One Piece Vol. 41: Declaration of War
- ISBN
- 9781421534572
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 232
- Chapters
- 389–399
- Anime
- Season 9: Enies Lobby ep. 264–336
The rescue stops for a flashback in these eleven chapters, 389 to 399, and the flashback is what the arc was built for. Robin is still refusing to be saved when the book opens, and the reason goes back to her childhood on an island of archaeologists trying to recover a century the World Government forbids anyone to study. This is where One Piece stops being a story about a crew and becomes a story about the institution the crew is standing in front of. The volume takes its name from chapter 398, and what that chapter declares belongs in the section below. Season 9 of the anime covers the whole book. At 232 pages it lists for $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Ohara is the volume, and Ohara is the closest thing this series has to a thesis. The flashback covers the archaeologists who kept reading, and the only two people the contents page names for it are chapter 393, 'Olvia', after the archaeologist the flashback is built around, and chapter 396, 'Saul'. The World Government answers scholarship with a Buster Call and erases the place. Aokiji, a Marine, lets Robin go and tells her to find friends and live, and the rest of the arc exists to collect on that sentence: Robin says she wants to live, out loud, and chapter 398 is titled 'Declaration of War' so the point cannot be mistaken. Franky then destroys the blueprints CP9 came for, which are not Pluton's but those of a weapon built to oppose it. The series had villains before this book. Here it acquires an enemy.
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