulu because the Husbandile was mentioned lmao)

Also, just... God this is reminding me of how many subplots OP has going right now...

Vivi is hiding with Morgans, trying to reach Luffy

Garp is being held by Blackbeard with a bounty from CG

Swamp Guy is on his way to Blackbeard to spill the beans about Pluton and Poseidon

Loki's bestie on the phone is probably Shirahoshi

Pluton is in Wano and Crocodile is plot relevant again

Cross Guild as a whole

Moria escaped BB, Hancock had to leave Amazon Lily, Pudding got kidnapped

Shanks wants to get the One Piece

The current status of Law, Kidd and Barto, etc etc etc

Like a lot of these we can easily connect with various dots (Moria and Hancock could end up in Cross Guild for various reasons; Swamp Guy connects the Ancient Weapon subplots through BB, really the only subplot here that's just giant free-floating here is Vivi where whatever is happening to her can't really be connected to any of the other happenenings beyond her past beef with Croc due to Pluton, but like I said, irrelevant to her current situation, only relevant if she ended up hiding with like CG for some god forsaken reason and I don't know how or why either), but I just... Like I can't figure out where the fuck we are going here

Thank God tomorrow is Sunday because if it had been any other day I wouldn't have survived a week after last chapter.

I really love Elbaph Arc because it looks like Oda suddenly remembered he needs to end OP at some point and decided to dump all backstory and lore on it 🤣🤣🥹.

Anyway, on my way to read "Heroines" now.

HOLY SHIT IS LUFFY DEAD I MEAN PROBABLY NOT BUT LIKE HOW IS DUDE GONNA SURVIVE THAT