One Piece Vol. 96: I Am Oden, and I Was Born to Boil
- ISBN
- 9781974719990
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 965–974
- Anime
- Season 20: Wano Country ep. 892–1088
Oda spent two books getting the story out of the present day, and this is the one that justifies it. Chapters 965 to 974 stay inside the flashback almost to the end: Oden at sea with Whitebeard, Orochi taking Wano while he is away, and a meeting between two crews the series had been referring to for years before it showed it. The closing chapter, 'Onward to Onigashima!!', comes back out to the present day. The book takes its English title from chapter 972, 'I Am Oden, and I Was Born to Boil', and the seven chapters before that exist to make those words mean something. A reader treating Wano as a detour should know that this is where One Piece puts its central mystery on the page instead of alluding to it. Of the eleven volumes from 92 to 102, this is the one that cannot be skipped.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Laugh Tale is named here, and so is Joyboy. Roger borrows Oden from Whitebeard because Oden can read the Poneglyphs, the crew reaches the last island, and what they find there makes Roger laugh, which is how the place gets its name. That scene converts the premise of the series into a destination. The rest is the execution. Orochi extracts five years of public humiliation from Oden by promising to free hostages and then to leave Wano, reneges, and boils him: Oden holds a plank above the oil for an hour to keep the Akazaya Nine out of it, survives the hour, asks that Wano's borders be opened, and is shot by Kaido. Toki sends Momonosuke and three retainers twenty years forward, which is the mechanism the entire arc runs on. Kanjuro is Orochi's mole, and he takes Momonosuke in the closing chapter, so the raid starts from a loss rather than from the army the last book assembled.
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