第163回：NAMI-SWAAAAAN!

Pirate captain Basil Hawkins’ Devil Fruit grants him a number of whimsical battle abilities but one thing is doesn’t grant him is anything remotely near accurate predictions of the future. Time and again, when we’ve seen Hawkins’ attempts at predicting the future, odds that he deems insurmountable *always* wind up bearing the… uh… well, the odds.

The reason for this is quite possibly because unless Hawkins makes a prediction of 100% failure, Luffy himself (and only a handful of others like him) are *the* factor preventing it from being 100%. What I mean is, unless Luffy or someone extremely close to his level of determination and strength isn’t involved the reading would be 100% failure.

Where does Hawkins get this ability? Rather than being exclusively supernatural, I think there’s an element of real math to the secret behind his readings. Combining his Devil Fruits power with (potentially) powerful Colors of Observation (similar to Enel) Hawkins may be able to extend his Devil Fruit abilities beyond normal limits and determine how many people on the planet are capable of overcoming a given opponent or opponents at any given moment (with respect to proximity). By the end of this arc, I hope we have a slightly better understanding of how his powers work!

Did everyone enjoy the World Top 100 results?

If you haven’t seen them yet, you can check out the videos on YouTube here:

Nami beating out Sanji for #3 was an unprecedented and welcome result! I feel bad for Sanji but at the same time, I can’t imagine he’d be anything but pleased by these results because of what it means for Nami. I even find it hard to believe Zoro would give Sanji too much of a hard time for the drop. （1st～6th ranking）

Since the development team was aware of these results for some time, I find it hard to believe Oda wasn’t deeply inspired by Nami’s victory when considering depicting the events in the climax of this chapter!

Following in her mother’s footsteps, once again, Nami displays a level of maternal protectiveness that can’t be rivaled by even one of the Four Emperors.

This battle has truly helped us understand even more of Nami’s motivations in battle. She’d rather throw away her life than besmirch the honor of her captain and even if she’s faced with an Emperor, she will stand her ground if it means protecting a child’s life. What’s most interesting about this depiction of Nami is that while her verbal defense of Luffy’s honor is a motivation that developed since her joining the crew, I get the feeling that even before she met Luffy, Nami would have stood her ground to defend a child to the death and that’s all thanks to Belle-mere.

Congratulations of the top three spot, Nami. This isn’t just her victory. It’s a victory shared by every villager from Cocoyashi and most of all, Belle-mere.