Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdVg8dudXPQ

Covers

On the cover, Yamato visits Amigasa Village, which has seemingly been rebuilt. Yamato is chilling on top of Komachiyo while watching Tama train under Shinobu’s apprenticeship to become a good kunoichi, something she is working hard on as evident by the several bandages on her body. Oddly enough though, Shinobu has already reverted to her old wider self despite Ryokugyu helping her slim down.

On the next cover instead, as Yamato and Tama are sleeping, we see someone stealing a katana. If we just backtrack our steps through Wano, the obvious answer would be that this is Gyukimaru, the fox Onimaru that transformed into a humanoid through the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Onyudo, since it was his whole character to be taking the swords of others. Though it brings into question why he’d steal from Yamato, and if this is a red herring by Oda to trick us with this being someone else.

Block Country

Back to our Block Country, the Lord Sungod grows furious over the destruction of his “shrine”, which he accidentally calls his “room”. Similarly he almost says his “pets” and corrects himself to say his “servants”. More interestingly though, he refers to the inhabitants of his kingdom as “Livdolls”, which is the name of the chapter, with the kanji reading as “Living Dolls”, treating his inhabitants as if they were just toys. The kanji reading refers to a specific type of dolls from Japanese Edo that were made to look like hyper-realistic humans.

Thanks to Nami we get a good visual of the country, where we see a bottom third of the room is devoted to his studio, the so-called “shrine”, where you can spot a similar skull on top of the shelf, while two-thirds are the country with the mirrors built in them. The giant Yggdrasil tree is stuck to the wall, so it might be fake too, just like the clouds that are just hanging cotton. Next to the X where the Straw Hats are, you can spot Bigstein Castle, which appears to be the only large castle in the area.

The Sungod hopes that the Mimigami, or Eargod, can stop them, but as we see he’s already been roasted and eaten whole by Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji. In this case we gets its actual name, which is the Gluttobunny, which could be a pun on Gluttony. There is also a Norse figure called Glut, but the connection could be looser.

The Sungod makes a grand speech about narratives and how the Straw Hats are crafting a narrative in his own world. This is, as we explained last time, the nature of a tabletop RPG, where the Grandmaster controls some aspects, but the players craft their own stories through their own choices, showing this Sungod enjoys playing as a God in this grand RPG he’s built.

Who is Road?

However, he lets go a certain detail which confirms to us his identity, even before it is blatantly stated later in the chapter. He says that Hajrudin acknowledged the Straw Hats, but he doesn’t, revealing his identity to likely be one of the Giant Warrior Pirates, and as we mentioned last week, he appears to be wearing the same shoes that Road and Gerd wear, but given the masculine speech pattern he has, different from Gerd’s we’ve heard before, this has to be Road, which indeed turns out to be the case.

As a bit of a background, Road is one of the New Giant Warrior Pirates, the new crew that Hajrudin formed in the present after the inactivity caused by Dorry and Brogy disbanding a century ago. However, the New Giant Warrior Pirates originally worked for Buggy’s Delivery during the timeskip as some of his best men, but after the Dress Rosa Incident Hajrudin defected to join the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. As we saw in a cover story, Road is the navigator of the crew, alongside the other members, which include Hajrudin the captain, Stansen the shipwright, Goldberg the cook, and Gerd the doctor.

Thing is though, we actually know all of these characters from even prior to the story. Now Hajrudin obviously appeared in Dress Rosa but you may not remember that Stansen is the same giant that was captured during Sabaody and freed by Rayleigh in the Human Auction House, after which he returned to Elbaf and joined Hajrudin’s crew, also growing a sick beard. Gerd is the childhood friend of Big Mom that was hanging out with her during her flashback, and Road and Goldberg were mentioned to have been born during the middle of Big Mom’s flashback, so in December of 63 years ago, shortly after Prince Loki himself. Keep in mind that in giant years, that’s still fairly young. During this flashback you can also spot Hajrudin training and a young Stansen watching behind him, accounting for everyone.

We did see them more later on however, as after the incident of Ohara, as seen in Vegapunk’s flashback, we saw some giants rescuing the books of Ohara seemingly under Saul’s orders. However if you look closely these are actually Hajrudin, Gerd, and Goldberg. Stansen not being there makes sense as he might have already been somewhere sailing overseas, but Road not being there could have been a hint to his more dismissive selfish attitude and deeming the rescue of books as a trifle matter.

To elaborate further on his speech pattern though, Road speaks in a very haughty and mighty attitude. He also has an iconic laugh, which is “Defufufufu”, which sounds more like “Dehehehehe” in English. As we mentioned last time, Road uses the first person pronoun “Sessha”, and words like “gozaru”, which are all archaic samurai terms. But the best way we can put this into words, is that he’s essentially speaking like a weeb. The use of these words in modern day is seen as being tryhard and trying to sound edgy and cool, as is apparent from his god complex. He even calls the Straw Hats by the nicknames of “Luffy-taso”, “Zoro-taso, “Nami-taso”, “Usopp-taso”, “San-taso”, and “Cho-taso”. The honorific “-taso” is a variation of “-tan”, which you might be aware is a suffix used for anime characters, particularly seen as a cringy suffix used by weebs to refer to their best girls or even idols. Road even later refers to Nami as his “oshi”, which is a Japanese idol term for one’s favorite, their “best girl” that they root for.

We later on find out how Road was able to get the Sunny, which was quickly abducted by Mugin through the air, who is colossal even compared to the 56 meter ship. The reason that he was able to snatch it without them noticing is because they passed through an area called the “Sleepfog Sea”, a stretch of Sea between Egghead and Warland that seemingly has fog that puts people to sleep, hence their drowsiness, though he kept them sleeping further with sleeping gas, perhaps even attained from that same area. As sleeping gas is a real thing, it makes sense that there is a sea area in One Piece where this gas forms naturally.

Amidst his speech, Usopp tries to break through the wall with a “Hisatsu Midoriboshi Dokuro Bakuhatsugusa”, or “Secret Technique Green Star Exploding Skull Grass”, which is an attack he first used during Fishman Island. The reading of one of the kanji at the end here is different, but it could be an editorial mistake.

Speaking of mistakes, Luffy here uses Gear 4th, but only on one of his arms, similar to Gear 3rd. This might be why he called Gear 4th a couple chapters ago, showing that Luffy has grown in strength. His fist stretches far so back that it bypasses Road and goes all the way inside of the Shrine.

Landfall on Elbaf

Luffy then shatters the wall and the Straw Hats break free, landing in what should be the island of Warland, in the country of Elbaf. Luffy appears excited, but we don’t get to find out what lies there quite yet. Still, there is a comment from Road that is kinda suspicious. He mentioned that this location used to be a “Giant Detention Center” in the past, so a sort of jail, meaning its walls were made strong enough to not let giants simply break away from it.

We get to see right away where we are, and it is indeed on the shores of Elbaf, as indicated by the large tree in the background. The castle they were in, or “detention center” as Road defined it, is a prison built atop a hill, with a large bridge connecting towards the leaves of the tree. However, we’ll break down the geography of Elbaf later in just a moment.

Approaching from the bridge are Gerd and Goldberg, the other two members of Hajrudin’s crew aside from Stansen. They drop several relevant names, such as that of “Elbaf’s shame” Loki, who we’ll get to later, but also that of Jarul. If you recall, Jarul was one of the two giants seen in Big Mom’s flashback, who both served as the previous captains of the Giant Warrior Pirates. “Fallbeard” Jorul was killed by a kid Big Mom, which caused much of the tension between her crew and the giants of Elbaf, while Jarul still lived. We thought that he might have died of old age, but surprisingly he is still kicking! Giant lifespans are no joke, because considering how he was 345 years old as of Big Mom’s flashback 63 years ago, it means that now he must be 408 years old!! Let me put it into perspective: when Jarul was born, Mont Blanc Noland hadn’t reached Jaya, in fact he hadn’t even yet left his home country. That’s how old we are speaking, four centuries ago. It was mentioned that giants usually live over three times the lifespan of humans, but evidently this “over” is certainly going generous.

As the Straw Hats cross the bridge, Luffy claims to feel a powerful presence. He says that it comes from the same place where there was the Country of Blocks, claiming that it must have been the source of the large roar. This is referring to the massive roar that was heard a couple chapters ago at the end of the chapter. Some mistook this to be the sound of some other creature in the block country, but the way it sounded in Japanese certainly came off as way more aggressive, indicating some larger creature causing this, evidently the source of power Luffy heard.

Strange Message

Back on the Great Eirik, we see that Dorry and Brogy have gotten new bounties. Fittingly, these are 1.8 billion each, which is a far higher number than their previous 100 million bounties from a century ago. Robin explains that bounty prices are different than they were a century ago, likely a result of inflation or increase of wealth. I suppose inflation hits all economies one way or another. Their bounties going up makes one wonder if the Straw Hats have gotten new bounties as well, especially as you’d imagine the Gorosei would consider Luffy and his crewmates important targets.

However, in his Gear 5th photo in the newspaper, Luffy bears the mark of friendship on his arm. The weird thing is that he clearly didn’t have this mark on his arm during Egghead, which the Straw Hats also find weird. Meaning that if this mark is here, then the picture must’ve somehow been altered by someone on the newspaper side. And when you think about it, it makes sense, as it was likely Vivi who snuck in this edit to the picture, likely through some excuse. That way she could send a message that only the Straw Hats would understand, to let them know that she is safe and with the World Economic Newspaper. This even parallels when Vivi saw the message of “3D2Y” and knew it meant something, but struggled to understand what. The issue however is that the only Straw Hats here are Robin through Jinbe, who were not present there for the farewell, which explains why the first six Straw Hats were chosen. Robin swears she has seen the mark somewhere before, so while she may not know the significance of it she might’ve still seen it on their arms after leaving Alabasta. Interestingly, Brook mumbles to himself.

Hajrudin and Loki

The giants explain that Hajrudin actually happens to be the prince of Elbaf. However, there is yet another Prince, and that is Loki. For some background, we already know of Loki from quite a while ago, as he was originally introduced in early 2017, over 7 years ago. Loki was stated to be the Prince of Elbaf and having fallen in love with Charlotte Lola, one of Big Mom’s daughters. This brought Big Mom great joy, as it meant she could repair her relationship with the giants through their wedding, and add Loki’s power and Elbaf’s army as her allies. However, everything came crashing down as Lola decided to run away to pursue her own love, which led her to form the Lolling Pirates and end up eventually in Thriller Bark, still asking for people to marry, until she finally met Gotti.

Big Mom tried to desperately fix things by using her identical twin Chiffon as a stand in, but the giants noticed and relationships worsened even further. Big Mom claimed that if the marriage had gone through, then she might’ve had enough military strength to have become Pirate King.

And maybe that might not be that much of an exaggeration, as Loki is said to be so powerful that it took the combined strength of Elbaf’s giants to chain him up. He is stated to not be right in the head, as he murdered his father, the King Harald, in order to obtain his so-called “legendary devil fruit”.

King Harald, is likely named after Harald Fairhair, the first King of Norway, who also sired two princes. In this case it seems that Harald had eaten the fruit, so Loki had to kill him in order to eat it, as the fruit is reincarnated after death. We had a similar case with Teach and Thatch, as the Ace Novel implied Thatch had eaten the fruit, which is why Teach had to kill him. The interesting thing is that this fruit was seemingly a “legendary” fruit, keep in mind “legendary”, not “mythical”, meaning it has historical importance rather than strictly being a mythical Zoan, even if it could still be.

But I wonder if Loki claiming to be the Sun God could perhaps tie with the devil fruit that he may have eaten. Could there perhaps be like a second incarnation of the Nika fruit, perhaps from a slightly different myth of Nika that differed a bit from the story that led to the formation of Luffy’s fruit? After all the giants have been religiously defending this fruit for potentially centuries.

This is actually something that was setup as early as Hajrudin’s first introduction. When he first appeared, Hajrudin stated that by eating the Mera Mera no Mi, he would become powerful enough to be king of the Giants. This actually was setting up this very specific conflict, as it would make sense that since Loki ate an incredibly powerful devil fruit, that Hajrudin wanted to match it by eating an also quite powerful fruit. And him claiming that he wanted to become King of the Giants was a clear allusion to the fact that he wanted to be the next King in the succession of Warland.

LOKI!

And we do in fact see Loki, who turns out to have been chained up in what seems to be the bottom of the detainment center. Finally yet another one of the final face reveals before the end of the series, with the few major ones being Joyboy and Imu left. He sports tattoos on his arms, long hair, a beard, and a large horned helmet, yet most interesting is how he was blinded, particularly as his eyes shine in the last panel. This makes me thus wonder if the eyes are connected to his legendary devil fruit he has eaten. The obvious connection with eyes to Norse mythology is Odin, who sacrificed an eye in order to attain greater wisdom.

Also, if you look at his belt, you can spot a skull with a crown on it. The crown is actually very similar to the one that Loki wore during the first time we saw his silhouette, which despite being nothing like he looks in the end, still bears this crown motif.

The design is actually somewhat reminiscent of historical drawings of Loki, who depicted him with a similar beard. Of course, he is named after the famous figure of Loki, the God from Norse culture. Loki is a trickster who is known for shapeshifting and taking different forms. He is famously known to have the death of the god Baldr, whose name is similar to Harald’s in Japanese, and was chained up as a result, just like Loki here. He does however eventually break free and plays a major role in the grand cataclysm of Ragnarök, which was literally the end of the world. This is once again indicated here, as they claim that if Loki is freed, he could easily destroy the world. This is no light statement, as this statement has only been used to describe the ancient weapons, with the only exception being Whitebeard’s devil fruit.

Loki even claims that he is the man who will end the world, referring to himself as the “Sun God”. In this case, unlike the Lord Sungod that Road was playing at imitating, the term here is “Taiyou no Kami”, or “Sun God”, identical to the definition of the “Sun God Nika”. The way he speaks in general is incredibly rude and insolent, owing to his crazy disposition.

FINALLY, ELBAPH!!

Loki explains that we are on Elbaf, in the Kingdom of Warriors, Warland. We originally thought that Elbaf might have been the name of the country and Warland that of the island, but instead it’s the opposite: it’s Elbaf Island and the Warland Kingdom. That said, we get a romanization for the name, showing that it is indeed “Elbaph” with a “ph”, rather than Elbaf.

However, we get to see the island in full, as the camera pans out and we get to witness Elbaph in all its glory. Indeed, the island is built on a rock with many jagged peaks, at the center of which is a massive tree that stretches into the sky. The tree however has a second tree atop it, creating two layers of tree. From this tree are flowing several rivers that drop into the sea. These are the mysterious vertical shapes that we saw falling off of Elbaph in previous times we’ve seen this island, and just as we had correctly guessed, these are in fact waterfalls falling off of the tree.

This tree is almost certainly inspired by the Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse culture upon which the nine realms exist. In many depictions of the Yggdrasil, it is represented as a double-layered tree, which explains the two trees in this case. And true enough, it looks like different regions of Elbaph might have different weather and different characteristics, so it’s possible that across the entire island are nine different regions each inspired by the nine realms in Norse mythology, which include Asgard, the realm of Gods, Vanaheimr, another settlement of Gods, Álfheimr, the realm of elves, Midgard, or Middle Earth, where humans live, Jötunheimr, realm of the gigantic jötnar, Muspelheim, the realm of fire, Svartálfheim, realm of dark elves, Niflheim, the frozen hell, and Nidavellir, realm of the Dwarves.

In this case, I think it’s safe to say that the realm we currently find ourselves in is inspired by Niflheim, the frozen hell, as not only is it completely frozen over with harsh winters, but it is also where prisoners are banished, essentially sent to hell, as Loki is imprisoned and sealed there. On the opposite side of ground level, we can see something in the shape of a pipe jutting out of the tree, but it’s too hard to make out and seems too curved and high to just be a root.

We also know that the village of Elbaph is located on ground level, the one we saw in Big Mom’s flashback, as it was built on solid land with the tree as a backdrop. We also saw some settlements by the coast when Shanks departed to fight the Kid Pirates. Given how this is the most normal realm, this could perhaps be Midgard. Midgard was said to be surrounded by the Jörmungandr snake, which we know the giants of Elbaph likened the Red Line to.

Going higher onto the second level, we see a location with a massive sword jutted into it, one that must truly be of colossal size given the size of the island, especially when you compare it to the giant-sized bridge we see below. Adjacent to it are massive cannons, so big they’re even bigger than the castle in the detainment center, seemingly being used as defense by the people of Elbaph as they are pointed towards the sea. An identical pair can be seen on the opposite side of the tree. Behind the sword is another area that appears to have a large lake, with a rainbow behind it. Some structure is covered by the clouds. Opposite to it is a large castle, far bigger than the detainment center, with more cannons and a large gate. This could be the royal palace that was mentioned in Big Mom’s flashback, but it’s also possible the palace could be elsewhere. After all, we don’t see the very top of the tree, so what if there is yet another realm atop it? Perhaps this could be Asgard, the realm of the Gods.

Still, I’d like to take a step back and put it all into perspective. Elbaph was first mentioned in December of 1999… a quarter of a century ago, in a time that was still the previous century. We have waited 25 years to see Elbaph island with our own eyes and finally… it’s here, in all its beauty and glory. As one of our final arcs before the end, we are ready to dive into the wondrous land of giants, the Elbaph arc!