One Piece Vol. 81: Let's Go See the Cat Viper
- ISBN
- 9781421591599
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 807–816
- Anime
- Season 18: Zou ep. 747–782
Much of this book is characters explaining events the reader did not see, which makes it the slowest volume in the Zou stretch. Chapters 807 to 816 open with Nami recounting how the crew escaped the Big Mom Pirates after Dressrosa, and go on to reconstruct, in retrospect, a raid on the minks that happened before the Straw Hats ever arrived. Season 18 covers chapters 802 to 824 and so takes in all of it. This is not the book that sells the run, and it should not be the one a reader samples. What it does instead is load the next two arcs: the invitation that arrives in its back half is the reason the crew splits. Viz lists two hundred pages at $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The minks credit the Straw Hats with driving Jack off. They did not. Jack retreated on hearing that Doflamingo had been beaten, which happened two volumes earlier and nowhere near Zou, so the gratitude the crew is met with on arrival is a coincidence the book quietly declines to correct. The same joke runs through the rest of it: the Straw Hats panic that the minks will turn on Kin'emon and Kanjuro for being samurai from Wano, and the minks have in fact been hiding Raizo, the ninja Jack wrecked their city to find, throughout. Between those two reversals sits the chapter that matters. Capone Bege and Pekoms arrive with an invitation, and Sanji has left to marry Charlotte Pudding, which would put his family and their mercenary kingdom under Big Mom. That is the engine of most of the next nine books, and it is delivered here as a piece of correspondence.
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