sei'taer said:
If you haven't read one piece all the way through those characters haven't appeared in hundreds of chapters. People that picked up one piece later may not know the history of some of those characters.
Whilst I understand that way of thinking, it overall feels unnecessary from a narrative standpoint to constantly stop and recap. After all, there's a lot more information that isn't recapped despite newer readers likely being out of the loop and it can be considered unwise for a new reader to pick up the story over 900 chapters into it in the first place.
Also it would be weird if those characters were all at reverie and didn't meet, so it was good to get that all out of the way in one chapter.
My problem wasn't with that. It was with the fact the core of their conversations boil down to "Oh wow we all know Luffy." Gives Luffy far too much relevance for an arc where the drawing point is his absence from the limelight.
New chapter was...actually really good for once. It was great to see a lot of well established characters being brought to the front, with the Yonko alliance, possibility of Admirals getting involved in Wano and Shanks making some deal with the Gorosei. Also, seems like the presentation of Lucci's strength in Film Gold may be canon considering how easily he stomped Sai. It does seem somewhat erratic in just how much content was crammed into this chapter compared to the slow pacing of the past several dozen chapters, yet if all the ideas brought to the table are executed well this could be the first genuinely good post-timeskip arc.