One Piece Vol. 40: Gear
- ISBN
- 9781421534565
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 232
- Chapters
- 378–388
- Anime
- Season 9: Enies Lobby ep. 264–336
Chapters 378 to 388, and the first book of the raid on Enies Lobby. The crew has crossed onto the island to take Robin back by force, and CP9 is waiting in a courthouse the World Government treats as unreachable. What starts here does not finish here: the fighting that opens in these eleven chapters is still running in Vol. 44, four books on, which is the argument for reading this stretch collected rather than one book at a time. Season 9 of the anime opens at chapter 378, the first chapter in this volume, so a viewer who stopped at the end of season 8 loses nothing by starting at the front. Viz lists 232 pages at $11.99, and Box Set 2, stated as volumes 24 to 46, holds it.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The book is named for its last two chapters and they are the reason to own it. Chapter 387, 'Gear', names the idea and chapter 388, 'Gear Two', uses it: Luffy moves at a speed nobody in the fight can track. The opponent is Blueno, the only member of CP9 who agreed to take the match, and he took it remembering how quickly Luffy was beaten the last time CP9 met him. Luffy wins, and wins partly with one of CP9's own techniques, taught to himself in the interval. The escalation does not stop here: chapter 421, four books on, is titled 'Gear Three'. What the volume does otherwise is clear ground. It sets the gates, the courthouse and the bridge in place, scatters the crew across them, and ends with Luffy calling up to Robin that he has come to get her. That promise is what the next four books spend themselves keeping.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Links on this page are affiliate links, which cost you nothing extra. They never influence what appears on this site or what the commentary says about it.