One Piece Vol. 18: Ace Arrives
- ISBN
- 9781421515120
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 232
- Chapters
- 156–166
- Anime
- Season 3: Introducing Chopper at the Winter Island ep. 78–92; Season 4: Alabasta ep. 93–130
Chapters 156 to 166 open Alabasta. The anime's third season ends on chapter 156, this book's first, with the crew's meeting with Mr. 2 Bon Clay. It is still not a place to start One Piece: the passenger the crew is escorting and the organization hunting her were set up several books back. The volume takes its name from chapter 157, 'Ace Arrives'. Most of what follows is movement, an officers' meeting in a desert cafe, a dead green city, a crossing to the rebel town of Yuba, and stopping here would mean paying for the setup of a six-volume arc and collecting none of it. Eleven chapters and 232 pages at $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Portgas D. Ace is the reason people remember this book and he is in a small part of it. The site spells him Portgas, not Portgaz. What he does here is pull Luffy out of a chase with Captain Smoker and then leave. The other introduction is Mr. 2 Bon Clay, a Baroque Works agent who naively shows the crew that he can copy the face, voice and body of anyone he touches with his right hand; the arc later runs on that information. Crocodile's scene with his own officers is the one that matters structurally, because it gives the reader the plan before it gives it to the cast, and it closes the loop from Vol. 14 by feeding Mr. 3 to a crocodile for failing to kill Vivi. Vivi's story about Koza and the dead town at Yuba are the emotional load the arc draws on from here to Vol. 23.
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