Chapter 155: "Pirate" Sir Crocodile

Throughout the desert nation, the warlord basks in a hero's welcome. The populace watches him fend off pirates and lavishes him with praise, and even the reigning king, Vivi's own father, offers his thanks for the man's supposed service. Not one of them suspects that the celebrated guardian is the same figure quietly bleeding their homeland dry.

Back aboard the Going Merry, Vivi spells all of this out for her companions. Rescuing the country, she explains, demands two things: halting the gathering revolt and tearing the criminal syndicate apart. Usopp asks how the group is structured, prompting Vivi to describe its pyramid of command and its leading officer agents. She cautions that seizing the throne would require every one of those senior operatives to assemble together somewhere inside her borders.

Readers get their first clear look at Crocodile, who is shown to be revered as a savior by the desert people. His title card cites a past bounty of eighty-one million berries, an odd discrepancy against the eighty-million figure Igaram once gave. He puts a Logia's intangibility on display along with the power to whip up sandstorms, all of which point to a Devil Fruit. Vivi walks the crew through how the syndicate operates and predicts that its official agents will descend on the capital to carry out the warlord's grand design. With this opener, the long desert-kingdom storyline officially gets underway.

The Jango's Dance Paradise cover wraps its serial here: having tracked down a vessel near Mirror Ball Island, Jango flings a parting taunt at every Marine who never figured out who he really was. The chapter also serves as a sprawling roll call, putting faces to the broad cast of syndicate agents who will fill the arc to come.