Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZbBzE-gw-o

Cover:

On the cover, Holed’em ends up kidnapping Tama, suggesting that he may have been the one behind the kidnappings. It makes sense, as Holed’em wasn’t at Onigashima when the Raid happened, instead having been behind at Bakura Town, laying fire to Okobore Town after realizing that O-Tsuru was protecting the samurai. While Tsuru did thankfully survive, Holed’em likely found himself in shock as he saw the Beasts Pirates collapse, forcing him to escape and go into hiding, having to kidnap others in order to survive. Ryokugyu did storm Udon and disposed of all the remaining pirates there (though we later found out King is still alive, likely simply captured), but since he never went to Bakura Town, which was another gathering spot of Beasts Pirates, those there like Holed’em likely all ran away after Kaidou’s defeat.

Speaking of Holed’em, you may not know that he is actually a Wano native. In fact, his father is the man who appeared at the start of Oden’s flashback, a shaman who blamed Oden for bringing the Mountain God into the Capital, as many already thought was the case given their resemblance. His father’s name is Norinosuke, and Holed’em was raised in Wano only to join the Beasts Pirates.

In this cover, Speed is burned on the ground, while smoke comes out of Holed’em’s… uh, crotch lion, whose name is Kamijiro, translating to “Bitejiro”. This is because if you remember, in Chapter 917 Holed’em tried to attack Luffy by having Kamijiro spit an attack called “Shishi no Hi” (獅子の火), or “Lion Fire”, where he breathes a blast of fire, but Luffy easily broke through it and punched him with a Red Hawk. This attack is likely a pun on “shishi no hi”, or “Lion’s day”, which falls on April 4th in Japan. So in this case, Kamijiro attacked Speed with that same attack, making her fall to the ground defeated, while Holed’em holds O-Tama hostage.

He does this by using his Karakurito (絡繰刀), translating to Mechanical Sword, a named blade with which he tried to finish Luffy with, which is seen in this panel. Yamato can obviously more than easily beat Holed’em, but might want to be careful given the hostage Tama. Will Tama’s kunoichi abilities help her escape, however?

Also, notice that the area around them is incredibly forested. This is because when Ryokugyu passed by the area, he turned Udon into a green and vibrant region, hence all the flora sprouting out of the ground here.

Dark Past:

We cut to a flashback 22 years ago, where Spandine, tells the press about the incident at Ohara. If you don’t recall, this is Spandam’s father, who led the buster call on Ohara as a former leader of CP9. He lies out of his ass by blaming Robin for the destruction of the passenger ship, which in reality if you remember was destroyed by Sakazuki, Vice-Admiral at the time, to ensure that no citizens of Ohara escaped, as is fitting of his justice motto of “thorough justice”. This references what was mentioned as early as Alabasta, where Mashikaku, Tashigi’s assistant, told her that Nico Robin was known for sinking six marine battleships when she was the age of eight. In reality though, it was Saul who ended up sinking five Marine ships, but in this case the sixth one is clarified to be the vessel that Sakazuki sunk, with Robin being blamed for it all. Spandine calls her a Devil hiding in the body of an eight year old, which references how the Government labeled the scholars of Ohara as “devils”, an ironic statement given how they are the real devils ruling the world. This is how Robin came to obtain the epithet of “Child of Devils”, often just shortened to “Devils’ Child”.

Also, in the corner left of the panel you can spot what might be Laskey, Spandine’s fellow agent and the father of both Kalifa and Alpha.

Even more ironically, the Government claims to not want to make details public about the incident for the sake of not traumatizing children, despite what they are doing to Robin. Among the compilation panels, we see an old lady claiming she saw Robin and that she had the eyes of a killer. This is actually the same lady from Robin’s flashback in Chapter 398 that offered to shelter her, only to sell her off to the Government. Her name was Kanezenny, whose name literally just means “money money”, showing how willing she was to sell Robin out.

Robin is forced to keep running away, rummaging through trash, eating in the snow, being chased by bounty hunters and Marines, and hated by all. There comes a point where she truly contemplates wanting to end it all, according to her wish of “I want to die”. Even when Luffy beat Crocodile at Alabasta, she was trying to take her life by being buried in the mausoleum, when Luffy decided to stop her and saved her life. However, she recalls her mother’s wish of “you have to live, Robin”, as well as Saul’s words, giving her just the little strength to keep pushing on.

At a town of peculiar architecture in the West Blue, Robin finds a geography book, but where Ohara should be is completely empty, having been erased from maps, so she instead adds the island herself. As a neat detail, Kuzan helped Robin escape from Ohara by heading to a nearby island via a rowboat. Said nearby island can be spotted here at the edge of the map not too far from Ohara.

Robin is further hounded by all kinds of horrible remarks, from people calling her little shit, to others outright telling her to go kill herself.

Elbaph Geography:

Out of the trauma and back to present day, the ship of the giants the Great Eirik makes its way onto the Sunworld by landing on sea clouds, which serve as a dock on this higher level. Gerd’s group instead arrives on what they call a “Svar”. It’s a ship that can quite literally fly in the air by taking advantage of island clouds, which float in the air, and attaching them to the oars of a rowing boat to keep the flying ship afloat. Its kanji reading is “霧舟”, “kirifune” or “fog ship”. This is likely a reference to the Skíðblaðnir, the mythical ship of Norse mythology, a ship said to be able to fly in the sky in much a similar way. Meanwhile, Lilith already puts together all the science behind all these things being able to operate, and how to potentially reproduce it.

As Hajrudin reunites with Luffy, he thanks them for having defeated Big Mom, the enemy of the giant race due to what happened in her flashback. In fact, during her flashback we even saw Hajrudin trying to kill her, only to be stopped by the other giants due to Mother Carmel’s pleas. However, Luffy is confused, as not only does he not know what Big Mom’s past connection is, but he also isn’t the one who brought her down. Ironically, the one to truly defeat her was wiped by Elbaph’s giants for opposing Shanks. Gerd adds some context to what Big Mom did, even calling her Linlin, as she was originally a friend of hers up until that disastrous night where she razed down the village, even being the one to warn Mother Carmel. However, let’s not forget that it appears that Jarul is still alive, having just mentioned him a few chapters back.

We can also see someone being crucified in the background, who is seemingly Road being made to pay for his crimes. As Hajrudin calls his crew the “four of us”, Road briefly adds “five of us”. Hajrudin also calls Usopp as “Usoland” due to the events of Dress Rosa. The group dances on Hajrudin and Gerd’s palms, while Jinbe instead relaxes atop Goldberg’s shoulder, Franky on top of Stansen’s shoulder, and Chopper atop his helmet. Sanji of course continues fawning over Gerd.

However, the giants decide to cut the explanations for now to instead prepare the upcoming party, at what is evidently a tavern given the sign with two mugs at the top, similar to the sign with two axes on the right. The castle gates can be seen on the left, indicating this is in the middle of the village. Among the cheerful giants, Dorry and Brogy beckon at the tavern’s entrance, and there are several we can recognize from the attack on Egghead as well as a… bear, oddly enough. Also, as an interesting detail, we saw in Hajrudin’s cover story that Goldberg’s shield had a tongue sticking out of it with a grin, and yet in this page it appears to be sleeping now that it’s not in use, suggesting it might actually be alive. Is it a homie, or some other kind of ability-powered creature?

Robin however requests a moment to go meet Saul. They are accompanied by Gerd on the Svar, and we get cardinal locations for the island of Elbaph, which are useful to help orient ourselves. The village we were just at is the West Village (西の村) and we are now traveling towards the south-western region. We know where the village was since it features the castle we saw in the big view of Elbaph, meaning that said view of Elbaph is seen from the west. Given how this village appeared on the map as being located in the central to left area, it means that is west-ward, with the area we are heading now being the south-west, the lake area we can see on the panel of the island from afar.

Said location is on the branch of a tree, from which several waterfalls descend, in what is called “Senshi no Izumi” (戦士の泉), or “The Fountain/Spring of Warriors”. This could perhaps be a reference to the famous fountain of youth of norse myth. Built atop it is the “Fukuro no Toshokan” (フクロウの図書館), or the “Owl Library”, as evident by the symbol of an owl featured at the top of it. It is likely within there that the books of Ohara are being kept. The idea that we might be visiting the preserved books of Ohara is incredibly exciting though. In there, not only should have the research of the poneglyph from Ohara have survived, which is the one that seemingly included the name of the ancient kingdom, but also the research of at least one other poneglyph which Vegapunk read, the one detailing info about Joyboy being the first pirate!

Gerd explains that the reason why there is a beach here is because remains of the tree became fossilized and withered, turning into grains that act like sand on a beach. Gerd also claims that under the library there is a school, perhaps the other buildings seen in the panel, as Saul-sensei helps educate the giants. It’s funny how beloved he’s become here, considering that in Chapter 392 he called the giants of Elbaph “savages”, and how he was nothing like them, as other clans of peaceful giants exist too.

Reunion:

Luffy tells Robin that when someone has helped someone in the crew, then it’s only proper manners that they go and thank them directly. Robin playfully teases Luffy, in a far more cheerful mood than she usually is in, featuring a vastly different speech pattern in this chapter compared to how she usually speaks, likely due to how excited she is to meet Saul again, asking Luffy where he heard such a thing. This is in fact however something that Ace told him in chapter 589, as in his flashback he said it’s normal to thank someone who helped someone dear to you, which referred to Ace wanting to thanks Shanks for helping Luffy, with the language being almost the same, something Ace would have done much later when he finally met Shanks. In the meantime, Robin is still holding on to Bonney, giving major mom energy.

However, a giant comes running, claiming that Saul-sensei collapsed and isn’t moving. This is the same giant that made that claim a couple chapters ago, as evident by the hairstyle. However this turns out to have all been a ruse all along, as Robin knows what is going on. As she walks up to him, we get a heartwarming one to one recreation of Robin and Saul’s first meeting, almost panel per panel, with both Robin and Saul wearing very similar clothing. Robin in fact changed outfits halfway through the chapter to look even more like her childhood self.

We are properly reintroduced to Jaguar D. Saul, who appears fairly similar, but with some changes. He was 105 when he first appeared, making him 127 years old now, but given how slowly giants age, he hasn’t changed much, the only major difference being his mustache having grown out, which he has now styled in the shape of pigtails, pretty similarly to how Loki styled his hair. His changes come more from his wounds though, having several scars over his body. Two large scars run over his face, while another can be seen on his arm and leg. Said leg is actually missing an entire foot, now instead walking on a pegleg.

He explains that said scars came from the fact that the fires of Ohara melted the ice encasing him, causing him to fall down onto the water below, saving his life. It’s unclear if Kuzan purposefully knew this would happen, or if this was unbeknownst to him, particularly since he mentioned Saul dying to Robin when talking with her in Chapter 433. His leg had already been injured by the time he disembarked on Ohara, so it likely became too damaged after he froze over. We should also address the elephant in the room, being the fact that these fire-induced scars would make Saul a prime candidate for being the man known as Hinokizu, or “Firescar”, a theory that has prevailed for a while, but that doesn’t fully add up with the description of a man in a pitch black vessel who can create whirlpools.

Eitherway, he also speaks with a very strong Nagoya dialect, the same one he used in Robin’s flashback, using the first person pronoun “washi” with katakana and ending his sentences with “de”, which is why you may have seen him speaking with a bit of a dialect in some translations, sounding a bit like an older man.

The two catch up on various things, such as Saul comparing Robin to her mother’s kind eyes, Vegapunk’s message passing on the will of the scholars of Ohara, and his scars. During the speech about the scholars of Ohara, we see Clover and Olvia, as well as many of the other named scholars, such as Busshiri, Rinto, Zadie, Gram, Hack, Hocha, and Roche. However, Robin says that she doesn’t want to talk about depressing things anymore, so she instead asks Saul to praise her for being alive, citing the chapter’s title. He tells her “Well done on being alive, Robin!!! Well done on having stayed alive for 22 years!!! Well done on having come to meet me!!!”.

Within those words, Robin is reminded of her desperate plea she made many years ago: “I want to die!!”.

Which later became “I want to live!!”.

And now has become… “I wanted to meet you!!!”.