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!
Before we even start talking about today’s actual chapter, turn your eyes up to that cover.
I’ve been basically just letting the whole Chibi Buggy Saga play out without much commentary in the headers of these articles (always cropped, to make them not look absolutely awful on desktop) but this one actually introduces a new character! A mysterious lady-pirate rocking a cowboy hat who seems to have taken in Buggy as her pet short king. Good for him, I guess?
As for the chapter itself, this is the first one in a while to basically be pure action. An honorable duel between the villainous Hawkeye and the heroic Zolo (eh, more or less, on both counts). I also want to highlight Zolo’s quip here off the top, because, yeah, I am also surprised that we’ve gotten to actually meet Hawkeye this early.
Part of me wonders; was One Piece being allowed to publish basically indefinitely not a sure thing yet this early on? That would make sense, we’re 50 chapters in, but given that as far as I know One Piece has always been a weekly, that only represents around 2 1/2 months of publishing time. Maybe it was not yet the utterly massive hit that it would later become, and Oda wanted to start bringing some plot threads to a close, or at least moving them closer to a conclusion, just in case? This is all speculation, if I’m wrong and 1P was a total smash basically right away feel free to correct me in the comments.
In any case, much of this duel is devoted to showing how much better at Sword Hawkeye is than Zolo. Zolo hasn’t really had a proper challenge in this series yet, and Hawkeye less gives him one and more completely wipes the floor with him.
Did I mention, he doesn’t use that big fancy cross-shaped sword across his back with the black blade to do it? No, he uses a little dagger. Like a really little dagger.
I bet people ship these two really hard.
Spoiler alert; he does not need anything bigger than the dagger.
This sends Zolo into a bit of a spiral, with Oda again deploying his technique of “fading” memory panels in and out to create a flashback that’s actively weaved with the manga’s present-tense. (It’s worth noting that alongside all the memories of his late friend to whom he promised to become the world’s greatest swordsman is a memory of Luffy recruiting him to his crew.) Zolo refuses to believe that they could possibly be this mismatched, but they are, and Hawkeye cuts his belly open to prove it.
Hawkeye is, at the very least, impressed by Zolo’s bravery as he manages to spit out that to him, death would be better than defeat. Hawkeye, out of a sense of honor, makes him stick to that, and the second slash he delivers to Zolo’s frame is a lot more lethal.
Tomorrow: How will the swordsman survive?!
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