One Piece Vol. 27: Overture
- ISBN
- 9781421534435
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 247–255
- Anime
- Season 6: Skypiea ep. 144–195
Chapters 247 to 255, and the opening stretch of a battle that takes six books to settle. The Straw Hats have reached Skypiea and made enemies of the four priests who police it, and this volume is the long middle in its purest form: one crew member against one opponent, repeated, with the reason any of it is happening held back until the last pages. Nothing here concludes. The anime's sixth season covers chapters 218 to 302, so a viewer has been through all of it, and a reader starting here is buying about a sixth of an argument. Viz lists 192 pages at $11.99, and the whole arc falls inside Box Set 2, which Viz states as volumes 24 to 46.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The priests are not opponents with grudges: they are the administration of a place that was taken from somebody, and Ganfor, the god Eneru replaced, is introduced to say so before the story has explained what he means. Nine chapters of parallel duels then end on a rumor of a city of gold, and the treasure hunt the crew signed up for turns out to run through a war between Eneru and the people who lived on the island before it was in the sky. That is the arc's method: withhold the history, stage the fights, and let the reader work out that the fights are about the history. Collected, that is setup rather than delay, which is a defense of the structure and not a claim that the duels are the best part of the book. Viz shipped five volumes on 5 January 2010, this one among them, then five more on 2 February 2010 and five again on 2 March 2010.
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