Video version: https://youtu.be/WPVG1nBkvqA

Cover:

On the cover, a reader requests Bepo resting on a fluffy Zeus, but Oda adds several more layers to it. We have seen Law using Bepo as a pillow previously in the series such as after Marineford in Chapter 595, but in this case Law is resting on Bepo (along with his sword Kikoku) who is resting on Zeus who is then resting on Elder Yomo, the goat mink upon which Nami rested at the beginning of the Zou arc due to how fluffy his fur is. So peaceful is this scenery that even one of the birds flying by seems to fall asleep.

Chaos on God Valley

The chapter picks right off in the clash between Xebec and Roger and Garp. In this case, we see that both Roger and Xebec are coating their blades in armament haki, making them completely black, but they are also coating them in advanced conqueror’s haki, as streams of black lightning come out of them and the powerful sound of cracking thunder “bari bari” (バリバリ) can be read on the page as well. Garp similarly coats his own fist in armament haki but also conqueror’s haki as similar sparks of flowing lightning can be seen. So powerful is this clash of conquerors that the skies end up splitting, a feat we’ve only seen up to four times before, including Shanks vs Whitebeard, Kaidou vs Big Mom, Whitebeard vs Roger, and Luffy vs Kaidou, at least seen to this extent.

The remaining pirates all scramble to get away from the island given the disaster ensuing, including a pirate with a jolly roger of a skull with a sideways cross. Kyou decides to run away on the ship of the Rocks, potentially leaving others behind if he succeeds this way, which makes sense since Sengoku spoke of “Silver Axe” as a legend that other Marines were aware of, meaning that he probably became famous enough after the time of the Rocks to still be known around, and thus likely survived the incident. As we had seen last chapter, Shiki is also making his way out by simply flying away with his powers.

Meanwhile, Roger’s crew grows worried for him, as MAX Marx calls him over via den den mushi. To his side you can also see a rare appearance by Yamon, one of the most hidden members of the crew who has barely been seen so far, and behind them of course the egg is as visible as always. As we see later, the rest of the crew makes it back on the ship, but Rayleigh and Gabin decide to go back to assist their captain. This might be when Gabin gets the chance to run into Sommers, as the clash between the two has yet to be shown, which could make sense if Sommers is feeling vengeful towards Rayleigh. There’s also the question of what about other God Knights like Garling, if they ran away with the other Celestial Dragons on the ship or if they did stay to clash against the likes of Rayleigh and Gabin. We also get to see how Gloriosa made it out of the island, by hitching a ride with the Roger Pirates alongside her sister.

Both Roger and Garp however stand their ground to put an end to Xebec as per his wishes. Both of them toss their capes aside, though interestingly in Roger’s case he also tosses away his straw hat without much regard, a big contrast to Luffy either always keeping it on or trying to pass it on to someone else to keep it safe.

Around the island, we get to see little by little how the Rocks broke apart. Kaidou and Big Mom start arguing over the dispute of the fruit, which explains how growing tensions led to a complicated rivalry across the several next decades, with the two growing from being like siblings to instead being at each others’ throats, until their combined hatred for Luffy helped them reconcile again to work side by side. Just as she told Kaidou in chapter 907, Linlin considers this to be a lifelong debt, one she will come to insist on reclaiming when she gets to Wano, but Streusen just urges Linlin to run away with the treasure they have, and so she and Kaidou seemingly leave the island that way, with Kaidou I imagine he might just fly off. Linlin would continue expanding her territory in Totto Land until she came to be known as Big Mom, while Kaidou would likely soon meet with a young Arber at Punk Hazard, turning him into King and setting off a crew that would slowly, over time, become the Beasts Pirates.

Polo Gram

Similarly, another pirate would begin his journey of gathering a big crew, as Newgate runs upon a certain individual. This person turns out to be Polo Gram (ポーロ・グラム), the captain of the Polo Pirates, and if it wasn’t obvious enough, it’s very clear that this man is related to Marco “the Phoenix”. This isn’t even the first time we’ve seen him, since you might recall a couple chapters ago we saw someone fighting among the pirates who we pointed out looked a lot like Marco, even kicking his enemy in an exact identical fighting style to how Marco fights, despite the fact that since Marco is currently 45 at present, he would’ve been only 7 years old at God Valley. And thus a lot of people concluded this might be his father, which seems may indeed be the case. If that were the case though, it would mean that he already fathered Marco at this time, so maybe something happened to him later which caused him to die and he begged Whitebeard to take care of his son, who would eventually succeed him as Whitebeard’s right hand man and eventual first division commander, not to mention acting as his son. After all, by Oden’s flashback only 8 years later Gram is nowhere to be seen, with Marco instead taking that position in the crew.

There is however a more unique way of approaching this, and it’s perhaps that this could be an effect of the Tori Tori no Mi (Bird Bird Fruit), Model: Phoenix. What if Gram was the original user of the Phoenix fruit but eventually came to be almost killed at some point, thus being “reborn” like a phoenix and coming to regenerate his body but at a younger age, either missing or retaining his memories. That younger body wouldn’t exactly be like that of a baby but maybe of a younger teenage boy who would then grow into the Marco we know today. I’d imagine that the Phoenix fruit has a limit and that you can still die, as Marco was panicking when he got caught with seastone cuffs in Marineford, but at least to some degree I wouldn’t be surprised if the myth of the phoenix being reborn from the ashes can still hold true. Obviously this is the more creative answer, as the father-son connection is much more obvious, but you never know with Oda.

That said though, the reference between their names is quite evident. Because if his father or predecessor was named Polo Gram, then Marco’s full name would be Polo Marco. And considering of course that the family name comes first, that makes his name Marco Polo when written in our current western order, which of course is a reference to the famous Venetian explorer of the same name, who famously explored a lot of the silk road and eastern Asia during a time when it was unusual for Europeans to head that far. This might perhaps tie with Marco seen studying maps as a kid when Oda drew him in the SBS, which the vivre cards highlighted as him having a big passion for navigation, a trait we also saw when he talked to Inuarashi and Nekomamushi about just how big the world is. This however suddenly makes sense as a potentially really big elaborate pun, as not only was Marco Polo famous for exploring what is modern day China, but in Chinese itself “polo” is also the word for pineapple. Thus explaining his bizarre face shape after all these years. On that note, I do also wonder if Polo Gram is meant to be some kind of pun by Oda as well, as it does sound like something such as “Hologram”, but it doesn’t feel as apparent.

Gill Bastar

On the other side of the island, Stussy is trying to find Newgate, but can’t seem to spot him. I do wonder if she would escape with him or if the two will become separated, particularly as Stussy kept insisting that Weevil was Whitebeard’s son, but he still wouldn’t be supposedly born until 3 years from now. That said, it already was implied that Weevil’s relation to Whitebeard could be proven by Vegapunk, implying some kind of cloning shenanigans, so who can say, really. Escaping along with her are Ganzui and also Gill Bastar, though shockingly, Gill is accompanied by a hollow, which would suggest that he’s the user of the Horo Horo no Mi (Hollow Hollow fruit). This actually makes a lot of sense because we know that Moria would pillage the corpses of several of the Rocks Pirates, including the corpses of John, Ganzui, and Gill Bastar, though we don’t quite know if they all died here at God Valley and Moria pillaged them here or if they died at different points and only then did Moria eventually take their bodies one by one. But in the case of Gill Bastar, it would seem that it may have been Moria himself who killed him, as it makes sense that Moria would’ve directly taken the Horo Horo no Mi from him and thus given it to his adoptive daughter Perona, explaining how the fruit was passed from one to the other, as it seems too much of a coincidence for it to have happened otherwise. Which reinforces the idea that Gill did not die here, as Moria was still quite young (only 12 years old) at the time of this incident.

Dragon returns to his Marine ship and confronts his superior about what happened on the island. This superior is actually the exact same we saw in Chapter 1160 questioning if all the soldiers had returned, with one of his subordinates concerned where Dragon ended up, showing consistency in this being the one in charge of Dragon’s squadron. Dragon demands to save the lives of the remaining surviving slaves, and even though this may have its consequences, it would seem that Dragon likely left the Marines shortly after this to start the Freedom Fighters.

At the same time, Saturn, still possessed by Imu, leaves the island on the Celestial Dragon ship, uttering the decree of wishing that the island never existed. Thus a combined effort would be launched between Marine Headquarters, G-11, and CP6, in hiding all information regarding God Valley’s existence, thus “wiping the island off the map”. We’ve gone before over the fact that it’s always been a bit confusing whether God Valley was erased in the same way Ohara was, by being removed from official records, or if the island did physically vanish. The way he mentioned it “vanishing without the trace” did kinda make it sound a bit like the latter, but the fact he remarked the Government wanted to hide it seems to imply more the former, which does seem to be the case here. Furthermore, in Oda’s storyboards for Film Red, when the Roger Pirates are seen leaving the island, the silhouette of God Valley can still be seen in the background, which to be fair could’ve been Oda just messing up as he did with Roger’s hat and mustache, but does seem to indicate the island was not necessarily physically vaporized like Lulusia was.

Roger and Garp

As the duel continues to ensue, destroying the other mountain on the island, Roger confronts Garp about the “black monster” (黒い化物), referring to Imu. He even tries to invite Garp to join his crew, but Garp finally explains why he still remains in the Marines, as he has a duty to wish to protect the other Marines within it when others won’t. And despite having to work under such an oppressive Government (although Garp would continuously refuse to work directly under the Celestial Dragons), Garp agreed to keep the Marines in check and look after the younger generation, just as we had seen when he went to save Koby.

The two however prepare to unleash one final devastating attack on Xebec, with Garp’s speech even making Roger begin to tear up. Thus, the two each unleash some of their strongest moves to pierce through the dominated Xebec.

• Roger unleashes a new move called Hinokagutsuchino Eisu (火之迦具土慧士). The first half, “Hinokagutsuchi”, refers to the diety kagutsuchi from Japanse mythology, being the god of fire (as evident in its name since “hi no” literally means “of the fire”). This is consistent with many of Roger’s attacks which we’ve seen are inspired by shintoist belief. On the other hand, the second term translates into “wise man”, making the kanji read as something like “Wise Man of the Fire God”. In reality, of course, this is all just a pun, as “eisu” can be read as “Ace”, the name of Roger’s sword with which he strikes Xebec, and also the name of his son, who fittingly would go on to be thought of as some kind of “fire god”, thus making the attack “Ace the Fire God”. This is also fitting as in the Japanese myth, Kagutsuchi ended up burning his own mother to death upon birth due to being the fire god, which you could parallel with Rouge passing away upon Ace’s birth due to the struggle for her body to deliver him so late.
• Garp instead unleashes another new attack called Infinitum Explosion (無限拳骨). The kanji reads as “Mugen Genkotsu”; while “mugen” means infinite, thus simply being the Japanese word, “genkotsu” instead means “fist”, which is the same word he uses in his other attacks such as “Genkotsu Meteor” (fist meteor, where he throws a bunch of cannonballs), as well as “Galaxy Impact” (and Galaxy Divide), where the kanji reading for “Galaxy” is that of “genkotsu”, or “fist”. So in this case, “Infinitum” refers to the mathematical concept of something that expands infinitely without limit, particularly being used in physics and cosmology to debate the possibility of the universe being potentially infinite. Thus, when the attack reads as “Infinitum Explosion”, or rather “Infinitum Fist”, if here the “Fist” was a replacement for “Galaxy” previously, the attack could be read as “Infinitum Galaxy”, the concept of there being infinite galaxies in this massive universe of ours. This of course refers to the fact that Garp is throwing an endless amount of fists at Xebec in quick explosions, with as many fists as there are galaxies out there in the infinite universe. This attack, of course, is highly reminiscent of Luffy’s Gomu Gomu no Gatling, but it also has some aspects of Red Roc as the fists begin to be wrapped in flames, potentially from the friction, meaning that both Roger and Garp’s attacks are named after the theme of fire.

With this attack, seemingly, it seems Roger and Garp put an end to Xebec, helping bring an end to the Era of Rocks that had marked the world up until this point 38 years ago. However, as the narrator explains, this incident would leave behind many reverberations, or echoes (残響, zankyou), which gives name to the chapter. Dragon would go on to form the Freedom Fighters and later the Revolutionary Army, joined by Kuma and Ivankov as well. Shiki, Whitebeard, Big Mom, Kaidou, and even the likes of Captain John or Silver Axe would all carve their names in history as famous pirates who marked the future of the coming eras. Shanks had been separated from his lineage, while Shamrock wasn’t, while Teach would survive and inherit the will of Davy, one way or another. And of course, Garp would be cemented as the “Hero of the Marines” while Roger would go on to define the coming era as the “Era of Roger”. The God Valley incident was simply a very early trigger of the much bigger events to eventually come…