Video version: https://youtu.be/c0NBAdl2fX0

Covers

On the cover, Hatchan is shoveling snow thanks to all his arms, and getting gloves in return, one for each of his six arms. On his shirt he has the writing “Takoyaki Eight 8”, which refers to his ship that he attained during his cover story, built by the catfish of Hachimakinamazu Village, and now serving as a wandering shop of takoyaki, the traditional Japanese dish of fried octopus.

On the color spread instead we have a beautiful drawing of all the Rocks Pirates in color, with some interesting details about some of them. Xebec is front and center, with the color scheme we saw him in just a couple weeks ago on the Jump cover. Next to him is John, with the same white hair we saw his zombie having, who is seen counting money, which shows his love for treasures that has been mentioned a few times. Then there’s Whitebeard with Stussy on his lap, showing the massive difference in size between them, but equally as big is Ganzui, who seems to be just about as big as Whitebeard, especially since he doesn’t seem to be standing on the couch. This kind of matches with his zombie also being quite big, though in this case he appears to have red hair, unlike his zombie who had black hair. So I wonder if his hair somehow withered over time or if Oda once again changed his mind from what the anime and the colored manga used. Floating above him is Shiki, who is giving a side eye to Kaidou while he flies in the air thanks to his powers.

Below the two is Ochoku, who is flipping Barbel off, while also holding a bottle of booze in his other hand. Interestingly, he has greenish hair, which would match Coribou’s hair if he indeed is Caribou and Coribou’s father. That is assuming that the thing on top of his head is an oddly stylized hair and not an actual living reptile. Next to him, instead, Marlon is shown having blueish hair, while the massive Barbel instead has yellow hair, making his head look as if it were on fire. Below him are the final members, including Big Mom eating from a whole cake together with Gloriosa, though her piece of the cake is about to be eaten by her snake. As we saw in the anime during God Valley, younger Gloriosa had this brown-orangey hair color to her. Meanwhile instead Streusen is depicted with what looks like purpleish hair, which once again clashes with his previous depiction in the anime and colored manga of having black hair. And finally above him is Kyo, who is brandishing his iconic “Silver Axe” from which he got his monicker, who is shown as having grey hair, befitting the silver color of his axe.

Harald and the world

The chapter opens up whilst showing different places across the world reacting to the changes in Elbaph’s culture. The first is a tropical island with large palm trees and castle-like towers, with a particularly defined clock tower on the right, slightly similar to the place with a similar clock tower in last chapter, so I wonder if the two could be one and the same. There, behind those checking the newspaper, you can spot a man and a little girl exchanging baloons. Elsewhere, a chef is seeing great success in his shop thanks to some of the seafood from Elbaph, which refers to those colossal fishes we’ve seen near the island in cases like chapter 866.

Elsewhere instead, we see Umit selling Elbaph timber to some rich buyer, from its colossal trees as seen in the background, a single log taking large part of the ship. If you recall, Umit was one of the Underworld Emperors that appeared in Big Mom’s party, known as the “Shipping Magnate”, who had a transport network deeply involved with the Underworld. As such, beyond this timber seen here, which appears to be from regular trees (or at least smaller branches of the Adam), I wouldn’t be surprised if Umit also helped ship some of the Adam Tree wood onto the black market, which is how the likes of Franky eventually got the wood and thus was able to build the Thousand Sunny, all thanks to Harald’s efforts.

Ida’s Death

Harald continues taking efforts towards Elbaph joining the Government, but he receives several warnings, too blinded by his own vision, claiming that this is what Ida would have wanted, but she is not here anymore to advise him. As she said back when she was still alive too, she does believe that there is worth in maintaining some of Elbaph’s culture, mainly their pride as warriors and the willingness to stand up for good causes. As we see during that scene transitioning in the flashback, you can see in the first panel that several people are posted outside of the house where Ida is resting, with the doctor first and foremost standing right next to the door in the case of any eventuality. We can see them better when Harald walks out, including Hajrudin and Mato, who grieve over her death, and of course his crew with Stansen, Gerd, Goldberg, and Road. Next to them is also Ripley, with Colon on the ground and what seems to be Gabin in her hand.

In the middle side of this page we see how the father and the two sons grieve in different ways. Hajrudin pours his emotions out alongside Mato and Road, whereas Harald begins to cry as well but covers his face because he has to keep appearances as a king. Loki meanwhile sits silently in his cell, still crying but refusing to show his tears, because his childhood trauma has made him afraid to be like his true self, which is why he kept acting cold towards Ida despite seeing her like a mother, although she was well aware of this. It’s likely that due to that attitude he may have refused to explain why he burned down Sake Village, which is why he was jailed in the Penitentiary. To remind you, the Penitentiary is the lone castle found in Elbaph’s Underworld, which later became abandoned and was thus used by Road to house his “Block Country” inside of a room within the Castle. But at this time it was still in use and thus Loki was jailed inside of it.

Coming back to the (past) present between Saul and Harald, you can also spot playing among the children at the school what seems to be a younger Colon given the helmet. You may also once again notice the difference in size between a regular giant like Saul, who is 19.5m tall, yet still looks tiny compared to someone with ancient giant blood like Harald.

Harald’s Subscription Plan Upgrade

We move forward by one year to 14 years ago, the same year this flashback started in. After at least a year as a God Servant Blade, Shanks has mysteriously gone missing, fittingly right before his promotion to becoming a God Knight, wisely knowing to not upgrade his subscription service or he would not have been able to back down from it. As such, the offer now falls upon Harald. Interestingly, this seems to imply the idea that there is an order to join the Knights and that positions may empty over time, which may be due to the lack of perennial youth on the knights in spite of the immortality. The Gorosei guide Harald to Imu, who they still refer to as “Ontai” (御大, the “great one”) like the God Knights, standing so high atop the throne that Mu towers over even Harald.

Harald’s mark is upgraded, with the symbol now having a pair of horn-like shapes added atop it. The normal mark, looking a bit like a jolly roger but twisted vertically to look more like the Government logo, had previously been seen in places like above the alcoves of the freezer room of Mary Geoise like we mentioned, and in religious-like imagery across the story, but we pointed out that when seen on Shanks’s arm it lacked the horns that are seen on the bands of the God Knights, which we assumed to be the symbol of the God Knights. Indeed, these added horns are part of the upgrade, and thus I now wonder what the Gorosei mark would look like with the final completed pattern. The whole concept of it is reminiscent of a demonic pentagram, where adding more details to one changes its magical properties. This now gives Harald not just stronger power but also immortality, and seals the pact with Imu by creating an Abyss in Elbaph, which is how Gunko and Shamrock were able to reach the island at present day. As we saw then, they then made a new Abyss on a branch and that’s how they summoned Sommers and Killingham, basically meaning that anyone with the Abyss power can summon other God Knights or Gorosei but they require one person to presentially be there to create the Abyss or have made one prior, which is why Saturn traveled to Egghead.

Unfortunately, Harald’s new subscription plan also comes with the ability to be controlled by Imu, which we similarly saw with Gunko, who had lost her older memories with Brook, regained them for a moment, but was then stopped by Imu again. Interestingly though Gunko already seemed very loyal to Imu prior to becoming a God Knight even being a Servant Blade, so I wonder if once again she is a bit of an exception or if she was being brainwashed in some other separate way. I do also wonder if the possession is exclusive to the Gorosei tier with an exception for Gunko, because while Imu controlled Harald here, it’s to be seen if he’ll fully take control of him with the eyes and all.

Not being able to resist being controlled, Harald tries to desperately sacrifice himself for the sake of not letting Elbaph fall under Imu’s control, which is likely the “great mess up” that Sommers and Imu spoke of. This begins to explain why he ordered the guards to attack him and try to kill him, and it also may now explain why Loki killed his father, because Loki having conqueror’s haki meant he was the only one there who could actually override Harald’s immortality and kill him, and no one else would’ve been able to, no matter how much it may have hurt Loki’s heart. But given his reputation, of course, the country would only blame him once more.

Shanks and Ace

Switching to Gabin and Shanks’s side, Shanks finds out about Ace. Shanks thinks of him like a little brother, given how Roger was his father, but more interestingly believes that Ace might become the next Pirate King. This is very interesting because this is a conception that many in the world had, which is the idea that Ace would be the Pirate King of the next generation, or potentially even a new Joyboy. Even Sengoku mentioned that the reason for the scale of a war like that of Marineford is that Ace had to be executed at all costs due to the danger of him becoming the new leading figure of the future pirate generation, and that’s something that Yamato echoed several times, until realizing Luffy was the figure Oden spoke of. In the end as Gabin explains here, that conception proved wrong, and as Whitebeard said during the final speech before his death, inherited will is something that isn’t tied by bloodlines, but rather passed on like a torch, with a particular focus during that page on Luffy.

However, it’s interesting to think that Shanks thought that as well. Maybe the reason he considered himself the “child of fate” was due to being Roger’s son before Ace popped into the picture, but maybe it could be referring to something else entirely. There’s also been a theory for quite a while that Shanks wanted to originally give the Gomu Gomu no Mi to Roger’s son, but in the end Luffy ended up eating it and decided to bet on him instead, though now it’s definitely becoming clearer that he sacrificed his arm on purpose to get rid of the mark.

Back at the castle, as Harald begins to lose control, his life flashes in front of his eyes, remembering his sacrifice with the horns, the cheers of the people of Elbaph, and the children at the school, everything that he had accomplished. He mentions his life has lasted 144 years, but this conlficts a little, as Harald was mentioned to be 45 years old 109 years ago, which would mean if he was still alive he’d be 154 years old. However, since he died 14 years ago, then at this moment he should be 140 years old, not 144. So I wonder if Oda screwed up a bit with the math or if he’s trying to find a way to retcon it. And as we connect back to the start of this flashback, as we had assumed, Harald was being skewered by the guards because he asked them to.

Contracts

Back to Shanks, he gives us some better details on the abilities unlocked by each of the contracts:

The Shallow Sea Contract, for God Servant Blades, means that the person bearing the mark cannot defy Imu’s orders, but this is only within the range of Imu’s abilities, as without having telepathy they can’t be controlled at a range. Also not having regeneration, Shanks was able to get rid of the mark because his arm wouldn’t regenerate.

The Deep Sea Contract, for God Knights, means that the person bearing the mark still cannot defy Imu’s orders. However, now being able to communicate telepathically with Imu or the others within this network, Imu may cast orders from anywhere in the world, making the orders inescapable. Furthermore those with this contract become able to summon the Abyss pentagram, although it’s not quite yet clarified if Servant Blades can use the Abyss as well, just unable to generate it, or if the ability to travel is fully limited to God Knights and above. I’m saying this mainly as Killingham said that “only those with the mark” can use the Abyss, but I wonder if he meant one of their tier or anyone with the mark in general. And beyond that, of course, there’s not just increased strength, but also the immortality, though it’s worth noting that this immortality does not involve perennial youth, since we’ve seen God Knights age.

The Deep Deep Sea Contract instead, for the Gorosei, we get no details from Shanks, but we can surmise some things. Given what he said, it seems that the Deep Deep Sea Contract grants you the power of perennial youth, as all the Gorosei were shown to seemingly be unaging, unlike the God Knights, thus in a sense granting true complete immortality, though of course that’s as long as Mu is willing to. Furthermore, I wonder if the devil transformations are also a boon of the Deep Deep Sea Contract, particularly as Gunko, Killingham, and Sommers all have regular fruits (with Shamrock having a fruit on his blade), whereas the Gorosei were all demonic creatures who were referred to simply as their creatures rather than being stated to have a fruit, though that’s still in the air.

And of course, beyond these, there’s the weird exception of Gunko. Gunko seemed faithful to Imu, despite seemingly being brainwashed, even at a time when she was still a God Servant Blade. Gunko has perennial youth despite still being a God Knight. And there’s the question of which tier allows for full body possession, as Harald in this chapter has his body controlled but it’s never being taken over directly by Imu, rather just being brainwashed. So is Gunko an exception to these tiers, and if so, why?

With the final parts of his conciousness remaining, Harald tells Loki to eat the fruit, and to use it to kill him, as we had thought. With his mind being fully brainwashed by Imu, Harald orders for the castle to be locked up, which explains why the guards were unable to escape, and tries to stop Loki from eating the fruit, instead Imu desiring Harald to seize it for himself. Interestingly, it appeared that this is also what Xebec wanted to do with Harald, but Jarul warns that if Harald eats it and loses control it will literally become the end of the world. This lines up both with Xebec’s ambition but also Loki’s claim at the start of the arc that he’s the Sun God who will bring an end to the world.

Jarul tries to stop Harald but instead gets skewered in the head with his sword, with Harald revealing that it was Jarul who gave him that sword to begin with. This is something that many of us had picked up on many chapters ago, that the sword in Jarul’s head matched the one Harald was seen with in his painting, and indeed it was him who stabbed Jarul. Some of us wondered if this was due to Harald having sold out or betrayed Elbaph while others thought he may have been Domi Reversi’d, but in a sense it wasn’t too far off from the latter guess. It’s possible however that by being stabbed like this, Jarul may have suffered some memory loss, and thus not recall what happened in the castle on this day, unless he somehow is really keeping a secret on Loki for no real reason. Though the fact that Gabin was also present but didn’t leak the secret prior means that there maybe was some agreement between them. As he and Shanks jump in to try and stop Harald, Shanks appears visibly pained at having to hit someone who he believed to be a good person. Speaking of Shanks, I also wonder why he would agree to defeat Loki 6 years ago, and why Loki decided to leave Elbaph and become a pirate rather than following his father’s promise. Did he perhaps prefer to leave that role to Hajrudin but couldn’t communicate it? Did Shanks never find out the full truth about Loki? We know he’s quite the tsundere, but why exactly did he willingly get chained up for six years like that?

Ragnir

Loki makes his way to the storage room where the devil fruit is hidden, seemingly inside a chest. Behind it however is a hammer, which we can infer is the Ragnir, Loki’s hammer which is a fusion of the words “Ragnarök” (the end of the world) and “Mjölnir” (Thor’s hammer that summons thunder), which checks out as Loki kind of heralded the start of Elbaph’s ragnarök with a thunder strike. We can infer this by the fact it looks like Ragnir (while Loki’s current hammer looks different) and by the fact that Harald mentioned that he would take the devil fruit and Ragnir, showing that the two treasures are stored together. Funnily enough, if you go back to Chapter 1152, you can perfectly spot Ragnir behind the chest, but few people paid attention to it, probably thinking of it as some stone in the background or just part of the castle.

Mysteriously though, the hammer appears to lift in the air by itself, and begins spinning as if to attack Loki. It is possible that from the shadows, someone may have picked up the hammer and thrown it at Loki, but the way the panel is drawn seems to imply more that the hammer almost lifted itself off the ground and began flying towards him. So unless there’s somehow someone in here locked inside this door already locked by chain and key, it would seem that the hammer… moved on its own. Furthermore, a speech bubble next to the hammer says “geggeggegge” (ゲッゲッゲッゲ！！). There’s two ways to interpret this. Either it’s a sound effect that indicates spinning, like a “vwovwovwoom”, but while I can see it, it’s not one I’m previously familiar with at least that it comes to mind. Alternatively, this could be seen as a voice, like a traditional Elbaph laughter, like “gegyagya” or “dohahaha”, and could be interpreted as a voice, though I could still give more credence to the former.

Still though, why is the hammer moving on its own? Well, it’s not the first time we’ve seen objects come to life in this world, because we know that devil fruits could be fed to inanimate objects given Vegapunk’s research, which we saw with the likes of Lassoo, Mr. 4’s gun dog, and Funkfreed, Spandam’s sword. The process can seemingly be replicated by accident too though, as Sukiyaki’s kettle Bunbuku became a tanuki after “consuming” a fruit some way or another. So in this case, if the hammer really is alive, then we could assume it has a life of its own, which would require it to have “eaten” a Zoan fruit. In that case, there’s two possibilities: either somehow the hammer ended up “eating” the legendary fruit of Elbaph, perhaps on accident, or two, it simply possesses a separate fruit itself and the legendary fruit is still within the chest. In the case of the former I wonder if you could “kill” an item to attain its fruit or if Loki simply didn’t eat the fruit but instead kept the hammer that had it, but in the case of the latter it would probably be a lot simpler and more straightforward.

After all, Ragnir did seem to be able to call forth the power of thunder, casting down a massive lightning bolt that set the Adam Tree on fire, so there’s a decent chance Ragnir’s power is related to lightning. This hints at some kind of mythical Zoan, as it most obviously likely isn’t Enel’s power and it has to be a Zoan for Ragnir to be alive, but it’s hard to make a connection with Norse mythology given how all the myths of lightning there relate to Thor, and it’d be odd for Oda to give the hammer the Thor fruit when he usually prefers to stick to mythical creatures rather than human-like creatures (though there’s some exceptions like the Buddha). Perhaps it could be connected to Loki, who, among other things, was considered to have fathered the mythical wolf Fenrir and the world serpent Jörmungandr. So perhaps Ragnir could be a Fenrir, like a loyal dog or pet to him, but the Jörmungandr could also be an interesting approach. Some have speculated that Loki’s mythical fruit could tie to the Jörmungandr, given its mythology in Elbaph associating it with the Red Line (and thus through the Harley associating it with the Hellflame Serpent that was involved in the first world’s destruction). There were some connections with Loki and Jörmungandr already in the story such as him being born with snake-like eyes, so perhaps this connection could go even further.

It feels like we are on the verge of finding out what this fruit truly is, and if Ragnir also has a similarly powerful fruit with a will of its own. With the final question of this flashback lingering… what will this fruit be?