One Piece Vol. 78: Champion of Evil
- ISBN
- 9781421585840
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 776–785
- Anime
- Season 17: Dressrosa ep. 629–746
Ten chapters, 776 to 785, and the last long stretch of Dressrosa before the arc lets go, fought inside a cage that is closing. The officers still standing are cleared one at a time, Doflamingo begins shrinking the birdcage in order to leave nobody alive to describe what he did, and Luffy spends the book getting back to him through whatever is in the way. Something in the back half changes how Luffy fights, and naming it here would spoil the thing readers most want to meet on the page, so it sits in the section below. Nothing is settled in these chapters: the arc runs on past them. This is inside season 17, chapters 699 to 801, so the anime has been through it. Viz lists 200 pages at $11.99, and the volume falls inside Box Set 4, stated as volumes 71 to 90.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Gear Four: Bounceman is the reveal, and it turns the fight with Doflamingo around within a few chapters. Getting there costs Law everything he has left: caught in Trebol's net with Luffy stuck beside him, he takes Trebol out and is carried away for treatment before Luffy goes back in. Diamante falls to Kyros, Pica to Zoro, Bellamy to Luffy. The birdcage is the better piece of design. Doflamingo's answer to losing is to shrink the walls and kill every witness, which gives a hundred-chapter arc the one thing it had lacked since the tournament: a clock the reader can see. It also makes the motive legible. He is no longer trying to win, only to stop the account of what he did from leaving the island. The arc does not finish here.
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