One Piece 819 Review: Jack is Back

One Piece, Chapter 819: Momonosuke Heir to the Kouzuki Clan

A huge chunk of the chapter is just telling us how the Minks and the Samurai want to fight back against Kaidou and the Shogun (who is either working together or forced to work for Kaidou). We get this moment where Luffy and Momonosuke forms an alliance, with Momonosuke finally growing out of the 'kid prince crybaby' theme that he's been portrayed as for a while. Don't care for Momo that much, but it's a nice scene nonetheless. Also, another big ally for Luffy.

I do love how throughout all this Law is miffed at how everyone just assumes he's going to help out with the big Pirate-Mink-Ninja alliance. 

Luffy's main priority at the point is still saving Sanji from Big Mom, though, so it's nice that that particular plot point -- which I'm frankly more interested in compared to all the Mink and Wanokuni stuff, simply because of how out of focus Sanji has been over the past year -- is being addressed.

And then Jack shows up with a massive fleet, Sheepshead is flayed apparently, and he just wants to launch a barrage to kill the giant elephant Zou itself. Well, we're going to deal with Jack sooner than I thought, after all! And here I was, thinking that Zou is just going to be an introdump and flashback arc... and, well, as awesome as Jack has been built up, it wouldn't be too remiss to have him fall to the newly-minted Pirate-Ninja-Mink alliance right now, especially with a good amount of powerhouses on the island right now -- if nothing else, Luffy, Zoro and Law would give Jack a fair amount of run for his money.

The only real bad thing from this chapter is that in dealing with Jack -- which I hope takes a while -- we're delaying Sanji's arc. But it's not a delay I really have a problem with.