One Piece Graphic Novel Volume 88 cover image

Monkey D. Luffy was a child when he ate the enchanted “Devil Fruit” and gained the ability to stretch like rubber, but he lost the ability to swim.  Undeterred, Luffy set out to sea and, in time, became known as “Straw Hat” (because of his straw hat).  Gradually, he enlisted a motley crew, and Luffy and company became known as the “Straw Hat pirates.”  The Straw Hats sail the high seas aboard their ship, the Thousand Sunny, searching for the legendary treasure known as “One Piece.”  And Luffy still wants to be the “King of the Pirates”

One Piece, Vol. 88 (entitled “Lion”; Chapters 880 to 889) opens in the wake of the marriage that did not happen.  Charlotte Linlin, a.k.a. “Big Mom,” the captain of the “Big Mom Pirates,” was not able to get Straw Hat Sanji to marry her 35th daughter, Charlotte Pudding.  Once part of Big Mom's conspiracy, Charlotte has joined her sister, Chiffon, and Sanji in making the ultimate chiffon cake in order to end Big Mom's monstrous hunger pangs.

Meanwhile, Big Mom and her fleet are pursuing the Thousand Sunny.  Aboard the ship, Straw Hats:  Nami, Brook, and Chopper – joined by Jimbei, former Warlord of the Sea – race towards Cacao Island.  Where is Luffy?  He is in Mirro-World fighting Big Mom's awful son, C. Katakuri, who has never been defeated and has never been on his back...

THE LOWDOWN:  The One Piece manga continues to sail through the “New World” super-story arc.  The series usually rolls on with new characters, places, plots, and concepts because creator Eiichiro Oda is probably the most imaginative and inventive comics creator working today in the entire world.  Now, Oda keeps his focus on the players in this marriage conspiracy.

One Piece Graphic Novel Volume 88 is the 28th volume of “New World.”  One Piece can be so frenetic, and here, there are three main plots racing towards one showdown:  Sanji and the ultimate chiffon cake, Luffy vs. Katakuri, and Big Mom's pursuit of the Thousand Sunny.  The ending, with Big Mom almost at her goal, will guarantee that we Straw Hat readers will be back.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Readers looking for the ultimate pirate manga/comic book will find it in the Shonen Jump title, One Piece.

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