One Piece Vol. 55: A Ray of Hope
- ISBN
- 9781421534718
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 533–541
- Anime
- Season 13: Impel Down ep. 422–456
Chapters 533 to 541, nine chapters spent going downward, and the middle of a prison break that reads better collected than it did week to week. Four of the nine are named for the floor they happen on: Level 4 at chapter 533, Level 5 at 536, the half-floor at 538 and Level 6 at 540. Nothing here opens and nothing here closes. Season 13 covers the whole book, so a viewer who has finished Impel Down has seen all of it, and a reader buying this one alone gets a descent with no ending attached. It belongs in a run bought from Vol. 53 to Vol. 60. The Omnibus Edition, three volumes for $16.99, is by a wide margin the cheapest route through this series; Viz states the contents of its first book only, so which omnibus holds this stretch is our arithmetic and not Viz's word.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
This is where the arc acquires its cast. Emporio Ivankov, Bon Clay, Crocodile and Jimbei are all in play by the end of it, and not one of them is an ally Luffy went looking for. Magellan poisons him close to death in chapter 534, and the recovery takes hours the story cannot spare: when Luffy wakes, Portgas D. Ace has already been moved to Marine Headquarters, so the rescue this entire descent was for has failed before the book ends. What the last chapters do is convert it into a jailbreak, which is a larger objective and a different story. That conversion is the reason the arc works, and it is also why the volume is unbuyable on its own. It begins in the middle of a fight and ends in the middle of a riot.
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