One Piece Vol. 20: Showdown at Alubarna
- ISBN
- 9781421515144
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 216
- Chapters
- 177–186
- Anime
- Season 4: Alabasta ep. 93–130
Chapters 177 to 186, and the book where One Piece stops being a series its protagonist can punch his way out of. Crocodile dissolves and reassembles whichever part of him is struck, so the first meeting between them is not a contest, and how it ends belongs in the section below rather than here. The rest of the volume is the crew crossing ground: a giant crab, the river Sandora, a squad of spot-billed ducks, and then the arrival at the capital, where the cast splits into simultaneous single fights across a city. That structure is the one the series has reused ever since. Season 4 runs from chapter 156 to chapter 217, so a viewer has seen all of this. It sits in Box Set 1, the volumes 1 to 23 set, at $244.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Crocodile puts his hook through Luffy's chest and buries him in the sand, and the book does not dig him out. That absence is the decision Alabasta is built on: the story runs for most of the next two volumes without its protagonist, and the fights that fill the gap are the ones the arc is remembered for. Usopp and Chopper against Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas start here, and the pairings alongside them carry into Vol. 21. What the defeat changes is the terms. Every earlier fight in the series was a question of hitting hard enough, and this one cannot be answered that way at any strength, so what Luffy eventually finds is not a bigger attack. Vivi's failure is in the same book and gets less attention: she gets in front of the rebel army she has spent eight volumes trying to stop, and it goes straight past her.
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