So Chapter 1001 started exactly how Chapter 1000 ended, with Kaido damaged, but surprised to be damaged.
Zoro and Kid are surprised to see his punch work and Killer says that they might actually have a fighting chance. Kaido, however, wonders what happened after he defeated him back in Kuri since he only knows a few people capable of fighting him. In that moment, he sees the shadows of Oden, Whitebeard, Shanks, Roger, and Rocks behind Luffy, and he gives a smirk.
In this panel, Kaido says only a few people can fight him while imagining Roger/Whitebeard(who Oda paralleled at the top) with Xebec, Shanks and Oden at the bottom.
– Is this panel representing the people Kaido lost to before? Or is it representing the people Kaido think could kill him? He fought Big Mom before in this arc, and she isn’t in the panel, maybe because she didn’t actually damaged him / threatened his life.
– It makes it more interesting in the way Oda will portray the encounter between Kaido and Shanks during Marineford because it’s the only build-up Oda left between them that has yet to be cleared.
– More importantly however is the build-up leading to Luffy ultimately proving himself by matching Kaido; it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we’d have a Luffy vs Kaido chapter.
Beyond this though, the build-up here was cool, with Luffy using Future Sight this time unlike last time, allowing Kaido to praise him for dodging his attack(albeit barely since he was still partially hit) while also displaying Kaido’s raw speed at the same time since he still hit Luffy a bit despite reading the future.
It also helped to show why Oda gave Luffy Future Sight and advanced techniques of Armament Haki, since both tools will be extremely useful in the decisive battle between them.
On the other hand, Zoro showed a new technique he took from Kinemon allowing him to cut fire, which is a nice callback from Punk Hazard where he was interested by Kinemon’s fox fire style. This ability should be particularly useful as well both for Big Mom’s Promotheus attacks and Kaido’s dragon fire attacks.
