I dig the lil’ skulls on Sanji’s jacket

This whole picture is very cute, but I am suspicious as to why the boxes are labeled Salamander Farm when these are clearly chameleons

Moriah using his shadow powers to make Oars stretch is my single favorite thing he does with his Devil Fruit. The logic of it is so simple, but it's one of those things I never would have thought of or guessed in a million years. Oda gets good mileage out of it, too, as it's the basis for the Straw Hats surviving getting mostly burnt to a crisp at the end of the arc.

I always love it when Oda shades things like this

Imagine trying to shoot a dude in the face and he looks at you like this

This move is appropriately called Jenga Cannon, and honestly it makes me want to see what the Straw Hats are like on game night

I love that the fight turns this idea on its head, and the lack of feeling is a big reason Oars is defeated. It fits with the overall themes of the arc as well; Moriah relies so heavily on zombie power because he didn't want to feel the pain of losing his minions anymore. That lead him to neglecting himself and his training to the point he couldn't handle his own Shadows Asgard.

I want to say that this might be the last time we see Franky fire breathe, and him tag teaming with Usopp is a super cool use of his power. These two in general I think could have a lot of synergy with their move sets if they were allowed to fight together more often

Usopp's right, calcium by itself couldn't possibly have healed Brook that quickly. He should have specified the milk had been fortified with vitamin D

Fun fact: Chapter 475 was voted highest in a poll ranking reader's favorite cover pages, and ended up being colored by Oda and used as the cover for the first volume of One Piece Doors, which compiles the cover pages and cover stories like the color walks do for the color pages.

Okay, this made me laugh harder than it should have

Hogback's greatest medical miracle is having Oars be able to function without any of his abdominal muscles, but even so, I must admit the little cockpit is very cool

Unlike Perona, Moriah is actually taller than Kuma. But like Perona, he isn't the one with power during this conversation. As Moriah acts like a petulant child, he is shown to look like one next to the more reasonable and rational Kuma

I love when Oda lets his characters have emotions so big that they distort the very world around them, Loony Tunes-style.

i know kuma is Large, but do you think his panel decapitation is meant to hint at how he essentially gives up his mind to have his body used as a weapon? maybe i'm misremembering, but i don't recall other very tall characters getting their heads cut off quite like he does

It is strange. One of the reasons I noticed it in the first place was because I didn’t remember other tall characters being depicted that way before. I think part of it is because Kuma himself is such a mystery at this point in the story; Oda has gone out of his way to appear menacing, and not showing his head is disquieting in the way Kuma is intended to be.

On the other hand, usually when Oda was to present a character as mysterious he doesn’t hide the whole face. Akainu and Gold Roger had their eyes hidden, Moriah earlier this arc showed nothing but his eyes, Crocodile was framed deep in shadow, etc. And while Kuma also has a lot of face shadows going on, I do think the decapitation panels are intentional and symbolic, particularly because there are so many of them.

It is incredible how well Kuma is able to play Moriah by preying on what he has to know is his greatest insecurity. The real coup de grace is that little inconspicuous offer to help at the end, added almost as an afterthought. If Moriah agrees, then Kuma can poof the Straw Hats wherever he wants to like he did on Sabaody. And if he refuses, well, we see how angry it makes him, and how his injured pride causes him to make stupid mistakes. Hell, Kuma has seen how badly the Straw Hats have wrecked Thriller Bark already. It could be that he genuinely believes Luffy could defeat Moriah unaided. The little push just helped get things started in the right direction.

The whole conversation is another one of those moments that takes on so much more meaning in retrospect, but even without that retrospect it's still impactful. I don't have to know Moriah's entire backstory to understand exactly why he's reacting the way he is, and that alone makes it one of my favorite bits of writing in the entire arc. So often the big personalities of One Piece can cause characters to feel more like caricatures, but this moment feels very human.

This is a perfect little hype nugget dropped in during a conversation that ultimately has very little to do with Blackbeard

Do you think Gecko Moria has knees?

He definitely has knees, but I’m not sure he has thighs