WARNING: The following contains spoilers for One Piece Episode 930 "All-Star! Queen the Plague Appears!" now streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, VRV and Hulu.

After several weeks of production delays, One Piece is back. The new episode continues the story of Luffy, stuck in prison following his defeat at the hands of Kaido. While Eustass Kid broke free of the prison prior, Luffy has remained stuck there, his powers restricted by the special cuffs bound to his wrists. While this episode does feature Raizo stealing the keys in secret, none of this affects Luffy's actions during the episode.

In a strangely cathartic episode, Luffy breaks free of the quarantine of prison, rips a person's face mask off and gets sneezed/spat on by those restraining him. Considering the series was on hiatus due to the effects of a global pandemic, it's hard not to draw coincidental comparisons to the real-life quarantine Luffy's audiences have found themselves in.

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Breaking Masks and Sniffing Snot

Daifugo threatens Boss Hyogoro

In the prior episode, Luffy gave the old man Hyogoro extra food vouchers to eat enough dumplings, since the old man was too frail to really earn enough through his own hard work any longer. However, the guard Daifugo interrogated Hyogoro, insisting (correctly) that Hyogoro could not have earned those vouchers through hard work alone.

When the old man stands up to the guard, Luffy, who up until this point is being spat on by a lamb-headed guard with a real penchant for spraying it rather than saying it, stands up and jump kicks Daifugo in the head. Daifugo wears a grated mask on the lower half of his face, which snaps off upon impact with Luffy's foot.

The sentence for attacking a guard is death. Luffy, while weakened, resists accordingly. He can't use his Gum-Gum Powers but still manages to keep up with the guards, striking them down as they come for him one by one. Then the Warden arrives. Babanuki is a towering figure with an elephant head for a belly. One of the Warden's key attacks is that he launches a cannonball from his elephant trunk in what he describes as an "Elephant Sneeze." The sneeze manages to almost flatten the depowered Luffy.

Possible salvation arrives in the form of Queen, one of Kaido's elite pirates. The spherical performer arrives to perform in a strange dancing show that distracts the guards for so long that Luffy, taking the old man on his back, decides to scale the side of the prison in an attempt to just climb over the walls. The Warden manages to draw Queen's attention to Luffy escaping before he can get very far, however, which is where the episode ends.

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Odd Coincidences and Future Implications

Queen the Plague shocked One Piece

Obviously, this anime episode was written before quarantine and based on manga chapters written long before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the details of the episode play different today, as facial masks and remaining shackled to one location has become a part of life for many of One Piece's fans. The episode might feel either cathartic or meaningful to its present audience due to this the real-life context.

The episode also sets up something quite interesting: Luffy has become stronger in prison. The cuffs that restrain him restrict his power, but he's still capable of incredible strength. With the cuffs magically restricting his abilities, he should no be able to do half of what he's done so far. The Warden refers to it even as "breaking the laws of physics."

This begs the question: with Raizo having stolen the keys to said cuffs under the Wardens' noses, how long will it be before Luffy and Eustass are freed from their cuffs and how much stronger will they be with their newly unrestrained abilities?

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