One Piece Vol. 59: The Death of Portgas D. Ace
- ISBN
- 9781421539591
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 208
- Chapters
- 574–584
- Anime
- Season 14: Marineford ep. 457–516
The title printed on this book names what happens in its first chapter, so there is no way to shelve it without the spoiler. Chapters 574 to 584 finish Marineford and then walk away from it: the battle and its immediate consequences, then a drop back years into Luffy's childhood. Chapter 580 is titled 'The War's Conclusion', which is the marker to use when working out where the fighting ends and the aftermath begins. Season 14 runs through all of it with no boundary. Counting the single chapter at the end of Vol. 56, this is the last of the four books the battle occupies, and it is the worst place in the run to start reading One Piece.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Whitebeard is not beaten by the navy: he is killed by Blackbeard and the crew Blackbeard brought out of Impel Down, which is the volume's second argument that the war is a handover rather than a victory. Blackbeard takes the earthquake power off the body and levels what is left of Marine Headquarters. The fighting is stopped by neither side, but by Koby, Luffy's friend in the Marines, and by Shanks, the pirate Luffy grew up wanting to be, who arrives late and is obeyed. Then the book does the thing that makes it more than an epilogue: it goes back to Luffy, Portgas D. Ace and a boy named Sabo, and starts explaining what the word brother has been covering. The closing chapters set up Vol. 60, and reading this book without that one leaves the flashback unfinished.
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Lines from this volume
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“If I can buy a little time... ...by sacrificing myself, I'll gladly do so!!”
The admiral has already done the arithmetic for him. You were once a warlord of the sea, runs the objection on the same page, so you know exactly how strong I am, and Jinbe does not dispute a word of it. The line is built on that concession. What he offers is not a win but a quantity, a little time, and the pages show what the time is for. The fist that went through Ace three pages earlier is turning toward Luffy, and the chapter needs a pause in which a dying brother can speak. Jinbe is the pause. In the pages that follow, the story turns from the fight to Ace lying against Luffy, apologizing that Luffy did not get to save him, saying that dying makes him nostalgic even for Dadan, and admitting he has left one thing undone. None of that exists without a large body standing in front of a fist it cannot stop. The story had to supply someone strong enough to last a few seconds and honest enough to know that was all, and a former warlord hearing his strength assessed by an admiral fits exactly. The sentence that follows in the same balloon, that he was prepared to die from the start, is the least necessary part of the speech. The arithmetic had already said it.