Her tragic backstory was fairly short and one-note and didn't add much that we didn't already know: the land was brought under Kaido's clawed heel, the samurai fought anyway, we were all told and shown as much as it was well before now. Her father was Kaido, sure, but what about her mother? How did all of that come to be, and where did they go? I was halfway curious but it was never brought up at all. The connections mentioned above don't really add anything of significance and only raise further questions. The conflicts she involves herself in feel fabricated and for their own sake. She only interacts with a handful of characters over the course of the raid. Right out of nowhere.Īnd yet what does she actually add to the story? Almost nothing. And now you bring in one more character, one whose very existence hadn't even been mentioned until now, one with a flashy design and boisterous personality and - as it turns out in this volume - a fancy rare Devil Fruit, and a personal connection to another important character, offspring of the main antagonist, all of which she here employs to basically muscle her way into the spotlight. I was getting a bit tired of it already at the time, to be honest.

We were gearing up for the big climax at last. The arc was already long and complex, bloated with more characters and subplots and loose ends than any other. Speaking partly in retrospect - now that the entire arc is over and I've read it all, even the things beyond this volume, at least twice, gotten about half a year to ruminate on it, I can pretty definitely say.

Volume 101 one piece