One Piece Episode 997 – Battle Under The Moon – The Berserker, Sulong.

One Piece Episode 997 continues where we last ended with Luffy declaring war on all of Kaido, Big Mom, and Orochi’s men. Yamato besides him smiles at Luffy, admiring him even more as he reminds her of Ace whom she has met but we aren’t aware of this at all, hopefully, Oda explains more about this. With Ace having passed away 2 years ago, makes you wonder where and when did she ever meet Ace, and if Ace was here, did he fight Kaido?

With all the chaos going on in the castle, Queen can not comprehend where and how they went wrong as he keeps getting calls about samurai entering the castle in thousands, he thought it was just a few hundreds that were here, taking no precautions towards them as they have thirty thousand soldiers.

If it’s not the thousands of samurai entering the castle, it’s the members of the worst generation who are also providing aid to the samurai, so now it seems like everyone is against them, to make things even worse, he has just received that Marco and Perospero have teamed up as well are on their way into the castle.

The members of the worst generation being Zoro, Law, Kid, Killer, and Luffy have allied to take down Kaido, that being 5 out of the 10 members which can not be taken lightly, it is said either one or more can be the next generation of Yonko, so it’s more like a way to prove who amongst themselves who will be the one to rise to the top.

While Zoro is clearing the way, creating a distraction for the samurai some can not help themselves but want to help him as well of which Zoro declines as we all know. This seems to be a conversation known only by the samurai hence some of them have chosen to stay by the pirate’s sides as aids. Kid refuses their gratitude as well stating that he’s only here for Kaido’s head. 

To think that these samurai’s lives who were overturned by the presence of Kaido, a pirate that killed their Lord and true ruler of The Land of Wano Kozuki Oden would themselves come to respect and appreciate other pirates is amazing when you think about it.

Kaido back on his feet turns into his Dragon form calls out to Luffy saying that he heard him and asks his challenge, he’ll show the young man what the world’s strongest military power is, which fills me with questions, I mean we know the strongest military power for the Marines and World Government are The Admirals, and the strongest weapons in the world are the Three Ancient Weapons being, Pluton, Uranus and Poseidon.

Aside from these two, we’ve never heard of another power being the strongest in the unless if he means himself as a Yonko and his Army of thirty thousand men as he crashes and opens a hole on the ceiling of the Skull Dome where he plans to fight the Akazuya Samurai.

But what Kaido doesn’t know is that the members of the mink tribe have been waiting for him at the top to exact their revenge for their thousand-year homeland that was destroyed by his Top three generals being Jack The Drought.

We get this beautiful spread shoot from Toei Animations with the Kaido in his Dragon form looking down on his opponents reminiscing about the last time he fought them in the open but sadly enough, unlike last time Oden is not here but the Dukes of Zou reply with their own comeback stating that, unlike last time, the moon is full and bright.

Jack arrives at the top of the Skull Dome with his men in tow. The minks thank this day for coming and we get the long-awaited Berserker form from the Minks, once they look straight at the full moon their fur turns white as snow and they show extremely wild behavior which gives them a crazy power-up but comes with high costs, however, this is the day they have been waiting for so nothing else matters. 

While the minks fight Jack and his men, the Dukes and Samurai will fight Kaido. Throughout everything happening in the castle Kaido seems to know more than he reveals, like for instance, how does he know about the minks transformation? Kaido is becoming a very interesting villain, I wonder what more he knows.

Thank you for reading…