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!

---

The Cover Issue: In today’s Chapter cover (not the volume cover! Those are outside the scope of this, uh, sub-column?) Buggy and his lady-friend confirm their mutual hatred of Luffy and have dinner and wine while they’re at it. “PIRATE ALLIANCE”, the chapter text helpfully tells us.

^{The image of Buggy just going absolutely beast mode on an entire fish is going to haunt me for a long time.}

---

So this chapter is mainly about two things. One; holy shit, Sanji is really good at kicking. (The unspoken implication being of course that Sanji studied under Zeff not just as a cook but as a fighter as well.) He also gets off a pretty great samurai vibes line about how knives are the soul of a chef.

Two; we meet a person named Pearl. (Also in the background of much of this issue, Luffy and Krieg are fighting elsewhere. Keep that in mind, it’s important.)

When I saw this chapter was called “Pearl”, I did indeed assume it’d introduce a character named that. But in my experience, Pearl is usually a girl’s name (think Steven Universe, Splatoon 2, I think that whale from Spongebob, etc.), and given one of the things One Piece is—ahem—known for, I sort of assumed Don Krieg would turn out to have a femme fatale pirate woman in his ranks.

Well, Pearl does work for Krieg, but he is….not that.

Yes, this is Don Krieg’s second-in-command, a walking dartboard made out of garbage can lids with a ponder-worthy orb for a hat. He is obsessed with his own handsomeness and also with not getting hurt in combat; he brags that he’s never lost “even one drop” of his own blood while fighting. He brags that he wouldn’t even get hurt if he were shot with a cannonball; you know how it goes.

Unfortunately, he’s also great at tempting fate, and you can probably guess that I wouldn’t be mentioning this if it weren’t relevant. Yes, as Luffy and Krieg are fighting on the next deck over, Krieg accidentally hurls Luffy in Pearl’s general direction, and this happens.

The reactions that follow are, shall we say, interesting, and imply some crazy shit is about to go down. That’s for tomorrow’s chapter, of course, because that’s where today’s ends.

---

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.