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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Before we get to today’s actual chapter, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that chapter art. For the second time now, it depicts a, I guess you’d say, chibi-Buggy? Getting into antics after his battle with Luffy’s crew. I wonder if this is canon and the clown-pirate will show up again sometime soon.

Regardless, the chapter itself is much more in line with the punch pop boom wow sort of feeling the last several have been. Really, the fact that so many chapters in a row have basically been straight action feels like it should wear on me, but it really hasn’t. (Although it does make coming up with novel things to say about each a little challenging, but, well, that’s baked in to this entire “One Piece Every Day” endeavor to begin with.)

I like this moment here, where Kuro gets one up on Luffy by predicting where he’s going to toss a punch, and then…stands on his arm as he does so.

^{Kuro’s version of the cover for Stillmatic was firmly rejected by Nas’ people.}

Indeed, I think Kuro giving Luffy a serious challenge is in a lot of ways more impressive than Buggy doing it. Buggy was also a Devil Fruit….user? Eater? He also had powers, is what I’m getting at. Kuro just seems to be That Good at whatever this weird fighting style of his is.

He also gets rather testy when his crew cheers him on, specifically because they’re cheering “Captain Kuro” on. He even hollers at them for doing so.

^{Sorry man, but it’s fewer letters than “Klahadore.”}

He launches into a flashback here, and through this medium his motive becomes, in a sideways sort of way, understandable, even as his methods remain dubious as ever.

Kuro of the Thousand Plans is tired. Tired of the planning, the pillaging, and the inevitable squads of navymen, marines, and bounty hunters that pursue him. Wanting out is understandable.

He uses one of those very same marine attacks as a pretext, boarding their ship on his own and killing everyone aboard except two.

He has Django hypnotize those two; one is given his own name—Captain Kuro—and the other becomes the brave lone soldier who managed to take him in.

There’s something to be said about how we might admire a pirate, but find fault in one for trying to leave the life if his methods are unsavory. Hypocritical? Maybe, but maybe what makes it easiest to loathe Kuro is his lack of commitment to anything but buying his way to peace of mind.

In the end what matters more is that his monologue gives Luffy ample time to regain his strength. So when he makes a swing at a fatal lunge, Luffy blocks it with a massive chunk of rock.

Which he promptly bashes Kuro over the head with.

Tomorrow: The battle continues…?

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