One Piece Vol. 73: Operation Dressrosa S.O.P.
- ISBN
- 9781421576831
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 208
- Chapters
- 722–731
- Anime
- Season 17: Dressrosa ep. 629–746
This is the volume where the tournament stops being the point and the island turns out to have been taken from somebody. Chapters 722 to 731 stop to explain the country: who ruled Dressrosa before Doflamingo, how he came to be accepted as its king, and what becomes of the gladiators who lose. The plan the crew arrived with is gone by the end of it, and the other side is moving the pieces. The chapter titles track the collapse, from 'Change of Plans' and 'Law's Plan' at the front to 'Operation Dressrosa S.O.P.' at the back, which is also the volume's title. From here Dressrosa is a story about an occupied country rather than a bracket. Season 17 adapts chapters 699 to 801, so a viewer has seen all of this. At 208 pages it lists for $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Doflamingo is a Celestial Dragon, and that recasts him: not a pirate who seized a country, but a member of the class the World Government exists to serve, playing at being outside it. The flashback shows the method. He did not conquer Dressrosa. He arranged for its people to hate the Riku family and to ask for him, and the Riku family was turned out by the people it ruled. Sugar holds the arrangement in place, turning defeated gladiators into toys with a hobby-hobby power, which is where the island's missing people have been going. Two identities land in the same book: the one-legged toy soldier is Rebecca's father, and Violet is Princess Viola, her aunt. Law is beaten by Doflamingo, Big Mom finds the Sunny on its way to Zou, and Luffy meets somebody on the way out of the Coliseum who leaves him crying, takes the Lucy disguise off him, and is not named until Vol. 75.
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