One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

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Today’s opening art—that’s it up there in the banner—depicts Nami walking side by side with a very cute pig. It’s quite charming, if I do say so.

The chapter itself adds a new dimension to Buggy the Clown’s personality. Yesterday in his proper introduction, he was mostly pretty angry, and it had the effect of making him simultaneously intimidating and more than a little silly. Here, we get another side of his personality; boisterous, as most good pirate captains are.

There’s a pretty good sequence right near the top of the chapter where Nami drinks several of Buggy’s crewmembers under the table. (Because I am, at heart, kind of a mom, I was only able to admire her feat after an initial reaction of “wait a minute, isn’t she too young to drink?” Then I remembered that I was reading an adventure manga about pirates. Moving swiftly along….)

The good times don’t last, though. Buggy’s plan to punish Luffy for “stealing” his map of the Grand Line is to blow him to smithereens. to this end, he orders his crew to do something distinctly unpleasant-sounding.

^{I Do Not Want To Load The Buggy Balls}

We quickly learn what ‘Buggy Balls’ actually are, as Buggy shows them off by firing one from his ship’s cannon, and absolutely wrecking an entire neighborhood of the town in the process. It’s a really impressive looking sequence. There is a certain sheer kinetic energy to the cannonball knocking a hole through a dozen buildings in a row, making them crumple like towers of matchsticks.

Buggy then tells Nami that actually, he’d rather have her light the cannon fuse that blasts Luffy into oblivion. As a test of loyalty, sure—I doubt Buggy is as easy to fool as Nami’s assumed—but also just because he can. If the fact that he gets kicks out of this kind of thing wasn’t obvious already, it’s made so when he doubles down on the order, with a panel that—and I say this with love—I am genuinely shocked never became a meme.

The visuals assume a panicky quality here, as Nami tries to stall for time while trying to figure out what she should do as Buggy and his crew heckle her and her hands shake.

The egging-on, both from Buggy’s crew and from Luffy himself (who tells her she can’t expect to tangle with pirates without putting her life on the line, probably true), eventually wears her to the breaking point. She impressively flips over the crewman trying to show her out to light the cannon, and yells this.

Which is a really nice, economical slice of character-building, only slightly undercut by Luffy explaining the barely-subtext in the immediately following panel.

^{Live Luffy reaction.}

She doesn’t have to fight alone for long, Zolo makes his grand return just moments later. Buggy takes an immediate interest in the ex-pirate hunter, which Zolo does not return, to say the least.

^{I really love the “DOOOOOM” sound effect in the background there.}

The clown pirate doesn’t initially appear to put up much of a fight. Almost as soon as Zolo engages with Buggy, he cuts him to ribbons. Is this the end of Buggy the Clown….?

I somehow doubt it. We’ll find out together tomorrow, pirates.

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