Who needs people skills when they can enslave anyone they want?

A sentient hammer means Usopp could use it 👀

Yeah I think the covenant doesn’t give Imu direct control, at least at this level, it seems like it strips away or inverts the good aspects of someone’s personality. There’s no way pre-covenant Harald would say he’s superior to other races.

“Sorry I missed the funeral, I was a toy”

Not yet, thanks for checking in!

I’d say Shanks should have warned Harald sooner but I don’t know if Harald would have listened. It sucks to see him break down desperate to preserve Elbaf right before succumbing to the covenant.

And next chapter we finally get to learn about the Elbaf’s legendary devil fruit!

The fan art is always a treat

Step down and put the buzzwords away old man

Have they explained that Geoff Keighley tweet or is he just opening a portal to hell?

That’s a way better interpretation!

The thing is Harald wasn’t totally wrong, the country improved after he started pushing back against the backwards elements of their culture and opening to ideas from the rest of the world. There’s a reading of this as a critique against Japanese isolationism, but I don’t really like the implications it gives the “warrior culture” stuff.

This chapter was low key so good, the climax of both Harald’s progressive leadership and reformist naiveté. Elbaph is economically and socially improved through Harald’s policies and yet his complete submission to the perceived superior culture of the liberal world order World Government is what doomed him. And to put a stamp on it, because Harald was trying to shoulder everything himself there is no popular movement in Elbaf to keep going after his death it becomes leaderless and stagnant like we see when the Strawhats arrive.

I’m sympathetic to Harald being lied to by the government, but you’d think he’d be a little more shocked by the reveal that there’s actually a sole ruler of the entire World Government that he’s about to have his country join.

Timeline-wise how close is this to Shanks stealing the gum gum fruit? This undercover mission to Mariegeois has me looking forward to the inevitable Shanks flashback (in 200 chapters or smth lol).

I think Shanks’ rat status can officially be revoked, he was seemingly double agenting as a God’s Knight and helped Fischer Tiger escape.

For some reason seeing the way Harald has lowered himself to become a dog of the World Government really reminded me of the movie Sinners and its metaphors for the sublimation into the ruling class. Harald tore out his horns for a more human like appearance and is still only a part of the ruling class conditionally. And it really feels like since Rocks died there is a level of desperation to Harald’s actions, maybe because he doesn’t see any other options left.

I was kinda meaning in terms of popular consensus rather than sales. There’s plenty of games I have no interest in playing that I think are good

I agree but also they are too niche to be a GOTY contender

More buttons = more better game, that’s why everyone knows and loves Steel Battalion

That’s a nice running theme with a lot of the Marine characters, they each have an ideal of what justice is or should be but they inevitably clash with reality. Garp loses faith in the justice preached by the Marines after the God Valley Incident but resolves to stay and protect the low rankers from what they can’t stand up against, only to find he can’t protect everyone when the WG is set to execute Ace. Ultimately he recognizes the limits of his personal justice which is why he’s training the next generation vs Sengoku who’s basically done with trying to change things after retiring.

Garp and Harald certainly don’t learn their lessons. It’s interesting that they’re both so driven by their ideals (justice and peace respectively) and then they’re hit with the reality of things. But we also see the setup of next generation who reject following those paths in Dragon and Loki.

Loki’s flashback with Rocks is such a tease of what his devil fruit will be. Seems like the reason it’s important is that when a giant uses it they can somehow call out to the Galleila company giants… what could it be???

Pro-establishment/counter-revolutionary academics and opinion writers in the media.