One Piece Multi-Piece #10: Before the Skip
a.k.a. the Ambitious Animeister
and Master Of Tickets.
In November of 2023, I succumbed to "peer" pressure from fellow content creators, Mother's Basement and Totally Not Mark, and began watching One Piece as a palate cleanser for DanMachi and RWBY (and especially for Children Of the Corn). I had no intention of giving it any critical attention at first because it was just a fun but daunting form of audio-visual therapy, and there wasn't much to talk about in the seasons before the die-hard fans say it "really gets good."
I see where they're coming from, but I think it gets good a little earlier than that, and gets bad shortly after.
My next effort in the One Piece Multi-Piece will be a review of the Fishman Island arc, which I have been putting off for quite some time because of my struggles to get through it, having things to say about other anime, financial challenges, and my hard pivot into weekly reviews of Dragon Ball DAIMA at the end of 2024. But I still need to do a lot of work and mental refreshing before I draft up the Fishman Island review, so I thought I'd get everyone refreshed as well with a mega-post of all of my reviews from before the two-year skip that took place after Marineford.
Every story must begin somewhere, and I would appreciate it if you began this particular story anew by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and joining my Crew on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest snail transmissions of news on my content.
See, the One Piece world is divided in half vertically by the Red Line (a meridian continent of almost solid rock) and horizontally by the Grand Line (an equatorial body of water flanked above and below by doldrum zones (Calm Belts) full of giant sea monsters (Sea Kings). So the East Blue is more like a Northeast Blue (as the series goes on, the map makes even less sense, and that's ignoring the cursed super-power-giving fruits, flying islands, psychosomatic animal mutations, globally unsustainable weather events, and other shonen-level cartoon absurdity that makes the series a visual and conceptual marvel that not even an artificial intelligence playing MadLibs could come up with). Our requisite knuckleheaded protag-kun with protag-kun hair is "Straw Hat" Monkey D. Luffy (voiced in the Funimation dub by Colleen Clinkenbeard, who has done VA and direction work on RWBY, My Hero Academia, and as kid Goku in various Dragon Ball media), a wannabe King Of the Pirates who can't swim because he ate one of the aforementioned Devil Fruits and gained the ability to stretch his body like rubber so he can shout attack names that start with Gum-Gum. Aside from wanting to be the next King Of the Pirates and find the titular treasure left behind by the previous Pirate King (who has the same middle initial as him for reasons that I haven't gotten to in the series yet), Luffy is very simple as shonen heroes go. He wants meat when he's hungry, water when he's thirsty, people on his crew that he thinks are awesome, to protect his friends and crew, and to kick the asses of bastards who suck.
He almost immediately recruits Roronoa Zoro (Chris Sabat, Vegeta and Piccolo in Dragon Ball), a notorious bounty hunter who dual-wields swords and holds a third one in his mouth so he can look badass but sound ridiculous when he calls out his attack names. He has no sense of direction, sleeps all day when he's not wandering aimlessly, lifting weights half the size of a small pirate ship, or fighting to become the world's greatest swordsman so he can honor his dead childhood crush's final wish.
Next is Nami (Luci Christian, Kaname in Full Metal Panic! and Hestia in DanMachi), a money-obsessed cat-burgular and navigator with a dark past and a near-precognitive understanding of the weather.
Next comes Usopp (Sonny Strait, Krillin in Dragon Ball), a cowardly, Pinocchio-inspired liar with a long nose who serves as the crew's sniper, makeshift shipwright, gadget man, and comedy relief. He ultimately decides to join the Straw Hat Crew so he can become a "brave warrior of the sea." I hated him in the 4kids edit and the East Blue arc in general.
And finally (for this arc), there's Sanji (Eric Vale, Future Trunks in Dragon Ball), a chef with worse customer service skills and better cooking skills than me who turns into an obedient blob of romantic horniness at the sight of the opposite sex and fights exclusively with kicks because a chef's hands are for cooking (even though his early signature move involves him breakdance fighting with his hands touching the ground; add in that he cooks with expired or spoiled ingredients for his male customers, and I wouldn't hire him to scrub my toilet...). He wants to find the "All Blue," a geographically impossible (unless I haven't gotten to it yet) convergence of all four directional seas where every species of fish on the planet coexists.
Though he is not one of the Straw Hat Pirates, it's important to also acknowledge Coby (Leah Clark, who has done voices for many of the anime I've Spotlighted, including the A Certain franchise), a chubby, cowardly, but driven boy who gets rescued by Luffy in the first episode and aspires to become a Marine (the moral opposite to Pirates, though the grey areas proliferate as the series goes on) despite his friendship with Luffy. It's a sweet rival chemistry even though young Coby can get on my nerves at times.
The villains this early on are scaled well to the crew's capabilities, but mostly feel like jobber-of-the-week fare for Luffy to demonstrate his various Gum-Gum attacks on. Even fan-favorite Captain Buggy (an over-designed, John Gacy-esque clown pirate--voiced by Master Roshi himself, Mike McFarland--with self-dismemberment and self-telekinesis Devil Fruit powers that make him almost immune to cutting weapons, unlike Luffy) and his circus performer-themed crew are underwhelming. The exceptions to this are Kuro, a blade-fingered pirate captain engaged in a long con of an heiress from Usopp's home village, who poses a genuine psychological threat to the Straw Hats, Hawk-Eye Mihawk (a powerful swordsman who introduces the concept of the Seven Warlords Of the Sea into the series and hands Zoro his first real, near-death defeat), the living weapon Don Kreig (a Wolfgang Krauser-alike pirate captain who fights dirty and wears armor that would put the entire TriGun series to shame in terms of concealed weaponry), and especially the Fishman Pirate Crew led by Arlong (Chris Rager, Mr. Satan in Dragon Ball). Of all the East Blue villains, Arlong has the best buildup, the best arc, the best intimidation factor, and poses the biggest physical, psychological, and emotional threat. The Arlong Park arc (say that without sounding like a yodeling seal) is East Blue at its peak, and I'm not going to spoil it.
There is also the Loguetown mini-arc, which serves as a winding-down for East Blue (not counting the filler story that comes afterward) and has a few highlights, but mostly feels like a "when can we get on with it?" stretch. Loguetown is where Gold D. Roger (the previous King Of the Pirates) was born and executed, and Luffy runs ahead to see the execution platform, where he is ambushed by Buggy and a Devil Fruit-powered Marine named Smoker, and announces to the town that he will be the next King Of the Pirates. It's one hell of a moment! Meanwhile, Zoro goes looking for new swords and runs into a subordinate of Smoker's who looks like his childhood crush, and infuriating Japanese rom-com miscommunication and mistaken identity shenanigans ensue. Usopp and Sanji get into their own filler battles while Nami goes shopping offscreen, and Luffy and Zoro are rescued from the Marines by a mystery man named Dragon (who will get a great identity reveal in about four hundred episodes). And finally, when everyone is back on the Going Merry (a ship that was given to them upon saving Usopp's heiress friend and her real butler from Kuro earlier in the season), they all share their aspirations and make a vow as a crew before heading for the Grand Line.
I watched a little of the filler afterward, but it was more of the same and I was itching to get to the Grand Line episodes, so even though one of the characters was voiced by the instantly recognizable Brittany Karbowski, I skipped ahead and didn't feel like I missed a thing.
For anyone who doesn't know, Japan approaches visual media nearly the opposite of how America does it. We start with comic books as a way of focus-grouping concepts and characters for live-action movies. But in Japan, manga is the chief content and they use anime as a manga commercial, only having long-running anime in a relatively few lucrative cases, and even more rarely going the live-action route for further adaptation. In cases where a manga and its anime are stupid-successful do the creators of both media run into situations where the anime catches up to the manga's "canon" story, forcing the anime team to create original content so the series' revenue stream remains constant while the manga pulls ahead. This original content is termed "filler" (which can be "the other F-word" to print media purists). It can either be cumulative, such as by repeating animation frames or extending conversations, staredowns, or power-up sequences, or it can be entire unique stories. The "problem" with filler is that while it needs to be entertaining, it is limited by whatever status quo the arcs around it have established, so things like new forms or attacks that don't appear in later material are out of the question (with one exception that I will bring up later in this post), and the filler story must end in the same place it began.
If I feel like it, I may go back and watch the filler, movies, and specials when I've caught up to the present. But for now, I am using Anime Filler List to narrow things down to "manga canon" and "anime canon" episodes (which are designated differently from filler because they are anime-only, but tie directly into "canon" events, whereas filler can stand alone).
If you are wondering if you should invest any time in One Piece, I'd say "get started before it gets any bigger!" Also, I hear the live-action adaptation is one of the only such good ones Netflix has ever done, so if a thousand-plus-episode anime seems too daunting, hand some positive analytics to the Netflix show, and there's supposed to be a remastered, no-filler anime coming out at some point called The One Piece.
With the East Blue behind us, the Straw Hat Pirates next make their way to the Red Line and battle Baroque Works through the kingdom of Alabasta. That's basically three more arcs of content to cover, and while it may be new territory in terms of both storytelling and weird locations, the Grand Line portion of One Piece's story also shows that, for the most part, the Straw Hat Crew are going to be stuck in a pattern that began in Usopp's recruitment arc, became more apparent in Arlong Park, and continued into Loguetown.
There's also some cool new technology introduced with the Poses. A Log Pose is a compass-like device that stores the magnetic energy of the nearest island over a period of time to make navigation in the Grand Line's insane ecosystem possible. Eternal Poses are similar but more powerful, as they point to a specific destination regardless of location.
With a Log Pose in hand and Mr. Nine and Ms. Wednesday in custody (they were trying to kill Laboon for some reason I forgot, but they will be important later), the Straw Hat Crew set sail for Whiskey Peak, where an ambush by the criminal organization Baroque Works awaits them. Following a satisfying sequence where Zoro solos most of the Baroque Works grunts--and a fight between Zoro and Luffy because he slept through the plot twist and he's an idiot--it is revealed that Mr. Nine (who has the most Second Amendment powdered wig of all time and an annoying habit of clearing his throat with vocal exercises every five minutes) and Miss Wednesday (who fights with razor-sharp yo-yos and is best friends with a giant duck) are double agents seeking to bring down Baroque Works on behalf of the desert kingdom of Alabasta. So Miss Wednesday (now revealed to be Princess Vivi of Alabasta) temporarily joins the Straw Hat Crew in hopes that they can help save her kingdom from "Mr. Zero." Having been on Whiskey Peak for long enough, the crew follow the newly set Log Pose to the ironically named Little Garden, but not before an unusual encounter with Zero's partner, Ms. All-Sunday, who is...helpful?
So, if you haven't guessed yet, Baroque Works is a "secret" criminal organization where the top twenty or so strongest members are assigned to male/female pairs, with the men having numeric code names that get smaller the stronger the person is, and the women having code names based on holidays or days of the week.
Before the crew gets to Little Garden, though, we are treated to a two-part, slice-of-life story about Coby and a pompous, goofy-looking boy named Helmeppo (the son of an evil Marine named Captain Morgan, who got his jaw broken in a fight with Captain Kuro from the East Blue season, and who was unseated after Luffy sent him flying with a Gum-Gum Bazooka like he did to every "important" villain he fought in the East Blue) doing grunt work and training to become Marines under a Vice-Admiral in a dog hat named Garp (he will be very important much, much later). The boys are a little annoying, but the story is sweet and falls right in with the overall, "follow your dreams" message of the series.
Back on Little Garden, we are introduced to Mr. Three, who has wax-based Devil Fruit powers, and Ms. Golden Week, who can use paint to affect people's emotions. Also, there were previous instances of this in the Grand Line part of the story, but it's important to note that Mr. Three has access to a Transponder Snail, which is this world's version of wireless, audiovisual communications equipment like telephones, wrist communicators, spy receivers, and security cameras, among other uses...but it's snails. And this particular Transponder Snail is a direct line to Mr. Zero! Don't ask me how any of it works because sometimes, the Rule Of Cool is good enough.
As for the Straw Hat Crew, Nami and Usopp stay on the Merry because cowardice, Luffy runs off, screaming about meat with Vivi (voiced by Caitlin Glass, who has also done VA work on Lord Marksman, Freezing, and My Hero Academia) in tow, and Zoro and Sanji fight over who can kill the biggest animal for Sanji to cook. Thankfully, Little Garden is the One Piece version of the Savage Land from Marvel Comics, so there are plenty of prehistoric-sized animals and dinosaurs for them to punch, kick, and slice. Unfortunately, there are also two literal giants (former pirates from the island of Elbaf--that's "fable" backwards) locked in constant combat for reasons that both of them have forgotten. This ends up being incredibly cool and giving me something to like about Usopp for once because he gets all macho about how masterful their fighting technique is and makes it his goal to visit Elbaf so he can train to further his goal of becoming a "brave warrior of the sea." But also unfortunately, and for me this time, the giants are the series' first instance of annoying and maddeningly repetitive Japanese onomatopoeia laughs, as way too much of the Little Garden dialogue consists of "Yababababababa!" and "Yackackackackackack!"
Following some great thematic character work with Luffy and Usopp defending the giant warriors' honor against the Baroque Works agents, including a few compelling life-or-death cliffhangers (or they would be, if I didn't know there are nine hundred more episodes afterward), the Straw Hats defeat the Baroque Works agents, free the giants from Mr. Three's super-hard wax, and return to the Merry. Meanwhile, Sanji, who has been wandering around on his own, still in search of something to win his contest with Zoro, gets a chance to be a badass when he stumbles upon Mr. Three's hideout, engages in some amazing social warfare with Mr. Zero through that Transponder Snail I mentioned earlier, and steals an Eternal Pose (set to Alabasta, where Mr. Zero's base of operations is located) from a pair of Baroque Works animal assassins called the Unluckies (so I'm assuming their names are Mr. Thirteen and Ms. Friday).
After leaving Little Garden with the giants' help, the Straw Hat Crew are struck by tragedy when Nami comes down with a fever, and they must head to the next island in search of a doctor...without their navigator.
But with Nami healed and Chopper now on the Straw Hat Crew, things get good for the first time since Arlong Park. On the way to Alabasta, the crew picks up Mr. Two, an androgynous Baroque Works agent with mimicry powers who loves ballet and wears an overdesigned swan costume that makes them look like Bjork in Burt the Bashful cosplay. Luffy makes friends with them because he's an idiot, but when Mr. Two is showing off their ability, Vivi sees that they have learned to copy her father, making her even more impatient and desperate to get home than she was before. Also, the Straw Hats devise a system to make sure they know if any of them are being copied, and Marine Vice-Captain Smoker is also headed for Alabasta after intercepting Sanji's conversation with Mr. Zero (who is really the sand-powered Warlord Of the Sea, Crocodile).
So, yeah; there's a lot of padding in the early Alabasta episodes as the Straw Hats split up and various circumstances and goals keep them from reuniting or getting where they need to go (which requires even more splitting up so they can keep the Royal Army and the Rebels from killing each other over the lack of rain in the desert). But from this, we get Luffy meeting his brother, Ace (who is a member of the Whitebeard Pirates and came to Alabasta in search of this series' version of Blackbeard) for the first time in the series, more awkward chemistry from Zoro and the female Naval officer, the introduction of Rain Dance Powder (which can seed rain clouds and was outlawed by the World Government for reasons that play into Crocodile's plans), more bonding with Vivi and Nami as well as Usopp and Karoo (Vivi's giant duck), underground ruins, Baroque Works escalating their plans to make Alabasta destroy itself, Luffy stoking Vivi's convictions in his signature fashion of being loud and simple, more morally interesting encounters with Ms. All-Sunday, more of Spy Mode Sanji (a.k.a. Mr. Prince) being awesome, and Crocodile seemingly killing Luffy!
But this was all just buildup, and the best part is to come with the Fierce Fighting In Alabasta arc. Now, I said earlier in regards to Nami's illness that the ticking clock didn't work for me because of how many episodes of One Piece there are. But Luffy's apparent death struck differently because we know he is vulnerable to cutting and non-projectile piercing weapons, and Crocodile put a hole in him that would make Yamcha cringe, which is way more serious than a fever. So rather than thinking, this series is over a thousand episodes long; they'll find a doctor and Nami will be fine, my reaction to Luffy's death (?) was how will he survive that, and if he doesn't, how will that affect the story? I mean, we've seen Zoro, who doesn't have Devil Fruit powers, survive getting gored by a man who can casually slice multiple ships in half, so Luffy surviving getting a hole punched through him and being thrown in quicksand to drown shouldn't feel as final as it did for me in that moment. But it did, and I wanted to know!
The answer: He gets pulled out by Ms. All-Sunday (whose Devil Fruit powers let her bloom copies of her arms, legs, eyes, or ears on anything within her field of vision, leading to some cool, but Cronenberg-meets-Geiger visuals) because she's curious about the D.
I phrased that as a sex joke because my mind is still that of an aged thirteen-year-old and it was the first thing I thought of, but Luffy and Ace (along with Gold Roger and at least two other characters in the series that I will get to in a future part) both have D as their middle initial, it is so far the only initial that any characters in the series have had, and they both have a certain quality of willpower about them that sets them apart from the rest of the world. The explanation is probably one that I haven't gotten to yet, but yeah, Ms. All-Sunday seems to have a history with people with that initial, and she's intrigued by it, so she pulls Luffy to safety and walks off.
Meanwhile, Vivi makes repeated attempts to stop the two armies from fighting each other (thwarted by Baroque Works grunts who have infiltrated both sides and Mr. Two impersonating her father), Sanji has an honorable kick-fighting duel with Mr. Two, Usopp and Chopper have a comedy-relief fight with a mole-woman who talks like her favorite food is cocaine and a baseball player with a dog-bazooka, and Nami squeaks out a win against the spiky Ms. Doublefinger (that's a nickname for New Year's Day because 1/1, but it also sounds dirty, and it should because she looks like she stepped out of a Blaxploitation-era bondage film) with the beta version of her new weapon, the three-part Clima-Takt staff that Usopp built for her offscreen.
This seems like the perfect time to talk about one of One Piece's biggest problems: the main characters suddenly having new moves out of nowhere that they learned offscreen so they can win fights that they normally wouldn't be able to win. Zoro is the biggest offender in this, as, outside of battle, we only ever see him sleeping, arguing with Sanji, lifting weights, or getting lost. Yet every battle he gets into, he either relies on old attacks, pulls out a new attack, or miraculously learns to do something mid-fight that will allow him to win. I'll get to what the most famous example of that is next time. But for now, I'll just say that writing a flashback to explain why Nami's three-part staff is now a goofy weather weapon full of party tricks so she can stand up to a Devil Fruit opponent is a total ass-pull that screams, "I needed to write myself out of a corner!" As for the less-famous (and seemingly never mentioned again after its use in this arc) Zoro ass-pull, he finds himself fighting a Baroque Works agent who can turn his body to steel, and a memory of something his old sword-master told him as a kid helps him figure out how to sense sub-atomic vibrations so he can cut through steel and defeat Mr. One.
But as things continue to get worse for Alabasta (including a massive, time-delayed cannon that is poised to wipe out both armies and destroy the entire capital city), Luffy, King Cobra of Alabasta (Vivi's father), Crocodile, and Ms. All-Sunday converge in the underground ruins where Crocodile's true goal is revealed: he took advantage of the outlawed Rain Dance Powder to cause a drought so no one could use his weakness to water against him, and plotted to have the kingdom destroy itself so that he could use Cobra's knowledge and Ms. All-Sunday's ability to read ancient languages to decipher a giant stone called a Poneglyph, which is purported to contain the location of an ancient weapon from "the Blind Century." Ms. All-Sunday (here revealed to be Nico Robin, a woman who has had a bounty on her head since childhood for destroying a city and several Navy ships by herself) tells Crocodile that the weapon's location is not on the stone, and we are led to believe that she is lying (though this detail seems to lose importance later on), and rather than keep her alive to torture her for the information, Crocodile wounds her and leaves her, Luffy, and King Cobra for dead in the collapsing ruins.
In terms of attacks, Luffy's rematch with Crocodile is nothing new: plenty of Gum Gum Pistol, Gatling, and Bazooka usage to knock the villain out and send them flying. But Crocodile is the perfect villain to change things up. He's a cerebral villain with plenty of surprises thanks to his Devil Fruit powers that let him summon and control sand, suck the moisture out of anything he touches, and turn his body into sand. Then there's his hook, which I spent the second half of this fight overthinking how he could have unsheathed a rigid, curved object. When unsheathed, it drips poison. So Crocodile is basically invincible compared to other Devil Fruit pirates Luffy has fought before, forcing him to fight strategically for the first time in the series by coating his fists in water or (badass!) his own blood.
Once the Alabasta Civil War has been stopped, Luffy has hit Crocodile hard enough to turn him into an honorary member of Team Rocket, and rain begins to fall from his dissipating sand-body, Smoker's Marines are faced with a moral dilemma and decide to let the Straw Hats escape. as well as have the credit for incapacitating Crocodile.
Escape proves to be a generous term, though, because Luffy likes food, Nami likes treasure, and they're waiting to see if Vivi will continue to sail with them or embrace her renewed role as the Princess of Alabasta.
I haven't mentioned this yet, but in the past, Luffy has had a habit of Gum Gumming the villain into orbit and leaving the threatened village, city, or island as it was, so it came as a pleasant surprise when Vivi decided to be responsible and Luffy respected that choice, even though I really enjoyed her dynamics as an honorary Straw Hat.
Two unexpected events come of this, however. First is that Mr. Two, a.k.a. Bon Clay, has turned over a new leaf after his brief time on the Merry and his fight with Sanji, and decides to help the Straw Hats escape by playing decoy when a second contingent of Marines show up. Second is that Luffy repaid Nico Robin by saving her from the collapsing ruins earlier, and her interest in history and The Will of D (as well as mild spite toward Luffy for not letting her die) have led her to join as the seventh member of the Straw Hat Crew. Mostly for her looks, voice (provided in the dub by Stephanie Young, who also did VA work on Magical Index, Zombie Land Saga, MHA, and Soul Eater), and suggestive fashion choices, Nico Robin is a huge fan favorite, but she also has the uncontested best character arc of the entire crew, based on what I've seen of the series so far.
Now, Luffy fights Eminem in One Piece heaven and plays competitive Mario spinoff games with Waluigi. I'm serious.
There was an entire season of filler after the Baroque Works and Alabasta material, but the story proper resumes with the Straw Hat Crew having fled from the Marines and getting lost when Nami's wrist-mounted Log Pose begins pointing straight up, as if the next island on their journey through the Grand Line is in the sky. Things get even stranger when a wrecked ship almost lands on the Going Merry - from out of the sky - and they have to outsmart and fight a monkey-man and his crew for salvage rights. A successful stealth salvage operation later (if you don't count the three strongest characters and the monkey-captain getting eaten by a giant turtle), the Straw Hats head to the nearby pirate haven, Mock Town, on the island of Jaya, where Luffy, Zoro, and Nami show admirable restraint despite being ridiculed and physically abused (because Mock Town, get it?) for their current ambition to find the Sky Island, Skypeia. Luffy also has an interesting encounter with a boisterous man who really likes pie and seems to share his dreams.
After the Straw Hats leave in search of a man who might be able to help them get to Skypeia, several of the pirates who had been wreaking havoc in Mock Town's side streets come to join the boisterous man, and it is revealed that he is Blackbeard, the fugitive pirate whom Ace was looking for in the last arc.
After more filler, there's an arc of canon filler (it was apparently in the manga, but has that "be weird but end where you left off before" feeling to it) where the Straw Hats have to beat Pimp Waluigi, Bondage Donkey Kong #3, and their massive pirate crew at Mario Party: Squid Game Edition. It's purely comic relief (including a final boxing match where Luffy puts on a Blaxploitation wig, talks jive, and dresses like a Hajime no Ippo reference), the stakes are ultimately non-existent, and Foxy (the Waluigi pirate captain) is never seen or mentioned in canon again after this (I hope). There's a weak, "get to know the locals" subplot where hopes and dreams turn every plant and animal on Long Ring Long Land into a stretched-out version of the norm and the Straw Hats accidentally reunite an old man on stilts with his son who got kidnapped by a mooooooole or something. It's stupid and the arc where things "really get good" is coming up next.
The Straw Hats' troubles with salvage monkeys isn't over, however, as they soon get in a fight with the other salvager's brother on the way to meeting with someone named Montblanc Cricket, a descendant of Montblanc Nolan, an infamous "liar" who claimed to have discovered a lost city of gold on Jaya and was executed when his king journeyed to the island and found that the city did not exist (or vanished?). We get some fun, "are you sure you aren't talking about Usopp?" gags with Luffy out of this, which I feel dumb for not expecting ahead of time, but that just adds to the strength of the joke as far as I'm concerned.
Some exposition and rushed modifications to the Going Merry later (it turns out that the salvage brothers work for Cricket, looking for scuttled artifacts of the lost city, and they hurry to make the Merry flight-worthy before either Nami's Log Pose locks onto a different island or they miss the eruption of a massive geyser-current called the Knock-Up Stream), and also some comedic padding while they look for a Southbird (and solid slapstick that continues Luffy's...inconsistent track record of interacting with the local wildlife that began with Laboon and the Drum Island rabbit monsters, and has just gone downhill from there in the funniest way possible) to guide them to the Knock-Up Stream, the Straw Hats make it to the eruption point on time and somehow survive being thrust thousands of miles into the sky. Also, because shonen protagonists, they adjust immediately to the thinner atmosphere.
The Skypeia Arc begins in earnest here, tackling controversial issues like racial caricatures, the theft of native land (there is an indigenous-inspired group called the Shandorians/Shandians who seek to reclaim their El Dorado-esque homeland from Skypeia), and the societal ills of organized religion (a man with lightning Devil Fruit powers, who looks like Eminem and Geese Howard had a baby, used his power to overthrow Skypeia's previous leader and declare himself God--a wrathful one at that--so he can build a flying ark, steal the Shandorians' lost riches, and smite the entire city on his way to the Fairy/Endless Vearth, which is either a mythical mass of solid land encircling the world like an atmosphere, or it's just the moon, depending on the translation).
Eneru (the aforementioned, slim and shady goose god with electricity powers, voiced by J. Michael Tatum, Klein the Butler in RWBY, speedster Iida in My Hero Academia, and several voice roles for the Dragon Ball and A Certain franchises), his four Priests, and a few other characters have an ability they call Mantra, which is kind of like a buffed ki sense from Dragon Ball, but also has predictive capabilities. It will make a surprise return in a future arc. Keeping with the religious connotations of the arc, Skypeia is a city made of solidified clouds, and all of its citizens have wings and halos (including the Shandorians for reasons that will be confusing after later reveals, and it's never stated whether they are biological extremities or decorative costuming) to look like angels.
As with the Grand Line, Skypeia also introduces some new tech in the Dials: spiral shell objects that can replicate most real-world modern - for the late 90s and early 2000s - technology, such as jet engines, kinetic weaponry, and media, elemental, and sensory storage. I think Dials are incredibly inventive and cool, even though real world technology has surpassed them many magnitudes over. There's just something whimsical and magical, yet plausible, about them that I like.
As for the Straw Hats, it's slightly different but more of the same as they befriend some locals and piss off the authorities, the natives, and the man in charge, but for once, it's Nami who ends up going off on her own and starting trouble by riding a Dial-powered jet ski called a Waver to Upper Yard (the only patch of land - Vearth, in Skypeian vernacular - on the Sky Island, which makes it rare, sacred ground that only God - as it turns out, this is just a leadership title - and his Priests are allowed to set foot on). Many goofy but high stakes fights (some of which involve Zoro pulling a new projectile slash out of his ass - take that as a statement of "backed into a corner" writing, not literally - called the Caliber Phoenix), territorial disputes with the Shandorians, cool platforming sections in the giant trees of Upper Yard, flashbacks, and archaeological discoveries later (Nico Robin is into history, remember?), we learn that Upper Yard is the missing piece of Jaya where Nolan the "Liar" met with the early Shandorians in the City Of Gold.
Even cooler, Luffy takes his strategic fighting to the next level against Eneru by taking advantage of his rubber physiology and turning his brain off in a sort of Drunken Fist counter to Eneru's Mantra ability. The final confrontation aboard Eneru's ark for control of the Golden Bell of Shandora (which, it turns out, was embedded with another Poneglyph and has some footnotes indicating that Gold D. Roger could read and write the ancient language as well) is epic and satisfying.
Somewhere in there, Usopp awakens to find a mysterious figure restoring the Going Merry to its original, flightless state. This will be important in a future arc as well.
But it also means that, in order to return to the sea (thousands of miles below Skypeia, remember?), they have to take a parachute octopus back to the surface because One Piece.
But first, after finding happiness and her place on the Straw Hat Crew, and uncovering new information about the poneglyphs on Skypeia, Robin is unexpectedly shaken by a face from her past: a lazy but terrifyingly strong Marine Admiral with ice powers named Aokiji who has come to apprehend her. He easily defeats Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro all at once, but lets them go with a warning as payback for neutralizing Crocodile in Alabasta. Unfortunately, this ominous feeling will weigh on Robin's mind into the next arc.
Since the last One Piece Multi-Piece, I've come to realize that I haven't spoken much about the individual characters since the first entry.
I've mentioned plot points, fights, and a brief rundown of what each new Straw Hat's goal is. Seeing as how there are nearly three hundred episodes (filler is included in that count, even though I didn't watch much of it) holding up these next two arcs, there is bound to be content that I forgot, conflated, or glossed over. Things like how, aside from Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, and Chopper, their initial dreams have not been addressed. Luffy wanting to be King Of the Pirates is so set in his character that it's the sign-off line for every episode preview. Zoro is shown training or fighting in almost every arc to become the world's greatest swordsman, and as I mentioned in previous arcs, this has involved him pulling new techniques out of his ass since at least Alabasta (of course, some grace is allowed, as much of the crew's down time at sea is off-camera). Usopp has seen a ton of character growth in his increasing "willingness" (?) to face unfavorable odds, adding an assortment of elemental, chemical, and gag Stars to his slingshot ammo, creating a weapon for Nami (now upgraded with Dial tech he acquired in Skypeia) and developing new psychological warfare techniques, in addition to maintaining the Going Merry to the best of his ability, as he progresses toward becoming a Brave Warrior Of the Sea. And even though he's become something of a sidekick to Robin and the new comedy relief of the Straw Hat Crew (not that there's a shortage of those...), Chopper's dream of being a famous traveling doctor is pure, waking life.
On the other hand, Sanji's search for the All Blue is both resolved (there was an anime canon episode where he won a rare fish from the All Blue in a cooking contest in Loguetown that totally undercut the difficulty of his quest) and tied so steadfastly to a particular place and moment that there is no visible journey for him, and he can get away with following Nami and Robin wherever they go, or feuding with Zoro, or cooking or buying ingredients to cook, or going off on his own to do cool spy stuff, none of which has any kind of serial narrative to it because his vices and chivalry get in the way.
Nami is much the same, as we see the remains of her adoptive mother's tangerine orchard on the Merry's deck and her navigation and meteorological knowledge play into the beginning of every arc somehow. But even though her dream is to chart the entire world, we don't see her draw any maps outside of the few flashbacks in Arlong Park. More often than not, we see her greed and frugality on display instead.
The unique case among the Straw Hats is Robin, whom we've seen express an interest in the Poneglyphs, the Will of D, and world history (with an emphasis on the Blind Century). But as to her own past, her true goal, and her allegiance, she has yet to voice anything definitive. And unlike the flawed (or is it just incomplete for now?) execution of the rest of the Straw Hats, I actually don't mind this. It gives One Piece an air of mystery to not know what the sultry burlesque cowgirl who can speak French and make Geiger-Cronenbergs with her hands is thinking. I mean, everyone wants Lady Dimitrescu to step on them, but I just want to be hugged, and maybe have my back cracked once a week; is that so wrong?
So, after chasing a giant sumo-frog who can swim like a human and almost getting hit by that "train to Hawaii" Charlie Sheen was talking about in Hot Shots!, the Straw Hats arrive at Water Seven, a seven-gated floating city with heavy Venice inspirations. But tensions arise when Robin abandons the crew to join CP9 (basically One Piece Black Ops Interpol who dress like the cast of a Guy Fawkes-themed Guns 'n' Roses tribute band), Usopp loses the money they got from exchanging Skypeia's gold (and he's beaten up several times by Frankenstein cyborg Elvis and his gang of Blaxploitation disco girls and Rocky Horror backup dancers) and one of Water Seven's premiere shipwrights (who I'm just going to call Minecraft Usopp) comes to them with hopeless news about the condition of their ship.
Luffy (who seems willing to sacrifice the Going Merry, and perhaps the bonds of his crew, to achieve his dream) and Usopp (who has the closest bond to the Merry, especially after seeing the mystery mechanic in Skypeia) clash ideals and enter into a duel for their respective places in the crew, and more importantly, for the fate of the Merry. Little Garden may be where I began to respect Usopp, but this fight is where I began to like him as well. He loses because he's up against Luffy, but Usopp is at his most "Batman with prep time" here, pulling out every trick in his arsenal and nearly knocking Luffy unconscious.
So, yeah; Usopp gets to keep the Merry, but he is out of the Straw Hats!
As he tries to gather enough supplies to repair the Merry and prove Luffy wrong, a plot unfolds involving the cyborg Franky (formerly known as Cutty Flamme) and ship-building magnate Iceburg, both of whom apprenticed under a Fishman shipwright named Tom (the same species as Arlong and his crew). Tom was the creator of the sea train the Straw Hats encountered on their way to Water Seven, and was executed as an accessory to piracy for repairing Gol D. Roger's ship. However, it is also revealed that Tom was in possession of blueprints for an ancient battleship from the Blind Century, and that he passed them to one of his apprentices (it's Franky) before he died. Now, CP9 want the blueprints to give the World Government some leverage against the Seven Warlords, and they've manipulated Robin into their custody because she, too, may have knowledge of the Blind Century that needs to be buried one way or another.
On top of that, the masks and costumes that CP9 wear create a decent amount of mystery as to their true identities...but if you've seen a police procedural drama before, it's fairly obvious in most cases who they are.
Ooh! Speaking of masks, obvious mysteries, and "new characters," it's time to talk about my favorite part of Water Seven: the introduction of Sniperking!
Following his defeat by Luffy and savage beating by the Franky Family, Usopp is torn between his personal pride and his former friendships with the Straw Hats...so he puts on a mask and cape, deepens his voice, makes a bigger slingshot offscreen, and hopes no one will notice that he's Sniperking. The resulting comedy (everyone but Luffy and Chopper notices because they're hilariously dumb) is gold that doesn't overstay its welcome despite persisting for two arcs, it gives Usopp the personal security to try being the hero he wants to be, and he gets this whole Super Sentai-inspired anime opening sequence with a theme song that just takes over his debut episode like a Deadpool wall-break. "Sniper Island" is the music video to my life now.
The fights here are pretty much just "stall so the villains can escape with Robin and Franky to set up the next arc," but CP9 does introduce some new techniques called the Six Powers that can make it possible for a normal person to fight evenly with a Devil Fruit user (though all members of CP9 have also eaten Devil Fruits) by enhancing their speed, mobility, attack strength, defense, range, and other attributes. So while the fights on Water Seven lack finality, they look cool enough.
The back end of Water Seven, though, has the Straw Hats (with Sniperking joining later, and Sanji infiltrating the prisoner transport on his own like he's the protagonist of Snowpiercer) teaming up with the Franky Family and the remains of Iceburg's Galley-La Company elite shipwrights on board a beta sea train as they race to stop Franky's and Robin's executions in the next arc, Enies Lobby.
As such, the Enies Lobby arc is kind of a One Piece version of the Entry and Rescue arcs from Bleach, and follows a Horizontal Tower structure similar to Sanji's train escapades in the previous arc, just with Luffy as the focus.
As we have come to expect from him, Luffy ignores all established plans and slingshots blindly into battle, sending Marine fodder flying as he screams his shot-call about whose ass he's going to kick next. That ass belongs to the strongest member of CP9, the Leopard-shifting Rob Lucci (who was undercover in Water Seven as one of Iceburg's elite shipwrights, a Slash-inspired ventriloquist who spoke through his pet pigeon to disguise his real voice), but we won't get to that fight for awhile, as Luffy must first contend with the door-powered, horn-haired former barkeep, Blueno.
To talk about this fight, though, I have to talk about three things.
The first is the initial fight choreography. It's well-animated, and with Luffy being on the back foot because he hasn't fought a Six Powers user before Water Seven, we get to see something that looks like actual fighting and defensive strategy, rather than the screaming and flurries of blows and energy attacks that typify the battle shonen genre.
Second, Blueno uses his Door-Door powers to turn Luffy's face into a Puppetmaster reference, which is cool.
Finally, and what deserves the most discussion, is the debut of Luffy's Second Gear transformation. After merely defending himself for an episode (because shonen protagonists have to hold back to gauge their opponents and draw out the narrative of the fight), Luffy decides that if he's going to get anywhere with Blueno (or any other Six Powers fights that lie ahead), he needs to take his own power to the next level (the Second Gear, if you will). Now, like I was at first watch, you might be wondering what happened to First Gear, and the answer is both logical and underwhelming because there always and never was a First Gear; it's just Luffy's base Gum-Gum state that he's had from the beginning and it didn't need a name. You might also be asking where this form came from because neither the original Japanese nor the English dub really explain it that well. Luffy simply says that ever since he lost to Aokiji (one of the three strongest men in the Marines), he had been looking for a way to get stronger so he could protect his crew and friends, who are all weaker than him, and that "I'm glad I met you [guys]." By itself, this feels like as much of an ass-pull as Zoro suddenly being able to cut with wind projectiles, sense subatomic vibrations, and triplicate himself into a Hindu sword god. And if you consult the wiki on Second Gear, the explanation is either bullshit writing, or it frames Luffy as some sort of fighting genius because on sight alone, he figured out how Shave (the speed-enhancing Power) works, and used that knowledge in conjunction with his Rubber Man physiology to accelerate the blood circulation in his body and enter a Kaio-Ken-like state (Gear Two makes him fast enough to outpace a Shave master and strong enough to damage someone who has activated the Iron Skin Power, but puts intense physical strain on his body). Wherever Gear Two's explanation ranks on the bullshit meter, the technique itself is instantly iconic and gets way more screentime than the average shonen buffing technique.
Meanwhile to Luffy squashing Blueno, the combined Straw Hat, Franky Family, and Galley-La forces mow through more Marine fodder and are joined by two Giants (former crewmates of the dueling pirates from Little Garden, who were manipulated into serving as Enies Lobby gate guardians by being told that their fellow Giants were captured and sent to Impel Down, an obvious lie that gives Usopp/Sniperking an opportunity to be awesome and strategically useful in the face of literally imposing odds).
The really character-driven stuff comes with the exchanges between the captive Franky and Robin, and the leader of CP9, Spandam (a weak, pompous, ignorant bastard who wears a Mankind mask, fights with a transforming elephant sword, takes pleasure from beating up women, and is more than deserving of every broken bone Robin will give him later). We learn from these conversations that not only is Spandam a lying, manipulative, misogynistic asshole who deserves to be put in a wheelchair and then beaten to death with it, but his father was the piece of shit who launched the Buster Call (a Marine scorched Earth assault) against Robin's home in an effort to genocide its historians who were researching the Blind Century, and then framed her for it as a child. As a result, she became the youngest person in known history to have a multi-million-Berry Bounty (I've glossed over this, but Berries are the currency of the One Piece world, and Bounties are the series' numeric power-scaling system), which led her to a life of betrayed trust and constantly shifting allegiances as a "devil" and a "bringer of despair and disaster."
The one bright point in her youth came with Jaguar D. Saul (explaining her previously established fascination with that particular middle initial), a Giant (complete with weird, Japanese onomatopoeia laugh) Marine-turned-pirate who teaches her how to laugh and that she should never give up hope of finding true friendship. Her previously established history with Admiral Aokiji is also given some meatiness in this flashback, as he defeats Saul in battle, but helps Robin escape the ongoing carnage of the Buster Call.
As it turns out, the way CP9 convinced Robin to go with them and sacrifice herself was by threatening the Straw Hats (her long-desired true friends) with a Buster Call. But because CP9 is an organization of, by, and for despicable, lying, ruthless assholes, Spandam (accidentally, but he planned to do it all along) triggers a Buster Call on Enies Lobby to wipe out the Straw Hats, and Luffy, having heard all of this from Robin herself, declares war on the World Government by having Sniperking shoot a Fire Star at the WG flag before her tear-flooded eyes.
If you are reading this and haven't watched One Piece yet, first of all, go watch it!, and second of all, you might be wondering why, if Robin can make body-part bloom-ception on anything within her field of vision, hasn't she snapped Spandam like a twig by now. One reason was the leverage that he and the rest of CP9 had over her with the Buster Call threat. The other was this series' power-dampening substance, Sea Prism Stone. Because anime logic and made-up minerals and elements, Sea Prism Stone is the solidified essence of the sea, which is the one shared weakness of all Devil Fruit users, that neutralizes their powers and takes away their ability to swim. So, Robin has been wearing Sea Prism Stone handcuffs, and cannot use her powers with them on.
But with Robin shouting triumphantly that she now wants to live, Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hats (who are lined up on a rooftop across from Robin and Spandam like a Super Sentai team preparing to henshin and kick monster ass) leap into action in various matchups against the members of CP9, who all have numbered keys in their possession, only one of which matches Robin's Sea Prism Stone handcuffs.
Luffy, of course, goes straight for Rob Lucci and Robin, while Franky (who burned the warship blueprints and was able to escape now that he was no longer needed) and the other Straw Hats fight to obtain all of the keys. This is mostly just a comedy-relief stall tactic by both CP9 and the author (for example, the only female member of CP9 turns Sanji into a human soap bubble because he's a chivalrous pervert, Nami fights a kabuki performer who can control his hair with the Six Powers and says "yo-yoi!" every five seconds, and Zoro has to fight a Giraffe-Man while Sniperking is cuffed to his arm), but there are some highlights like Chopper turning into a rampaging monster after eating too many Rumble Balls (jawbreaker-sized pills that he previously used to fight in various Point transformations during the Drum Island part of the Grand Line material) in a short period of time, Nami using her upgraded Clima-takt to defeat the soap-powered Kalifa (whose design here, as well as the rose-themed costume she wore in Water Seven, are sure to ignite a few 2D crushes in those who aren't already simping for Robin), Sanji once again getting an opportunity to be a badass spy who saves the day at the last moment, Zoro busting out the aforementioned Hindu god form for the first time, and Luffy's battle with Rob Lucci.
As it turns out (and this was hinted at in a prior episode), Luffy also already has a Third Gear form! It looks spectacular and puts in work, but is my least favorite Gear so far for several reasons. Rather than increase his strength and speed like Gear Two, Gear Three has Luffy pull a Looney Tunes by blowing into his thumb and inflating his body, then concentrating that inflation into one of his arms or legs to make it gigantic while scaling up mass and density so it still hurts. In exchange, Luffy has a cooldown period where he deflates into a child-sized body after delivering a single hit. It gets even less of an explanation than Gear Two, undercuts the significance of Gear Two and itself by being an inferior technique and debuting so soon after the previous Gear, and I'm pretty sure he already used it in the bit of filler that I did watch back near the end of East Blue, just without the Gear designation or the cooldown form, which completely robs it of its specialness.
Which is probably why Luffy finishes the fight with Rob Lucci in Second Gear.
With collapsing and flooded buildings around them and concentrated Marine forces prepared to saturate Enies Lobby in cannon fire, Luffy breaks his limits and launches a desperate Gum-Gum Jet Gatling (his traditional rapid-fire punching attack, now so enhanced by his Second Gear form that his punches create sonic booms and pressurized air projectiles before they physically connect, and considering his red skin, the barrage of punches, and the steam coming off of his body, this probably inspired Ralf Jones' Climax Super in King Of Fighters from XIII onward) against Rob Lucci that is as satisfying as it is well animated.
However, this leaves Luffy unable to move (as is Chopper, after reverting from his rampage form), and the carnage of the Buster Call has trapped the rest of the Straw Hats like fish in a barrel. That is, until they are rescued by a surprise returning...character?...it's the Going Merry!
As it turns out (and as Franky speculated in a conversation with Usopp back in Water Seven), the mystery mechanic who repaired the Going Merry on Skypeia was the spirit of the ship herself (voiced by Brittany Karbowski, making her a literal spirit animal as far as I'm concerned), so the Going Merry is alive, and has followed them from Water Seven to rescue them and enjoy one last voyage.
Between Robin's backstory and rescue, and the Going Merry's return and subsequent funeral back on Water Seven, this arc is as strong with the tear-jerker moments as it is with the fight animation. That trend continues when Franky reveals that he's going to use wood from a legendary tree (which he bought on the black market with the money his Family stole from our heroes in the last arc) to build the Straw Hats a new ship, and Garp (the Vice-Admiral from the Coby/Helmeppo two-parter in East Blue) shows up with his two trainees for a reunion. Coby (who has trained in the Six Powers in the years since One Piece began) spars with Luffy, no one remembers Helmeppo because he's lame, and we and the assembled Marines and Straw Hats find out that not only is Garp's name Monkey D. Garp (making him Luffy's grandfather because the initial D is a family thing like it was for Jaguar D. Saul, and the Japanese convention of addressing people by their last name first holds true in the One Piece world), but Luffy's father is Dragon (a.k.a. Monkey D. Dragon), an infamous Revolutionary leader who may have been supporting the Rebel Army in Alabasta, as well as the man who saved Luffy from Smoker way back in Loguetown.
Also, the other hemisphere of the Grand Line (I think? This is where One Piece geography stopped making sense to me) is called the New World, and the Straw Hats decide to make it their next destination.
After that emotional roller-coaster of a double-arc and a few more filler episodes, Franky's ship is completed, and because he refuses to join the Straw Hats for macho reasons, they and the Franky Family steal his Speedo and make him run around Water Seven naked for two episodes to get it back. Totally unnecessary and (I'm struggling not to say "barely" or "hardly" because even risque puns are too highbrow for this level of attempted comedy, so I'll just go with) not funny, but eventually Franky agrees to witness the journey of his "dream ship" (the competently composited CGI powerhouse that is the Thousand Sunny) first hand because of a promise he made to Tom and Iceburg, and Usopp drops his disguise and his own macho insecurities and rejoins the crew. So the Straw Hats have a new ship, Robin and Usopp are officially back, and Franky has joined as the crew's shipwright.
Things can only get better from here, right?
Right?
Wrong!
But before that, I forgot to mention two important episodes of Enies Lobby, wherein Ace (shown in flashback to have disowned the Monkey name and accepted Whitebeard as his father) finally tracks down Blackbeard and faces him in battle, only to learn that the man has eaten a Devil Fruit that gives him Darkness powers that prove to be stronger than Ace's flames.
Also, there was an episode where "Red-Haired" Shanks (the man who sort of acted as Luffy's guardian when he was a kid in some flashbacks from the early East Blue, and gave Luffy his hat...and an arm) meets with Whitebeard to discuss Blackbeard's crimes and whether it was wise to send Ace after him. This meeting and the fight between Ace and Blackbeard set the World Government on edge (even more than they were after Luffy defeated Crocodile and demolished Enies Lobby), and the narrator says that events have been set in motion that will change the World forever.
To be fair, there are a few - repeat: a FEW - highlights, such as Nami's friendship-by-way-of-survival with a jealous, homicidal zombie warthog-woman, the arc's clear inspirations from Gothic architecture, classic monster movies, the "Thriller" music video, and Scooby-Doo! Where Are You? cartoons, Ian Sinclair (Whis from Dragon Ball Super) voicing a reanimated skeleton who makes bone puns and dresses like Prince, Usopp tapping into his Sniperking persona to psychologically fracture a Queen Of Hearts-inspired shut-in with ghost powers, and Luffy stacking Gears to defeat the villains of the arc with some Jet-powered Giant Gum-Gum attacks.
Plotwise, stop me if you've heard this one: a blonde ladies' man, a woman with orange hair, a sexy nerd, a coward, a Scrappy fighter, and their talking animal sidekick investigate a spooky mansion where the eccentric owner with a questionable reputation attempts to scare them because you meddling kids and your raccoon-dog won't let me get away with my evil scheme to gain notoriety. It's basically a Scooby-Doo episode stretched out into an anime arc, complete with multi-doored hallway maze slapstick chases.
If you were wondering how an anime could consistently pump out an arc that is...checking resources...forty-five fucking episodes long!, on a weekly basis, let alone a thousand-plus-episode anime, the answer is no more apparent than it is here in Thriller Bark. Half of any given twenty-five-minute episode is either credits animation, episode recaps that just show you the entire final scene of the previous episode, commercial bumpers, or episode previews. There's even an episode or two where they just show the Laboon stuff from the beginning of the Grand Line again, but in a smaller aspect ratio with a frame and a nostalgia filter over it.
The dialogue makes my ears bleed because as bad it was to listen to two Giants onomatopoeia laugh at everything in the Little Garden material, there were only two of them. In Thriller Bark, the Shadow-stealing Warlord Moria, the zombie-making mad scientist Dr. Hogback, the ghost girl Perona, and the undead musician, Brook (who is supposedly an accomplished swordsman despite being dead and losing most of his fights in this arc, as well as a skilled musician in every instrument despite only knowing one song on only two instruments) all have annoying Japanese onomatopoeia laughs that they insist on repeating at least three times after every sentence like an elipsis of auditory torture.
Speaking of Brook, Laboon, and contrived unoriginality, after the Straw Hats stop Hogback and Moria from turning everyone's stolen shadows into souls for an unstoppable zombie army that will allow Moria to take over the World and become King Of the Pirates (also, the Peter Pan'd original owners of said shadows will burn to ash in direct sunlight like Universal Dracula), we learn that Brook was a member of the pirate crew whom Laboon imprinted on as a baby, and that they didn't abandon him; they got sick and died! Well, except for Brook, who ate a Devil Fruit that would allow him to come back from the dead one time. He wandered the ocean on the wreck of his old ship, hallucinating, singing to himself, and otherwise going star-craving mad. Yes, I know it's actually "stark-raving," but I needed to do something to distract myself from the fact that Brook has a panties fetish and this arc has been the crust of shit that I smear across my eyeballs before I claw them out with sharpened chalkboards made out of rusty nails.
Get a tetanus shot, vaccinate yourself against pinkeye, shove in those earplugs, and fuck this arc. I hate it with a passion.
Its final saving grace, though (much like how the pointlessness of Long Ring Long Land was sharpened up by the last-minute introduction of Aokiji) is the arrival of the Warlord Kuma, a massive, bear-themed cyborg with Devil Fruit powers that allow him to transfer pain, injury, and possibly more, with a swipe of his paw-palmed hands. He shows up in the middle of Luffy's battle with Moria, poofs Perona out of existence, offers to help the defeated Moria escape, and later threatens to kill the Straw Hats (not only is he a Warlord Of the Sea, but his cybernetics are the product of the World Government's Pacifista program - remember that name for a bit later) because the World Government wants to keep Moria's defeat a secret from the public. However, he offers to change his mind if Zoro can survive absorbing all of the damage that Luffy incurred in his battle, which Zoro does, unbeknownst to any of his crew, despite being found later, barely conscious and standing in a twelve-foot circle of his own blood.
With the worst arc I have ever endured out of the way, and a musician added the the Straw Hat Crew, this seems like a good time to talk about the bumper music.
When an episode goes to, or comes back from, commercial breaks, there is a brief animation related to one of the characters (in the East Blue through Skypeia - I think; I don't recall the exact moment when it changed to something else, but I know Robin was the last to be included - it was their individual Wanted posters wafting toward the camera, and thereafter, it was their reactions to being peered at through a spyglass - possibly inspiring May's "Destroy" Finisher from Guilty Gear? - followed by a relevant activity or possessions), accompanied by a snippet of theme music. Luffy's is a triumphant trumpet scale that sounds like old-school superhero fanfare. Zoro's is...Zorro-sounding with a dash of samurai flavor. Nami's is a slinky spy melody. Usopp's is whimsical and clownish like zydeco music as inspired by Bulk & Skull. Sanji's is suave and jazzy. Chopper has kind of a woodwind melody with a hurried and tense quality. Robin's is mysterious, smoky, and sexy like a femme fatale from an old noir detective movie. Franky's is bombastic and celebratory. And Brook's starts out with a haunting hum before ending with a few notes of "Binx's Brew" (or "Booze" in the original Japanese because kids in the West aren't supposed to know what alcohol is, and it's the one song that Brook knows how to play). Even Vivi gets her own bumper during the Little Garden and Alabasta arcs, with music that is kind of regal and forelorn, highlighting her true station and her feelings about the state of her country. They match their respective characters perfectly. My only criticism is that the bumpers are, for the most part, chosen at random, with no hint that "we're switching focus from this character's fight," or "we're going to follow this character through town now." I don't care much for the opening or ending theme music that I've heard so far (even the fan-favorite, "We Are," failed to grab me like it probably should have), but these short bumper themes are the kind of character expression I dig.
Speaking of Wanted posters, there is another episode from the Enies Lobby arc I forgot to mention, wherein the entire Straw Hat Crew get Wanted posters and Bounties (previously, it was just Luffy, Zoro, and Robin). The most notable being Robin's updated poster to a more recent image, Chopper being disappointed that his Bounty is only fifty Berries, and Sanji needing to be hand-drawn because the press couldn't get a picture of him for some reason.
But not really, because the Sabaody Archipelago arc starts out pretty light-hearted with the Straw Hats trying to find a way to get to Fishman Island without the Thousand Sunny being crushed by water pressure (even though it's made from the wood of a legendary, giant, nigh-indestructible tree) because Nami's Log Pose is pointing downward. They soon meet a young mermaid named Camie (whom Sanji is delighted to see after his encounter with an elder mermaid in Enies Lobby that "never happened") and her talking, Rastafarian New Yorker starfish, who are hoping to rescue their Octopus Man boss from a group of human trafficking bikers. The gang leader wears a mask that makes him look like a Fist Of the North Star character, and seems to have a grudge against Sanji. The joke behind this reveal plays out a touch too long, but it's followed by an even better joke when Sanji kicks the man in the face so hard and so many times that it turns him handsome (possibly several years before Family Guy did a worse version of the same joke with Meg?) and he wants to become Sanji's disciple. Also, the captured Octopus Man is revealed to be Hatchan, a reformed member of Arlong's crew whom Zoro defeated back then. Hatchan has a sun emblem on his forehead that will be important later.
But for now, he leads the Straw Hats to the Sabaody Archipelago, home of fantastical new tech like bubble bikes, and morally reprehensible activities like kidnapping, human/Fishman trafficking, slavery, torture, and public assassinations. That bubble tech is what the Straw Hats will need to coat their ship (courtesy of Gol D. Roger's former first mate!!!) so they can get to Fishman Island. But because the criminal element on Sabaody (not counting the other nine rookie Pirates with 100M+ Berry Bounties who have come to witness a Slavery Auction and maybe discover something even more fun) get the richest from kidnapping mermaids (read: Camie gets kidnapped for the auction), Zoro gets bored and lost going for a walk, and there's a family of disgusting, pompous aristocrats with diplomatic immunity riding their slaves around town, shooting any "peasant" who makes unwarranted sensory contact with them, and snatching new harem wives off the street at random, Luffy has some new asses to kick.
When he punches one of said aristocrats (let's just call him Snot-Nosed, Fat Space Elvis) who was in the process of acquiring Camie for his slave collection, it causes an international incident that draws the full might of the Marines to the Archipelago, which, at this point in the story, is like a Buster Call times ten, plus four Pacifista cyborgs who look like Kuma, as well as an Admiral with light powers and Kuma himself.
Despite teaming up with the other "Supernova" rookies (including a mafioso-looking captain who can shrink his entire crew and ship's artillery and store them on his body, and has the unfortunate name of Gang Bang) and "Dark King" Rayleigh (the aforementioned first mate of the King Of the Pirates), the Straw Hats can only struggle in vain while their shaky allies are slaughtered and Kuma swats them away one by one, leaving Luffy for last.
Likewise, we in the audience can only stare at the empty, silent aftermath of the Navy's wrath as Luffy is also swatted out of existence.
The credits roll and a filler episode is previewed. But for the first time in over four hundred episodes, Luffy's sign-off declaration is nowhere to be heard. He's not gonna be King Of the Pirates.
Of course, there are hints in the finale's dialogue (particularly between Kuma and Rayleigh) that the Warlord's touch does not mean death like we previously thought, and we know that there are at least another six hundred episodes after this. But when you've heard "I'm gonna be King Of the Pirates!" over four hundred times, the one time you don't hear it is something you notice. It isn't final, but it feels that way.
I think my in-the-moment reaction was something like, "What‽ Holy shit! He didn't say it! Oh, my god! What now?"
What now is that I keep forgetting to mention important things, which shouldn't come as a surprise because of how massive and lore-dense One Piece is, but this is a big one.
In addition to Devil Fruits (don't get me started on the fact that there are types and models to these awesomely damned things), Sea Prism Stones, Dials, solidified clouds, Poneglyphs, Rain Powder, ancient weapons, the Six Powers, Transponder Snails, Log Poses, and enough other weird gadgets, characters, and techniques for a Buggy-themed ICP cover band to write a lifetime of "Miracles" parodies, there is also a force (maybe capitalize the F?) called Haki.
Haki is One Piece's answer to ki, hamon, spiritual pressure, etc.; basically a life energy that varies in amount and strength from person to person, if it is strong enough and/or focused enough, it can make people sick, knock them unconscious, manipulate their will, or be infused into weapons to increase their effectiveness. There are probably earlier instances (like when Blackbeard freaked our Luffy back in Mock Town), but the first mention of it that I can remember was when Shanks knocked out half of Whitebeard's crew just by showing up for their meeting in the Enies Lobby arc. Luffy activated it twice during the Sabaody Archipelago arc (stopping Masked Duval's bull, and knocking out the audience at the human auction) without knowing what it was or how to trigger it. Kind of interesting that the author would introduce a new battle concept in the arc where the main characters (and because it's always a good idea to give the villains a prison yard flex moment for hype purposes, the other nine strongest Pirates in the Four Blues) get killed.
Haki is One Piece's answer to ki, hamon, spiritual pressure, etc.; basically a life energy that varies in amount and strength from person to person, if it is strong enough and/or focused enough, it can make people sick, knock them unconscious, manipulate their will, or be infused into weapons to increase their effectiveness. There are probably earlier instances (like when Blackbeard freaked our Luffy back in Mock Town), but the first mention of it that I can remember was when Shanks knocked out half of Whitebeard's crew just by showing up for their meeting in the Enies Lobby arc. Luffy activated it twice during the Sabaody Archipelago arc (stopping Masked Duval's bull, and knocking out the audience at the human auction) without knowing what it was or how to trigger it. Kind of interesting that the author would introduce a new battle concept in the arc where the main characters (and because it's always a good idea to give the villains a prison yard flex moment for hype purposes, the other nine strongest Pirates in the Four Blues) get killed.
Now, we all "know" the Straw Hats aren't dead because of the little dialogue hints and the fact that we're nowhere near halfway done catching up with this monster series, so let's dispense with the preamble and find out what happens next!
What happened is that before Kuma hits people with his Paw-Paw strike, he often asks them about their ideal vacation spot. Sometimes the destination turns out to be more of a Monkey’s Paw than a bear paw, and the physics of how people actually survive his strikes boil down to "it's a cartoon," but Kuma can control where he sends people, and swat them there at super-sonic speeds without crushing them into gory pancakes in the process.
We get little anime canon episodes throughout these next two arcs called "The Friends' Whereabouts," that have Franky getting repaired by Dr. Vegapunk (the mind behind the Pacifista program, whom Dr. Hogback name-dropped in Thriller Bark), Robin battling the forces of a Communist/Nazi allegory nation (and showing her growth as a character from when she was a reviled and betrayed child on the run) in a distinctly different animation style that has a foggy, retro fluidity, Usopp battling giant plant monsters (which I watched as little of as possible for obvious phobia-related reasons) with a fellow masked Brave Warrior, Chopper playing doctor to some unruly giant birds while poorly-aged tribal native stereotypes try to eat him, Nami learning weather "magic" from an eccentric cloud island scientist, Zoro getting lost and tortured in a creepy castle by Perona (whom I never thought I would be happy to see again, but this was among my favorite character dynamics in this "new era" of One Piece), and Sanji...learning things about himself...?...on an LGBTQ+ island. These little catch-up stories are fun, make me want to stay invested in the narrative, and use character-appropriate bumpers for once. But until I get to a point in the story that tells me otherwise, they all end on cliffhangers, and that makes me mad!
Because of her past, Hancock (because a character named Gang Bang was too subtle, I guess?) hates men and sees everyone as so far beneath her that she literally bends over backwards to look down on them. Her Devil Fruit powers don't help with genuine personal connections, either. That is, until she tries to seduce and petrify Luffy...and it doesn't work.
Thinking that her feelings for him are poison and he could pose a threat to her, she sentences Luffy to a public fight to the death with the Gorgon Sisters, who, like the rest of the Amazon Lily elites (most of whom were petrified for helping Luffy earlier in the arc) use Haki to enhance their physical strength (could the Six Powers be Haki?) and weapons. But most interesting of all, they can predict Luffy's movements, which means Mantra (that predictive life-sense ability from Skypeia) is Haki!
Public perception of Luffy begins to change, however, when he starts pausing the fight to move the petrified women out of harm's way, leaps onto one of the Sisters' back to cover her brand and protect the audience from the "curse," and when given the choice between a ship to find his crew or asking Hancock to de-petrify her subjects, he shocks her by choosing the latter. Luffy, ladies and gentlemen!
As he is about to leave on Hancock's ship, though, she falls ill with a bad case of Valentine's Disease and Luffy learns of his brother's defeat and impending execution. So they team up using Hancock's status as a Warlord as a pretense to sneak Luffy into Impel Down to rescue Ace while she half-heartedly joins the brewing war with Whitebeard.
I rarely post anything on YouTube, but I'm a frequent commenter and content supporter, and prior to the original writing of this portion of the review, I commented on one of Doug Walker's videos as follows:
It's not just you, Doug; Buggy the Clown didn't land for me in the anime at first. But he is AMAZING in the Impel Down arc (not going to spoil it, but the basic idea is the "Lock Up" episode of BTAS in Dante’s Inferno with One Piece characters, done as a full season).
That is, until he ends up joining forces with Buggy the Clown (who, like I said, really shines as a character here), Mr. Three and Bon Clay from Baroque Works (as well as an underground LGBTQ+ rebel network run by the double-Queen of Bon Clay's home country - where Sanji is currently discovering himself)...and fucking Crocodile‽
It's almost like they're some kind of...Suicide Squad. And I love how surreal it all is!
Yes, this arc is merely a transitory stop on a grander journey to somewhere else (considering Blackbeard shows up with his crew to wreck the place for fun and Luffy just barely misses Ace as he's hauled away to Marineford for execution. But seeing Luffy work so well as a leader (considering that his makeshift subordinates are almost all former leaders themselves - Buggy, Crocodile, the disgraced Fishman Warlord Jinbei, and legendary Queen of Queens, Iva) with crew members who are either former villains of his or complete strangers is a testament to his emotional intelligence and a sight to behold.
This was where I originally chose to stop watching until I got the first seven issues of the One Piece Multi-Piece written, as well as the penultimate arc I reviewed before the time-skip that precedes Fishman Island. The final arc review is as follows:
Now, in past issues of the Multi-Piece, I have gone back and forth between calling him Gold Roger, Gold D. Roger, and Gol D. Roger. It's interesting to note here that the characters in One Piece most often refer to him as Gold Roger (even the narrator), but those in the know, or who have incredible power, refer to him correctly as Gol D. Roger, almost as if a sheer act of will (perhaps a "Will of D"? Or maybe Haki? It's too soon to know for sure because there's still a long way for me to go) has made the average person forget his real name. There have clearly been other characters with the D. initial who know of its significance and are still referred to with it in their names (like Luffy, Garp, Dragon, Saul, Ace, and the late? Rouge), but there's enough in the early Marineford episodes to back up my hypothetical so far.
We also learn, as Whitebeard's fleet attacks Marineford and the incident is broadcast to Sabaody, that the Supernova rookies aren't dead after all. But then Luffy and his Suicide Squad crew from Impel Down literally crash the party, and it devolves into twenty episodes of that Looney Tunes gag where the weak comic relief picks a fight with the super-strong antagonist and keeps walking offscreen to get his ass kicked: Luffy runs toward the scaffold where Ace is set to be beheaded, some high-ranking Marine knocks him back or stalls him, he gets up and keeps going, lather, rinse, repeat for ten fucking hours straight while rubble and Pirate and Marine fodder fly every which way. There is an attempt to add variety and diversion with cutaways to Buggy's prison cult leader shenanigans and Hancock playing both sides to keep her Warlord status while ensuring that her oblivious, loud-mouthed crush succeeds at rescuing Ace, and the interactions between Luffy, his former enemies, and his new, tenuous allies, the Whitebeard Pirates, continues to be interesting. It's even impressive how many unique character designs Oda manages to pack into this arc. But it still starts with twenty episodes of Luffy taking ten hours to watch Sixty Minutes because he's getting his ass kicked by that Paula Abdul song with the rapping cartoon cat.
When opposites finally stop attracting and Luffy can make progress by inadvertently using Haki (re-dubbed here as "The Emperor's Spirit" for some stupid reason) on the entirety of the Marine forces, his path is blocked once more; this time, it's Grandpa Garp. This makes things uninteresting from a combat standpoint but thematically important for showing Luffy's growth as a character because he goes into Second Gear and non-lethally one-shots Garp, finally reaching Ace and freeing him with the help of a wax key from the crafty Mister Three.
After the brothers make their way back through the carnage and the Marines shift focus to taking down Whitebeard, though, they are intercepted by a Lava-powered admiral named Akainu who makes most of the previous twenty episodes irrelevant because, while elemental ("Logia-Type") Devil Fruit users are pretty much invincible, Akainu has "power so hot it can burn even fire," and that includes punching a giant hole through Ace's chest while Luffy watches the remains of his brother's necklace bounce around in slow motion like a Martha Wayne reference.
Portgas D. Ace, formerly Gol D. Ace, is dead. And after all the time and effort wasted on rescuing him (on both sides of the screen), I hate it. I'm not sad and broken like Luffy, or filled with murderous wrath like Garp and Whitebeard. I just straight up hate Ace's death, and the arc leading up to it, for making Alabasta, Enies Lobby, and Impel Down (three of my favorite arcs so far, all of which had some focus on Ace) into retroactive wastes of my fucking time, as well as making the waste of time that is the beginning of Marineford into a meta-waste of my fucking time.
But I also understand its narrative purpose (besides serving as a source of many flashbacks to dump personal lore on the audience about Luffy's childhood and Ace's search for family and a reason to exist). Ace is Luffy's final childhood crutch: a big brother to protect him. If Luffy were to succeed and have Ace join him (or Ace continued to wander the seas alone), there would always be that lingering dependency to hold Luffy back, and his shonen protagonist status would come to feel unearned. Since Sabaody changed the game, One Piece has been about Luffy growing as a leader and a solo act, showing that he doesn't necessarily need others to achieve his dream, but he wants them, and has the ability to gather and lead them no matter the circumstances. And as cool as Ace is, his presence would passively hinder that going forward.
Next come a rapid-fire series of events as the massive, macho, tremor-powered Whitebeard avenges Ace's death by punching Akainu so hard that he reduces Marineford to rubble and sends the magma-powered Admiral plummeting to the bottom of the ocean...maybe. Then Blackbeard shows up and reveals that killing one of Whitebeard's crew to get his darkness powers, defeating Ace, and breaking into Impel Down were all parts of his grand plan to do...something, something, King Of the Pirates, I guess.
In the course of the battle with Marine headquarters and the Blackbeard Pirates, Whitebeard succumbs to the cumulative effects of over five hundred wounds and dies on his feet, his back unmarred by retreat, like the gigantic badass pirate that he is. In his dying moments, however, we get a flashback to a friendly parlay with Gol D. Roger, wherein the then-future King Of the Pirates begins to tell Whitebeard the old legend behind the D initial (but the flashback ends before the story can begin) and name-drops a place called Raftel. This is interesting because Whitebeard's dying words are to tell Blackbeard (whose real name is Marshall D. Teach, by the way) that he's not the one Roger was waiting for, and to shout over the Transponder Snail broadcast that the One Piece is real. So, wherever Raftel is, I'm betting my Berries that it's the location of the One Piece.
Now, with Ace and Whitebeard dead, Blackbeard makes his scheme known (kind of) when he covers the statuesque corpse of Whitebeard with a black sheet, steps beneath it, and later emerges like a morbid David Copperfield, revealing that he now has Whitebeard's Tremor powers in addition to his own Darkness powers (which is supposedly impossible, as a few bystanders state that eating more than one Devil Fruit will make a person's body explode).
As Blackbeard uses his combined powers to further pulverize Navy HQ and turn the frozen sea into a collaboration between Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, and M.C. Escher, the so-called "War Of the Best" whips into a frenzy of bloodlust and needless tragedy on both sides, leading to one hell of a reveal about Coby (yeah, he and Helmeppo have been here the whole time...): that he has the same kind of Haki - or rather, Mantra - as Aisa, a Shandian child who was an important supporting character in the Skypeia arc. Overwhelmed by the collective bloodlust of the Marines and Pirates, and the massive-and-growing body count, Coby attempts to put a stop to the bloodshed and is almost killed by Akainu...until mother-fucking SHANKS rolls up and casually blocks the Admiral's lava punch, saving Coby's life and convincing everyone to stand down.
Though this is far from the only wow moment in Marineford, it is the only one, aside from Ace's lineage reveal and Whitebeard's flashback and final words, that made me pop off. Shanks showing up is this arc's Aokiji swerve, its Kuma drop; the moment that made Marineford worth watching.
And we're not done yet!
Meanwhile to all of this spectacle and carnage, Buggy gets a funny reunion with Shanks and winds up accidentally saving Luffy and Jinbei (a Fishman and former Warlord whom Ace befriended and Luffy rescued in Impel Down) with the help of Crocodile, after they got perforated by Akainu because putting large, cauterized holes in people is his passion, I guess.
Throw in the sudden arrival of Pirate doctor Trafalgar Law (who lives in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, and was one of the Supernova rookies who got handed back in Sabaody) to somehow fix two people with lava floes for chests even though we already saw that wound kill two other, much stronger people, and Hancock offering Amazon Lily as a refuge for Luffy and Jinbei to recover, and I am back on board with this arc.
But why did it have to take half of the arc (and some moments that, while cool, are still contrived, "help me; I'm a writer trapped in a corner!" bullshit) to make me feel that way?
Once we get away from the spectacle, there is some admirably handled commentary on the polar morality of revisionist history and war (i.e.: treating "the bad guys" as generally inhuman, when, with a few notable exceptions from our own history, they are just as flawed and human and misguided by their views as the rest of us), the shortsighted nature of band-aid solutions (civilians thinking that Ace and Whitebeard being dead just magically erased all Pirates, even though Whitebeard was a peacekeeper and protector who held back lesser Pirate threats), and the destructive nature of grief (Luffy eventually awakens back on Amazon Lily, still so traumatized by Ace's death that he thinks for an instant that he dreamed the last two arcs, and when reality sets in, he risks re-injuring and killing himself by going on a rampage that destroys half of the island).
The Marineford arc as a collection of episodes is still far from over at this point, as a new chapter in Luffy's story, and a resolution for the rest of his scattered crew, is about to begin.
Following his almost-life-ending mental breakdown after being hit with the full weight of accepting his brother, Ace's death, and throwing a quarter of Amazon Lily at another quarter of Amazon Lily (thereby destroying half of it because shonen superpowers and math), the next episode transitions into a flashback to Luffy's childhood (aside from the previous flashbacks to Luffy's childhood that involved Garp trying to physically abuse the Piracy out of him with his "fists of love" because old men punching toddlers in the head is funny?).
It's set ten years prior to Marineford, when Luffy has already accidentally eaten the Gum Gum fruit and been saved by Shanks, but beginning just before he is introduced to his future adopted older brother (and at a point where Luffy hasn't learned to use his powers effectively, resulting in him missing his target and knocking himself out on the rebound), the flashback tells of how Garp sent Luffy to be raised by a group of mountain bandits and their formidable matriarch, Dadan, who had already been tasked with raising Ace. At this point, Ace knows and despises his own birthright, and goes out of his way to make Luffy's life miserable (and that of anyone else who is or wants to be a Pirate), turning the beginning of this Grey Terminal mini-arc into a physical training montage for Luffy as he gets stranded in the forest trying to catch up with the older and more agile Ace. When he finally manages to catch Ace, he discovers the cutthroat scavengers' wasteland that is Grey Terminal (a suburban landfill where the High Town of the adjoining Goa Kingdom dumps its trash - including the human variety), and a runaway Goa noble named Sabo whom Ace hangs out and commits crimes with. The three of them soon become friends and found brothers when Luffy endures hours of torture without revealing the location of their Pirate Savings to a member of the Bluejam Pirates. The boys craft their own Jolly Roger, vowing to head out to sea when they've swindled enough capital to buy a ship, under the banner of the American Sign Language Pirates. I joke because it's just a skull and bones with ASL painted on it in primary colors, but it obviously stands for Ace, Sabo, and Luffy. Unfortunately, all three of them want to be captain, so they make a bet that whoever can kill the giant tiger in the forest first gets to be captain.
This brings them into contact with an old man made of eyebrows named Naguri, who has Conqueror's Haki (or Emperor's Haki, or "the Emperor's Spirit," depending on the episode and whether it's subbed or dubbed) and agrees to train Luffy to get him physically on par with Ace and Sabo. This amounts to the old martial arts movie standby of making him do menial labor (in this case, it's chopping wood like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, but offscreen instead of with a montage).
Meanwhile, in preparation for the arrival of one of the Celestial Dragons (a.k.a. World Nobles), the Goa Kingdom aristocracy have hired the Bluejam Pirates to set incendiary and explosive devices all over Grey Terminal to be set off on an unusually windy day, trapping and incinerating all manner of trash because nobility was the real garbage all along.
On the day of the fire, things start to get interesting, as the majority of Grey Terminal's residents are rescued by...Dragon, Iva, and...Kuma?
There was a moment where things pulled focus to the dojo where Zoro grew up, and I thought, oh, fuck; are they going to pull another "these characters didn't know they knew each other all along!" like they did with Brook and Laboon?, but instead, Oda decided to make things genuinely interesting by revealing that Kuma was a Revolutionary working with Monkey D. Dragon and Iva all along. There's still that dramatic irony, six degrees of missed connections thing going on because of Dragon being Luffy's dad, but it didn't trigger the same negative response as when it happened in Thriller Bark.
The next day, the World Noble arrives just as Sabo is setting sail to run away from his shitty, sociopathic family, and straight up merc's Sabo's ship, leaving him presumed dead. However, there is enough dialogue and animation to suggest that Dragon saved Sabo's life, and we will see the boy again in the future, looking completely different. For now, though, we get a little more of a time lapse and some montage training as Ace and Luffy work through their shared loss and try to cooperate in taking down the giant tiger with their brother gone. Vowing to set sail when they come of age, as Sabo had, Ace and Luffy have trained for seven years, at which point Ace departs, leaving Luffy to get himself up to par with the beginning of One Piece over the next three years. With Luffy now setting sail on his own small boat (upon which rests a certain barrel, hinting that he won't make it very far before the first episode), a realization of the series' sense of time sets in. The Grey Terminal flashback is set ten years before Marineford. Ace trains for seven years after the "death" of Sabo, and Luffy trains for another three after that. Which means the past five hundred-three episodes, minus that decade of offscreen training that only lasted an episode, all took place in under a year. Let that sink in, okay...?
Back in the present, Luffy expresses sadness and shame that he ever thought he (who was unable to save Ace and Sabo or reconnect with his scattered crew) could be King Of the Pirates, as he sees himself as too weak to protect anyone (a stark contrast to his dialogue with Blueno in the Enies Lobby arc, where he gave his reasoning behind Gear Two). After losing a desperate, emotional fight to an equally injured Jinbei, Luffy expresses his desire to see his crew again, and perspectives begin to jump around: Shanks and the Whitebeard Pirates hold a funeral in the New World for Ace and Whitebeard, Garp visits Windmill Village (Luffy's hometown) where he comes to blows with a furious Dadan and offers to protect the village in Whitebeard's place, Luffy receives a training offer from Gol D. Roger's first mate, Rayleigh (whom we haven't seen since Sabaody, and who seems to have some history with the Amazons), there are flashes to the Supernova Rookies' adventures in the New World (where it's perfectly normal for any non-rain element to fall from the sky, including fire, lightning, and giant icicles), and we get continuations of the Friends' Whereabouts episodes where they have extreme reactions to the ever-changing news on the War Of the Best.
Nami winds up in Cloud Island jail when she tries to rob a bunch of absent-minded old weather wizards and fly to Sabaody on a craft she has no idea how to pilot.
Zoro comes to blows with a tribe of human-mimicking mandrils and seeks training from Hawkeye Mihawk (the Warlord who almost killed him and casually sliced a galleon in half back in East Blue), all the while being totally oblivious of Perona's developing tsundere feelings for him, reinforcing my previous declaration that they are my new favorite character dynamic.
Usopp has gotten fat from indulging in the ready-to-eat junk food that grows on the island where he's been stranded and fighting off carnivorous plants with the help of the beetle-armored hero, Heracles. In his desperate attempts to get off the island and reunite with the Straw Hats, he finds his path blocked by a pack of kaiju who were lured to the island (soon revealed to be a giant, Sea King-devouring carnivorous plant itself). Changing events lead Usopp to beg Heracles for training so he can turn all of his fat to muscle.
Sanji is still learning things about himself on Iva's Kamabakka Island when news of Ace's death comes to the Queendom, and things don't get any better for him when Iva herself arrives, showing Sanji just how physically, mentally, spiritually, and nutritionally outclassed he is compared to the entire Kamabakka population. Now, he must incapacitate every single one of them and retrieve their recipes so he can feed and fight himself stronger in preparation for the day when he reunites with the rest of the Straw Hats.
Chopper makes peace between the giant birds and the tribal stereotypes, getting one of the birds to fly him to Sabaody once he has studied every medicinal plant on the island where he is stranded, and learned organic chemistry from the stereotypes because they were secretly Wakanda all along.
After helping a group of Revolutionaries bring down the bridge-building Nazis, Robin accepts their help getting back to Sabaody on the condition that she comes with them to meet their leader. And you all know by now who the leader of the Revolutionaries is!
Franky overcomes being turned British because he'd been drinking tea instead of cola, and causes several legendary incidents on the departed Dr. Vegapunk's winter island (including literally nuking his own face off and surviving because shonen anime, cartoon logic, and cyborgs) in search of a ship that will get him back to Sabaody, ultimately deciding to upgrade himself and build his own ice-breaker...in a cave! With a box of scraps!
What changes the Straw Hats' priorities from a quick reunion to rigorous training is that Luffy returns to Marineford, causes a silent ruckus during the ongoing repairs there with a smile on his face, and rings an important Marineford landmark called the Ox Bell to get the attention of the press and give a moment of silence in Ace's honor.
Speaking of Ace, one defining characteristic of his design is the misspelled tattoo of his name on his arm (reading ASCE, with the S crossed out). When we finally get a reveal of what the Straw Hats saw in the paper after Luffy's visit to Marineford, it turns out that Luffy had decorated his own arm with a similar tattoo, reading 3D2Y with the 3D crossed out, telling his crew that instead of reuniting at Sabaody immediately (originally three days from when the Sabaody arc began), they would meet up again after training for two years.
There are some other important tidbits, like Coby officially learning that he has Haki, the reveal of the World Elders (who express a distaste for "those D's," referring to Dragon, Garp, Luffy, Blackbeard, and any others we may encounter later), and a Warlord named Doflamingo Donquixote (who has puppeteering powers, was behind the trafficking operation on Sabaody, and looks like an evil Elton John) finally putting an end to Moria (so he's automatically my favorite One Piece villain now).
The Marineford arc concludes (for real) with Luffy beginning his training with Rayleigh by learning about the different types of Haki (and confirming nearly all of my speculations about it from previous arcs). This season finale wraps up with the first time I actually liked "We Are" as a theme song (because the Japanese version is more hype and visual accompaniment makes all the difference), and instead of the usual "To Be Continued," we get a screen that says "To the New World."
At the time I'm editing this compilation in early January 2025, I don't know when I will release it or the Fishman Island review, as my "three month" hiatus lasted much longer than expected, I got into reviewing DAIMA as it came out on a weekly basis, and my winter financial situation temporarily changed my priorities away from content creation.
But please stay on course by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and joining my Crew on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest snail transmissions of news on my content.
To the New World!
I'm gonna be Master Of Tickets!
Piece,
Out.
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