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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Chapter 42 is what you might call an interstitial. If One Piece were a piece of prose, chapter 42 is a “and then” clause, serving primarily to link the previous and the next story arc, without doing too much of its own. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be some interesting or fun ideas in it. For instance; here’s Luffy’s shot at a pirate flag.

Usopp ends up giving it a shot a short while later and, well, he does a much better job.

This chapter has a bit of a “Usopp shows off some skillz” thing going on, actually, because just after this, we learn that he’s a crack shot with a cannon. I’m not sure I buy his slingshot skills transferring, but what matters much more is that the random rock he uses for target practice was occupied.

By two people Zolo knows.

Because coincidence is for suckers.

The pair, after some initial swords-first confusion, establish themselves as Johnny and Yosaku, old colleagues in the pirate-hunting biz of Zolo’s. (Johnny actually uses the term ‘brother’ but I’m not clear on how literal he’s being. I think it’s being used in a colloquial sort of way, but if I turn out to be wrong then, well, throw me overboard.) Yosaku is basically dying on the deck of the Merry Go at first, before some quick thinking from Nami makes it clear that his problem is that old pirate’s ailment; simple scurvy.

Grateful, and taking note of a conversation about how the Merry Go could really use a cook, the pair point our heroes toward an ocean-going restaurant, and in doing so, presumably set up the Straw Hats’ next adventure.

Personally, I’m interested to see where this goes. I assume “ocean-going restaurant” means that it’s literally a restaurant on a ship? But maybe it’s something more exotic. We’ll see in the days to come.

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