Episode 885, “Therapy Session” (SGS #26)

Summary

The One Piece Podcast – Episode 885: “Therapy Session” (SGS #26)

Release Date: September 22, 2025
Host: Maji Media
SGS Hosts: Steven & Greg (with Simba the cat)
Anime Recap Hosts: Sam, Steve, Simba, Steven, Greg

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Episode Overview

Theme:
In this SGS (Steven & Greg Show) edition, the panel dives deep into the latest three One Piece manga chapters—1158, 1159, and 1160—dissecting the current God Valley flashback, recent reveals, and the implications for both lore and future storylines. The hosts explore Oda’s naming twists, the structure of the saga, their translation struggles, and fan questions—creating a genuine therapy session for long-time readers grappling with major plot developments.

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Catching Up – Personal Updates & Gaming Tangents

[01:19-13:36]

• Bench Press Victories & One Piece Converts

  • Greg shares a personal victory: finally hitting a 270 lb bench press. His trainer, a former student, is now binging One Piece, currently at the precipice of the Whole Cake Island wedding.
  • Quote (Greg, 02:19): “I edged it up to 270. I am excited about that. A lot of work went into that and yeah, very happy with results.”
  • Discussion of how people discover (and sometimes bog down in) One Piece.

• Family Overload & Hollow Knight: Silksong

  • Steven recounts a hectic week with family, medical runs, and playing Silksong, sparking a deep-dive into game completion anxiety as adults.
  • Greg reflects on why dropping games mid-playthrough scares him now: “If I so much put it down for two fucking seconds, I'll come back to the controller and just be like, wait, what? Where? I can't. I have no idea.” [07:22]
  • Comparison between high-difficulty games (Elden Ring, Hollow Knight), how gaming habits and patience change with age.

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Manga Recap: Chapters 1158, 1159, 1160

[17:08–79:24]

Key Points

• General Structure: The chapters cover the ongoing God Valley flashback, introducing new character connections, secrets about pirate ancestries, and government manipulations.
• Naming Trick Fatigue: Both Steven and Greg express weariness at Oda’s current run of “name gotchas,” where character identities or backgrounds are revealed via name reversals or sudden new information.
  • Greg, 22:20: “Once you start to pull that more and more frequently, it gets harder to do because you have lost a sense of… trust in the audience because you’ve deceived them.”
• Moria’s Heritage Reveal: The Kozuki Moria twist is dissected—questioning foreshadowing, character relevance, and potential Cross Guild implications.
  • Steven, 27:23: “Unless he has a plan to bring Moria back... at least at the moment it just kind of feels like, yeah, we sort of already had his story. I don't see where this is going…”
• Family, Bloodlines, and God Valley:
  • The flashback reveals Rocks had a secret wife and child, and Shanks and Shamrock’s buccaneer origins are hinted.
  • Strong focus on the twins’ mother’s wisdom (“wise like you”—an atypical Japanese compliment) and what this may mean for Shanks’s lineage.
  • Ongoing theme in One Piece of “men can’t keep it in their pants,” leading to increasingly convoluted family trees.
• Name Swap Cycling & Story Trust:
  • Comparing Davy, Joy Boy, Nika, and the handling of titles versus real names.
  • Greg: “You only get so many chances at playing with a character’s name before it starts to feel like an abuse of the... author pulling the rug out from underneath you.”
• Flashback Tone:
  • The “high school musical” vibe of legendary pirates in their youth; they are driven and dramatic, but the flashback injects lighter, youthful moments alongside the deeper world politics.
• Core Dramatic Thread:
  • At the center isn’t just Rocks, but the relationship between Rocks and Harold, and how this will intertwine with the fate of Elbaf and the Giants.
  • Greg, 59:39: “He’s really doing a good job of keeping the main pole. The main drama being between Xebec and Harald here. How these two come to where they are at the end of this is super exciting to me…”
• Analysis of the Motherlessness Motif:
  • The significance of Oda hiding mothers’ faces, especially in relation to Shanks. Steven praises how this could reflect a poetic loss of memory or identification from the child’s perspective.
  • Greg, 45:07: “I love it. That’s what we’re here—see, this is therapy. This is growth.”
• Knights of God/Holy Knights Naming Confusion:
  • Behind-the-scenes translation stories, adapting “Kami no Kishidan” between manga and anime, and changes in localization policy.
  • Steven, 71:42: “There are a number of different ways to parse Kami no Kishidan… and so it was kind of a compromise that I had to make… Holy Nights was kind of a compromise.”
• Speculation Corner:
  • What is the nature of Davy/Joy Boy/Nika? Are devils/demons in One Piece natural, supernatural, or man-made? Is Imu alien? Are the Knights of God vestiges of ancient races, or manipulated beings?
• God Valley Game & Story Structure:
  • The current arc is framed around a twisted “Hunger Games” between pirates, knights, and celestial dragons, setting up the historic trauma that shaped current events.
• Anime Recap (Summary Below):
  • Follows.

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Anime Recap: Episodes 1142 & 1143

[96:04–127:30]

• Hosts: Sam, Steve, Simba, Steven, Greg
• Content:
  • Covers Vegapunk’s near-death broadcast, Kizaru’s assault, Saturn’s awakening, and islands around the world reacting to Vegapunk’s transmission.
  • Praise for moments where “animators get their shit in,” adding flair to side characters and random scenes (e.g., Vice Admiral designs).
  • Noting how the anime leans into Saturn’s monstrous transformation, Kizaru’s guilt, Luffy’s cartoonish creativity, and how the anime builds atmosphere with repeated use of the heart monitor sound effect.
  • Steve, 124:08: “These episodes are better than some of the previous ones where you can really, really feel that they're just kind of like, biting their time until the real showy stuff comes up.”
  • Anticipation for the next big action episode and further reveals.

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Listener Questions (SGS Mailbag)

[129:41–191:42]

Selected Highlights

• Favorite Pokémon (Greg) & Kumamoto Statues:
  • Greg admits he doesn’t know Oda’s favorite Pokémon, but shares the Kumamoto One Piece statue pilgrimage isn’t on his bucket list.
• Shiki & Kyo's “Gokudo” Connection:
  • Deep dive into gangster/yakuza implications of the “Gokudo” title, and how it could indicate a deeper lore connection without being literal yakuza.
• Translators' War Stories:
  • Greg shares a translation horror story involving a hard-to-spot blood effect (“Enhance! Enhance!”), and Steven reminisces about editing Frederick Schott’s “impeccable” 1990s Ghost in the Shell translation.
• Weird Devil Fruits:
  • Suggestions include natto-natto (fermented beans), mania-mania fruit (eidetic memory), and the paradoxical “soup-soup” fruit.
  • Greg, 158:31: “Mania Mania fruit... once you hear information about a topic, you automatically sort it and can recall that information at any time without pause.”
• Retroactive Luffy/Nika Reveal Theory:
  • Discussion if Shanks “tipped off” the Elders to Luffy’s fruit. Panel is skeptical, with Greg asserting Who’s Who’s knowledge as a government agent contradicts this.
• Elbaf Arc & Endgame Structure:
  • Greg cites his detailed “End of One Piece” essay, estimating Elbaf at ~56–98 chapters (1.5–3 years total), possibly wrapping near summer next year.
  • Speculation on a “ten Marinefords” final war, global/fast-travel mechanics increasing, and who will be the ultimate Straw Hat match-ups.
• Who Could Join the Crew?:
  • Vivi, Loki, Yamato—all possible after the “main story” concludes.
• Hinokizu (Burn Scar Man) Identity:
  • Fan theories range from Rocks to Harold, but Greg warns there are not enough narrative crumbs for a definitive answer.
• Next Cover Story?:
  • Possibly Pudding’s perspective or aerial adventures of Egghead satellites—pure speculation.
• What Would Emu Look Like?:
  • Steven: “Either Emu has to look really, really bizarre or like unearthly beautiful… because anything less… what was this all for?”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Greg, 22:20: “Once you start to pull that more and more frequently, it gets harder to do because you have lost a sense of… trust in the audience because you’ve deceived them.”
• Steven, 45:00: “[Oda] can kind of get away with [hiding the mother's face]...Shanks was separated...so how much does he really remember? In a certain poetic sense, not being able to see her face...puts us in a similar space with Shanks.”
• Greg, 59:39: “He’s really doing a good job of keeping the main pole. The main drama being between Xebec and Harald here. How these two come to where they are at the end of this is super exciting to me…”
• Greg, 158:31: “Mania Mania fruit... once you hear information about a topic, you automatically sort it and can recall that information at any time without pause.”
• Greg, 177:05: “Whatever it is, there's going to be like, transportation is going to become simple by the end of this.”

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Final Thoughts & Outro

• The episode is an insightful, sometimes cathartic blend of close reading, translation nerd-outs, and speculative therapy for veteran fans.
• The SGS format allows Steven and Greg to be frank about their frustrations and hopes for the narrative, to laugh about Oda’s quirks, and to field deep fan questions with honesty and humor.
• Teasers for new manga translation projects, anime events, and the ongoing “End of One Piece” timeline tracking.

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Bench Press & One Piece Trainer: 02:19
• Game Completion & Aging: 07:22
• Manga Recap Start: 17:08
• Naming Fatigue Rant: 22:20
• Kozuki Moria & Wano Foreshadowing: 27:23
• Shanks’ Mother Analysis: 41:04, 45:00
• “Therapy Session” Motif: 45:07
• God Valley Game Structure: 62:00+
• Anime Recap: 96:04
• Translator War Stories: 140:53
• Deviant Devil Fruits: 157:27
• Elbaf Arc Structure: 169:32
• End-of-Show Banter: 193:03

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This episode is both a guide through the latest, lore-packed chapters and a therapy couch for fans and creators alike—honest, passionate, and very One Piece.

Transcript

[Greg]

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[Steve]

Whatever your vibe, we got you covered.

[Greg]

Cafe Bustelo esta aqu?

[Steven]

This is the One Piece podcast episode 885 for the week of Monday, September 22, 2025. My name is Stephen.

[Greg]

And my name is Greg and Simba.

[Steven]

Is hanging out right at the foot of my chair right now. It is SGS week, which means that, you know, in the style of ODA's SBS segments. This is our special Off Week podcast When the manga is off where Greg here, a columnist for V Jump1piece.com and series advisor for Netflix's One Piece series series, and me, Steven, translator for One Piece manga in Shonen Jump and manga plus break down the latest events and chapters and share our expertise. But before we get to all that, of course we do have to catch up. It's been a couple weeks, so what's new in the the life of Greg?

[Greg]

Let's see, what do I. What do I choose? All right, I hit a new max on my bench, so I'm extremely excited about that. That's been about six months trying to budge from, what was it? I think 260 in pounds was my previous best and I finally got it. I edged it up to 270. So I am excited about that. A lot of work went into that and yeah, very happy with results. Cool.

[Steven]

Congrats.

[Greg]

Well, I guess I'll try to tie it around. Back to One Piece is I think I mentioned this before, but my trainer is a former student of mine and he has slowly been getting through One Piece. He knew that I liked it when he was in school, but I mean that was like, you know, over 10 years ago and he never really got into the series and he didn't know how much I was into the series until he saw coincidentally me on Hocotate on the TV quiz show and he was just like, I didn't know he liked it that much but like this was a new kind of chance for him to get into it and he started watching the anime and he was just like, this takes he was really into it up until up and through about Alabasta. And then he was like, this is really kind of taking its time, isn't it? And was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about where it starts to slow down. And so he got in, I got him into the manga, sucked him in. And he is now currently at. The last I spoke to him was yesterday and he's right before the. The wedding ceremony at Whole Cake Island. He's like, the night before it. And I was just like, there are so many things I want to talk to you about but can't say anything because the story changes so dramatically after the events of that night. Not to mention that Katakuri hasn't even been introduced yet. I think they do a name drop. But he's not in the story yet. He's not been seen in the story. So it's just like there's so much I want to talk about, but. But no, I was just like, well, let's talk again on Monday. So. Looking forward to that. I think he's going to speed through it the rest of whole Kicker Island. That's where we're at.

[Steven]

Nice.

[Greg]

How about yourself? What's going on?

[Steven]

Yeah, it's. I was gonna. I. I was saying just before we started that, like, things are chilling out, but I'm trying to remember. I think probably, yeah, that there was like a week. It wasn't a week from hell, but there was a. There was a week probably in between the last time we recorded and now when it was like, you know, my. My brother's family came into town. They were visiting with their kids and at around that same period, like, both of my. My parents were like, having, you know, little health issues here and there, stuff that, you know, was important enough to take them to, you know, to the er, to urgent care or whatever. And it just seemed like it was just this cavalcade of, you know, driving stuff around, you know, taking stuff to the hospital or taking people around to the airport or from the airport or whatever. And it was quite, quite hectic. But that's fortunately in the. In the rear view mirror and. And you know, people are feeling better for the most part. But yeah, I'm enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet now. And it's nice because it gives me a little bit of time, even though I still have a heavy work schedule. But I have been playing a lot of Hollow Knight silksong. It is the game of the moment. And. Yeah, I don't know. Did you ever play Hollow Knight? Are you into this. I.

[Greg]

Boy, do I have questions for you.

[Steven]

Okay.

[Greg]

How deeply did you get into Hollow Knight? Before I answer your question, I'd like.

[Steven]

To pose another question. Yeah, I would say I got probably like 80 or 90% through it. I think I had seen just about all the areas of the game, although I know I didn't beat the final. I don't remember where I'm supposed to go to get to the final boss in Hollow Knight. And I got to that point where it was like, the map is so big and I don't know exactly where I'm going. And like, you know, the, the pace of finding new stuff had just slowed down enough to where, you know, something else came along or whatever. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna play this now. And then I just never went. Never went back to it. I thought about trying to pick it up again before Silksong came out, but. But I just didn't. I didn't get around to it. So maybe I'll go back to it once I'm done with, you know, with Silksong. But they're very large games, Steven.

[Greg]

I don't know if this is a byproduct, a result of my age or games in general, but the scariest thought in the world now to me is putting down a game before I finish it. Because if I so much put it down for two fucking seconds, I'll come back to the controller and just be like, wait, what? Where? I can't. I have no idea. I don't know if it's because the maps are so large and the mechanics are so complicated or just because I'm older. I really don't know. Like, I'd like to not think that because I am a very experienced gamer, but it's been happening a lot recently, especially with larger games like you said, like Horizon. I think I dropped it and came back to it, like maybe, I don't know, five months later, Horizon two. And I had no idea what to do. I had no idea how to fight anything because it's so complicated, right? Like each dinosaur is a puzzle and I had no idea how to use the controls because everything was so wheel related. And that's not to say it's bad, it's just games have become to me so complicated. And Hollow Knight, which I did play and I beat and I tried to make a dent in going towards the Platinum trophy. I had to. It's the game that broke me on Platinums, like a game that I. Because I didn't Platinum everything I ever Played but like games that I really enjoyed. I wanted to platinum. So I was like, all right, I'm going to go towards this. And Hollow Knight was one of those games where I was like this is great. I have never seen a Metroidvania modern day created with this much love and care to attention. Do you know what you have to do in order to get the platinum in that fucking game?

[Steven]

I. I remember. I. Well, I. Here's the thing because I. I think my copy is on Steam or. No, it's like the game has its own internal achievements. Right. I don't know if those are the exact same if all of them are on are also trophies on PlayStation or whatever.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

But I know that there was like a. You know, like you have to beat it in heart, you know, one, one death and in your game is wiped and then you have to beat it like 100% that way or something like that. I don't know if that's part of the.

[Greg]

That the platform as far as I recall. I don't know if that's any like special updated trophy or something like that. That is as far as I know is not part of it.

[Steven]

But it's okay.

[Greg]

You must beat every boss in the game one after another on One life and that. I was just like fuck that. And you know who fucking did it was. He's a friend of the podcast. He's a fellow. I think he used to be like a community manager for funimation. And I don't remember was it or.

[Steven]

No that I was remembering. Josh Kosherk was like, he was the brand manager. He wasn't a community guy.

[Greg]

I believe it was after. Yeah, he was a brand manager, I believe was a community fellow. But like we're friends on Facebook. I should recall his name in no time flat. I feel so super embarrassed. But he did it and he was just like, oh yeah, I did it. He just posted it up on Twitter at one point I was just like, how. What the fuck? How does your brain work? You're amazing. You definitely need to be studied because I have no idea how you can do that. I have done ridiculously difficult trophies and achievements in games and my stomach turns at the thought of trying to do that in that game. So how has your experience been so far with Silksong? What do you. What do you find?

[Steven]

It's really fun. No, I'm. I'm probably like a. Does like between 10 and 15 hours maybe I'm not doing it like super fast. I know that there are people who you know can get through the whole game and like 30 hours or 40 hours, something like that. I'm sure it'll take a lot longer for me because I have been hitting the wall with. With bosses and just, you know, over and over, you do it two dozen, three dozen times until I. Until I get past them. So I'm still in the act one part, but I've. I've got a bunch of abilities now and I think I beat a. A pretty important boss. So I'm. I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna go around and find a bunch of stuff that I have access to now that, that I. That I couldn't before the first time in the areas.

[Greg]

I am envious of you and at the same time, I'm scared to think about being you.

[Steven]

You further along.

[Greg]

No. No, I will not pick up that game. No.

[Steven]

Okay.

[Greg]

Nope.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Nope. Nope. Nope. I think Elden Ring kind of did me in for the super difficulty games. Yeah. And that's not to say I dislike it. It's just like I finished it. I platined it and I think I was like, I'm good. I think that that kind of put a bow on it.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Yeah. As you said, that wall of I'm not. I got a friend who, like, who's like, yeah, man. He's like, that boss was so hard. He was like, I had to fight it two times. And just like, man, fuck you. Fuck you, man.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

I don't know. I think it's a memory thing on hitboxes. Like, I have to do things again and again and again to memorize them. And then this dude, he'll just be like. He'll see it once and he'll be like, oh, yeah. All right. So I know I need to be like outside the Hitbox at this point with this tell and it just. And I try to do that, but it's just like, nah, I'm not wired that way.

[Steven]

Yeah, neither.

[Greg]

But good to anyone who is. Amazing work. So more power to you.

[Steven]

It's cool. Cool game. But yeah, people are here to. To hear us talk about one piece. So before we get into the. The chapters, I'll just give our usual Patreon plug here. I know that people have heard us talk about the. The sticker stuff. And Steve is preparing to send out the. The latest batch. I believe we are going to have some. Was it Shmopo Schmaban in Margaritaville? It's going to be a Scott Burgabon double fisting Margs that is going to be your next sticker for our little sticker club. I know that we've been going through. In case you're one of the few people who has not gotten your stickers or, you know, you haven't updated your, I guess your address on your, your Patreon account, that's how Steve will be able to, to send them out. So, you know, if you have not checked that or made sure that you have that, go ahead and update that if you can and send him a message on, on Discord or wherever to let him know that, that he should have access to your address. And yeah, I know he's been busy with, with a move recently and stuff, but I do think that is in the, that it's also in the rearview mirror for him. So hopefully we should have more smooth sailing with, you know, the future, future months and so on. So check that out. That's over on our Patreon at One Piece podcast. I believe that is the twelve dollar tier, if you are interested in that. As far as news, I don't think there's a ton of news. Well, there was a, I guess they've been doing a little bit of promo stuff for season two of the Netflix show. They've been putting out, like I was gonna say screenshots. They're not screenshots, they're just still stills, I guess, of, you know, the characters in costume and stuff like that. So, you know, the, the promotional cycle moves on. We're getting ever, ever so closer to the eventual release of the second season. So that's exciting. But other than that, I think we, we got a couple chapters to get through and we do have a good number of reader or I should say listener questions. So why don't we just get into it, Greg?

[Greg]

All right, let's do it.

[Steven]

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[Greg]

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[Steven]

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[Greg]

Hard to tell what's real unless you have McAfee.

[Steven]

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[Greg]

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[Steven]

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[Greg]

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[Steven]

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[Greg]

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[Steven]

Brain can really do. This is the manga recap for chapters 1158, 1159 and 1160. Those are the. The three most recent since our previous break. And I. I don't know about you, I have a feeling we will be able to get through these a little quicker than usual. Just because there's a. There's a lot of repetition in these, in these chapters and there's a lot of like, action where you're just kind of hitting one scene to the next. So. Yep, we'll see how, how we do here. I've got my. My synopses are written up, so we'll start with 1158 Rocks versus Harold. So first off, I think. I don't usually comment on these, but you know, for this one instance I'll just say Kozuki Moria. But in the chapter itself, Shaky sends a love letter to Rayleigh. So the Roger Pirates sail off to quote unquote pillage her figureland. Garling recommends God Valley for the Hunger Games and says he found something special there. While Roger and Rox continue their rivalry, Rox is revealed to have a secret wife and child. Meanwhile, Rox admonishes King Harald for playing along with the government's game. And on God Valley, an unnamed woman gives birth to Shanks and Shamrock. So, yeah, now I had a. I had, I had a little rant, you know, and I was kind of. I was playing it up a little bit for, for funsies, just to, you know, to make things fun and, and funny and whatnot. But I did have a little bit of a rant about the Kozuki Moria reveal or just the way, at least the way that he unveiled this. Like, I get, I get that for a lot of people, you know, the. Okay, the, the get go. And I, I literally said this like when I saw Kozuki Moria on, you know, in, in the kanji, like I had a little like dyslexia moment where I was just like, oh my God, it's Gekko Moria. Why didn't I see that before? And then I was like, oh wait, no, that's Kozuki. Wait, what the. You know, like my, my, my brain just read the kanji in the reverse order originally and then I was like, wait, he's supposed to be a Kozuki now? Is this supposed to. Are we supposed to take away that, like, he. He was like, adopted into the. The Kozuki clan or.

[Greg]

I don't. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if I want to get into this because there's a lot of. Spoiler alert. I'm not super duper happy with some of the big reveals that we've been having lately. So a lot of me might. I'm not trying to, but a lot of me might sound jaded. So I'm not sure whether to get into it now or later. You know what I mean? Because there's something of a common thread connecting specifically the aspects that I'm not super happy with. But what can I say is playing with names is a difficult thing in a manga. You get a couple of chances at. You only get a couple of chances at a really good gotcha with a name like, oh, this character's name wasn't this. It was actually this. Once you start to pull that more and more frequently, it gets harder to do because you have lost a sense of cohesion. Not cohesion, you've lost a sense of trust in the audience because you've deceived them. And when an audience is listening or when your readers are reading, they only get a certain amount of. You lied to me about this. And I don't know if you're a newer reader, maybe you don't feel it as much, but as for someone who over 10 years ago was experienced, actually for over 20 years, has been experiencing some of these characters and have trusted Oda to only use these kind of manipulating name techniques when it was absolutely necessary for him now to have one almost on a weekly basis. Actually, I think maybe all three of these chapters have that instance where we find someone or something has been. We've been lied to about a name.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

And I think maybe you and I are probably one of the few who've been fans this long, so maybe our perspective is somewhat similar in this and maybe maybe different, I don't know. But, like, I feel like there's a little bit like, really? Again? And, like, it becomes also problematic when the. When pulling that in the world feels just silly. It feels like it was something that was added on. So, for instance, just as you. Exactly as you were saying, like, you write it as like, oh, my God, Gekko Moria. And you're like, wait, Kozuki Moria. And oh, wait. But no, no. Yeah. If you reverse it, then it is in Fact. Gekko Moria. So, like, okay, in this world, who would he be trying to fool with that name? Like, that wouldn't fool anybody. It's like, oh, he's a clever. It's not. He's not hiding anything.

[Steven]

It's just. It's just to look clever to the readers, basically.

[Greg]

Yes, yes. And when you want to look clever to the reader, then it better damn well be clever. This. I don't know there. You can argue that there's some foreshadowing, but a lot of it does feel tacked on. Especially because. What was it like, Toko chan being Perona's potential sister. Right? Like, we don't know who.

[Steven]

What's that? We.

[Greg]

Oh, have you.

[Steven]

Oh my God, I have not heard this. No.

[Greg]

Oh, just. Just think about it for like two seconds. Like, look, look at the two of them. And it's just like, oh, wait a minute. Did he take an older sister with him? And is she the younger sister who was left behind? And she has no memories of having an older sister? Because if I recall, correct, she's an orphan, isn't she? She was picked up by Yasuo.

[Steven]

Yeah, that's right. He said that they were not blood related.

[Greg]

So what if she has an older sister because they look similar? I believe in the anime, they both have the same hair color.

[Steven]

That's right. Yeah.

[Greg]

And they've both got those. Those. I don't know how to describe it. Those eyes, those beady eyes.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

So it's like, oh, did Moria just take an unfortunate young girl, like an orphaned girl with him and he didn't know she had a younger sister? There's things like that you think about and you're like, okay, okay, that it makes sense, but it feels like it was like it was looked into. Like, can I make this make sense? There's no real solid foreshadowing that this was a thing aside from the name. Like when the only thing you could argue is, like, when the Kozuki name was revealed. Like, be like, oh, okay. I guess if you put that in reverse, it could be read Gekko. But like, that. That doesn't make any sense. Because putting Gekko isn't a foreshadowing to. To Kozuki. It would have to be the reverse. And this is to a lot of readers, I'm sure listening, are raging at me right now. It might sound like much ado about nothing, but I know there are also a couple like, like, disruptive out there who are longtime readers. And I, I do wonder if. If people feel the Same way that you only get so many chances at playing with a character's name before it starts to feel like an abuse of the. Not of the system. I don't want to sound like some conspiracy theories, but it sounds like an abuse of author pulling the rug out from underneath you. And unfortunately, that will only continue through these chapters.

[Steven]

Okay. Yeah. All right, well, let's, I, I, and, and I have said my, my piece on the podcast as well. I know it wasn't with you specifically so much, but I, I think, you know, we, we have, we have similar thoughts on the matter. So.

[Greg]

I, I just, it would be nice, like you mentioned, is he adopted? It would be nice if he's adopted because I'm kind of, kind of upset about these, these men traveling around the world, can't keep it in their pants kind of thing.

[Steven]

Yeah, yeah. Like, it's, it's easy enough to be like, okay, well, okay, so, so if the one guy went on or the one, you know, group went off and they, they sailed off to the east blue, that's fine, but, you know, like, but he's from the west blue. So, like, is this a different, you know, if he, if he was supposedly, you know, Kozuki, if he was born Kozuki Moria, then that means you have to explain a different group of people potentially that splintered off from Wano. And. Yeah, it's just, it feels very messy.

[Greg]

And why wouldn't he be referenced or revered or, you know, seen anywhere in the country? Like, obviously, it seems like it was a thing where he was respected enough to be immortalized. Immortalized. Memorialized here. Yes, because it seems like he did a heroic thing. It seems to be that he defended a village against Moria. That, you see the. I don't know if it's supposed to be in disrepair or if that's actually the cut that wounded him, but you see how the. It's not a Torii. It's the part of the shrine that's like, cut down the middle. Right behind the. Kozuki Moriya.

[Steven]

Yeah, the beams.

[Greg]

You can't really tell for sure whether he's just trying to show that it's old and decrepit, or is that the site of where Kaido actually did the damage to Moria? Like, is this where he took that final stand and where he got supposedly that cut that runs down the middle of his face? Is this where he got that damage? I don't know. It would be kind of interesting if he did, but you could say that maybe those kind of things are kind of Threatening. I mean, the fact that, that he was a hero here and it's not brought up any time or mentioned during the, the massive Kozaki Oden story.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

At least not that I've seen. Maybe if I go back and read it, there's some little hint somewhere. Like, I don't know, there's a Yatsura that has dots by it, you know, that I never write or something, you know.

[Steven]

Yeah, the plural.

[Greg]

Maybe it's there, but you and I are usually pretty good about picking that stuff up and putting a pin in those. And I don't recall anything. I mean, it doesn't seem lazy, it just seems moody, like, forced in.

[Steven]

Yeah. And my issue is like, okay, like, I can see all the little bits and pieces that connect to each other, but like, to, to what end? Like, what. What is the point of all of this? What. What are we getting out of it? How is this enhancing either Wano's story or Moria's story? Because unless he has a plan to, to bring Moria back and, and it's. And it's going to really pay off and it's going to have something really cool and worthwhile and he might do that. I might completely change my, my tune on this. But at least at the moment it just kind of feels like, yeah, we, we sort of already had his story. Like, I don't see where, where this is going, that it's going to be worth all of the, the little hints and nods and, you know, clever asides and whatnot. It's, you know, I don't know.

[Greg]

I don't know if you and I are on the same page, but we are in the same book. Moria will definitely be back in the story. He's going to play a part in the final war. It's going to be interesting. But my whole thing is not, does Moria need to come back in the story and be important? It's because he will. Everyone, I mean, everyone will. But sure. It's. What is that. What does that mean for Wano? Like, what. What is how. What would that mean for. For the country that he was a part of? What does it mean for the family that he was a part of? Like, how is it important there? Like, what does it do to that end? Because I'm not interested. Like, if he comes back in the story, this has almost nothing to do with that.

[Steven]

This just explains, like, what he was doing in the past. Yes. What does it have to do with his. What he's going to do in the.

[Greg]

Future and why specifically that family. Some people have suggested, you know, maybe he can read the poneglyphs. So that's a plus for Cross Guild. Like, do they have a reader now? Yeah, but then.

[Steven]

But then. Then Oda would have to break his rule again because that was only taught to the heir to the shogun.

[Greg]

Oh, Stephen. Oda. Oda can break that anytime he wants. Are you kidding me? It can be like, oh, yeah, he was. He was the deshi for, like, any.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Or he was in the room next to him and. And. And he. He secretly saw that. That's why. That's why you can't do this shit, is because then it comes to that point where it's like, oh, well, yeah, he made that rule, but then he broke it. Or he told us this character's name, but it's not that name. And that's what upsets me about that because it creates those scenarios where you have to doubt everything that they give you, and there's a fund out and then there's a. Well, you know, we just don't know. So a lot of. A lot of. When an author breaks down their own barriers to this extent, it destroys a lot of the magic that's there, because you can see behind the curtain, and you can see that he's constructing this because he thought it would be cool in the moment, which goes back to creating rocks looking like a carbon copy of. Well, I mean, teach looking like a carbon copy of rocks. He wanted that cool. Like, wow, it's definitely Blackbeard's father. Even though, you know, it says at the bottom. But, like, from one look, you can tell. And wow, that's. He wanted that moment, and he didn't think for a second, like, this would be a dumb thing to do because they look exactly the same. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is such a shitty way to start off the podcast. But, like, there's. There's. There's no way to avoid this conversation. Bringing me into this conversation. It. And I'm kind of. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad I got this out of the way. Like I said, it is going to be a common thread, but I'll try to keep my main displeasure with it to this extent, but. Okay, I feel a little bit better. This is like, is this the sgs or, like, is this just like my. It's kind of become my therapy session with you now is to kind of go through this. It's like my decompress. Yeah, I feel a little bit better.

[Steven]

Yeah, I do. I Do like, the. The. The reinforcement. And, you know, I think we saw some of that prior to this, but, you know, it's. It's also very, very thick in these chapters of like, during. During this time when they're in their. Their prime. All of this stuff with, like, Roger and Rocks and especially, like, you know, reintroducing Shaky as like the. The Helen of tr. That it's all. It's. It's just like. It's like a high school musical or something. Like, it's. It's just the popular kids fighting, you know, the nerds fighting the jocks and. And all that stuff. Like, it's so funny the way that they, you know, when you're. You're kind of expecting them to be like, absolute badasses who are always. And they have those moments. But, like, you know, at the. At the heart of it, there is just a lot of, like, these are just kind of young people without many cares in the world who are. Are just kind of thriving and doing their own thing and having fun with it. And it doesn't have the same kind of sense of intensity or. Or, like, urgency that all of the, you know, the stuff involving the one piece does, for example. And I. I just think that's. That's so funny, and I didn't necessarily see that coming, but I do enjoy that part of this flashback.

[Greg]

I would say that pretty much everyone fits that description except for Rox. Rox seems. I mean, like, Teach is. Maybe there's gonna be some, you know, like, psych. Like he actually was this. Or, you know, something he doesn't care about his dad, blah, blah, blah. But he seems like a man with a mission. And it seems like everything that he wants to do and all the people that he's assembling, it seems exactly like Blackbeard in that, like, he recognizes people of extreme talent and he wants to get them together to more or less use them to. To. As a means to an end. And that's the only. To this extent that seems to be the only not cool thing about Rocks is that he does seem to be using these. He seems to have a goal in mind that I don't know if he shared with any of his crew. I don't know that he has maybe.

[Steven]

I mean, if he's. If he's, like, talking with Harold and saying, like, yeah, here's my secret name and all that stuff, you know, I certainly would not expect him to be having those same conversations with the randos on his crew.

[Greg]

Right? And it doesn't seem to be that way. He seems to have a very. He seems to open up to Harold more than. More than anybody else. Yeah. Like even part of me wants to say, like, maybe he opened up to Whitebeard. But then almost as the second it came out, before it came out my mouth, I thought, wait a minute. Think about that for a second. Like, White Beater is just at this point, like, he's, he's a badass, but he's still. He's not Yonko Whitebeard. It's like, no, he's not gonna open up to him. So, yeah, he's the only one who seems to be kind of understanding the world stakes that are involved here. Everybody else does. See, just as you said, it seems. Everybody else seems to be having fun.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

Can I say a random thing about Shakki? I like how he has. Because I've been shitting on the series for 20 minutes now. I like how he depicts her hair as being kind of tsuya. Tsuya. I don't know. Silky.

[Steven]

Yes. Shiny.

[Greg]

Shiny. Because she does not have that necessarily in the future. In the future when we've seen her. And that's just kind of cool to represent her age that way because she obviously still looks like amazing, but she doesn't have that. That same sheen to her hair that she does when she's younger. And that's an interesting choice to depict age that way because it's one of those things like instead of drawing like lines or, you know, giving wrinkles, etc. Like he'll. He'll tend to do to a lot of characters. He just chose to make her hair look more not as shiny. I think that's a really cool choice. That's neat. Doesn't she have the devil wings in the future as well? But they're black and now they're white here when she's younger. Interesting choice. I like that. That's cool. Carrying through. I still have sweatshirts and shit that I wear from. I was in high school, so I get it.

[Steven]

Yeah, yeah. You find a motif and you stick with it.

[Greg]

Do you think that the events of God. Well, maybe this is best saved for later. Yeah, let's talk about that if I even remember it by then. Yeah, okay. Wow. Shanks and Shamrock, they're brothers.

[Steven]

Yeah. Now the interesting thing to me on this page, and I don't know, I forget if we talked about this or if I'm. I'm thinking of. Of someone else, but you know, we don't really learn much more about the mother. You know, we've seen her once or twice more in these chapters, but we don't, you know, Oda is very deliberately not revealing too much, but there's some interesting details with her interactions with these, these townsfolk. And maybe this is just Oda, you know, trying to give you a little glimpse of like, okay, this, you know, this was the life that Shanks and Shamrock could have had if not for their father, you know, that, that, you know, the being raised by the. All these, you know, lovely people, you know, it takes a village, etc, etc. But like, it was interesting that, like, this one guy says, you know, I hope they grow up to be, you know, wise like you to the mother. And that just struck me as a very interesting comment. And I don't want to like, generalize too much, but I think for, for Japanese culture, at least for, you know, someone coming from Japan, I think if you were going to do a boilerplate, like just sort of very, very typical, you know, line, I don't think that that would be like the adjective that you would go to first. And so it suggests that like, there's something notable about this, this woman that we haven't been told otherwise. And I, I don't know if that's going to be important or if that's just kind of like, okay, maybe, you know, she, she was a special person on God Valley. But all that really matter. You know, the only way that this really matters is that it helps explain, you know, why Shanks and also Shamrock are so extraordinary as individuals because they came from very good stock, et cetera, et cetera. Or if there's, you know, if there's more to that, that story. But that, that really struck. Stuck out to me in this, this kind of initial scene when we first see her.

[Greg]

Are you trying to say they have good genes?

[Steven]

Yes. Yeah, that's definitely what I'm saying. They're, they're, they're drying up the ad campaign now.

[Greg]

I know. I'm in complete agreement. That's a very. God, just like we were saying with like the Moria stuff, like, if only there were a line like, like this related to that. Wano. And yes, okay, yes. Asterisks. Maybe I missed it somewhere. Maybe there is one. But like, but like, yeah, it does stand out. Like, why would you use that? And it's, it's also not like the first thing you'd think Oda would go to either because he's, he's more of a, like when he goes with his gut instinct for a scene that he's just like, I'm just trying to depict, you know, a typical conversation. It seems like he would go for it, like, oh my, I don't know, she looks obviously attractive. Like if they were, I hope maybe they'll be attractive as their mother, you know, like.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

Aside from whether that's PC or not. Like, like that's a go to line for him. Like you know, just to have that. Especially coming from an older, older character as it seems to be. But why does he choose wise? That isn't as an interesting choice. And just going back to the, you know, they have good genes kind of dig. But like they, they obviously have a, a bright mother and a very powerful or at least I say inclinated. That's not the word I'm looking for. But they're not prone to. But like they're well developed for battle, in other words.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

So they have brains and brawn, these two. So. Yeah. What family are they from? Also, you know, we know that there are what, buccaneer genes on this island as well. Right. So like.

[Steven]

Yes, presumably. Yeah, it's again a little unclear for sure, but there's definitely, there's definitely some kind of ancient stock here on God Valley.

[Greg]

Interesting that that is. Yeah. About the mother and maybe that's why he doesn't deliberately show the face but like just constantly another thing is like not showing the face of the mother again.

[Steven]

Yes. Yeah, I, I had a comment about this because, you know, people were noting. And we do, we do see presumably Teach's mom's face when we see them too. But obviously this is a, this is, this is a repeated theme here of, you know, unfortunate mothers of children. And in addition to maybe hiding something that he wants to reveal later with the mother here, I, I also said, you know, he can kind of get away with it from a certain artistic standpoint as well. Just because, you know, Shanks. We don't always see things through Shanks's perspective, you know, like, like Luffy is the, is the, the main viewpoint for the series. But you know, I think it's kind of a classic style thing of. Well, you know, Shanks was separated from his mom when he was an infant like this. So how much does he really remember? He never got to know her. And so in, in a, in a certain poetic sense, not being able to see her face and to identify her visually kind of puts us in a similar space with Shanks. You know, it helps kind of.

[Greg]

You.

[Steven]

Know, emulate that, that mindset or that experience that he's had. And so, you know, you could explain it that way. But of course.

[Greg]

Stephen, you changed my opinion. No, you just changed my opinion. Good.

[Steven]

I did it.

[Greg]

I love it.

[Steven]

I did it.

[Greg]

I love it. That's. That's what we're here. See, this is therapy. This is growth. This is.

[Steven]

There we go.

[Greg]

Moving through. I absolutely do like that. I agree. Yes, you're right. And it's like the doflamingo thing with the sunglasses. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, I'm satisfied. Thank you.

[Steven]

Okay, well that was the last page of that one. So let's move on to 1115. In this one, Shecky is kidnapped from Pirate island to be used as a prize in the God Valley game. Sending all of the big pirate crews and Garp into action. Garling delivers a fatal but slow acting blow to the twins mother and takes the boys rookie marine monkey. D Dragon is shocked by what he sees happening around him. Rox meets with Harold again and reveals that he is secretly Davey D. Zebek from God Valley. And as the game is set to begin, the Davey clan prisoners are revealed as targets. So yes, more naming shenanigans.

[Greg]

Yeah, I won't spend too much time on that just because. But because it came so fast and so furious. It just. Yeah, to me it was just like. Oh, okay. One argument I don't particularly agree with is. Or stance. I don't particularly is. See and. And you thought Davey back fight wasn't going to be important to. To date. I know I love Davey back David back is awesome. But to date like Davy back fight like as Davy back fight as an arc is not terribly important.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

To. To. To the lore. Like it's a thing that occurred, but it's just a name. Like we got to hear Davy Jones's name there. We got to hear that we throw coins to the sea. Which is to say maybe they arrive at Davy Jones's place. And I would love for the treasure, like one piece is probably not going to be a quote unquote treasure. Right? It'll be a thing. It will be an item. But it would be kind of cool if the treasure is at least in part all of the coins that got thrown to the sea over the years. Like what if they actually drifted to. That's neither here nor there. But. But as it's related to lore, David back fight is not terribly important. Or at least not as important as something like say the Skypie arc in general is to. To modern day core story lore. I don't necessarily agree with that. That's not a slam dunk argument. But you win points if you just always love the Davy back fight because it's an awesome arc. Points for that. So what do you think? I. Are the Davies related to like buccaneers? Are they a special group of buccaneers? Like, what's going on?

[Steven]

So let me. Yeah, because this does get mentioned in the next chapter, so I'm just going to jump, jump ahead to that, that first spread. So the, the announcer says, let's see, what does he say at the end of this chapter? He says, in addition to the Buccaneer kid, who is obviously referring to Kuma, you know, we have crossing first, being seen in public again for the first time in 800 years, yada yada, the Davey clan. And then subsequently in the, in the next chapter, the crowd is like, you know, yelling at them, hurling abuses. And then there's the line.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Which is like, it's, it's basically saying, aren't you buccaneers too? And you know, that, that could just be that, that ODA was like, well, you know, it's a little awkward to say. We had the Buccaneer kid, you know, who, who you saw before in this old scene in Kuma's flashback, but we also have more buccaneers who are the Davy clan. Maybe he just thought that was a little awkward to reveal or maybe he just changed his mind in between chapters. I have no idea. But it did seem like an oddly kind of backwards way of, of, of intimating that fact or revealing that fact that, that the Davies are also buccaneers. So that's why I'm not sure, I'm not really sure. Like, are they actually buccaneers? Are they just, you know, a particular family from the Buccaneer nation or culture or, you know, however that is defined.

[Greg]

Or what it seems to be.

[Steven]

That's what it seems to be. Or, or is this like them not really being sure and kind of equating the two as like equally, you know, scandalous to them or something? You know, it's just not, it's not really stated with perfect authority. And so I'm not entirely sure what to make of it yet.

[Greg]

Yeah, I'll buy it for now, I'll take it. But like, this is part of that. Part of the fallout from that distrust is like, oh, really? Let's see what did. Well, let's go back to the previous chapter. Sorry, I was just jumping ahead there, but it is irrelevant topic. Okay, so what does that mean then? A lot of people are theorizing is Joy Boy than Davy Jones? That is a name switch that I can get behind. And this is why I hope that I'm this is my shining light in the darkness of my jadedness is that it's not simply. I'm just not against it in general. It's how you do it, the number of times you do it. And I think that Joy Boy being a quote unquote foe or a secondary name is absolutely fine because it sounds like that. And Oda has been fairly consistent with that in the series. Like when we get a character called Mr. One, right? I think years ago when it was revealed that, like, that's Daz bonus, it was like a. It was like mind being blown. Like, whoa. Like, he has a name. Like, he's not just Mr. One. And it's like, no, no, dumbass. Like, of course he has a name. His name isn't Mr. One, duh. Mr. Two. Like, his name isn't Bon Kure. And that was actually surprising. Like. Like, even now that I think about it, it's like, yeah, okay, I thought maybe his name could have been Bon Kure, but like, because they call them Bonchon, right? But like, no, he's actually Bentham. Joyboy sounds like it could be a title. And I can fully get behind that. So it's not just me at random not liking name changes. It's one's. How you build it up, how you do it, and that one works. I totally would get behind that. I don't know if it's. I don't know though, if it. If it fits. Like, are we being given this look at Zbek? I never. I gotta think how I want to do. I want to call him Rocks or Zbeck or D. I don't know. I don't know what the freaking call. But when we look at. I'll try to quite call him Zvek as possible, but he calls himself the Rocks Pirate. Well, never mind. When we look at Xebek, like, he's this obviously buccaneerish, as we've seen so far, buccaneerish type body, a very large. Compared to a quote unquote, normal human, hulking, muscular body type. And yet when we see depictions of Joy Boy, it seems to be lanky, kind of like a Luffy figure.

[Steven]

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Greg]

So, like, is that Oda doing his shadow thing again? Like, is that the. The. The. The Big mom that looks kind of almost nothing like Big mom in the. During Border 7, you know, is that just a car? I don't know. It's hard to say. I don't know if I have a strong opinion on it, whether or not one way or the other. But I think it could easily be a bait and switch. And then like, yes, they are larger. He was just a thinner type of these. And we've only seen the muscular types because it is kind of a red herring. It is a fake out. So I don't necessarily think that just because he's lanky doesn't disqualify him from. Doesn't disqualify his ancestor from being Joy Boy. Man, it's so tough to think about to refer to this character because Joy Boy could be a fake name. Joy Boy could be a Davey and also Nika at the same time, but it's not Nika because Nika is actually a. A God. But do we know that it was a God or an actual figure in point in ancient history that became a quote unquote God because of the devil fruit? Or is it just the concept of a God from the beginning? It's really hard. But I do appreciate that kind of weaving that Oda has done to kind of COVID the origins of a character. That's what I like. It's this, you know, spending. Because this is a double for. For T, for. For Teach now, right? Because Teach, he wasn't.

[Steven]

Is he Marshall? Is he rocks? Is he. Is he Davey? You know?

[Greg]

Yeah. So there we are. That's a lot of my. That's a lot of my Davies. I don't have too much on, like, the lore, the history of it, or. I don't want to get too deep in that. I don't know. Did you guys talk about that on the. On the regular podcast?

[Steven]

Just like the, the implications for.

[Greg]

Yeah, the implications.

[Steven]

Not so much, I think. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's like once he starts narrowing down, like, oh, yeah, this is the. The guy. I mean, now, did he say. They said that the Davies have not been seen in 800 years, at least by the. By the government. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Davy D. Jones was from the Void century. He could have been older, right?

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Is that okay? Because, yeah, if he was from the Void, as far as I know, yes. Yeah. If he, if he was from the Void century, then. Then at some point it's kind of like, okay, well, I mean, is. Is this one guy the same as the other? Only other guy that we've heard of existing in, you know, the Void century? Or, you know, are we gonna. Are we gonna eventually get some kind of, you know, more fleshed out flashback where Oda actually introduces, you know, a full cast to. To, you know, help color in the. Our. Our understanding of what that time period was like. And I don't know. I don't know if that's what's his plan. I don't even know if he knows for sure whether that's his plan or not. But, yeah, I don't know. I'm. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna wait and see.

[Greg]

This is kind of an aside, but how do you like. And again, slightly jumping ahead, but almost two chapters in a row, the Yamato story kind of looking like the final chapter.

[Steven]

And then.

[Greg]

Absolutely not. I'll tell you, the first time I read both of these chapters, I saw the image first. Right. Like, the image enters my brain and I go, oh, Saishu Kai. And I was like, I'm surprised. I thought that, you know, mom and Kaido would be coming into the end of this. And then I go immediately down to the bottom to check. This is like, you know, 0.1 seconds. Right? So image. Okay. Process down to the bottom. And I'm like, it's not. It's not the final one. Okay. And then the next week, same thing, like, oh, okay. Yeah. This is his perfect, like, you know, ending to the. The arc. Yeah, great. Wait, it's not the final one. Two in a row. And I think that's on purpose. I think he's trying to give a lot of readers the impression that, like, this is. This is the end. And I think he's going to pull a gotcha in one of the next.

[Steven]

I would love that.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

And I do believe it's been announced that the One piece. When One Piece comes back, it's going to be on the. It's going to have the COVID and the color spread and all that stuff. So it's going to be a few more weeks before we get the potential finishing entry to this cover.

[Greg]

Yeah. So let's see. Trying to. I'm trying to reign things back into 1159.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Morgan's young. Morgan's looking. Looking derpy.

[Steven]

Yeah. I did think it was funny that, like, they specify that, like, at. At least at this time, it's just a. Like a local newspaper that he gave a very ostentatious name, you know, like, set your goals for where you want to be sort of thing. And so now in, you know, four decades later, he. He actually has a worldwide newspaper. That's pretty.

[Greg]

Yeah. The. I don't know if it just works on me this way. And this is just me reading it. I know a lot of people are excited about God Valley. Rightfully so.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

But for me, I think this is kind of, despite all my misgivings, he's really doing a good job of keeping the main pole. The main drama being between Xebek and Harald here. How these two come to where they are at the end of this is super exciting to me. And I think the level of friendship that you're going to see on display here and the kind of Oda's typical sacrifice tell story of sacrifice is going to play into why those horns come off.

[Steven]

Oh yeah.

[Greg]

Because Xybec is probably going to do something that's going to save face for the Giants and it's going to be at likely the cost of his life, if not the appearance of his life to everyone else. To everyone else who's alive. Like what I'm intimating is what if Xebek is still alive? Right? Like that's, that's a possible. Unless. Unless we. It's confirmed that he has one of the fruits that are currently being used, right?

[Steven]

Yeah. That's the only way we can know for sure. Yeah.

[Greg]

Well, and even then it's like, oh, somebody invented this thing that can actually, you know. But anyway, because the drama between these two is so big for me and I don't know if that. If that's hitting everybody the same way, but I am fascinated to see these two come together and go apart, come together, go apart again and again. And they both have such. Obviously Xebek's goal is to get to Imu, right? Somehow, because he says, I'll be back. It seems to be a vendetta. And he knows that when he sees Imu for the first time that he can't change shit. So he becomes something for himself. He gets a crew. And he knows that he has the capability to try to accomplish what he wants to. And this entire time he's been trying to get Harold on his side because I think he knows exactly what the world government knows. In that you need the Giants on your side in order to win. And in that trying to constantly pull him in. The two of them have become friends. And they started off as friends, obviously, but then they came to fisticuffs when they came to a societal disagreement over where they are, where they should be, whether you want to work with the government or against the government. Right. And he wanted to work for it, he being a herald. Sorry, he wanted to work for it, to work towards a better future. And obviously Xybek still not being completely genuine with him sharing everything that he knows, because maybe if he did then it would become A different story. And I don't know why he's being quiet about it, whatever his goal is. But I get the feeling that if he did share that with Harald, Harald would be at his side in a second. And because he has, I think when Harold becomes aware of what his goal is and what he's done to get to that point and because of what he will sacrifice in order to accomplish it, I think that's when we'll see those horns be probably ripped off. Torn off.

[Steven]

Yeah. And the structure of the way that he's told it is just begging you to expect that. Because we've seen throughout this flashback Rox and Harold interacting so many times. It's been at least two or three times that it's like, come on man, you gotta jump. You know, you gotta, you gotta. Yeah, you know, you gotta wait, you gotta wise up. You gotta realize what the government's doing.

[Greg]

Come on, Harold. Harold, we gotta go. We gotta exploring, Harold.

[Steven]

Yeah, exactly. And, and Harold keeps refusing. And like you don't just hammer the same point multiple times if you're not going to bring it around at the end and have it, have the, have the tables turned. So yeah, that's a, that's a, it's a, you know, not dramatic irony, but it's, you know, the, the dramatic weight, the tension of like, okay, you know, this has to come back around. And I think that that's a very rich, you know, undercurrent to, to what we've seen building here.

[Greg]

Yeah. And for, for me that's the main pull. I'm interested in that drama. And a lot of people are like, well, you know, this, isn't this supposed to be the Loki flashback? You know, why are we taking all these side. And it's, this is, this is a hard question. Do you think that Loki is aware of all of these events?

[Steven]

I mean, I feel like realistically probably no. And I don't, I don't take like, you know, we, we joke about these sort of things, but I don't take like the, the framework of how we start the flashback as like, you know, as like a literal, as like, as like a literal narration of like, oh, all these things Loki is telling, you know, all these things like Oda the narrator is, is showing us and presumably, you know, at least some of this is going to be told is what Loki is telling to the characters and how they react to it is going to reflect that. But I don't necessarily think that that this means that like when, when we get out of this, that Luffy is going to be aware, or, you know, the more attentive members of the Straw Hats are going to be aware of all of these. These details. Like, I just. Yeah, that's not the way that.

[Greg]

That Oda. Yeah, yeah. No, not at all. Not at all. My only question is, does Loki know it or not? Because if he. If he doesn't know it, then it is a bit of a. It is a bit of a pull on Oda to do this here in the middle of his flashback. But as a reader, we obviously need to know what's going on here in order to get to the next stage and to have that proper drama. So it makes sense from a narrative, even if it doesn't from the sense that like, okay, we're getting this flashback because. And the flashback within the flashback is occurring because Loki is aware of these events in a perfect world. Yes, that would be the case. Because when that is occurring, when Loki sees what happened to his father, he's thinking about all of that. But I don't think that he's going to be informed. He's going to know all of that, which will be interesting moving forward as well for the modern age story to see how he reacts to when or if he learns about what happened here. But I could be wrong. It would be interesting if somehow Loki has been made privy to all of these events. But somehow I don't think that's the case. He seemed too carefree when he came home to see his dad right before the murder. So yeah, I'm not sure that he knows all this. Anyway, that's a weird aside. That's like an aside with an aside. But that's all to say, I do think that Oda is doing this flashback correctly. Even if some people are bemoaning the fact that it's not really Lokis, or it's not sticking to that point. I think that the drama here is perfect for what it needs to be between giants and the outside world. And that's all that matters, even to Loki right now.

[Steven]

All right, well, I think the Last chapter here, 1160, this one is actually a pretty simple, pretty straightforward one. The Celestial Dragons depraved game begins and carnage ensues. Dragon secretly saves Eva and Kuma by tranq shotting a celestial dragon near them. Then somehow finds the twin boys and runs off with them while the Rocks Pirates, Roger Pirates, Knights of God and Garp's fleet pose for their photo shoots.

[Greg]

So do I start this one off with an apology? Knights of God?

[Steven]

Yeah, well, actually. So I was confused by that. And I. And I was. I kind of went through what. So I don't know. I forget if. If. If I talked about this with. With you or not, but I did bring it up on. On the podcast last week that at least for the moment, temporarily, I'm kind of transitioning. So, like, I was talking to Alexi and I'm like, what are we going to do about this? Like that. You know, I'm like, I'm counting up, like, okay, here's all the instances. Here are the volumes that this term appears in already, several of which are already in print in English. And I'm like, okay, you know, what do we. What do we do? You know? And there's like, supposedly a deliberate meaning here in choosing, you know, the word God singular, for example. And he was like, why don't you just call them the Holy Knights of God? And then we'll. And then. And then we'll just ignore the old ones. And I was like, hey, that's why. That's. That's why you're the editor in chief here. You know, Quick thinking. So, yeah, so at least for now, we're. We're. We. We just kind of mashed them together and, and maybe over time, once people get used, because, you know, I can't just switch it completely and be like, hey, this is, you know, can. Did you notice the change here, like, off camera, that we change from one to the other? You know, you got to give people a little more continuity to. To make sure that the association is right. So, yeah, at least for now. I. We changed it to say Holy Nights of God. But. But, you know, my, My plan is by. By a later point, you know, we'll be able to just say Knights of God.

[Greg]

Cool.

[Steven]

And it won't be. Yeah, it won't bother anyone. It won't ruffle too many feathers. That's the idea.

[Greg]

So the reason for this and why I'm apologizing is, as I may have mentioned in the past, from time to time, I get consulted by the production staff about English namings, and most of the time it's not an issue. But this is one where it came up and they're like, we want to do the Knights of God. What do you think? And I was like, that sounds fine to me. But the English version uses the Holy Knights, and that's going to be something that, you know, that's a name they've used, so that's going to have to change. Now you. I try to be diplomatic here. So I do tell Them straight out. Like, you can ignore that. They can just simply change it in, in the English version. Keep it changed.

[Steven]

Yeah, I, I just to, just to be clear, like, I don't necessarily want, you know, in all cases, like a choice that I made to dictate, you know, creative decisions like on, on the Japan side, you know, like, if, if there's a good reason, if Oda has a plan for something, like, I want him to. To execute on that. So, yeah, you know that, that's not like it. It can be frustrating to me to have to deal with the aftermath of that, but, you know, that's just part of what, you know, part of what doing this job entails.

[Greg]

Yes. So actually, do you want to. Do you want to. Because we had an interesting conversation about this. It was like, what, what is the, the, the point. That's what I had to ask them as well is what is the point of specifically using Knights of God? And Steven, you made a really interesting point why it's important to be vague at times and this can work in your favor and thankfully it does most of the time, or it can work against you as it does from time to time as well. But why did you choose Holy Nights?

[Steven]

Yeah, and I went over this last week too.

[Greg]

Oh, did you?

[Steven]

I think, yes. But I think you will understand this obviously much, much at a much more basic level than the, the rest of the guys that, like, you know, there, there are a number of different ways to parse Kami no Kishidan and ways that, like, if you differentiate the text in English has different meanings, but they can all mean, you know, they, they can all be covered by the way that the Japanese term is. And, and so it's was kind of a, it was a compromise that I had to make because I was like, well, I don't know if these guys are. I don't know if they are the knights of a God, of a singular God of Emu. Basically. I don't know if they are Knights of the Gods, like, if they, if they, you know, because they serve the Celestial Dragons. Like, is it, is it that. Are they God knights? Are they actual, you know, because are they Celestial Dragons or not? We didn't know at the time. They could have just been a, you know, just been like a super special security squad that, you know, is allowed to, to protect Mary Joa or something. You know, we just didn't know. And if I had committed to any of those, it could have easily turned out, you know, backwards and, and then it looks really awkward in retrospect and so, you know, Holy Nights was kind of a compromise where I was like, well, I mean, I gotta, I gotta have something that potentially covers each of these interpretations. And I'm glad to, you know, to, to know it now, but, you know, I just didn't. Yeah. I had no idea what it was going to turn out to be like at this point.

[Greg]

Yeah. And so when they, they brought the, the Knights of God to me, I said, okay, well, what is, what is the inspiration for this? Like, why, why must it be Knights of God? Like, I'm not, I'm not arguing against you. I just like, what is the point? And they said, like, they are the knights of a specific God. It's not like specifically, like, it's not like Greek mythology where you have multiple, multiple gods. It's specifically like the Judeo Christian kind of like a, A singular God. I thought, okay, all right, well then in that case, Knights of God or the Knights of God would be an excellent choice. And I also, I did offer the Knights of God and they, as they often do, they try to keep it succinct. So I said, we'll go with Knights of God. And I said, okay. But the one place they did use my suggestion for the. Was with the Roger Pirates.

[Simba]

The Roger Pirates, yeah.

[Greg]

Yeah. So they did keep it there because they like the fact that the, the accentuates like the one and only.

[Steven]

Like, yeah, they do love that in Japan.

[Greg]

So that's, that's cool. I'm glad they did like that. And Garp's fleet, that was, that was easy. So, yeah, Dragon is doing the rescuing here. This is kind of Dragon's origin story as well. Right.

[Steven]

I, I, And I want to point out too, I got really confused and we had people who were, who were pointing this out to me. And, and to be fair, you know, there were people who were confused in the last chapter because there was the sequence where you see.

[Greg]

I know what you're gonna say.

[Steven]

Right, right. You see Dragon talking to Shanks's mom. And then like the next panel is Teach. His mom with J. Teach. And so there were a lot of people who just like, put two and two together of like, oh, that's, that's Shanks. Or the, you know, the, that they're, they were the same person or that they were the same scene, but they were actually completely different people. And I had a, A similar thing where I forgot because we see her talking to him on this first page. Right. She. Where she says, like, you know, I'm, I don't have longer to live. But, you know, take. Take the boys to someone who will, you know, raise them kindly and, and, you know, make them into good people, etc. Etc. Don't let him have them. And I didn't realize, and he doesn't really necessarily like, explicitly spell it out, but, like, in my head, I was like, okay, so he has the boys now and he's taking them to safety. I didn't realize that. No, he has to go off and find them first. And. Because, of course, Garling took them away from her. And so I was really confused by some of the panels where it's like, okay, does he have the kids in this one? Does he not have him in that one? And yeah, now, now in retrospect, I do see the, like, the order of events, although we. We still don't really know. I think he kind of. He kind of yada yada over, like, how does Dragon know where to find them? Presumably she told him, I guess. But, like, how does he go in and get them? Like, he. He could have definitely fleshed that out into a whole scene, but, you know, instead it was not important enough to. To, you know, preempt any of the other stuff. So we just kind of, boom, he found him and he's got him and now he's rushing off.

[Greg]

Yeah, that. I don't know.

[Steven]

The.

[Greg]

The scene didn't confuse me.

[Steven]

Okay, good for you.

[Greg]

I think it was just for you. Sorry. It's just because the hair color, I think, was the hair color. And also, like, the bars, instantly, it was just like, oh, so these are two. It was a little bit. It was jarring because he didn't put either. He did two things that were. He made two mistakes, basically. One is from top to bottom. The panels were not. There was no difference in their separation. It felt uniform, so it felt sequential. Sequential. Next, he, He. He failed to add one of the, like the time. I don't know how. To the vertical slice as. To show the time is passing. He failed to add that as well. And I think that that helped create the illusion that things were happening sequentially there. But just a second of like, trying to be like, okay, well, there are bars here and there's this.

[Steven]

Yeah, yeah. I didn't. I didn't necessarily get confused by the, the mother to mother thing, but the, the order of where the babies were. That. That was what got me.

[Greg]

Yes, yes. No, that. That completely went over my head. So. Good on you.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Oh, Streisan. Streisand.

[Steven]

Ah, yes.

[Greg]

This motherfucker. My entire Next column for the website is about Streisand, and it just got approved. Oh, nice. Yeah. So you can look forward to that. I'm glad that Oda's finally. I'm still gunning for him being that 10th member, but let's see. Speaking of names, I do have another anecdote about names, but I can't say it in public yet because the chapter isn't out. But there's something funny that.

[Steven]

Something to look forward to.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Yeah. I mean, there's.

[Greg]

Okay.

[Steven]

There's not as much.

[Greg]

I think we're through the chapter.

[Steven]

Yeah. It really is just kind of like. Okay. And now everybody's here. You know, the. The Smash Brothers logo went up and they're all showing up now.

[Greg]

Oda's the Hand. He's a. Yeah, Master Hand. What is it? I don't know.

[Steven]

Yeah. Squashing them around and so into place. Yeah.

[Greg]

All right, we got how many gods I. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[Steven]

Oh, yeah. I have a question for you.

[Greg]

And then we got Gunko as well. I don't know if Gunko is. I don't think Go is a member yet. Right.

[Steven]

We didn't know. There was a weird. Yeah, there was a weird term that they gave her. Right. The.

[Greg]

Where.

[Steven]

Where's her page? Kamino Jujin. The. What did I call? I called it like, the Devoted Blade of God. And I wasn't sure, and they made it sound like. Like. Like she was kind of a provisional member or was not like a fully fledged part of the. The Knights of God. And I wasn't sure if that was because she's like, an apprentice or if this is because she is, like, you know, being the Devoted Blade of God. You know, we saw her in the Flower chamber, like, maybe she has a special apprenticeship or, you know, relation with. With Emu. So something's going on there for sure.

[Greg]

Yeah. I don't think we were aware that she was part of a celestial dragon family.

[Steven]

We weren't aware initially, although they did add that. He added that to the recent volume when. When we first see her and Shamrock show up. They changed it so that her or her caption says, man, Meyer family sink. Get out. Yes. Yeah. So I guess you didn't see that then. Yeah, they. So I guess this is just him covering his bases and making sure he puts it again in the weekly chapter so that people didn't miss it.

[Greg]

No, I don't even touch volumes anymore. I get them. I barely read the sbs. Wait, so in the latest volume, there's a change?

[Steven]

Yes.

[Greg]

No, way. You wouldn't have to know the chapter offhand, would you?

[Steven]

I don't remember which.

[Greg]

Oh, my God. There it is. I just got it. Yeah, I flipped over. Oh, wow.

[Steven]

Introduction scene.

[Greg]

No. Interesting. Okay.

[Steven]

But I'm almost positive I'm like, okay, there's. There's no way, like, she. She has to be like, what? What? Like, the. The equivalent of, like, a muko or something. Like the. You know, the. The gets welcomed into the family from outside because. Yes, you know, we know that. There's definitely more to her. Yeah, there's definitely more to her story.

[Greg]

Yep. All right, so that's. So we're going to count her as eight, Right. So we got, like, at least eight knights. And then Garling himself, being a former. So we're up to nine. Yeah, that's. You got a. You got a set of ARC villains here, huh?

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

Unless they all. Unless. Well, no, because some of them are definitely still around. Right? I think we've seen some of them before. Have we not in modern time. Like the. The skull dude we definitely saw before, right.

[Steven]

I don't want to confuse him with, like, another skull dude. Haven't we seen multiple people?

[Greg]

There's the. The God of the sun, right?

[Steven]

Who.

[Greg]

Who did, like.

[Steven]

That's right. Yeah. That's why that was. That was. That was. That was Roto with the. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. I don't know if we've seen this guy, though, and in the present, I'm pretty sure.

[Greg]

Was it. I know we've seen a previous, like, Knights of God, and that character was definitely there.

[Steven]

Okay.

[Greg]

But I don't know if it was modern or not. I'm pretty sure it was. This could all be solved if I fucking read the series more than once these days. But.

[Steven]

Now I. I had a question for you, because, like, I mean, we're assuming, at least based on the precedent that, you know, all of these people are Celestial Dragon, at least the ones that we've been introduced to directly are. They are from Celestial Dragon families. And yet there are clearly at least, like, two folks here who definitely do not look 100% human. And I'm like, what. What is. What is the deal with that? How did that work out? Does that not violate all of the Celestial Dragon ethos that we have some, you know, people with horns and gigantic guy with wings and stuff? What do you make of that?

[Greg]

Yeah, the horns. Is that. That's like. Those are ancient giant traits right now that we know. So seems like if you've got some Ancient giant blood in you, then it seems okay for you to have horns. I mean that seems to be the, the Moria explanation as well, right? Like aside from possibly being a long neck, we don't even really know that anymore. Anything with horns seems to be ancient giant. And is ancient giant like, oh God, are demons supernatural or not? Like how far does supernatural go in this world? Were demons man made or are they supernatural in origin? Actually I just remembered now. I wanted to say like I want to put this out there. Sorry, this is completely aside. I swear I'll circle back to this. It is Davy Jones still alive at the bottom of the sea and is he this goofy fucking looking like skull with eyeballs? Because Robin I think says that like he's, he's still alive, right? That doesn't mean he's.

[Steven]

That's a legend.

[Greg]

That's a legend and it does not mean that he still needs to be alive. But what if he is? So like, what if they were in Goonies and when they go into the ship, One Eyed Willy is just like, hey guys, welcome. I've been waiting this whole time. So like, what if, what if that's like, like it's gonna be with Davy Jones. So what if, what if why Roger laughed is because it's just like, it's this giant table set up for a feast and Davy Jones is just like waiting there and he's like, why are there so few of you? Or like, you know, something like that. But yeah, that would be funny if he's just this like, like a brook with eyeballs and just like maybe like the Barrett, the, the slightest level of skin on him. Anyway, that's a whole other topic. But yeah, so like are these, are these demons in the world? Because we know that quote unquote things that we define as demons are devils. We know that they exist. Right, but are they the creation of technology or are they supernatural in origin? What do you think? I love throwing this awful question. This is so complicated.

[Steven]

Yeah, I, I don't know. I mean I'm. I'm willing to debate if he, if he cared to define it. I'm willing to go along with like a. Well, they're not explicitly supernatural, but maybe there was a species that, you know, that resembled them or that, that were them that were just part of the fabric of the world, you know, millennia ago or whatever, and they died out. And so now they're just kind of a remnant of the past. But I don't know. I mean that doesn't necessarily help us explain things like the, the weird, you know, demon summoning rituals and, and whatnot.

[Greg]

I think a lot of that can be taken back to two fruits of some sort. Right? Fruits of some kind or maybe a supernatural origin. Right? Are they confusing? Okay, let's say it is supernatural. Then has the devil essentially become their God? Have these people confused the devil for God? Because the, the most fucking interesting thing in the series at this point to, to me is what did corazon mean? And I don't think. Not that he knew, but like Dake Diwa. It's, it's, it's. And D is the enemy of God. Now we, we fucking know what that means. Is like D. D is the enemy of Imu. And over time has the devil become God? Like, was he like, oh man, this devil fucking thing isn't working out for me. Like, my image is just shit. He's like, I gotta become God. And in doing that, did it succeed? Did he succeed? I don't know. I do think that there is a super. I do think obviously there is some sort of supernatural power in this world and I think that's what they're taking out of the center of the Earth in the Harley. Yeah, but I don't know if demons are necessarily. Demons themselves are supernatural. I don't know if it's not a. If the amalgamation isn't a creation of several species. Like, were they trying to create a super species? And was the result of that? Like even this fellow here, look at this fellow, look at him. The Knights of God. That dude, it's like, who does he look like? He looks like the fucking amalgamation. It's like, are they. Is that what they're trying to rebuild? Is that like, are they trying to make a new body for Imu? Is that the goal of this is to create a ideal vessel for imu? To what extent? Then why does IMU need that? Emu has complete control of the world.

[Steven]

Right? Right.

[Greg]

What more do you need? Is it a Genova kind of case? Where is Emu of alien origin? Did Emu get stuck here? And IMU's like, I need to get the fuck off. I need to get out of here. So I need the ideal vessel in order to do that. I'm going to go with for right now that Imu's being might be of alien origin, the Devil Fruits are supernatural origin, and the amalgamation is a vessel that IMU needed in order to either enact control or to. To get off the. The planet. Like, what, what could possibly. What could Emu possibly want at this point? It has Everything its goal has to be larger than the, the. The planet itself. Is it a resource? Are they trying to get resources for whatever their home was, their, you know, infinite possibility home? Yeah yeah, it seems to. What do you have. What do you want when you want. When you have complete control, would just keep control. It doesn't seem satisfied. They're still trying to win over the giants. They're still trying to get more people on their side. Unless it's just. Are they on the defense? What do you think about that? Are they just on the defense because they know that. That the, the next Joy Boy is coming? That would make sense.

[Steven]

I mean. Yeah, that certainly explains or rationalizes a lot of. Of behavior or, you know, it explains the need for more client. You know, the, an escalation in clamping down on, you know, what the people are doing. If they feel that they're their demise or their potential. The ruination of everything that, that they're trying to do is. Is at hand. That. That goes a long way to, To. To, you know, putting in context some of their actions.

[Greg]

I don't know if I, I like that. Are they rushing to keep control or do they have a bigger thing in mind? My idea, my hope would be that they have something bigger in mind. They've got pretty decent technology. Interstellar travel seems to be beyond them at this point, even though an air can apparently fucking get to the moon. But do they want to go beyond that? We know that space travel seems to be possible. Mm.

[Steven]

I mean, I do think that like, as, as a propulsive force for drama in, in storytelling. I mean, I do think that there's something appealing about like both the antagonistic sides, the two, you know, the two rivals or adversaries, like both trying to achieve something specific rather than it being one side is trying to do something, the other side is trying to stop them. Yeah. Because at that, at that point it's just kind of like, I don't know, it's almost like a mirror image thing where it's like, well, you go with this, you know, you have all your force trained in this direction, the other side has their force trained in the other direction. And then you're kind of locked in a stalemate until you get the answer. You know, one, one thing breaks down. But like having them both trying to do something which is at odds with each other. I think it could potentially be more interesting.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

At least to me.

[Greg]

Yes, I agree. It's a good take on it.

[Steven]

All right, well, we've got none of that. We're going to see in the next chapter.

[Greg]

Yes, we have at least nine knights of God. At least. So it's looking like there could be a decent pair up if there needs to be a pair up. So who's Frankie pairing up? No, I know. Let's not go there. Please, God, don't let that question be in the questions. Yeah, it's gonna take me another hour to think through.

[Steven]

But yeah, speaking of the. The questions, though, I think we are ready to. To go over and see what the folks have to say.

[Greg]

Yeah, we are.

[Steven]

So why don't we take a quick break and we'll be right back and answer some of your questions after these messages.

[Greg]

We'll be right back.

[Steven]

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Every style, every home.

[Steve]

This is the double anime recap for episodes 1142 and 1143. I'm your host, Sam, and today with me we have Steve Yurko. Word? Okay, I'm sorry. Episode 1142. Come in. Vegapunk's message. And it opens with, you know, if we remember where we left off, it was Caribou confronting Van Elger and Katarina Divan, crying, begging, shitting his pants, asking him, asking them to let him meet Blackbeard. He believes that he has something that Blackbeard will love to hear. But Augur and Devon are very antagonistic towards him. They're like, why would we believe you? There's lots of, you know, like, spies and assassins coming after our captain. And Caribou's just like, no, you have to believe me. You're gonna regret if I don't say it. It's gonna shake the world. The information I have. And it does seem to, it does seem to pique their interest. They're have a cautious glare bearing down on him.

[Simba]

I do like when Ogre is like, well he is a pirate, so.

[Steve]

And Caribou has an internal monologue explaining re explaining to us the audience that he's talking about the knowledge that he knows about both Poseidon AKA Shirahoshi and Pluton, which I had forgotten was in was is literally in wano.

[Simba]

Lots of stuff.

[Steve]

That was an interesting one for them to have plopped at the end of that arc.

[Simba]

Yeah, that was crazy.

[Steve]

We get more CGI marine ships blowing.

[Simba]

Up, but CGI explosions.

[Steve]

Yeah, it's a little better this time because like, like they, you, you know, the explosion happens and then you see like a busted up ship. It's not like the, it's not like before where the explosion was literally just hiding the ship and just hoping you aren't noticing. And there's, there's a trend in this episode of like a lot of quite nice looking moments and animation for like the most random scenes and characters. Like there's this really cool Pacifista, like almost like shoulder checking the camera. Like that just has a very nice, just nicely drawn, has a nice arc to the motion.

[Simba]

I feel like one of the themes in terms of animation for these two episodes are animators getting their shit in. Like there's some scenes who are like, yeah, this isn't like the most grandiose scene in In a One Piece episode, but these animators like oh, I, I, I get a chance to do a scene, I'm gonna make it count.

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's definitely the vibe. And we're going over the various Vice admirals at the scene. Even though we've, we've seen many of these characters already, they're, they're all getting big bold title cards like Vice Admiral Dober, Vice Admiral Doberman, Vice Admiral Bluegrass, Vice Admiral Urban, who I've become like minorly obsessed with. They just look like, like a human sized oars, but they have, they're like have a magician theme with a smoking top hat.

[Simba]

Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, that's Urban. Yeah, he kind of looks like a, he looks like a Muppet.

[Steve]

He looks like a Muppet. Like when you see his, when you see his like full. I was like looking at his Wikipedia page and there's like a picture of his full body like anime reference sheet and it's just like, like he's such a, he's Such a Susian looking character with his hair making him look like a.

[Steven]

Like a.

[Steve]

He looks like a gourd.

[Simba]

Yeah, absolutely. Susan's a great description.

[Steve]

There's like so much going on for such a, you know, a character who, you know, we probably weren't even paying too close attention to in the manga.

[Simba]

Oh yeah, there are some like 11 designs with some of these Vice Admirals because what like guillotine or Guillotine.

[Steve]

There's a Vice Admiral hound who's the most. Just some guy of all the Vice admirals.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Simba]

I was going to mention like I always found like Doberman to be such an odd name for that Vice Admiral way back in the day because I was like, oh. But then you got. It's like Doberman. But I guess like I'm like, oh, Dalmatian. Feels like the doggy. The doggy one. Yeah, the dog one. So it's always.

[Steve]

Yeah, I was having that exact thought process earlier. Like there's we. There's both Doberman and Dalmatian, but only one of them has like a dog theme to their design, I think.

[Greg]

I don't.

[Simba]

The thing is like doll and I mean doll's kind of punk rocker but has like, you know, the spiked collar and all that.

[Greg]

But.

[Steve]

Yeah, we have.

[Simba]

Who else have we got?

[Steve]

Vice Admiral Tosa. Yeah, he's the one chasing our heroes through the forest and he gets got by the. By Brogy's axe.

[Simba]

Here's another thought I had because we're talking about all these crazy characters. I always thought like, you know, it's like I applaud Oda for his creativity, but I feel like he has invented so many Vice admirals. I'm like, why couldn't you just reuse some of them here? I mean, not to stunt your creativity, but I was like, what about all those guys from Enies lobby that you've never done like anything with.

[Steve]

Well, Doberman's here.

[Simba]

Doberman.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Simba]

He's the only one I think.

[Greg]

Right.

[Steve]

Who are the. Doberman was Dalmatian from Dalmatian.

[Simba]

Momonga.

[Steve]

Momonga.

[Simba]

Who's the guy that was Bastille. Bastille. Was Bastille one of the Enies lobbyist?

[Steve]

He's the.

[Simba]

No, Bastille was just at Marineford and then was at Dressrosa and then he got his like helmet crushed by Sabo.

[Steve]

Was strawberry yet?

[Simba]

Strawberry. Strawberry was.

[Greg]

Oh God, strawberry.

[Steve]

And then like the, the smiley dude.

[Simba]

Yeah, the Bluto looking guy with the cigar. I don't know, maybe Oda was just feeling creative, but I Always just thought, I'm like, man, you just keep making marines. And I remember them all.

[Steve]

Speaking of doll, Dahl is skywalking through the. The sky and meeting up with bluegrass, who is now riding one of the. The robo. The big robo giraffe that she. I guess she's hijacked with her powers, and she's letting Bluegrass know about the. The giants wreaking havoc on the other side of the shore. And Bluegrass is like, oh, have you fought giants before? And Dahl lets us know that she has worked under a giant before. And this is apparently Saul. So she. Two decades ago, she worked for Saul. So how old is Doll? I would assume she's, like, early.

[Simba]

She's that old.

[Steve]

I did that thing where you type a one piece character's name, but you don't specify that you're looking at one piece. No age given. So we don't know. So she could be, like, way older than we think. And yes, Saturn is waking up and getting into fighting shape just as Luffy is landing on his feet to check on Vegapunk. And then that cuts to, like, the inside of Vegapunk's lab, where we see the heart monitor. It's. It's beeping, but we're, you know, we know that's gonna start slowing down here. That brings us to the eye catch of the episode.

[Simba]

Always a good sign when you show a heart monitor early on in an episode.

[Steve]

Saturn is approaching Sanji and Kizaru. As they're having their little stare down, Sanji takes note of Saturn looking a lot less human now. He says, you've got that crazy look in your eye. And the camera zooms in on Saturn's eye, and we're kind of interpreting that, you know, this is him at his most animalistic. This is, you know, he's going to protect his empire.

[Simba]

Yeah, it definitely gets more across in the anime for sure. I mean, I guess it was kind of obvious in the manga with the eyes, but, like, now it's like, you know, watching him in motion, like, oh, yeah. The design is a little bit different. It's not just a guy.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

He's not. He's not in his hybrid form. He's in a full monster crab mode.

[Steven]

Oh, yeah.

[Simba]

Because he doesn't even have, like, his arms anymore.

[Steve]

His legs are, like, way more noodley in this stage.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

In this sort of, like, awakened form.

[Simba]

He'S way more spider than man.

[Steve]

And so Luffy makes a big giant. He makes his hands all big, and he does a big hand clap in order to distract Saturn so that Sanji can scoop up Vegapunk and start running. Saturn is jabbing at Luffy with his crab legs, and Luffy's doing that.

[Greg]

Neener, neener, neener.

[Steve]

You can't get me acting like a silly little guy. And as I love this scene of Sanji's running with Vegapunk in his arms. And we get a POV shot from Sanji's point of view running. And then Kizaru like, zigzags into frame, but, like, he. He's like, perpendicular, so it kind of like he kind of looks like a freeze frame of somebody walking across the street. But then, like, that quickly turns into a, you know, a kick to Sonyu's face. Yeah, right into the camera. Great. Great staging for that. That's that attack. And this causes Sanji to basically, like, lunge Vegapunk into the air. And then as Vegapunk is falling in the air in slow motion, Kizaru ignites his lightsaber and jabs right through Vegapunk.

[Simba]

It's like he took out his, like, all of his internal organs in this.

[Steve]

Yeah, he had already been impaled, and now he's getting impaled again from the other side.

[Simba]

Maybe I'm confusing this with the other impale. I don't know. Like, this. Like, this is the anime. I'm like, jesus, that's his whole stomach.

[Steve]

He's got at least one episode of talking to a loved one.

[Simba]

He's going by frieza minutes.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

Like Ace's death episode. Luffy yells out in distress and Vegapunks. We come back to the heart monitor, and it's not like, flatlining yet. It's just, like, lower than before. It's like, less regular.

[Steven]

The.

[Steve]

The peaks and valleys are smaller. I don't think that's really how the heart monitor is supposed to work, but okay. And you know, Sanji seems, you know, he's. He's seen with his own eyes that this. This old man is dead, but he's picking him up in his arms anyway and continuing to run. And Kizaru zips back towards Saturn to help in the fight with Luffy. But then. But. But Luffy just, like, scoops Kizaru up and, like, face hand plants Saturn's face and is, like, basically holding them apart from each other. Like, no, no.

[Steven]

Like.

[Steve]

Like two dogs.

[Steven]

Yeah, fighting.

[Steve]

He's like, no, two dogs fighting. Sorry, guys. And the. The. But the very, like, somber kind of like, eerie piano music is, like, playing through the whole thing. So it's not like a big. Yeah, I remember in the manga that this is like a big, like, boom. Like, oh, you know, Luffy's having this very cool moment, but it's more focused on the tragedy of Vegapunk. And then we come back to the heart monitor, which is now properly flatlining. And then on the TV screen behind the monitor is a video that starts to play and a. A pre recording of Vegapunk. Basically the equivalent of tapping the mic to say, like, is this thing on? And then that brings us to 1143, Vegapunk's secret, a tense worldwide broadcast. And this has a cold open, a brief cold open where Vegapunk is beginning his message.

[Greg]

Hello, world.

[Steve]

I'm. I'm Vegapunk, the humble genius scientist. The message I'm about to leave will likely shock everyone, but it is. It is the truth of the world. And he's spending most of the episode in this recording. In this pre recording of Vegapunk that is playing after his proper death. It begins with a lot of, like, back and forth and banter between the original, the Stella, Vegapunk and Shaka. And Shaka is, like, trying to rationalize with him, like, hey, you know, people have to, you know, take a moment to tune in before you start going through your speech here. And so there's a lot of, like, kind of get. Get. Probably the most Getting everybody tuned in, getting the. The video transponder snails up and running, giving everybody.

[Simba]

It's funny because it's so obvious, you know, it's padding time, but it is true.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

So the message is coming through the transponder snails. And so we're cutting around to, like, the world, and we're hearing, like, all the snail phones are being, like, hijacked by this. This forceful, like, mental wave technology that Vegapunk is using and is broadcasting through, like, marine stations. And everybody's hearing it. Like, you have, like, Kiros and Rebecca, or I guess they're still in Mary Jo, and they're taking their time to have a little.

[Simba]

I thought they were in Dressrosa.

[Steve]

Are they back in Dressrosa?

[Simba]

Oh, this is Dressrosa. Kiros was never in Mary Joa.

[Steve]

Okay, you're right.

[Steven]

You're right.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Simba]

Also, I don't know how Leia would still be hanging around in Mary Joa after what they did to Charlos.

[Steve]

True, true.

[Simba]

We cut the dress Rose a lot. I think that's what's throwing you off, because we see Rebecca and Kiros, but then we go see other citizens.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

And we've Got Rebecca in like just like extremely contemporary. Just like a tank top and cargo shorts.

[Simba]

Yeah.

[Steve]

And you got. Kyros is training her, but he's like hopping on the one leg still.

[Simba]

Is he hopping on where? It was like an aerial view of. And like him and Rebecca and Tank looking up the screen and Kiros is just standing completely upright. And maybe someone should write into Oda, like maybe he just perfected it while being a toy.

[Greg]

Yeah, they never.

[Steve]

They never made it look super. But there is a shot of the, like the transponder snail in the foreground. Rebecca and Kyros training in the background.

[Greg]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve]

And it's like a properly animated, like, you know, swinging and dodging. And I'm just surprised at what is.

[Simba]

Like, why is Oda resisted giving Kiros like a peg leg or something like that. It's not like the eyepatch thing where everyone thinks he's saving it or, you know, he's saving.

[Steve]

We do have one peg leg user. Yeah.

[Simba]

Yeah.

[Steve]

You're like somebody.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

Just like somebody is right in a little explanation of, you know, some. One of the scientist characters just happened to visit Dressrosa and they're like, oh, here's a leg. Here's your, you know, your Star wars artificial limb.

[Simba]

I just mean like Zeph.

[Steve]

You know, you're all like, Zeph or.

[Simba]

It'S a pirate, mon.

[Steve]

I just feel like in the modern one piece, we're in the Star wars artificial. Just give somebody an artificial hand.

[Simba]

Oh, yeah. At this point, Kyros will just form a leg out of aura.

[Steve]

A hockey leg.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

God.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

We got Iceberg waking up in bed. Every. Every other location is. It's daytime, but like, I guess Water seven is. Is at night.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Simba]

Well, we'll probably see more locations if I commend the anime because I was wondering and I'm like, all these locations can't be daytime.

[Steve]

Yeah. I'm curious. Curious how much it tracks like, in terms of like how. How distant we assume these islands are from each other.

[Simba]

Well, when you think about it, we're. Because we're getting close to the end of the Grand Line, which is almost like a full circle around the world. It's back, you know, where we started so I could see.

[Steve]

Because what is the new world? The new world is like underneath west or underneath north blue and not underneath east blue, I think.

[Simba]

I believe you're right.

[Steve]

So if it's daytime in east blue, I would assume it's more likely to be night in the new world.

[Simba]

Sounds like dusk maybe.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Simba]

It's cloudy so it's either I think it's dusk or nighttime. But then explains Water seven. I don't know. We're thinking about it too hard.

[Steve]

Don't know. Dorian Brogy are unbothered by the marines shooting at them, and they take their swing. You know, the banter between Vegapunk and Shaka continues. It's. It's a weird feeling when they just, like, specifically say, give it 10 minutes. It's like, okay, is this gonna be, like, a literal 10 minutes then?

[Simba]

Yeah, I thought about that. Not gonna happen.

[Steve]

You know, Saturn's looking, you know, extra pissed as Luffy's hand is still just, like, firmly right in his face. And Saturn is communicating telepathically with the other elders, insisting that Vegapunk should be dead. He saw it with his own eyes, and yet he thinks. Yeah, he thinks it's like, I'm 99% sure that he should be dead. Unless there's some other factors we weren't aware of.

[Simba]

That's not 100%.

[Steve]

Yeah, we get some just regular dressrosa citizens. We get some of Windmill Village. I like this conversation of the villagers being like, oh, if only we had a video transponder snail. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Mayor, you don't want to. Want to buy us one? Is there room in the budget? But whoopslap is like, nah. Hearing it's enough. That's all you need. I'm a radio man.

[Simba]

Yeah, their WI fi signal isn't as good there.

[Steve]

Yeah. Iceberg's secretary, Alice, has a video transeponder snail prepared for Iceburg in the other room. And she's.

[Simba]

And a name call. She's like. She's never kind of properly been introduced in the anime before.

[Greg]

So.

[Steve]

Yeah, she's in Fan Letter.

[Simba]

Yes. And I think she maybe has appeared in, like, the credits of maybe it was Stampede or something.

[Steve]

Yeah. I think we've seen her in the periphery.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steve]

But, yeah, she's very, very type A. Very on top of things. Just going off of the long list of preparations she made to make sure everybody in the city is able to watch this. This video because she figures it's probably important. And, you know, Iceberg's very, like, chill about it.

[Steven]

But he.

[Steve]

You can tell he's thinking like, you're. You're like a little psycho.

[Steven]

But.

[Steve]

But thank you.

[Steven]

Vivi.

[Steve]

Waffle and Morgans are watching, and we see the girl fawning over Vivi over her shoulder. The girl who I believe is the one who is letting Vivi borrow her clothes.

[Simba]

Yeah.

[Steve]

And A lot of the random citizens of the world who are watching this video, they're frequently fixating on Vegapunk's head.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

They're like, oh, that man just chopped part of his head off.

[Simba]

He's operating at half brain.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Simba]

And knowing how big his head was, I'd say it's maybe like a quarter or a tenth.

[Steve]

Well, I don't think any of his brain is in his head anymore.

[Simba]

That's one piece, baby.

[Steve]

And the revolutionaries are also watching. And yeah, Evenkov is among the people.

[Simba]

Who'S like, whoa, what happened to his head?

[Steve]

Yeah, what'd you do, buddy? And dragons. Remembering the conversation from way back at the beginning of the arc when he was on the phone with Shaka and Shaka was saying that Vegapunk will be dying soon. That ominous. That ominous prediction. That brings us to the eye catch of the episode. And, you know, Saturn and Kizaru are kind of both ready to get back into action. Kizaru, he, like, shoots laser eye lasers because he's still in, like, Luffy's fist. But Luffy dodges the lasers. And then we get the big gum gum dawn symbol. Like, basically he does the clap he did earlier, but he flattens the two together. And there's a good slow mo shot of them, like, of Kizaru and Saturn, like going cheek to cheek before. And then they become a couple of flat Stanleys.

[Simba]

What's a flat Stanley?

[Steve]

You don't know that children's book Flat Stanley?

[Greg]

No.

[Steve]

Well, it's Stanley and you know, so flat fuck Kizaru. We get. We get the. The pizza shot.

[Steven]

The.

[Steve]

The point of view shot of Kizaru as a flat disc flying through the air as Luffy is spinning him in Saturn like pizzas on his fingers. And then he sends the villains flying. Kizaru crashes into one of the marine ships. We get some obligatory Naotoshi Shida animation.

[Simba]

Oh, this was Shida. This is.

[Steve]

Yeah, I assume so. It's looks. He's been up and down this last, like 10 to 20 episodes.

[Simba]

Hell, even gives, you know, ships like a kind of windy neck.

[Steve]

Yeah, he does.

[Simba]

I saw the same thing. I saw this seat. And I'm like, oh, this is Shido, right?

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Simba]

Someone's inspired.

[Steve]

Saturn redirects midair. So he's not. Yeah, back.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steve]

Flying back to the island like a ufo. And even. Even Luffy is. Is surprised by this.

[Steven]

He's.

[Steve]

His eyes bug out. They do the cartoon thing.

[Simba]

Yeah. Have like a little like stylized background too, which I thought was good.

[Steve]

I thought that was as the ufo Saturn is now chasing Luffy and Luffy's running away. And Kizaru has a moment of coming to. We get this cool kind of sketchy animated version of his of the moment he killed Vegapunk, which is not something he's thrilled about doing. Probably an action that's gonna live with him for the rest of his life. And he just kind of puts an arm. His forearm like over his eyes. Like he's like please don't look at me. To the. The Marines standing around him. And now the. The five Elders, they're getting antsy. They're like Saturn. Like we. This is. This is going on too long. We can't let Vegapunk speak freely. And so the, you know, Saturn still spinning like a disk. He kind of ground slides as he lands after having knocked Luffy into one of the buildings. And as. As he grinds to a halt, the. We're cutting between the Egghead and the Mary Geoa Elders approaching their big pentagram thing in their office. And now the. The black lightning has returned to the. To Egghead. It's storming everybody everywhere. It's turning nighttime. Maybe it was already nighttime this whole time. And that explains the time zone differences. And now Saturn is surrounded by the kind of smoking entry points that the. That the Elders are. The rest of the Elders are coming in on. And there's. We're kind of pushing this fuzzy like VHS effect in some of these shots.

[Simba]

Yeah, yeah. Like it looks a little pixelated.

[Steve]

And you know, we get this kind of ominous cliffhanger of the. You know, we're almost going to see all five Elders emerging from the Black Lightning altogether. But before we can see that it is. To be continued. Dun dun. General thoughts on these two episodes, Steve?

[Simba]

2 fine episodes. Judging by the next episode preview, you could tell what they were saving their time for. But I think the first episode of the two. I like the storytelling device of the heart monitor. I think that was great because then when it finally flatlines, you zoom out. And then like the. The video starts instead of just kind of cutting to it like in a room we haven't seen the whole time. So I thought that was pretty clever. Yeah, some fun little animation here and there. Like just like trying to make some, you know, sequences or it's just scenes that like no one's going to ever talk about these scenes. So let's just make them visually appealing here. Some fun stuff. The, you know, the Luffy, Saturn and Kizaru altercation is a lot of fun. One of the Sequences I liked was Kizaru. Like, was it when Luffy grabbed him and Kizaru, like, kind of tried zipping out of his hand, tried attacking him? Yeah, I thought that looked really cool. Other than I'm trying to think of anything else really stood out to me. What are some of your thoughts?

[Steve]

I mean. Yeah, I mirror your thoughts, for sure. I think these episodes are better than some of the previous ones where you can really, really feel that they're just kind of like, biting their time until the real showy stuff comes up. There's a lot more individual moments where you can tell that they're just trying to keep it as interesting and as visually appealing as possible while they. While they kind of string us along into the big stuff. And just in general, these episodes really just kind of have me reappraising and really appreciating just the entire narrative device of the Vegapunk speech. In general, I'm really excited to see the full scope of both. All the action and, you know, how it intertwines with the. The big picture stuff.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

So I think that's interesting. I think these are. I think these are definitely solid episodes.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Steve]

As you said, excited to see, though, the one that follows after this, and hopefully it's gonna be just like a crazy roller coaster from here until the end.

[Simba]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next episode, for sure. But I think they've been nailing, like, the key moments from these chapters of the manga, really getting across that Kizaru is remorseful, regretting everything he's doing here. I really enjoy when Saturn's on screen. I really enjoy seeing him because he just looks like a little. Just not like a little because he's huge, but just this demonic little creature just scurrying around.

[Steve]

Yeah, just like the. The. The. The composure and like the. The humanity is just sort of like, slipping away.

[Greg]

Mm.

[Simba]

And Luffy's fun to watch too, I think. I can't help but feel like some animators are like. These are just so. Like, they're just very anime animators. So when it's like, oh, it's time to do something silly kind of.

[Greg]

It.

[Simba]

A part of it kind of just feels a little stunted. Not that it's bad, but I just. I feel like it's. I see more of the anime sensibilities and I see. You know, then it gets all cartoony and stuff.

[Steve]

Yeah, there's. Yeah, I think generally I like the. I like the balance that. That forces both tones to have.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

I like that they Go.

[Steven]

I know what you mean.

[Steve]

I know what. I know the feeling.

[Steven]

You're.

[Greg]

You're.

[Simba]

There was the previous episode from this. I'm. There's one moment that just irked me. It was just right before kind of Luffy like attacked Saturn, I think. Like he was like kind of falling from the air, but then he kind of was just floating for a second and it looked like a dragon ball or a bleach character that's just standing in midair. And I'm like, okay, come on. Like, like at least animate him bouncing or something like that. So I don't know. Just like a weird nitpick I have that doesn't really ruin anything. It's just something I picked up on. Subjective, more than objective.

[Steve]

Any final thoughts you'd like to get in before we move on to the next segment?

[Greg]

Steve?

[Simba]

No, that'll do it.

[Greg]

All right.

[Steve]

Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's reconvene next week if possible and look forward to the end.

[Simba]

We'll catch you then.

[Greg]

ABC the Golden Bachelor premieres. Hi Mel. Hello. Former NFL star Mel Owens is looking for his second chance at love.

[Steven]

I'm hopeful that I'll find true love.

[Greg]

But these women are in a league of their own. Mel has never been exposed to women like us. I don't know how he can handle it all. The Golden Bachelor Season Premiere to love.

[Steven]

Happiness and Fun to love.

[Greg]

Wednesday, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

[Steven]

Well I was down on my last dollar then I started saving cuz the.

[Steve]

Bank said fiscal restraint is what you're.

[Steven]

Craving so I put my earnings in.

[Greg]

A high yield account let the savings compound and the interest mount.

[Steve]

I'm optimizing cash flow putting debt in check.

[Greg]

Now time is my friend and not a pain in the neck. And we've got a little cash to rebuild.

[Steven]

The old boring money moves make kind.

[Greg]

Of lame songs but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet.

[Steven]

Brilliantly boring since 1865. And we are back with the SGS where you send in your comments, theories and suggestions and of your suggestions for for who should fight whom in the the Knights of God. We will start on the Discord. If you are a Patreon subscriber and you get hooked up on the Discord, you will have access to the SGS channel where you can ask your question. And I will start with Sheepman who says howdy sgs. This question is for Greg. Do you know what oda's favorite Pokemon is? And I will, I will say this is from early in August. This was just after our last, last episode. Figured it was appropriate with the recent jump slash Pokemon collab. Could you find out for me also for Greg, I don't know where I would find an answer to this. So I'll ask you directly here, here if you've been able to visit the one piece statues in Kumamoto. I went this past March and it was the most grand experience I had on that trip. Getting to explore a part of the world I may never have seen if it wasn't for one piece.

[Greg]

Hmm, let's see. I'm just trying to see if he has.

[Steven]

I mean he's got to have one.

[Greg]

Okay. I was just trying to check his, his line profile because sometimes he puts up like images of the Pokemon and stuff. There's a problem with this in that, like, I don't know. I can't say if it's his favorite Pokemon or not. But like, he does often have an image on his line profile of a certain like Pokemon. But I'm not sure if he's just like, I'm happy I got this one. Yeah, it's Pokemon Go screenshot. So like, I'm not sure if it's like, I'm happy. The other problem with this is I know nothing about Pokemon beyond the fact that there's a guy named Satoshi and Pikachu. I know those two. And that's about as far as it goes. So I, I've. I really don't know. I can't answer that. I'm sorry about that. But that's just my own ignorance and like, lack of, of interest in the topic, which, which sounds really callous. I don't mean it that way. It's just, I don't know about it. It's not really my, my age thing. So I'm wildly uninformed. If I knew what that Pokemon was, it isn't there something called like a, like a Lugia or Logia? And it looks like a, like a, like a swimming thing, but it flies. I don't know. I don't know if that's right or not. The only thing, the only way I know how to describe it is like it's a Pokemon that looks like bulbous and has lines going around it like, like down its body. Doesn't that. And that's not Lugia, but like it. It's. If Lugia is what I'm thinking of, then it is a Lugia looking kind of Pokemon. There's only one problem. Every other fucking Pokemon I see looks exactly like that. Oh, even that doesn't yeah.

[Steven]

The only one I, I would have guessed was, you know, at least because he, he drew it a couple times was the, the little, you know, mechanical one. Right. That he slipped into kids. Mechanical arm. Yeah. Right.

[Greg]

And like, but even, even that I think it's less like that's not that that's a favorite at all. It's just like that seems like it fits, right.

[Steven]

Yeah. And I feel like he probably stops drawing that like after, after he got it out of his system and then everybody was like, hey, check it out, he drew a Pokemon. And I don't think he wanted that to be like.

[Greg]

No.

[Steven]

An expectation or an official part of the, the experience. So.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Yeah. Have you ever made your way down to Kumamoto?

[Greg]

Have I ever made my way. I've was outside of, outside of the documentary. Yeah. That where I dropped the tripod on the lady's nose. Yeah. God, no. I have not seen the statues. I've heard it's quite a journey and that it takes what, like a day, day and a half to go around and see.

[Steven]

Yeah. They're all over the prefecture. Right.

[Greg]

That is impressive. I've seen a lot of pictures. I know a lot of people have done the, made the pilgrimage down there to see them, but I have not done that. I can say that I probably do not intend to. I think I've had my fill of one piece pilgrimages and I've gone about as far as a fan can go. So I'm good on that end at looking at pictures, but I know it must be something else to stand there. Unfortunately. I know they've had some issues with the Nami one and we're not going to get into that in too detail, but the fact that I'm saying unfortunately and Nami, if your mind goes there. Yeah. There have been some people who've done some inappropriate actions and things, but Japanese social media has been pretty good about finding those people, weeding them out and saying like, yo, you shouldn't be doing this. And I don't think it's an issue anymore. But of course there are the people who would want to stand out that way. But other than that, just wholesomeness. I would love to see the Frankie one, the Jinbe one. Oh my God, can you imagine doing the Jinbe one? Like having to be the sculptor for this and like just being like this is going to cost how much?

[Steven]

As many as the others combined.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

At least for the materials.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's cool, it's, it's nice. I'll I'll say this, it's. It's nice that there is a good reason for tourists to travel over to, you know, because Kumamoto is pretty far out of the way for, you know, most tourist destinations in Japan. So in that sense, I feel like they've been a, they've probably been a smashing success for the, for the area.

[Greg]

Oh, yeah. Especially after the earthquake. So.

[Steven]

Mm.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Yes. All right, next one from snp. Hey, Steven, Greg and Simba, what do you think about the rivalry between Shiki and Kyo? Their possible backstory too? They do share the same title of Gokudo. And I saw this from one of the Japanese YouTubers. Gokudo originally referred to someone who follows the path of Ninkyo, the code of chivalry. When you consider that Shiki was originally conceived of as one of the Marine admirals, it makes sense that they chose this specific word. It suggests he's not just some random thug. That was the quote. Do you think maybe they were both former Marines? Golden Lion Kin. What was it? Kin Jishi Kind of fits the Admiral's codename pattern.

[Greg]

So I think it's two different, different things. If you want to argue that were they both former Marines, I think you could make that argument because, you know, we don't know about their, their younger lives. All we know at this point is what that Shiki met. What the fuck is her name? Higurashi. Like that. That's all we know.

[Steven]

Yeah, the, the old lady. Yeah. From Wano.

[Greg]

We know that Shiki met Higurashi and that's about all we know from before his time with Rocks. Zvec. Sorry. And the other thing we know is, is Gokudo and Gokuro. So like Ninkyo. Right, Right. The, the big, the biggest thing you could pull from that is less than Marines is, is like hard line Japanese mafia, right?

[Steven]

Yes.

[Greg]

The Yakuza, like super duper. That's all you really need to know is like, probably high up as well. Like probably both from the, the world of the Yakuza. So I don't know, were they Marines that were jaded and went into illicit business dealings? Possibly you could make that argument. I know exactly the, when you're talking about, like, the original concept too, but does it need to be. To me, it hits me more as the fact that, you know, they were, they were not thugs, but that they were just very highly powerful Yakuza. Like, like Godfather level.

[Steven]

I, I, I gave a spiel about this when that came up where I translated it as mobsters. Just Because I didn't know for sure if, if, if the ink. If the insinuation was that they were specifically yaki. Because we know the yakuza exist in Wano, right? Like, does that mean that shiki and kyo are both from Wano? They certainly could be, but we don't really know that yet for sure. And I didn't necessarily want to imply any connections that, that Oda be. Because he's using a different word, right. Of Gokudo, that maybe he's kind of cheekily putting a distinction between them and, and the actual yakuza that we saw on Wano. But I, but I did explain that like, you know, Gokudo. Yes, Gokudo are yakuza. But it's kind of like the difference is sort of like, like if a yakuza calls himself yakuza, it's saying like, yeah, I'm a real like low down bastard and a Gokudo is like, like I'm a, I'm a, you know, a man of the brotherhood or something like that. It's, it's kind of like this is the fancy way that we would say it's or, or something like that. They have different connotations. But even if, even if it is basically referring to the same people or the same culture, you know, so it could just be Otis playing around with it there. But you know, it's a, an interesting choice for sure.

[Greg]

So yeah, I do like the idea. I cannot put that down. Yeah, yeah.

[Steven]

Let's see how Steli got his Goa back. Says. Oh, I dang it. I meant to, I meant to, to bring it. I knew that there was some question where I was like, oh, I should tell Greg about this beforehand. But I, I forgot about it. Of course. Hello, Stephen. Simba, Stephen and Greg. I hope life is treating you well. Both of you and maybe Simba are very skilled translators. So I'm curious, is there something, an instance or instances in your translating careers that was quite a hurdle that was particularly challenging and made you annoyed, but was very rewarding in the end. It made you even better. That you would like to share. Have a great week. Trying to think like it's specifically in terms of like, like a big hurdle, but one that, that I felt like I learned something from. I mean I'm all, you know, you're always learning, right? Like there's always there, there's, there's always stuff that you realize or you come to understand that you didn't necessarily know before or you, you know, every time you read a new book you're seeing words and used in different contexts and stuff. So I could choose just about anything.

[Greg]

I think I got it. Shall I. Or are you still mulling over. Okay, this is one of those questions. It could change tomorrow.

[Steven]

Yeah. Yes.

[Greg]

My answer, and I don't know if it's the biggest per se, but it's something that stands out as even today being terrifying to me. And it happened again yesterday. And it's not necessarily something that you can learn from or it's not a piece of information that you just like, oh, I took this this way, and this will always help me solve this problem, because it's not so Always easily solved, but the need to. And this is. This is odd. Unfortunately, it's not as much about, like, the. The scholar end of it in so much as it is the. The logistic end of it. But not that. Not that I see myself as scholarly, but you know what I mean? I mean, I mean, like, the know how of it. That's a better way to put it. There was a sound effect. I'll. I'll. Okay, I'll describe the situation as it occurred yesterday. There's a sound effect in doing Die, the Adventure of Die, and it was ta da, ta da, which, like you'd normally read, is just like drip or drizzle or like, you know, sound of something drizzling down. Right. And it was the character's forehead. And the panel that this was in, for whatever reason, the PDF that I received it in, it has, like, a tone that doesn't gel well with Adobe Acrobat or whatever, whatever. And it was very blurred. Like, even the text is blurred. And you compare it to other panels, they look fine. This one is blurred. So the quality was a little bit low, but I could see what was going on. And I was like, okay, all right. But, like, there's a crest on the main character's head that shines, and in this particular panel, it's reacting to another character with a similar crest, and they're kind of resonating and has these. The character's shown to be in pain, and his hair is opening. His hair on his forehead is opening, so you can see the crest, and it seems to be shining. And he's in pain. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what Tara was trying to describe. And I go, that's weird. So I saved that to be one of the last things I translated. Later in the same job, an almost identical panel is depicted, and this time a bandana has been wrapped around the Crest, but it's still shown to be shining. And again says, tada. And he's in pain again. And I'm just like, what the fuck? Why twice? Like, what is Tara here? And so I save it. When I get to something that I absolutely am baffled on, not only do I save it to the end, but I ask my wife, I consult my wife, and she has a consultant fee and everything. We work through that. But I said, you know, honey, I'm sorry, I can't figure out what's going. Ta da. And she's going, well, maybe it's his hair opening. And I'm going, nah, can't be his hair open. You wouldn't use it that way. Also, the positioning doesn't seem to be showing that the main focus of the movement isn't on the hair spreading. And we looked through it a little bit and some obscure definition of it seemed to be like, it could be a pulsing. So I was like, okay, so maybe I'll put it as like, da dum. Like a heartbeat. Like da dum. Maybe it's supposed to be like a kind of a heartbeat sound effect because it's. It's pulsing. But I wasn't satisfied with it. There is a. And obviously by the end of this, my wife didn't have any idea too. She's like, your guess here is as good as mine. There is a Dai superfan who I work with, and she's wonderful. She's awesome. She knows DAI as well as I know one piece, if not better. And I consult with her and I show her some of my work, and I say, is there anything I can do better here to make it for the fans? Because I originally am not a Die fan. I'm not a die hard fan. Okay, I'll stop. So she brought that point up. She saw my dudum and she said, this should be blood dripping. And I'm going, blood dripping? What the hell? Where? So I go back to the panel with low quality, and sure enough, like, it's very. The panel that I see is pixelated, but sure enough, there is a pixel of darkness below the crest. And I go, huh, interesting. Okay, but like, still, like, it doesn't make sense because it's not in the next image with Tara. And I go to the next image. Sure enough, it's a fine quality. I don't see anything there. So it was literally fucking Blade Runner. Enhance, Enhance.

[Steven]

Oh, my God.

[Greg]

And strangely enough, under. Because I said, there's a bandana on this second one, right? Just below the bandana, there's the faintest lines, faintest outline of something. And I'm going, no fucking way. No way. No. Well, this isn't what I think it is, is it? And I go back to my source, my expert, and I say, hey. So I can see that there might be blood underneath the one, the first one, but that second one, I don't really see anything, but there seemed to be a oddly faint line or series of lines under. Could you possibly show me something from the original volume or the color? Because it was coincidentally a color chapter. And she's like, sure, sure, no problem. And she sends me back, steven, what's underneath the original? Not only the original tonklebone, but the original color blood red dripping down from underneath the bandana. So because I don't think it's been censored per se, but because some person in the creation of this newest edition raised the contrast or something to a certain degree, the blood is nearly invisible on this panel. And in the first panel, it's simply not. Even in the real version, you can see there's a little thing of blood coming down, but it's not like, oozing. It became impossible for me as the translator to discern what this was. So in time for final submission, I was able to get it in, as in like a drizzle sound effect. But this is the importance of having to compare multiple versions, just as you said, you know, like, with the change for the, I don't know, not Myanmar family, right Man, Meyer family. Especially for older works, you need to look at the. If you read something, you're like, wait, this doesn't make any sense. Like, I'm not getting anything out of this. Go to Book off or secondhand, you know, Japanese bookstore and get the original comic and compare and contrast and see if there's something you're missing there visually. Because this also happened with. With the Toriyama thing for, I guess, rights reasons, they. They had to pull out a God Ultraman villain from one of the front of the panels. And, like, there were multiple jokes that, like, didn't make sense because this thing wasn't pictured there. And they didn't change the dialogue to reflect it.

[Steven]

They just erased it.

[Greg]

It just erased it. And it's just like, what the fuck is going on? And that was a whole other thing. Like, Alexi, which one do I translate? Like, which one do I translate for? So that was a hard lesson in that you need to be. If there's something that doesn't make sense, if you just have a gut feeling like, this isn't right.

[Steven]

I'm missing something.

[Greg]

Even native people aren't understanding this properly. Is there something being cut out? So thank God. I went to her and I was like, hey, is there. That experience with the Toriyama manga theater thing helped me understand and be like, hey, is there possibly something that's cut out of here? Could you send me the original? That was a hard lesson. Luckily not an embarrassing lesson.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

But it's all thanks to, you know, double checking and checking and the work of my, My source here. She's. She's a great expert. But that, that is probably one of my biggest lessons with the know how of translation.

[Steven]

That's a good. Yeah, that's, that's a. That's an interesting story. There's probably been some. Something like that. I think. I've. I've. I remember working on some manga where it was a. It was a manga adaptation of a light novel and there was something where like I was looking at the manga version and like, it turned out that they had like copied over. It was like a character was filling out a. A crossword. And so like when you do crosswords in Japanese, you fill it out with like katakana. Like everything just converts into katakana. And so it was like they were filling out a really long one and then they, they, they copied the wrong cut, the wrong kana for one of them. And I was just like, what the hell is this? And, and I, and I had to look back. Yeah, I had to look back at. And unfortunately it was something that I. I think it was the scene that was in the, the novel. And in this case, you know, it was. It was a series where I was doing both sides of it. So like, I was able to go back and look. But. And it was something crazy too, because it was a really long word. So it was like. It was like the Japanese translation of. I think it was like, like broken. Broken window theory or something. You know, the whole thing about like, if you pass by and you see broken windows, it suggests whatever to, you know, to the person. And yeah, they just completely whiffed on it and nobody, nobody caught it. And that, that was a. That was a close call, I think, in terms of like, challenging or like. I don't know if. I don't know if this really fits the question, but it was something that, that popped into my head like a couple years back, maybe five years ago or something like that. I. I ended up doing a bunch of jobs for Kodansha because it just happened to coincide that a bunch of their Their classic sci fi hits. The, you know, these sort of like tentpole manga were getting like, you know, anniversary editions. Like they like, oh, we're going to put out a big, you know, hardcover version of this. Or it was something that was originally published before, but we want to redo it. Or, you know, it was only in. They flopped it to read from left to right. And we're going to put it in the original orientation. So we need someone to take a look at these things. And so I worked on. I did this process for Akira. I did it for Ghost in the Shell and then it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same thing. But, but I also, I, I also did a similar thing. I did an updated, like translation for Parasite that was a few. That, that was more recent. And, and then they had me redo the original Gumu or Battle Battle Angelita. So like, I had all these, you know, kind of similar profile series. And so like, some of them are interesting because Akira was like, you could look at it and there were certain points where, you know, because it had been originally, it had gone through a couple different editions, like it was originally published by I think Marvel, like early, early on. And then Dark Horse got it and they changed. I think they, they updated it or they may have done their own version or something like that. But there were certain parts where you could see like, okay, this is a spot where they made like an editorial decision to change something. And like, okay, well, in this version, you know, I'm gonna revert this to something that's closer to the Japanese or whatever. And you know, in this case, like, oh, I can see they made a mistake here. You know, it's a little minor mistake here. I can correct that. And so, you know, just little things here and there and like, you know, redoing all the sound effects and stuff like that. However the Ghost in the Shell thing was, it was like an all in one. So it was like multiple. There are a couple different books of Ghosts in the Shell that the author did over the years and they were doing. I forget if it was a box set or if it was an all in one, but I had to look through, you know, like three different books for this stuff. And that was two things. That was originally translated by Frederick Shot, who's like a, you know, super famous. Yeah, like he's, he's, he's like the grand. He's the guy who was friends with. Yeah. Back in the, in the 80s and 70s and stuff. You know, pioneer in, in translating Japanese comics into English and number two is if you've ever read like the original Ghost in the Shell manga, not, not the movies, not the TV shows that they did, but like actually read the original source material. It is like impenetrable. It is so complicated. There's so much stuff that he throws in there where it's like he just wanted to draw this thing and tell you about it and, and like there's. There's barely a narrative that goes through it and it's just. It's so hard to, to understand. And I remember buying the, the Dark Horse version. You know what? That was one of the very first manga that I ever bought when I was a teenager. And like, I was like, oh man, this is really cool. I have no idea what any of it means, but like, man, it's so cool. Like I'm getting into anime, you know. That was kind of like my, my version of it and so coming back to it as an adult and I'm looking at it, I'm like, yeah, this is still really hard to understand. But like my job was to, you know, to like oversee the train, look at the script, make sure that it's all correct or that there's nothing that we need to fix and make sure that all the sound effects are right and everything. And like for the life of me, I could not find anything. Like there were so few things to actually fix from that. And you know, I just felt like, like I was like pouring over the Bible or something like that. I was just like, oh my God, how, how was this like so perfectly done in the 90s, you know, before Goog and all of the resources that we have to translate stuff today. So yeah, that was a pretty mind blowing experience just to be like, wow, this was so impeccably done that even me looking over it with a magnifying glass, I could barely find anything to change.

[Greg]

Well, Sasaga Frederick Schott. I mean, that name is a blast from the past. You hit me back to college there. Yeah. If you've never read it, like manga, manga, manga. Like I haven't read it in probably 20 years now. But like, if you have not me too, you must read that. That's a Bible for translation. A lot of my. It will not teach you how to translate. It will not teach you any Japanese. It will teach you how to approach the idea of approaching the field of translation.

[Steven]

Yes. Yeah. A great, great book. Well, let's go from that question to Pungzilla who says, what weird devil fruits would you like to see? I want to see a natto Natto fruit.

[Greg]

Be sticky.

[Steven]

That.

[Greg]

Yeah, smelly.

[Steven]

Smelly. Well, what if there was a fruit that produced a bunch of arrows that went whatever you. Whatever direction you wanted and no.

[Greg]

Weird devil fruits? Would you like to see weird devil fruit? Weird devil fruit. You know what? You know what's hilarious about this is I'm trying to think of stuff and I'm coming up with ideas and it's literally like, nope, Oda did it.

[Steven]

Yeah, I was, I was. I. I was on the. It was on the tip of my tongue. I was about to say, like the bouncy ball fruit, and I was like, that is the main character of this fucking series. Oh, God.

[Greg]

I got one. I got one.

[Steven]

Shoot.

[Greg]

The. What would you. What would you even call it? The. The Mania Mania fruit. Where once you hear information about a topic, you automatically sort it and can recall that information at any time without pause. That would be so useful, you could even go a step further. Is like, once you hear the name of something that you're not familiar with, you instantly know everything about it that is known to humankind. Like, that's super op. But as long as we're going weird, fine, I'm going to go fucking weird. But like, yeah, Mania Mania Fruit is you can recall. You have eidetic memory.

[Steven]

Yes, there you go. Nice. A weird devil fruit. How about like the soup? Soup fruit. Like, how would you incorporate that into a story? You make people drink you. That would be weird.

[Greg]

He'd have an interesting spin on it, wouldn't he? It'd be like, do you make soup or do you become soup? Or does that count as a liquid? Is it useless?

[Steven]

Soup is a logia.

[Greg]

In which case, do you become curry? Because is curry a soup or is curry a food? And in that case, can you use your powers as curry? Because you are a food, but you can't use it as soup because that. That's a whole thing in Japanese. Right? That's if you don't. Yeah, it's a stupid thing. Is curry a drink or is curry a food?

[Steven]

Right, that's their version of like stew of hot dog sandwich.

[Greg]

Yes, exactly.

[Steven]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think God, isn't there. Isn't there like a Chojin from Kinikuman who's like curry man or something like that? That sounds like something you would see in Kinikuman. All right, Big Mike has Our next question. Has a very important question. In the last sbs, a reader suggested, okay, this. So now you may not remember this because it was in the most recent volume, but in the last sbs, a reader suggested that GERD and Ripley's bra sizes are W cups for World Cup. And ODA revealed that the average breast size of a giant woman is 6 meters, which is 19ft and 8 inches. But did you know that when you convert a bra size from Japanese to American, you usually go back one or two letters, depending on the brand? For example, the American conversion of Nami and Robin's J cups are I cups. So, Steven, since you are the official translator, can the American conversion of GERD and Ripley's W cups be V cups for valley? Cups for the Valley in between there. But this is just. This is just the. The Robin joke again from. From the Tentatas. The. The. The beach. The region. Region B for. Yeah, V. V cups. Well, to answer your question, seriously. Unfortunately, it is too, too late because I already turned it in. But that is a very. That is a very clever. A very clever observation. I like that. Reverse eye patch has our last question on Discord says sgs. I heard a theory I want your opinion on. So the five Elders only had their discussion about the Gum Gum fruit being the Nika fruit in Wano. Then they then immediately told CP0 to kill Luffy. Why did they never do this before, like in NES Lobby or at Marineford? Well, what if when Shamrock or Shanks. It could still be Shanks told them he needed to discuss a certain pirate? He was revealing that yo ho ho, Luffy took a bite of gum gum and the true name of the fruit. Maybe the Elders didn't even know about the Nika stuff. Or Luffy was so far below their radar that they didn't know what his fruit was. I'm guessing it would be the former, since IMU had his wanted poster and the giant hat.

[Greg]

Hmm.

[Steven]

Yeah. I mean, that. That also raises the question of, like, how much does Emu share with the five Elders? Since that was. You know, at least that. That stuff with the poster and the hat was kind of in. In EMU's secret space, as far as we can tell.

[Greg]

I'm gonna say disagree, because. And that's a great question, but I don't think it works out because who's. Who is in the loop about this? About the fruit? And he left the government quite some time ago.

[Steven]

That's right. He was a.

[Greg]

He was a cp. Yeah, Okay, I don't know which CP he was, but he was a cp. I don't have that. I need the eidetic memory.

[Steven]

Yeah, you need the.

[Greg]

I have it for the first half of the series. Not for the second half. And because he had that information and he does know that it's. He's the. Isn't he like the first person who says the name Nika? Is he not?

[Steven]

No. Was he. Yeah. Was that before or. I guess. Yeah, it was him, wasn't it? Because didn't he say it just before Luffy gets knocked out? And then he does the grin. He does the Nika sound effect, and then he transforms. Because that was right around that same. That same time he did it.

[Greg]

We only knew it as Joy Boy.

[Steven]

Yes.

[Greg]

I think he's the first person to say Nika. I think.

[Steven]

I believe you're. I think you're right about that.

[Greg]

And it might just be overshadowed by the racist. That was the thing about who's. Who's. Who's.

[Steven]

Who's a racist. Yeah. Right.

[Greg]

That was a big thing. But. And if he knows that. If he has that connection, especially because he was transporting the fruit at the time. Yeah.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

They should be in the know. Yeah. Maybe there's something I'm missing or maybe there's something I'm misremembering. Like, say, for instance, like, he knew it at the time, but they never were able to pass that information along. Maybe there's some twist there, but if there's not, I don't think that works. My whole justification has. And I might have mentioned this before, so I'm not going to get deep into it, but has always been like, they didn't want to draw attention to it because they realize the more they draw attention to it and the more they focus on this individual, the bigger problem it could actually be for them in the end. So I think maybe they just wanted to nip it in the budget when it was opportune for them, which. Which is then like. But then why did they handle Robin the way they did? Like, why did they want to draw attention to this little girl who obviously was so dangerous? But I think it's.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

If you could consider who is more dangerous, which by. By multiple levels, I would think that the. The literal enemy. The. The natural enemy of their. Well, maybe not natural because you never know about. Nevermind. Sorry. That's a whole other thing.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

But. Yeah, the enemy. The enemy of their essential God would probably be the top of their list. So maybe that was a special consideration. I'll still subscribe to that for now, but that was a really interesting consideration. I wonder if there's something going on there. Yeah. Good call.

[Steven]

Yeah. Yeah. I. I think that either way, you know, we are kind of we're all kind of trying to retroactively fit that in. Like, I, I don't necessarily think that there was a. There was a logical, like, consistent, you know, mindset of the characters that Oda was working from that they would, you know, that, oh, well, if I say this, then. Then they have to have known all that. You know, I do think that we're trying to kind of like, retroactively find a logic in there that, that maybe he didn't think about or he's just kind of making stuff up as he goes. So, you know, we, we might be. This might be futile, but, you know, I think that that's an interesting way to. To try to explain that for sure. All right, that's it for the Patreon. But we do have, I think we have maybe two more on Twitter, and you can, you can submit questions using the hashtag sgss. Sensei, that's all one word. No. No punctuation. That is, you can do that on either Twitter or Blue Sky. So we'll start with Michael Cunningham at Michael X Edge, who says, see? Not Greg. Dropping the coldest theory. That would be wild if true. On the latest sgs, I believe in Struzan. I hope I spelled that correctly. So I guess this is his reaction to your 10th member conspiracy theory.

[Greg]

Yeah, we'll see what happens. I was pretty blunt about it in my latest article. I mean, I left a few things ambiguous, but I very heavily leaned into, like, I think that he might join or not might join. I think he might be a member of the crew. And it seems to have gotten through. It seems to have gotten final approval. So, yeah, you can look forward to that. It's on the website.

[Steven]

Yeah. Either it's okay or it's just completely off base and they're like, okay, yeah, Greg, you just say whatever.

[Greg]

Yep.

[Steven]

Whatever comes to your mind.

[Greg]

Yep, that's exactly what that means.

[Steven]

Yes. Okay, and our last one here is from our frequent question writer op at Champagne Bala, who has a bunch of questions as usual. Let's see. Let's see if I can parse them all, because sometimes I, I have no idea what he's asking. Lbaf length guess. Well, that's a pretty easy one to guess. How much longer will Elbaf go? Oh, the longer this flashback goes, the, the, the further out the guess becomes. But yeah, at this point, I don't know, it might be like 1200 ish. I don't know.

[Greg]

What do you think I'm looking for my.

[Steven]

We're at 1160 right now.

[Greg]

Looking for my part five of my. The end of one.

[Steven]

Oh yeah. Consult the tome that you wrote.

[Greg]

The Harley.

[Steven]

Yeah, the Harley.

[Greg]

That's right Elbow. Must consist of, or will probably consist of, fish out of water arrival. Formal introduction of new cast members and factions. Presentation of a main problem, Dramatic link between local and main cast domain problems. Physically placing the straw hats in conflict action drama conflict resolution lore dump and setting off. Currently, we are in action drama conflict and I do have a whole write up about this. You can read this on the One Piece podcast website. You just need to do a search for One Piece podcast and the end of One piece or end of one piece, however you like that and it'll come up. It's a massive thing I wrote. Yeah, but let's see. Where am I right now? We're in action drama conflict and I have written here. Here's where everything goes out the window. This is the phase where Oda will absolutely lowball his expectations for the length of the arc, as should he find himself enjoying the work, he will absolutely overshoot the projected length. I do not expect this phase to be nearly as long as wano, but it also needs to carry a story that is meaningful drama with satisfying conflicts. And that takes time. And that takes time. I would expect this section to take no fewer than 25 chapters. If a flashback or flash sideways is thrown into mix, we're easily looking at 30 to 40 chapters. All right, and that's just where we are right now. So if we do some quick maths, this leaves us anywhere between 56 and 98 chapters for ELBAF. If ODA doesn't go all in on flashbacks. If you look at One Piece's manga release for 2022, chapter 1036 was the first release and chapter 1070 was the last to be released within the year. So that's a total of 35 chapters for the year. While I don't expect ODA to dip as low as 35 every year until the series completion, there's plenty of work and life events that could bring the number down within that range again. And I don't think we'll ever see more than 45 chapters a year unless there's something that really nice and fire in them. So ELBAF Chapter count 56 to 98 chapters. Real world time 1.5 to 3 years. We are. We're at. Well, actually as of this podcast, we're at the one year. Wow, this is. This is nice. This is like. Yeah, as of this recording, we're at one year. I think it was like the. 16 September or something where we, we had like. I think the, the. The first Lego blocks are like the first introduction.

[Steven]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Greg]

So yeah, we're there. 1.5 looks like it will clear with ease. I don't think we'll hit two years. So the question is, do we end before next. Do we end by next summer? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Do you think he'll wrap Elbaf up like he split after this flashback.

[Steven]

That. I don't know.

[Greg]

I would say 1.5 years. We will easily hit. That's my low ball expectation. So. Yeah, that would be, I don't know, March, April.

[Steven]

Yeah, I think we'll definitely shoot past that. Yeah. So yeah, I wouldn't be. Yeah, I would guess next summer maybe. We'll see.

[Greg]

You can read all of this. This is much longer. I go in depth about each part of elbow and I do have a chapter like breakdown and like at least the first parts of it. I was fucking on point and I stopped counting each section of the chapter numbers as I haven't done that in quite some time. And I figured I'll do it after the action drama conflict area is done. But so far so good.

[Steven]

All right, very nice. Next question. Where would we get an Akainu versus Luffy? I mean, I don't think it's going to be a random moment. It's definitely got to be something that pulls a. Unless. Unless we somehow go back to the, you know, the center of power, which doesn't seem likely for the straw hats. You know, it would have to be Akainu sailing forth with the fleet. So, you know, that's like maybe it's either Laugh Tale or, or the previous island that, you know, everybody converges on. That's. That's my, my guess is the only time if that's going to happen because I don't see. I. I don't. It's certainly not going to happen while he is stuck in his office on, on Marineford.

[Greg]

Yeah, movement. There was an interesting development recently. I think it was if Colin is successfully kidnapped, then at some point there will probably be a movement towards Marijoa. But I feel like Davy Jones's locker. If that's what we're looking at for our destination for our Laugh Tale under the ocean is at the end of the line, the end of the grand line. So Reverse Mountain. I see that being the natural progression, but then how will movement be? My long standing theory, as everybody knows is that there will be 10 marinefords going on at the same time. Right. We all know this. I've gone over this countless times. How far will they be separated? In other words, will this, the Straw Hat crew actually be separated around the world? My idea was always they'd be in a general region. But what if they are 10 conflicts dotted around the world? Then you'd have a crew member going to Marty Joy. You'd have probably the central. Probably Luffy at Reverse Mountain. At. Would that be how. How this. This ends up because everybody will be involved.

[Steven]

Yeah, I think it would be much more likely that that's what the. The fleets are doing, you know, or all the. All the friends who we've made along the way. They'll be the ones, you know, doing the proxy fighting around the world. Would that. That seems more likely to me.

[Greg]

Whatever it is, there's going to be like, transportation is going to become simple by the end of this.

[Steven]

Oh yeah. He's not gonna allow the. The rules that he built, you know, 27 years ago to. To stop him from, you know, making the confrontation or the conclusion that he wants.

[Greg]

So yeah, people are gonna get. They're gonna get places very fast where they previously couldn't.

[Steven]

Yeah.

[Greg]

And he has a number of reasons for that. He has. Fuck. He has Maxim, because Anel's gonna be back in the story. He has Maxim, he has Noah, he has a possibly new rocket train. He has Zo, he has fucking water. Seven itself was supposed to be made into a ship. Right. So he has many options for fast travel. Fast travel will be unlocked very quickly for the world.

[Steven]

Yes. Yes.

[Greg]

So it is theoretically possible that he could pull that off while having it still feel good. I mean, by that, I mean having the crew split up. The point is that they all come together at the end. So they split up. Do they have different goals at different locations? They have their conflicts. And then the final concentrated conflict, does that occur at the bottom of Reverse Mountain? From this point, movement is very difficult to read, but a lot of it depends on whether Colin gets successfully kidnapped or not.

[Steven]

Okay, well, you just mentioned the arc maxim. What does Emu's face look like? Arc Maxim slash Buddha. Ish.

[Greg]

I was just thinking of that this week. Like, we've seen this, like, Easter island like, type face, right? Like throughout the series. Like you see it. And obviously that comes very much from. That is probably not something that Oda had planned, right? Like. No, not at all. I don't think it might be something he works back into the story. But I was just thinking about that. So funny. This week I was like, yeah, what if like the God ended up having the maxim and that's why Aner, you know, created that in God's image. Right. Because you also see the Easter island face reflected in the Yeti brothers because their real faces are the Easter island faces as well. But I, I don't think that will be the, the case. No, we, we've talked a lot about him, but. But no, I don't think so.

[Steven]

Yeah, I, I think for one thing, like when, when Emu's full name is like a, a sort of joke on God and Buddha, I do think that then having him look like Buddha or, you know, having a very obvious religious. I mean, depending on how, how Oda does it. Like, I don't think it would be explicitly looking like a real world figure because I just think that would be a hat on a hat, you know, that that's something that it would be like. Well, oh, well, duh. So now he looks like the thing that his name is like a. Secretly named after. That's not exactly very, very exciting. I think I've, I've said before that to me, I don't know what Emu is going to look like, but it can only be one of two things, which is either Emu has to look really, really bizarre or like unearthly beautiful. I feel like, you know, with the amount of tension built up around, you know, what the appearance of Emu will be, it can only be one of those two things because anything less than that is going to be like, what was this all for? If it just looks like a normal person.

[Greg]

Yeah. And we're very much in the, at least I am in the beautiful category at this point with considering the Lily options right now. So.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

I'm in that category for now. And that would be perfectly contrasted with whatever the abomination is. Right. Just as you said, really, really bizarre or unearthly beautiful. Is Lily now, insanity later?

[Steven]

Does Davey, Davey Davy Jones cause devil fruit users to sink? I mean, that's the, that's the legendary reason, right? It's like, oh, well, if you, if you're hated by the sea or you know, you're, you don't have the good luck with you, then Davy Jones will claim you and pull you down to his locker on the floor on the sea floor. I kind of doubt that that would be like an in story reason. I think it's a fun, it's a fun folklore thing.

[Greg]

I don't see it as, I see the, I see it as the opposite, as was Davey forced Down into the sea by emu. Is that his last passion? He was cursed by the devil. Right. He was so bad that he was cursed by the devil to live at the bottom of the sea. And that's where he lives to this day, right?

[Steven]

Something like that. Yeah.

[Greg]

Yeah. I think that's almost verbatim. What is what Robin says in the Davy back area.

[Steven]

Right.

[Greg]

And is it. Is it was. Was the quote unquote devil, the actual abomination? Like, was that the thing? And did that make it so that he had to live down there permanently? If. If he's alive. That's the whole like, if he's alive thing. But yeah, I don't know if he brings people down to the sea or if it's the devil that is doing that. I mean, literally, we've watched the devil fruits do that to people. Right. You eat the devil fruit and you get cursed by the sea. Yeah. What brings life to people. Which is interesting that he used that like the mother. Like the mother life energy thing. Right. Because you do get good versus evil in that. Yeah. And life comes from the sea and the devil takes it away. Right. So you're cursed by the. The sea if you're. You're using the devil, if it's a part of you. Interesting. Yeah. Sorry. If we. If you let me go there, we'll be here for another five hours.

[Steven]

Then the next question is just water, devil fruit, question mark.

[Greg]

Oh, that's.

[Steven]

I think that's.

[Greg]

That's as old as one. That's. Since we knew about the devil fruit rules.

[Steven]

Right?

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Steven]

Yeah. I think you can only do that one if that comes hand in hand with like, here's what. The truth of what the devil fruits are. Because, you know, it's the one thing that you cannot imagine based on everything we know. So it can only be true if it's revealed as part of, like the. The truth of what. Of what they actually are.

[Greg]

The closest they came was the movie 2 villain. Right. That lady.

[Steven]

Oh, God, I don't even. It's been 25 years since I watched that probably.

[Greg]

Yeah. She was like a liquid or something. I think there was some. They had an explanation for it. It was like, what? She's. But she's water. But you can't be water.

[Steven]

I bet Oda loved that. Who will join the Straw Hats? Main crew in parentheses. Vivi, Loki, Yamato.

[Greg]

All of the above.

[Steven]

Yeah. Why not? I mean, if it's just we got.

[Greg]

The main crew for now, but. And like, after, when the series finishes and they go on their next adventure. Like all of the above. Yep. Definitely.

[Steven]

Any Hinokizu theory updates? Is it Davey slash Rocks? The burn scar? Yeah, I haven't really thought about this much since we got into the flashbacks and since it's just been like, okay, well, we're all learning the past here. I haven't really thought about the. The mysteries from the present.

[Greg]

So I alluded to this earlier, right? And it's like, is. Is Rocks alive or is Rocks dead?

[Steven]

Right. Yeah.

[Greg]

I don't like this question. I don't dislike anybody for asking this question. I think it's a great question, actually, and you could spend a lot of time on it. But that's why I don't like it is because it's so frustrating. And to me, Oda has not introduced enough crumbs that you can accurately hit it. Can you guess it? Yes. But can you accurately hit it based on facts? No, not at this point. You can guess based on what you like for the story, but there's no definitive yet. There's no winning guess to, to my mind's eye. Yeah, so far. And if Rox is alive, then I believe that he is Hinokizu. Right? If.

[Steven]

Yeah, why not?

[Greg]

If he's not, then I guess he's not. But like, Rox being alive would.

[Steven]

I mean, I'll tell you how he's going.

[Greg]

So family. Rocks being alive would be a reward for Blackbeard. Does Blackbeard? Is, Is Blackbeard owed a reward? How do you feel about that? Right? Like, if you can answer that question, then yeah.

[Steven]

That'S interesting. Yeah. I, I was just thinking to myself when you, when you mentioned, okay, well, if. If Rocks is dead, then he's taken off the board. Well, we already lost, presumably. Unless Oda comes back and is like, oh, actually this character was the, the burn scar, which, which would be pretty, pretty weak. But you know, we got. It seems like we got Scott Gabon taken off the board for that one as well, since, you know, he showed up and there has not been any.

[Greg]

What if it's Harold? What if it's Harold? Do we know for a absolute fact that that event killed him? We know it traumatized Loki. We know everybody in the country thinks he's dead.

[Steven]

I mean, everybody, yeah, everybody assumes he's dead.

[Greg]

What if it's fucking Harald? And what if that's the eyes? What if those are the thriller bark eyes? Now, I have obviously a lot of ideas about thriller bark eyes, but what if that's his ship?

[Steven]

I see. Okay, maybe that's true. But I would have, I would take issue with that, you know, as a storytelling device because they didn't say you would think if he was the biggest giant you've ever seen that people would mention that when they talk about the guy instead of being like, oh well, he thought, you know, he's, he's surrounded by a whirlpool and his ship and you know, he's, his ship is a ghost ship and blah, blah, blah. Like you would think if they know he has a burn scar, they would, they would mention he's a huge giant. That's just me.

[Greg]

You think if Counterpoint. If you think they know he has at least a burn scar, they call the by his name.

[Steven]

Right, right.

[Greg]

And, and no, I'm being, I'm being somewhat facetious there, but like. No, that's a good point. Yeah. Would that be his, his identifying quality or not?

[Steven]

Yeah, right, right, right. So that's how I would rule that one out. Last thing, since we are now at the seemingly close to the end of Yamato's pilgrimage, what do you think the next cover story could be?

[Greg]

Oh God, there was a huge build up to this one. Right? Like it was, it might even be the longest ever of like non story covers.

[Steven]

Oh yeah, yeah. Between the last one in that and this one.

[Greg]

Yes, yes. He really pulled it out.

[Steven]

It could be a long time.

[Greg]

Is it a long time between. And here's an even scarier question, will there be another one?

[Steven]

Yeah, that's that. That almost makes me wonder.

[Greg]

Now that's a bit clickbaity, but like, yeah, sure. But also at the same time, like where. What other story can he tell at this point that he's not going to bring in? Now the crazy thing he could do, the absolute batshit craziest thing he could do, is tell a story from a perspective of someone we don't know and like we have no idea what's going on. And it will all come together at the end. It'll come back into the story. Actually, pudding would be an interesting one too, if she's not just in a cell. Like if we get to experience. I know I'm backing what I just said, but yeah, she would be an interesting.

[Steven]

Yeah, I would like that. That could be interesting potentially because she'd.

[Greg]

Have a unique perspective from the Blackbeard side and that'd be a way to, to progress their story as well.

[Steven]

Yeah, I'm gonna guess the most likely answer will be like, it's gonna be like the aerial adventures of Pythagoras and Edison or whatever I was. Because I was just thinking, okay, well, if. If it's after wano, it's. It's got to be Egghead. So who. Who do we even know from Egghead still? And I'm like, oh, well, it could be the other.

[Greg]

You're right. You're right. That's really good. Yeah, that's really good. It's because they're kind of an outside force and they're doing their own thing and they can see perspectives of the world.

[Steven]

Right? Yeah. I mean, he could make it count or he could just. Or it's just a setup for like, oh, they could do anything. They could go anywhere because they're just floating along. So, you know, no stakes. I can just tell whatever, you know, lackadaisical story I want.

[Greg]

Yeah, good point. I would probably concede to that. Yeah.

[Steven]

Okay. All right, well, that is all. Once again, if you would like to send your questions to us in between SGS recordings, just use the hashtag SGSS sensei on Twitter or bluesky. Or as mentioned previously, if you are a Patreon subscriber, you can get the access to the channel for the SGS and I'll see your questions there. But with that, I think we are ready to round this one out.

[Greg]

Yes, we are.

[Steven]

Okay, let's do it.

[Simba]

Next up is a little song from.

[Steven]

Carmax about selling a car your way. You want to sell those wheels. You want to get a car. CarMax instant offer. So fast.

[Greg]

Want to take a sec to think.

[Steven]

About it or like a month? Want to keep tabs on that instant offer with offer. Watch.

[Greg]

Want to have CarMax pick it up from your driveway?

[Steven]

So Want to drive? CarMax pickup not available everywhere.

[Steve]

Restrictions and fee may apply.

[Greg]

Foreign.

[Steven]

This has been the One Piece podcast episode 885 for Monday, September 22, 2025. Once again, another wonderful and enlightening episode of the SGS. And that means it's time to round off your favorite part of the show. Greg, what can you say to all the people who are dying to contact you individually in person? Where can they do that?

[Greg]

You can find me on Twitter ochimusho108 and on the One Piece website, 1peace.com. Go looking in their special goods section. I think you'll find a picture of me in my glorious chopper hat. Where can people find you? Steven did that with so much.

[Steven]

Was that so hard? Was that so hard? Yeah, you can find me posting somewhat regularly over on Bluesky at StevenPaul, BSky Social. And yeah, check out the. All the other stuff I do. I have a new series from Jump plus called Kurumizawa's Folly. Actually I've had. They've really stockpiled those chapters. I've been. It's just been a whirlwind of working on that series and they should be coming out weekly for a little while and hopefully I'll get a little, a little break and we'll slow down a bit. But that is on the Shonen Jump app as well. As for the podcast, you can check out our site One Piece podcast.com follow us on social media, we do have One Piece [e-mail] or X or whatever. We don't use it very much anymore. More blueskyonepiecepodcast.com is where we share the latest news. Adil has been posting the pictures and little clips and things from the live action show as they release them. You can find us on YouTube.com One Piece podcast and Apple Podcasts and Spotify. All the usual places where you can subscribe to the regular audio show. You can also no longer call us at 347497 Maji. That's 347-497-6254. Do not call that number. It does not work any longer. But that's going to do it. Greg. Boy, that was a fun. I wasn't sure how long we were going to go, but we once again lived up to expectations every time.

[Greg]

It's not that much. It's only three chapters we've done in the past like four or five chapters. We've gotten through them and it's only three chapters. This. We're gonna be done in like maybe an hour. I think we can barely. Anything happens, I'm shut up. And yep, here we are. Three fucking hours. This is.

[Steven]

Yep.

[Greg]

I hope you enjoyed it. I hope everybody listening enjoyed it.

[Steven]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes it's fun to, to talk about your, you know, your, your weird nightmare translation scenario that, that you'll, you'll never get over because the, you know, the image quality was too blown out to, to see the trail of blood. That's, that's the behind the scenes baseball there. That's, that's good stuff. All right. Well we will be back next week actually. I think. Am I going to be back? I might not be back next week. I think I might be away. Yeah. Actually, yes, that's right. I will be at a baseball game next Sunday. So. Yeah, you will. You will get the regularly scheduled podcast however, talking about the, the next chapter. So look forward to that. But in the meantime, my name is Steven.

[Greg]

My name is Greg.

[Steven]

And there's Simba. He's trying to. He's trying to sleep. We just keep interrupting him. But he'll be fine. He'll be fine. Don't worry.

[Greg]

Sam.