Manga: Chapter 599 (SPOILERS!)

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Hancock may be gone for now but relive her initial "romance" with Luffy, Buy One Piece from Viz today!

To recap the awesomeness of last chapter, 2 years have past in the storyline and all the Straw Hats are back at the Sabaody Archipelago but there are also (clearly) fake Straw Hats around! What will this mean for our crew? Lets find out. This week's cover page is actually a fan requested one where Luffy is sleep-eating while his meat is getting eaten by sheep. Sure its simple, but after so many weeks without one of these, it feels good man.

We properly start out with a flashback of Luffy saying farewell to to Hancock and the Kuja Pirates as he prepares to go to Sabaody. Hancock is sad to see Luffy leave but is Luffy says that he wants to see her again someday. Of course she takes this as a proposal, which Granny Nyon immediately dismisses as Luffy leaves. I'm not sure when we'll see Hancock again but one thing I can say for sure, she will be missed for now.  Back in the present time at Grove 47, fake Luffy is pissed at the cloaked-real Luffy for bumping into him and pulls a pistol on him and sticks it right in his cheek. The tension rises as the fake Straw hats try to intimidate him and the crowd awes in terror. Luffy tries to apologies and leave but fake Luffy isn't pleased and fires the pistol.

The moment of awesome has arrived

Finally after weeks of waiting, we finally get to see Luffy's mastered Haki in action. The pistol barely misses Luffy's face. Luffy gives the "awesome stare" at fake Luffy and all the fake Straw Hats are knocked out as Luffy walks away. To be specific, he used "Color of the Conquering King". Even though this was a short confrontation, its awesome to catch a glimpse of Luffy's new prowess as well as see how hes matured quite a bit rather than just charge in fists first like he would've done 2 years ago.

We cut to Grove 17, Robin has returned to the Thousand Sunny, which looks well intact by the way, but we can also see how shiny it is due to the coating that it received. Since its so squishy, its as if the Sunny is now a giant bubble. Epic. Not only do we see Sunny again, but we also see our new, improved and super shipwright Franky! Franky looks awesome! Its great to see a favorite character of mine get a nice update! I especially like the giant cannon sized arms, the amount of damage those things could cause makes me squee with anticipation! Now that Robin's come aboard, Luffy's the only one who has yet to have set foot on Sunny since 2 years ago. Pretty much everything is taken care of, all the Straw Hats need now is their captain. Franky comments on how Brook may not come back to the pirate life now that he's living the good life as a rock star, but of course we all know thats not gonna happen. ;)

RIP Franky's Ducktail T^T

We go back to Grove 47, Chopper has ran into the fake Straw Hats just as they have recovered and poor Chopper still doesn't have a clue that they aren't the real deal. Chopper tries to get them to rescue fake Robin since she got mistook for the real deal but of course they don't pay attention as they have bigger ideas on their hands: gathering the 100 pirates they need to Grove 46 and teach the mysterious people they've come across a lesson...of course they will. Chopper is shocked and runs off to try and rescue Robin himself. I'm not sure whether to pity him or laugh at him (maybe both) and the marines are surprised to see how the Straw Hats have changed so much after 2 years. Oh the irony :) They get ready to capture the supposedly real, in the flesh Straw Hats. At Grove 66, more marines prepare to fight the Straw Hats and we also see Sentomaru getting ready join the fight also taking PX models with him. He had a feeling this would happen since he saw the change in Kuma's personality after the battle at Marineford. Sentomaru hasn't changed although he now has a Marine coat implying that hes been promoted since we last saw him. To what rank though, I don't know.

We go to Grove 42, Sanji sees a fisherman and tries to get some fish from him, but the man is in a panicked state. He says that a swordsman with 3 swords wanted to go fishing so he directed the swordsman to his boat but the swordsman accidently slept on a big pirate ship next to the fishing boat instead (sound familiar and obvious yet?) but the pirate ship had sank to the bottom since it was coated. Sanji is pissed but is convinced that he is fine and something is coming up to the surface. The chapter ends with a giant galleon thats been split in two (another familiar situation which Hawkeye caused all the way back in the Baratie arc) and of course the swordsman turn out to be Zoro. Zoro's new appearance is bad ass. I believe he has a new sword, he now wears long samurai-like clothing, slicked hair and a scar over his left eye (speaking of that, the colorspread for last chapter showed Zoro with a scar over his right eye but Oda claimed that was a mistake so his scarred eye is definitely the left eye).

Welcome back Zoro!

Overall, this chapter was just as awesome as last week's. We got to see what happened to Franky and Zoro's appearances as well as hints in their new skills as well as Luffy's mastered haki more. As well as teeny bit of how the coating looks afterwards, the Marines have taken precautions to attack the Straw Hat pirates as well as the fact that the fake Straw Hats are probably going to get their just-desserts pretty soon. I'm sure the adventure will properly begin with next week's chapter which happens to be the 600th chapter.

So until then, sayonara!