One Piece Vol. 29: Oratorio
- ISBN
- 9781421534459
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 232
- Chapters
- 265–275
- Anime
- Season 6: Skypiea ep. 144–195
Eleven chapters, 265 to 275, and the book in this arc that stands alone least. It opens with duels already running and closes with the fight still open, and a reader starting here will not know who is fighting whom, or why an island is at war over a bell. Buy it inside the run from Vol. 26 to Vol. 32, or do not buy it. What it has going for it is size: Viz prints 232 pages here against a run that most often lands at 208, at the same $11.99, so the longest books in the arc are also the cheapest by the page. Six of the eleven chapter titles are musical terms, which is Oda naming a battle royale after a concert program. The anime's sixth season covers chapters 218 to 302, so a viewer has seen it.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Two things happen that the arc has been withholding. Robin reaches the city of gold and finds the gold gone, which answers the question the crew came to Skypiea with and replaces it with a better one, and Eneru's plan turns out to be neither conquest nor worship: he means to destroy the sky and sail to the seas below on a ship made of gold. The survival bet resolves down to the promised five, and the five go at him without knowing what he wants. This reads better in one sitting than it did over eleven weeks. Serialized, these were eleven installments of an unexplained tournament; collected, the tournament is visibly a delivery mechanism for the reveal at the end of the book, and the musical chapter titles stop being decoration and become a running joke about an orchestra of people hitting each other. 'Divina Commedia', the title that closes the book, is the one that is not a joke.
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