One Piece: The Modern Odyssey (A Literary Analysis & Video Essay) | AxelBeats!

when it comes to the classic stories that define an era it is probably an easy reaction to go to things like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1984 Don Quixote and of course Homer's Iliad and odyssey the last of which being a story about this long journey which even inspired the name for the new one-piece game a name that is incredibly fitting because while one piece might not be the perfect story I think it is absolutely an important and Monumental epic that will leave its mark on history and so today I want to take a look back through the story and talk about why aichiro oda's one piece is the modern Odyssey now I do kind of want to get ahead of things for all the people who are about to comment that I'm giving one piece too much credit and that it's just a manga and it could never be as important as one of the classics especially considering one piece is so silly and ridiculous and unrealistic and let me tell you this as someone who has studied the classics and who has a degree in history The Odyssey is plenty ridiculous itself it involves a man being given a bag that contains the wind men being turned into pigs cyclopses sirens and a god going on a rampage because Odysseus's men ate his cow just because a story is Fantastical and involves unrealistic elements does not mean that it doesn't hold value for those who don't know the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Homer way back in ancient Greece The Iliad is all about the ending of the 10-year-long Trojan War and the story of Achilles while the Odyssey follows Odysseus on his journey home from that War which thanks to the interference of the Gods takes another 10 years these stories have stood the test of time for several reasons firstly they are absolute masterpieces focusing on some of the greatest of Greek Heroes but I would argue that the reason for their persistent values is the lens that they offer on Humanity at the time they were written The Iliad is a story all about Duty a quest for honor and Glory the importance of paying respect towards the gods as well as themes of Love companionship fate and free will to us many of these ideas might seem a bit dated or not very inspired to talk about at least but at the time these were the tenets of life that were pivotal to adhere to you gotta remember these were published in the 7th Century BC you have wars happening all the time so themes like Duty Defending Your Home and winning Glory are these tangible and very real ideas in the minds of the populace because at any point they could be forced onto them meanwhile The Odyssey is coming home from that Hospitality loyalty perseverance and spiritual growth while one story tells us about the hopes and fears of Greece at the time the other focuses on the reality and work that's involved in growing as a person and what's cool about all of this is that we can look back and despite living in very different circumstances and times we can think hey these were people too and they needed to grow they needed to fight and work the same way that we do and it's this very unique tie to the Past through the lens of a 20-year long journey while one piece might not be as serious as these stories were all the time I think in a very similar way it can be used to look back on the time that it was created in this too is a journey that spans two decades and the world that we began this journey on is drastically different than the one that we are continuing it through now and as such in a way one piece acts as a time capsule used to highlight our modern era but to fully appreciate one piece and why it's kept its relevance all this time we need to go back to the beginning before we get into the actual video this six hour Behemoth took an entire two months of essentially non-stop work and I won't spend a ton of time here but if you do enjoy it please consider leaving a like and subscribing or if you want to go above and beyond you can support the channel through checking out memberships or my patreon these projects are kind of insurmountable on their own so this kind of support helps me to hire editors like Dakota Broski and Kevin from who asked you who helped me on the alabasta sky Pia and water 7 sections of this video as well as Little Shelter who helped me with some of my audio work links to all of their channels and my patreon will be down in the description thank you so much for your consideration and I hope you enjoy the rest of the video Shonen Jump the magazine that one piece would be released in was in a bit of a transformative period in the mid to late 90s with the end of Akira toriyama's Dragon Ball a vacuum was left behind that was incredibly noticeable Dragon Ball had elevated this Magazine's popularity in a way that no series before had managed to do and when the series finally met its end there was no replacement to pick up that torch sure slam dunk and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure were doing very well in their own right but they were also fairly Niche with slam dunk focusing on basketball and JoJo's being well JoJo's while both were great and were definitely the forerunners of what Shonen Jump had to offer at the time they lacked the wide-ranged appeal that Dragon Ball had and that's where aichiro Oda comes into the picture Oda since the age of four wanted to be a manga artist being hugely influenced by Akira toriyama's Dragon Ball however also taking an interest in Pirates which was sparked by the series Vicky the Viking by 17 Oda had submitted his manga wanted which earned him several Awards and ultimately opened the door for him to start a job at weekly Shonen Jump as an assistant manga artist even as early as wanted you can tell that this is Oda the line art is kind of rough the visual quality definitely isn't where it would develop into but you got that patented Oda paneling style a very similar method of drawing characters that classic Dawn effect and a solid use of Comedy to supplement the action the most in your face thing that you'll notice though is this heavy Reliance on speed lines that he would tone down in the future but all the same this was a great starting point for him during his time here he would work for a bunch of different series such as suizon police Gang Jungle King tarchan and Kappa man which all helped him develop his unique artistic style with the most famous or inFAMOUS series that he helped on at the time being bironi Kenshin which was great of course before you consider all of the let's call them issues that popped up with the series Creator Oda himself would go on to create God's gift for the future ikiako and two one shots that would lead him towards beginning one piece with monster and Roman it's done monster would focus on the character of ryuma a prototype for Zorro while romance Dawn had an being a prelude for Nami as well as a familiar main character in Monkey D Luffy the rubbery pirate who wore a straw hat in this version Luffy would be given his hat by his grandfather and Pirates would be split into two groups the violent kind who attacked and pillaged being called Morgan ears and the adventuring kind peacemates these fought off the bad pirates and only wanted to travel around the world with these series seeing some kind of success and acting as a rough pilot for One Piece Oda would be ready to start serialization on one piece through weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. this was a story that he had been making notes for and planning since he was much much younger and is told in an incredibly interesting way making use of both long and short form storytelling being famous for foreshadowing and building of both the world and characters through these well thought out an emotional impactful moments all while holding true to a very strong sense of comedy and this is the key to what makes one piece such a great and accessible story there is a seamless blending of humor action and depth the last of which being my personal favorite element because one piece is as deep a story as you want to make it if you want it just to be a colorful fun pirate Adventure it can be but if you want more to the story you can look into characters names as they're often inspired by real life pirates you have the themes of each island which are more often inspired by different cultures Nations and architecture the message of each Arc which always focuses on a new topic or perspective or even the design of its characters which are often modeled after famous actors or people throughout history there are a million little things and details which are sprinkled throughout the series to add depth anywhere you might look Oda is never in your face without anything other than the idea of having fun and being on an adventure but he will always hold out a hand that you can take to learn more about the world or our own world's history and I think that is so interesting and cool that said though as you probably know if you've made it this far in the video at this point one piece has been going for over a quarter Century reaching nearly 1100 chapters and episodes at this point and has certainly changed over the years a style of Storytelling that we see today is drastically different to what we saw 10 years ago and that is drastically different than what we saw 10 years before that and this process of growth in writing style is allowed to freely develop and take shape as we so often explore new islands and get new opportunities to tell different stories however it's probably safe to say that the true formula that would stay at the heart of what one piece is would start taking shape around the baratier and solidify during our Long Park but before we can can get into those we have to jump back to July 19th of 1997 when weekly Shonen Jump released one piece chapter one romance Dawn right away I want to talk about the first two pages of the manga because I think it shows off a lot of where oda's style was at this point the first panel we have Roger on his knees with the Executioner standing on either side of him all in front of a plain white background and this use of white space especially in moments of impact and importance kind of makes the rest of the world fade away in the anime we often see these moments filled with complete silence the music cuts out everything in the background kind of Fades off and when you're dealing with worlds full of color and excitement these bits of nothingness can be incredibly effective a few examples of him using these throughout the series are vivi's goodbye but nothing happened moment Blackbeard's monologue and Jaya and of course Luffy getting his straw hat from Shanks the these in my opinion are often one of oda's secret weapons in producing stunning scenes that really sit with the audience and while it's not unusual to see them it is used sparingly enough to feel really special when we do see them the second panel shows Roger telling the world that his treasure is out there and all they need to do is find it and claim it for themselves doing several things at once in terms of Storytelling this is the hook for the series both the characters in the world and the audience are interested in what this great treasure the one piece could be and while this is the most in your face and obvious example of it this kind of leaving hints and crumbs of questions that need to be answered is a Mainstay in how Oda tells his story it is through exploring the world meeting new people learning about history and seeing fantastic places that we are drip fed the answers to the question he lays out for us but each time we get one of those answers we're led into a bigger world with more and more possibilities and more questions for us to latch onto each loose end that we follow brings us to two more and creates a want to learn more however it's never at the expense of the story we never feel like we need these answers or we won't be able to enjoy things and withholding information never gets in the way of what the crew is doing and that's an important balance that Oda manages to keep but just as important is the historical implications of this panel turns out Oda loves history even leaving a note at the start of this chapter in the tonkoban which explains that he had been Gathering and reading reference materials to create this story but regretted that real pirates often don't leave much in terms of written records because they're out having too much fun but even despite the limited access to their stories Oda uses bits and pieces that we know about them to place real world inspiration within this story that he's creating so while this world is obviously a manga or an anime there are still these little beads of history and accuracy spread throughout it that hold the structure he builds in place later we would meet the seven Warlords of the sea based on Privateer Pirates who worked for different nations as their attack dogs impel down is based on Dante alligiri's Divine Comedy Amazon Lily is based on themiskira from Greek mythology and of course Roger is no exception as he is based on two real world Pirates being Olivier levisur and Henry Avery or Henry every depending on the source Avery was the real-life King of the Pirates who had the highest known bounty in history meanwhile levisor at his execution would throw a cryptogram into the crowd yelling find my treasure the one who may understand it with the cryptogram itself looking very much like a pony glyph and the line he yelled being extremely similar to Rogers these tie-ins to history will be found at nearly every turn throughout the story and it's just another example of that depth that I was talking about earlier it is available but only if you want to dig for it otherwise you can just enjoy the fun pirate story and finally both the third panel and the following Pages color spread show what the story is All About excitement fun adventure the world ushers in the great pirate era and we see Luffy and Nami jumping into the air surrounded by the ocean treasures and the red-haired Pirates and at the end of the day it isn't the Epic panels it isn't the historical references it is the fun that brings people back to the story week after week and that is exactly why so many people fell in love with this series the manga would go on to pick up enough popularity to get an animated release only two years later and this is where my story with one piece began now the anime does make a bit of a strange choice right off the bat while the manga began with Roger's execution and then moved into Luffy's backstory with Shanks the anime would instead make Roger's execution into part of its opening theme which is something I love because it makes the series super accessible to anyone who sees it you won't need to know everything that's happened and early on as long as you hear the description at the beginning of the episode you have a rough idea that these Pirates are looking for the one piece but then they make a much worse Choice by delaying Luffy's backstory with Shanks until the fourth episode and instead beginning with Kobe alvita and shellstown the issue here is that Kobe at least early on [ __ ] sucks like he is insanely annoying and whiny and I've seen literally dozens of people either drop the show entirely or almost drop it because of him it was a very strange decision to lead with him and I genuinely can't think of why they might have made that choice other than to maybe bring some more character focused action right at the start but aside from this decision the rest of early one piece is just full of charm from Luffy's always present smile to Nami sneaking around behind the scenes there are little things all over the place that keep you watching and get you invested in these characters and speaking of characters let's take a look at the end of chapter 2 and the start of chapter 3 where Luffy is talking to Kobe on their way to shellstown about wanting to possibly recruit Zorro because I think this conversation is a perfect example of both a major theme and a major motif of One Piece as a whole this theme is the idea of individuality the East blue being the first Saga of one piece is broken down into six quick arcs and while each would have their own messaging attached to them they would all share in this overarching theme of individuality and what I mean by that is it doesn't matter who someone is or what group they're a part of they stand on their own you could be a pirate a marine a civilian or a Celestial Dragon everyone has their own hopes their own dreams and their own sense of morality and it isn't because someone is part of one of these groups that they are evil just in the same way that it doesn't make them good and at the beginning of chapter 3 we see Kobe explaining that he is sure Zorro is a bad person person because he was arrested by the Marines and this is built upon by the people of shellstown freaking out as soon as they hear his name however they also freak out when they hear Captain Morgan's name and this confuses Kobe because Morgan is a marine and when Luffy suggests that maybe Morgan had done something bad Kobe insists it's impossible his underlying understanding of the world is that pirates bad Marines good and this is a fairly normal assumption to be made that because someone is a marine or because they're a pirate they are good or bad inherently or in zoro's case he's a prisoner of the Marines however as we see the arc unfold Morgan is shown to be a tyrant and meanwhile we learned that Zorro had been taking prisoner because he had saved a young girl from helmeppo's Wolf so with this information in place now the audience starts thinking okay so in this story The Pirates will be the good people and the Marines are the evil ones I mean Luffy's good but then we just had alvida who was as bad as Morgan and all of the Marines under Morgan organs show themselves to be fairly Good People by the end of chapter 3 Oda has already given us this idea that all people are individuals and should be judged on that basis and not based on the title or position in the world and that is a theme that is carried throughout the entirety of the story which kinda leads me into one of Luffy's main motifs Luffy right off the bat is presented in this naive trusting and kind of heart on the sleeve manner he has a powerful sense of right and wrong but more in the line with good people care about others while bad people don't it isn't purely based on someone's actions it's their intentions as well and luckily for him one piece as a whole tends to avoid the Trope of morally gray villains that has been on the rise in modern media however what we're talking about here is his innate ability to read other people while he might not be the smartest on paper he has a surprising understanding of people on an emotional level from the first time he meets them and he will almost never let a description of someone Cloud his judgment on that person unless he is given specific details about what makes them bad from someone he cares about so when Kobe pushes back saying that he can't recruit Zorro because he's a bad guy Luffy just insists that he will recruit Zorro if he's a good person and they'll find out about that when they meet him and they come across him pretty quickly he's strung up in the Marine Courtyard being held prisoner and unable to eat and it's already nine days in luckily though the girl he saved shows up with some rice balls to feed him but not so luckily helmeppo shows up after her and crushes them into the ground it's not until helmet believes that Luffy actually interacts with Zoro directly and it is important to note that at this point Luffy still isn't sure if he wants to recruit Zorro because he's not sure if he's a good or bad person but then Zorro asked him to feed him the rice ball that had been ground into the dirt and despite it clearly tasting like well dirt he asked Luffy to tell the girl that it was delicious and to thank her and that is the moment that Luffy is sure Zoro is a good person and it's kind of like this for most of the other straw hats as well usop on the surface is a compulsive liar but Luffy sees him as someone who leads the usought Pirates and who's excited about Adventure Sanji is a womanizing flirt who is quick to anger with everyone else in the kitchen but Luffy finds him feeding Gene when he has no money to pay for his own food Nami is a thief who puts Luffy In Harm's Way she constantly pushes him away she steals his boat and yells at him to leave her alone but he sees her as someone caring talented intelligent and Incredibly hard-working not only is Luffy able to see beyond what a person says about these characters he's able to see beyond the front that they themselves put on he doesn't care who they have been what they've done or what people think of them what Luffy cares about is if they are a good person right here and right now which is why with very few exceptions Luffy never learns about his friend's past anytime their backstories are brought up he falls asleep he goes for a walk he stops listening and of the backstories he does know aside from Brooke he knows them situationally not out of his own interest he only cares about who they are when they join his crew and he can learn about all the other stuff later when they feel like it's relevant to share and while this is definitely odd it kind of makes him feel like he doesn't care about his friends it's also one of his most endearing qualities there's something inherently beautiful about people just being enough for Luffy and not needing to justify their worth Beyond just being a good person and once Luffy does put his faith in someone they have that indefinitely they are part of his crew they're part of his family and he will trust them with his life and he will offer his life up for them if needed and nothing can change that while shellstown as a whole isn't really a standout because of Kobe being again just the worst in this section the instant Bromance and Faith between Luffy and Zorro is an absolute highlight there's even this bit of comedy with Luffy being insistent that Zoro will join his crew and completely ignoring Zoro when he refuses and the reason for this is that Luffy understands this is only a semantic difference whereas Zorro believes it to be something greater Zorro has a dream for himself and he believes that joining Luffy will slow him down in reaching that goal beyond that Zoro also doesn't want to be a pirate because he doesn't want to be a bad person but Luffy sees people joining his crew as a family working towards their goals together and he doesn't believe Pirates are inherently bad either so it isn't a matter of him simply ignoring Zorro it's him understanding that he just has to show Zorro his own perspective so Luffy breaks into the Marine base steals back zoro's swords and meanwhile we have a bit of a surprise with Kobe showing up to try and untie Zorro and while he's doing this he tells Zorro that Luffy's goal is to become king of the Pirates and suddenly Zorro has someone with just as crazy a dream as he has not to mention a dream that doesn't conflict with his Kobe also tells him that Luffy punched out helmeppo the second he found out he would go back on his word to Zorro and the final piece of this puzzle is given to us when we find out that promises are incredibly important to Zorro this is another scene which is delayed in the anime as we wouldn't get it until the bratia arc 17 episodes later which again weird choice but in the manga at least this is where we get zoro's backstory his time in shimotsuki Village his rivalry with koena and the promise that they made that one of them would become the world's greatest swordsman all before kuwina's untimely death we then see Zorro begging Karina's father koshiro for her sword and then pledging to become such a famous swordsman that his name will return the heavens so she can know that he kept his promise to her what I love about this being shown to us so early in the manga is that it obviously lets us know exactly where Zoro was coming from and it helps us to understand his character but more importantly is that it tells us what his core trait is with Luffy the core of his character is his ability to see and bring out the best in others and we even see this in how he makes Kobe brave enough to try and save Zoro but with Zorro his core trait is honor his whole mission in life is upholding the promise he had made to kawina and one of the reasons that I hate the delay on showing this piece of his story to us in the anime is that the big moment that makes Zoro willing to join Luffy's crew is Luffy beating up helmeppo for trying to break their promise Luffy is someone who values honor as much as Zorro does and he has the same level of ambition if not more this is a man that Zoro can call Captain and from the moment that he joins he and Luffy prop each other up they become greater than the sum of their parts immediately Zorro tells Luffy that if he gets in the way of him becoming the greatest swordsman he will force Luffy to cut his own stomach as an apology and Luffy just tells Zoro that if he's going to be a member on the king of the Pirates crew then becoming the greatest swordsman should be a piece of cake they demand the best of each other and give everything they can in return and even as soon as their first battle together they are flawlessly coordinating their attacks and covering each other's weaknesses and together they managed to easily take down Captain Morgan and free shellstown before leaving though the Marines would confront Luffy Zorro and Kobe and demand that the Pirates leave however due to them saving the town they wouldn't try and stop them but then there's the issue of Kobe Kobe wants to be a marine but he has these new friends who are pirates and at the same time if the Marines found out that he had been on alvita's crew they would never let him join so as Luffy is leaving he eggs on Kobe he Reveals His secret to the Marines telling them that he had been captured and forced to be a cabin boy on alvida's crew making it so that they have nothing to dig up on him later and forcing Kobe to the point where he punches him to show the Marines that they aren't connected this ultimately opening up a path for Kobe to join the Marines and work towards his stream and that's Shell's town we learn about who Luffy is and how he sees the world around him we meet both good and evil Marines and Pirates Kobe joins the Marines and our pirate crew is officially up to two now something that the anime added in this section is Nami Nami is actually the first character on the crew that we see in the anime and she has this whole behind the scenes secret mission where she robs alvida's crew and then sneaks into Morgan's base to look for a map only to find that buggy has already stolen it and this does a lot of good and bad for her character on the good side I love this as an introduction for Nami it is fun it makes her feel like a real thief and it's a really cool angle for her character however this to me at least built up a weird expectation for her in my head Nami was going to be this thief or roguelike character but she obviously develops into something more akin to a weather Mage as the story progresses and the lead-in and development of that character Arc is a weird balance to me but when you look at the actual manga rather than the anime A lot of the moments that I and many others base that concept on are just not canon I mean yes she's still a thief who deals from Pirates but they're never in our face about it in the same way that the anime is I just think that's something super interesting to discuss about her character as the series continued these kind of differences would kind of become less common but it is something I wanted to bring up here as I mentioned earlier though we also have the delayed depiction of Luffy's backstory with Shanks as well here we are introduced to a lot of Concepts that would be core to the kind of pirate that Luffy wants to grow into the key to which being Shanks and the red-haired Pirates Shanks would arrive in fuchsia village with his crew and stay there for a year in that time becoming Luffy's hero and he and his crew would tell Luffy all about their adventures and how fun it was to be a pirate giving him this idea that pirates were not just something to be feared they could be heroic and brave and fun and a family something we notably don't see Luffy having here Luffy is pretty insistent on joining Chance's crew but Shanks despite being on Roger's crew at that age believed that pirate's life what's too dangerous for a child Ed continued to turn him down of note here is of course the run-in with higuma the mountain Bandit who would soak Shanks and booze and knock him down to which Shanks and his men would just laugh it off this because they realized that the Bandit wasn't worth their time but Luffy just being a child is upset that his hero was being disrespected yelling at Shanks and in Anger starting to eat everything around him including the gum gum fruit this turning him into the rubbery boy we know that said it would be revealed later that there is a bit more to this fruit but we'll get to that in I don't know a thousand or so chapters Luffy would run into higuma shortly after and pick a fight but the bandits would overpower him and take him hostage it isn't long until shanks's crew shows up we have one of the most badass moments in the series guns aren't for threats they're for actions and then higuma escapes on a boat with Luffy as hostage where they are attacked by a sea king luckily Shanks manages to swim out and at the last second saves Luffy at the cost of his arm and using conquerors hockey again something we'll learn about in 4 or 500 episodes he manages to scare away the king of the coast Luffy being a child who just went through something traumatic and watched his hero lose an arm for him is consoled by Shanks telling him not to cry because it's just an arm and he has another and he believes that Luffy's life is much more valuable and from here Luffy understands that while he wants to be a pirate he's just not ready yet and when the red-haired crew leaves he sees them off but not before Shanks gives him his straw hat and asks him to return it once he becomes a great pirate in the future Luffy would spend the next 10 years training learning how to use his gum gum fruits and once he mastered it he set sail knocking out the king of the coast who was blocking his way and shouted to the world that he would become king of the Pirates kicking off one of the greatest stories of Our Generation in the process again though this is the opening segment to the manga whereas in the anime you would instead have to wait until just before orange town and speaking of orange town this would properly introduce us to Nami as well as buggy the clown and his crew The Arc begins with Zorro and Luffy being separated because Luffy gets captured by a giant bird which just about makes sense for his character and then we see both Nami and zuro running into these same three Pirates and dealing with them in very different ways they approached Ami and she absolutely plays them tricking them onto her smaller boat and then hopping onto their bigger one and stealing their treasure and all of this before predicting that a storm will sink their boat she is witty she is cutting and she can read the weather now those same Pirates find Zorro shortly after and then threatened to steal his boat but Zorro takes a bit more of a direct route and beats them up so badly that they row his boat for him it's very cool very simple way to show the difference between zoro's more physical approach and Nami is more more sneaky and calculated one once they actually arrive in Orange Town Nami manages to steal a chart to the Grand line from buggy only to bump into Luffy as she gets caught by Buggy's men and pretend that Luffy is her boss so that she can make an escape Luffy naturally stops all the attackers and he finally properly introduces himself to Nami the thief who only steals from Pirates she tells Luffy about buggy terrorizing the town and offers him the opportunity to join her in stealing from Pirates so that she can earn 100 million berries and buy a certain Town however Luffy takes an interest in Nami and wants her to become the crew's Navigator again this is someone who on the surface is not a great person she's a thief she has already put him in danger and she's about to try and trade his life to Buggy the clown but even through all of that Luffy still recognizes her as a good person he understands that sure she isn't the nicest two Pirates specifically but if that's the case there's probably some kind of reason for her part Nami is also at least somewhat interested in Luffy as well from the moment that he mentions that his treasure is just his hat he's a pirate who's not obsessed with greed or Conquest but who takes pride in a straw hat that A friend gave him also this Arc obviously has a ton of parallels to oda's previous one shots it's kind of cool to compare and contrast them anyways she tricks Luffy and brings him to Buggy pinning all the blame on him and asking to join Buggy's crew so that she can steal from him in the future however buggy is a little bit hesitant and asks her to prove her loyalty by shooting a cannon at Luffy which she hesitates for now Luffy obviously not a big fan of being shot or killed but if someone wants to do it in an attempt to achieve their dream he wouldn't be against it for example in the future if Kobe ever captured him he would respect him for it and not resent him this is Kobe fulfilling his dream becoming a great Marine on the other hand we have Nami though he mentions that her hand is shaking because she's only half prepared to mess with pirates very similar to the Bandit pulling a gun on Shanks in fuchsia Village Nami asks if being willing to take a human life is what it means to be a pirate but Luffy corrects her saying that it isn't about taking someone else's life it's about being ready to risk your own life and recognizing that every other pirate is willing to do same it's not a game of violence it's a game where everyone puts their life on the line with honor and pride this conversation is interrupted when another of Buggy's crew members walks up to light the fuse and Nami instinctively takes out a staff and knocks him down explaining that she just acted without thinking and that she would never save a pirate because they stole the life of someone precious to her which Luffy immediately sympathizes with soon after Zorro shows up and challenges Bucky and we learn that buggy has the second devil fruit in the series The Chop Chop fruit this allows him to split his body at any point making him immune to bladed attacks which gives him an advantage against Zorro especially since he fakes his own death to get a sneak attack in the ark would go on as you'd typically expect from here some henchmen fights against buggies main two crewmates which are all fine and dandy but more importantly we have a short section dedicated to a small dog named shushu this is a dog who sits in front of his dead owner's store to protect it but when Moji and Richie show up the little dog tries to fight them off only to be beaten down and have his store burned Luffy sees this dog's treasure being burned away and absolutely kicks moji's ass we then jump over to Nami who's talking about how all Pirates are the same when she sees this burned down shop and she is so angry at this dog's treasure being taken from him that she threatens to kill Luffy before he can get a crew and lead to more destruction but Luffy blows her off grabs a box of food from the rebel and gives it to shushu this is the last remaining trace of that dog's treasure being returned to him and it's then that for the first time Nami sees a pirate doing something selfless he just fought off a giant lion to bring back a small box of food for a dog he had just met and now that she thinks about it Luffy wasn't even upset at her for betraying him earlier so yeah maybe Pirates had taken everything from her but maybe this one was okay this is a really easy part of the arc to skip but I always really appreciated what it meant for these two characters in the grand scheme of their relationship something else of note here as well is a bit of a trend that Oda picks up the story of shushu is a sad one but it's not unique in fact it's inspired by the very famous story of Hachiko A dog in Japan who would walk to Shibuya station every day with its owner the owner would say goodbye and go to work and Hachiko would wait for him there as the local shopkeepers fed him treats and kept an eye on him until his owner returned in the evening however one day the owner never came back having suffered a brain hemorrhage and passing away but Hachiko had no way of knowing this and would instead continue to wait for his owner every day for nearly a decade this being a clear inspiration for shushu's character in one piece and Oda does this all the time Oda loves to take inspiration from other stories historical events real people or even scientific phenomena and turn them into their own story arcs and characters I won't bring up every reference along the way because we'd be here forever but I just think that this is a really fun thing that Oda does to make his stories more accessible to The Wider audiences The Arc of course concludes with a fight between buggy and Luffy with buggy going out of his way to damage Luffy's hat as well as explaining that he and Shanks had a past together where they were on the same crew and saying he hates Shanks because he was the reason buggy ate the chop chop fruit the whole fight kind of devolves into slapstick plenty of kicks to buggies buggy balls but ultimately he has launched Far Away by Luffy and that wraps up things in Orange town with nami even coming around to the point where she sews up Luffy's hat for him when they leave now the second they get onto the ocean Nami immediately takes note that Luffy and Zoro were basically asking for death they didn't prepare food they don't know where they're going they don't know how to navigate and they were just all around not ready for what the ocean would throw at them but she's cut off when they land on gaimon's island and I won't spend too much time here but they made a guy named gaimon trapped in a treasure chest on an island filled with hybrid animals the whole point of this section again is to hammer home the idea of what treasure is as well as how this idea differs for every person gaimon comes to realize that the island and its animals are his treasure and it's a very short but very Charming chapter that is more in line with oda's one shots than the long-running series that one piece would become and with that we can finally move on to the syrup Village Arc I'm not sure how many people also feel this way but to me syrup Village is probably one of the worst bits of the East blue it can feel like it's moving at a snail's pace at times and it just isn't for me continuing the discussion from before the island of rare animals Nami brings up that if they're aiming for the grand line the most dangerous sea in the world they need a real ship suggesting that they go to syrup Village to see if they can find one this is a pretty small island and it's home to our next straw hat usop wussop is based on the boy who cried wolf constantly telling lies to everyone in the village and yelling about how Pirates are coming at first he believes that the straw hats are actually part of Buggy's crew because of the ship that they're on so he meets them at the edge of the island and begins telling that he is the Great Captain usop ruler of the island and leader of the pirate crew of 8 million followers who will fight any pirate who tries to invade them which is obviously a lie they eventually sort things out and explain that they're just looking for a ship and he tells them that the owner of the Mansion on the island might have one and that's probably their best chance if any Usopp then asks to join the crew as Captain but no one has any interest in him joining at all let alone as Captain he then says it's time that he heads out and he's replaced with three small children who call themselves The USA Pirates Who tell the straw hats that usop probably left to go lie to Kaya Kaya is the owner of the Mansion she's a young woman who is ill and bedridden and who had recently lost her family and so every day usop makes his way over to her mansion and tells her ridiculous and Fantastical stories about his journeys at Sea they are all lies but he tells her these stories to bolster her spirits to make her laugh and make her smile and suddenly Luffy sees a spark of a good person in this chronic liar there isn't too much in this Arc but we find out that usopp's dad was yasop a sniper for the red-haired Pirates and we also learned that usopp's mom was sick when he was growing up and that usop had started lying and hollering about Pirates coming to make his mom smile and give her hope that yasop was returning before she passed away so yeah Usopp will lie about some stupid things but it all comes from a position of caring for people and wanting to make them smile or feel safe the big bad for the ark is revealed to be Kaya's Butler klahadur who's actually the famed pirate Captain Kuro and he has this assassination plot to kill Kaya and steal her fortune and naturally Usopp is the one to find out but when he warns all of the villagers they don't believe him this is the boy who cried pirate after all but rather than letting this bring him down Usopp instead decides that if everyone already believes that he's a liar then they might as well wake up tomorrow thinking the same thing he will just have to protect the village on his own and make sure that none of them have to worry this fight reveals how usop functions as well much like Nami USA battles with his intellect he isn't strong like Luffy or Zorro but he is an excellent sniper and makes use of his surroundings and setting traps to take down his opponents the fight itself is nothing super notable but something to mention is how invested Nami gets until now she had been constantly saying she is only invested in protecting her treasure however she is willing to get injured or risk her life because this is a battle they can't afford to lose and when you think about nami's backstory in the future you can understand why she would be so desperate to to protect a friend's Village that is about to be attacked by Pirates naturally the straw hats managed to defeat Kuro and his Pirates and as a reward Kaia hooks them up with the going Mary this is a caraval ship specifically used by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 14th and 1500s they tended to be smaller than most but this allowed them to move quickly and to maneuver through just about any river system without issue it's not ideal for a big crew or for particularly Dangerous Waters but if you're looking for adventure this is a solid option and I don't know if I could make this clear enough but we love the Mary in this house now usop is originally planning to set sails separately but Zorro and Luffy tell him to just get on board because he's their friend and they should just travel together and with that we have our new ship our crew is effectively up to four and we set sail as the rest of the usop Pirates run into the village and warned them that pirates are coming once again syrup Village is a very plain Arc there is nothing things spectacular about it the sad backstory isn't as deep as we would get with other characters and the villain is kind of lame but it is homie it's an arc about what it means to be Captain as we see usop pretending to be a captain Kuro slaughtering his own men and Luffy's resolve to be the kind of Captain who stands up for his friends and what they believe in and just as importantly it reiterates to Nami that Luffy is not like other Pirates and that he truly cares about those around him it's nothing great but it is definitely the point where the crew finally feels like they're coming together and like we're really becoming real pirates but the first step of becoming a real pirate crew is to have a flag and it's a good thing that usop is on the crew because Luffy cannot draw to save his life and our flag almost looked like this now I should talk about usop a little bit here he is a jack of all trades kind of character anything artistic or repair based or when we're talking about the building of tools that's kind of his responsibility he won't make things perfect but he'll at least make them functional what he is great at though is sharp shooting for example we see Luffy trying to fire the Mary's Cannon and being unable to hit anything but usop does it and lands his first shot immediately and almost kills two people in the process resulting in a very angry Johnny and a very sick yosaku who are bounty hunters who know Zoro from the past and who apparently traveled the ocean with no fruits so they're dealing with the effects of scurvy luckily we also have Nami now and she knows that they need Vitamin C so she feeds yosuku some limes and fixes them up just fine so as a thanks Johnny recommends that they travel to the Sea restaurant the baratier where he thinks that they might be able to pick up a cook for their crew not only that but they tell Zorro that Hawkeye goes there from time to time and for the first time in the series Zorro looks anxious a quick side note before we actually get into the baratier arc this is also the section of the manga tonkobong specifically volume 4 where the SBS began this is essentially a question Corner in which readers could ask Oda all kinds of things that were often funny but could also expand the world and gave us information that we wouldn't have access to otherwise without actually interrupting the pace of the story for example in the first SPS we learned the names of bed and Beckman and lucky Roo from shanks's crew as well as talking about oda's iconic Dawn effect in paneling this is a really interactive behind the scenes Peak that at least to me was something really interesting and fun every time that it's included it also kind of couples with and mirrors his cover pages and I know that Oda is not the only one that does this sort of thing but I think it's really effective in one piece specifically every chapter of the manga has a unique cover page showing the characters in interesting and fun situations that really warm you up to the characters and help them to become more three-dimensional e even if they aren't Canon and plenty of these are actually based on viewer submitted recommendations as well which is a great way to keep the audience interacting with the material however they are sometimes created with a purpose as well for example from chapters 35 to 75 we got the captain buggy Adventure Chronicles this became a way of keeping tabs on the world and the characters that we had seen in the past without intruding on the actual plot or pacing so rather than having two full chapters of the story dedicated to this subplot or two episodes like in the anime we would instead be given one image every week until the story was done it is a completely unobtrusive way to give off the information but at the same time it makes the world feel so much more lived in and whole just because the straw hats aren't there doesn't mean that other parts of the story stop in their place and this is one of the best parts of One Piece the world in this series isn't so much a clock where the straw hats are the central gear are moving every part along with them but it's more like a real place with characters who act independently towards their own goals simultaneously and all of these gears start moving together to form the story and I absolutely adore that but back to that story and the crew runs into Marine lieutenant commander full body who attacks them because they're Pirates and in this commotion Johnny and yosuku drop their wanted posters giving us a little bit of foreshadowing when Nami sees one of them and becomes completely Frozen we don't get to focus on this though as one of the Marine cannonballs bounces off of Luffy and crashes into the bratier ending the conflict on the spot as Luffy is brought to meet with the owner zeph to deal with the consequences zeph is the first pirate to have a classic pirate feature rocking a peg leg and we might as well clear these out while we're here crocodile has a hook hand Lucci has a bird on his shoulder and while we see a few characters kind of having a Commodore hat here and there it's most iconic on Blackbeard the big feature that we're still missing would be a pirate with an eye patch but Oda seems to really keep these traits and reserve them for very special characters in the story that said it is very interesting that Luchi is one of these characters because he's not a pirate either way zeph and Luffy work out an arrangement for paying for the repair on the bratier but in honesty it doesn't really matter in the long run as they find a different way to work it out what does matter is that here we get the introduction to Sanji the assistant head chef of the baratier and the future cocky Ladies Man of the straw hats it's one of my favorite character introductions in the entire series it's just very fun as full body tries to impress his date by calling ahead and asking for a special drink to be used so he can sound all sophisticated and Fancy by recognizing it right away only for Sanji to say that he's wrong then full body starts to insult Sanji and Sanji effortlessly puts him in his place while flirting with his date eventually the Marine would get so angry that he would attack Sanji and within a moment Sanji has completely overpowered him and it's just this great way to introduce someone who's both very strong and effortlessly cool soon after this a prisoner named Gene escapes from Full body's ship and manages to find his way into the restaurant he tries to strong arm his way for food but another Chef Paddy bashes him through a table and kicks him out of the restaurant saying if you don't have money you can't buy food once Gene is outside though sanchi brings him food anyways and tells him to eat and Jean is so grateful that he even starts crying unbeknownst to either of them Luffy is watching and says that he has found a good cook not just a talented cook but a cook who is good Luffy naturally asked him to join the crew but Sanji explains he has a reason to stay and can't accept it saying that the restaurant was a treasure for zeph and he needed to stay with him here but all the same now that Gene has been fed they hook him up with a boat he warns Luffy to steer clear of the grand line because it is super dangerous and then leaves to join up with his captain Don Creek we get a bit of time before any real action happens here but Luffy works as the world's worst waiter for a bit we see that Sanji becomes a bit of a blubbering idiot at the first sight of any cute girl which Nami takes full advantage of and we see that zeph is trying to very coldly tell Sanji to leave with these Pirates and we have a really unique dynamic between zeph and Sanji they outwardly seem to hate one another or at least they're constantly angry with each other and telling each other off but at the same time even with permission Sanji refuses to leave him and this is a kind of similar situation between Sanji and everyone that he works with in general the more he seems to like someone and the more that he respects them the more that he will argue and stir the pot with them something we see with Zorro as the relationship develops as well overall though it's all good and fun on liberate until a little while later when Don Creek and his Pirates arrive gin returns with his captain begging for food and Patty is ready to kick them out like he had in the past but Sanji instead opts to give them food as he can't stand to see people starve and notably here this is also after Craig described himself to be the ruler of the East blue the king of deceptions whose sails a white flag to lure in unsuspecting victims but I want to take a moment to go back to something I mentioned earlier Luffy brings out the best in people Zorro has a strict code of honor that holds him and others accountable but now we have these three new members and what do they offer well usop has a gift to make people happy he will joke and tell stories or even make equipment for those around him so they feel safe and they can wear a smile he's a goofball but the dude genuinely cares for everyone around him Nami brings balance where the rest of the crew is impulsive and quick to act she is thoughtful and practical if Luffy is the heart of the group Nami is the brain and that leaves Sanji and he acts as a kind of mirror to Zorro and we even see sanji's backstory reflect how we met Zorro as well however whereas Zorro is all about patience and honor Sanji has an impulsive sense of Duty he is compelled to do what he thinks is Right which in some cases comes off as totally misguided for example when he overly excitedly dotes on women but in other cases it can manifest in him doing things like feeding people who are hungry even if he knows they are a threat and Krieg does become a threat immediately close letting Sanji once he has food saying he will take the baratier and use it to replace his broken down Galleon Krieg just like hero before him is another example of the difference between Luffy and other pirate captains he is ruthless he's big he wears thick flashy golden armor to both keep himself protected and to show off his greatness and when he finds out that zeph had traveled to the Grand line he wants to steal his captain logs for an advantage the next time he goes there and of course he sends his men to fight in his stead but then there's Luffy uninterested in showing off refusing to take notes from anyone else's adventure and when Zorro asked if he needs a hand fight in Krieg Luffy tells him not to worry and to stay sitting much of the early arcs leading into arlong park are built up to show Luffy as different from other pirate captains especially Toonami while also building up this idea of what a treasure really is and how it's different for each person with Luffy's idea of treasure being finding a crew that he can call his family and see seeking an adventure with them Krieg grabs a bag of food from zeph to feed the rest of his crew and while he's gone the other chefs yell at Sanji for choosing to feed them and for the first time we see zeph stand up for him telling everyone else to shut up and asking if any of them have known what it's like to be hungry enough to die how terrifying and how painful it is to be stuck in the ocean but deprived of food and water Gene begs them to run before Krieg comes back but Sanji replies that it was his duty as a cook to feed those who are starving but now that Duty has been fulfilled and since they're choosing to attack the baratier he will have no issue killing them he is Duty first and then self-interest here Gene also mentions how there was a Hawkeye man who sang Creek's ships once they entered the grand line and again we have Zoro looking shocked before mentioning that that is the man he is looking for stating that it looks like his Destiny is tied to the Grand line as well and Sanji is confused you have Luffy over here talking about fighting Don Creek by himself you have Zorro talking about fighting mihawk and it seems like all the straw hats are foolishly rushing towards their own death but Zorro corrects him saying that they're probably rushing to their own death but it doesn't make them fools when he decided that he would become the world's greatest swordsman he accepted the risk that he could die along the way just as Luffy had when he declared he would be the king of the Pirates and as such they will be the ones to decide in the end if that had made them a fool or not and while Sanji doesn't seem impressed by this zeph certainly does it isn't long before the creek Pirates have finished eating and start hollering their battle cries as they get ready to charge the bratier but in an instant their ship is split in half in the commotion we learned that Nami has stolen the going Mary and as the dust settles we see the silhouette of a man on a small raft Luffy is insistent that Nami will be their Navigator despite stealing their ship and that there must have been some kind of mix-up so he sends a group ahead to follow Nami but he himself stays behind to protect the baratier and to defeat Creek and as for Nami we catch up with her in tears lamenting that the straw hats were good people wondering if they'd ever meet again and if they could still be friends and this sentiment would be echoed years later on Alabaster with Vivi as well there's some very cool parallels between the two of them meanwhile as Nami is sailing away Zorro finally sees mihawk the greatest swordsman in the world who had followed the Krieg Pirates back from the grand line out of boredom only to sink their Last Ship and now it's Zorro's turn to challenge him even knowing he is vastly outmatched and for mihawk's part he knows this as well talking down to Zorro the entire time fighting him with a knife from his necklace rather than using a big sword because as he describes it it would be like hunting a rabbit with a cannon he even says that he wished he had something smaller to make it more fair regardless Zorro charged Zen for a big attack shouting that he won't be underestimated only for mihawk to hold all three of his his swords in place with a quick jab of his dagger and of course Luffy is watching Zorro go all out here and refusing to butt in or to let anyone else do so and this is another part of Luffy's character that I find very endearing if any of his friends ask for help Luffy will move Heaven and Earth to do anything he can for them but at the same time he understands that people have their own Pride their own wants and needs and goals and he would never get in the way of someone trying to accomplish something for themselves we see this time and time again throughout the series and it's always been something I've really appreciated about his character and of course in the next Arc you will see this more blatantly than at any other part in the story bee Hawk manages to stab Zorro in the chest and is surprised that Zorro refuses to step back but Zorro explains that while he doesn't understand it himself he feels like if he backed up now he would have broken his oath and that he'd never be able to Challenge B hawk again saying even if it meant he would die he refuses to break his promise and in that moment mihawk's view of Zorro is completely changed rather than a fool he is someone with conviction and so he asks his name and as a sign of respect he even takes out his real sword yoru in their next Clash mihawk would break two of zoro's Swords leading only kawina's blade remaining and Zoro would just get back up turn towards mihawk and declare that a scar on the back is a swordsman shame as he opened himself up for a final slice and mihawk nearly Cuts him in half however The Swordsman says that it's too early for Zorro to die spares him and tells him to become strong and search him out in the future demanding that Zoro surpass him but even having earned mihawk's respect Zorro has still lost he is bleeding he is broken and in tears he raises his sword into the air and apologizes to Luffy saying that he knows that if he fails to become a great swordsman it will only embarrass his captain so he promises that until the day he fights mihak in wins he will never lose again and asks if that's okay for the future king of the Pirates and what a great [ __ ] scene like what a great moment establishing mihawk as this Untouchable Pinnacle of strength earning his respect and filling Zoro with more conviction than ever and so mihawk leaves and the battle with Krieg begins Sanjeev starts a fight with pearl and he's doing great until geen holds zeph hostage and forces Sanji to just take hits which Sanji does gladly because he'd rather take a beating if it meant that zeph gets to keep his treasure the restaurant and this leads us towards what I would consider the first evolution in oda's writing style in the first big step towards the Oda that we know when we experience sanji's backstory the pillars of oda's writing from this point on would kind of be centered around three things action comedy and tragedy at this point he has the action stuff down pat his fights are Dynamic and exciting they feel impactful and his comedy is wonderful too each character has their own sense of humor and are really lovable because of it but up until this point that third pillar tragedy has been a bit lacking he would always introduce this element in singular bursts of emotion in Luffy's backstory it's all fun and games until that third pillar comes in with Shanks losing his arm it's powerful but it's fast in zoro's backstory we have Queen is death and again it's over at an instant but then we have usop's backstory and this is one that sees Oda playing with something a little bit different usov's backstory itself is a much faster one than we're used to it's only a page and a half that's it however the entire thing is sad it's a mother's last moment in life and a son who lies to make her happy there's no shock no moment of surprise it's just heartbreaking and when you think about the straw hat stories in the future this is more the shape of how those play out not just the backstories though much of the arcs follow this as well drum Kingdom Alabaster water seven and many more are built around this core sadness and the crew tries to overcome that with the people on those islands and this is where Oda gets his first real grasp of how successful this method of writing can be and all of that begins with sanji's backstory we see him working in a cruise liner as a young kid talking to the other chefs about the mythical all blue a sea where all the fish from all the seas in the world can be found and the other chefs just laugh him off because they think that it can't possibly be real and in just the same way Sanji is disgusted by them for eating the leftovers from customers plates but they tell them that food on the sea is a luxury and it shouldn't be wasted a callback to help set Sanji was when full body wastes his soup things get drastically more serious though when that cruise liner is attacked by Red leg zeph and his crew the young Sanji tries to fight off the Pirates saying he can't die because he he needs to find the all blue one day but he's just a kid and zeph manages to kick him off however because of the massive storm going on Sanji ends up falling into the ocean and without thinking this invading pirate Dives in after him in the anime he loses his leg trying to save him here but the manga is different by the time the storm calms the ships are gone and all that's left are zeph and Sanji alone on a deserted island with no natural resources what's worse it's curved in such a way that if they went down for fish or water they would never make it back up luckily though zeph managed to grab two bags of food giving one dasanji and leaving the other bigger one for himself as he's an adult he tells Sanji to wait on the other end of the island and to keep lookout for ships and not to waste energy by coming back to his side until he sees one so Sanji grabs his bag brings it to the other end and believes that he has about five days of food but he could ration it out to maybe last me and so Begins the darkest thing that Oda has shown us so far from here we watched them starve five days pass and when Sanji sees a ship he fails to get its attention ten days pass 25 days pass the food has either completely run out or is basically just mold basanji still eats what's left and is just thinking about all the food he has wasted in his life 30 days past 50 70. our boy is less than skin and bones at this point he wonders for a moment if zeph has died already and suddenly it's apparent that not only has he been starving this whole time but he's also been isolated alone he finally takes a look back to see if the old man is still there and sees that he still has that big bag of food so he decides that this is the moment he takes out his knife thinking it's either the old man or himself and he sneaks up and tears into the bag of food but inside is nothing of value there's only Gold Silver and jewels not a single thing that could keep him alive and so he learns that the big bad pirate zeph had given Sanji all of the food and opted to eat his own leg to survive instead zeph tells Sanji that he wanted him to survive because they share the same dream finding the all blue and having heard that the young boy believed in it that's why he dove in after him he also tells Sanji that just because because he had failed to find the all-blue doesn't mean that it wasn't out there and waiting for Sanji to find it they don't get to talk too much though as zeph collapses onto his back and thinks about how many people must have died at Sea just like them surrounded by water they can't drink and unable to find food and so he thinks about one day opening a restaurant for those lost at sea where they can feed anyone who's hungry and Sanji promises that if they make it out alive he will help to make that dream a reality and they do make it out but not before another 15 days past and this is it this is the moment that one piece clicked to me as something special it's not just a Shonen fighting show it's something tragic and beautiful and inspiring a story where people would give their lives to save others they don't know just because they share a dream a story about finding and protecting your own treasure but where gold and money don't matter a story that thinking back on and talking about is enough to get me teary-eyed this is the moment where Oda finds his gift for bringing powerful emotional value into the world and over the next few arcs these are the skills that we would watch him hone now sanji's story in particular is an interesting one and how it compares to the straw hats but in particular with Luffy's and with Soros in the case of Zorro he had chosen himself to be starved so that he could protect a young girl but in Luffy's case osanji and Luffy had been saved by a great pirate who would give up a limb to protect them and give them a second chance at life and we see these two budding heads here as their understanding of what that debt of Life comes with Sanji believes that because zeff saved him he must be willing to give his life to make zeph's dream come true whereas Luffy tells him that Shanks saved him so that he could find his own dream these men didn't protect them so that they could die in the future they wanted them to live their own lives and from here the rest rest of the art goes about as you'd expect but there is a tension brought to the difference in how Craig and Luffy act as captains Krieg has commented that Luffy's crew is small and thus weak while his was massive and Powerful but Luffy notes that individually krieg's crew is much weaker and they just rely on tricking an overwhelming opponents this is kind of something that we see as the story continues as well the straw hats never grow to be a huge crew never even reaching a dozen members but each member is special and that's what makes them powerful together this is only pushed further when Krieg starts firing off poison gas willing to kill his own men because they are expendable this is a far shot from the family that Luffy is creating and once Krieg poisons and disrespects Keen Luffy has had enough and goes in to finish the fight Krieg of course has traps and tricks and spiked capes everything that he can do to keep himself safe and deter his opponents from attacking but Luffy doesn't care and as Luffy charges in through all the pay game that Craig can launch at him zeph tells Sanji to watch saying that men like Luffy will show up from time to time they're idiots who fight to the death once they decide on their goal and that those are the worst kind of enemies you can face adding in that win or lose the kinds of guys that he likes Sanji of course is concerned because Krieg has so many weapons and traps that it makes him Invincible but zeph corrects him saying that in battle it's the one who fears death who will hesitate and lose and while Krieg is doing everything in his power to stop himself from dying Luffy has no fear of death and will never hesitate zeph says that every crew has their own strength Krieg has weapons and size and if we look back at buggy he had Charisma and passion Kuro had his plans but Luffy's weapon is conviction the power to make a dream into reality finally saying that he knows a certain idiot Chef who has been wasting that very same conviction by spending his life working for an old man and of course Luffy wins the fight one once the creek Pirates check out and Luffy wakes up from his recovery he talks with Sanji about joining the crew and at first Sanji rejects him saying that he can't leave until zeph acknowledges his cooking but he does say that he wants to head to the Grand line eventually and then we have this panel Sanji is almost always depicted as someone trying to look cool and be serious at least if there's no women involved but in this panel he just looks happy he has a dream and he wants to share it it's like a little kid telling his friends about some awesome new thing he just found and as he does zeph looks down from above smiling like a proud father at his son's beaming face and so all the cooks get together to do that Trope where they pretend to hate sanji's cooking and make him angry so he won't stay and finally zeph asks Luffy to take Sanji along with him to which Luffy just says Nah saying unless Sanji wants it for himself he wouldn't Force anyone into a dream or life that they don't want of course though Sanji comes around and says that Luffy's stream is as crazy as his so he will actually join as the crews cook they get ready to head out as Sanji thinks back on all the memories with Paddy and carne and zeph and how the old man had always kind of been a bastard but a bastard that he really respected and just as he's about to step onto the boat to head off zeph calls out reminding him not to catch cold a final fatherly message of care leading Sanji to breaking down and calling out how much he has appreciated everything the old man did for him as well as promising to remember the debt that he owes for the rest of his life a truly perfect ending to The Ark but of course while the bratier is overflowing with beautiful and Powerful moments be pretty agreed upon Arc that one piece becomes the one piece we know is our Long Park and it's right around the corner if you you've seen through most of the series these early sections might seem super nostalgic to you but also they're very different from what the series would become and there's several reasons for that first and foremost we still need to gather our crew and with less members to follow in each Arc there's also less story that needs to be told it makes sense that if we only have Luffy and Zorro rather than 10 crewmates there's just less threads to follow and we have shorter stories because of it second as I mentioned Oda was just finishing up building the pillars of what would make the series something special those again being comedy tragedy and action and while he knew what those things looked like in isolation he was still working on blending them together for example if you look at the fight between Captain Morgan it is just a fight there's very little comedy if any and there's no real emotional value attached to that battle but if we jump forward to zoro's fight with mihawk it's full of passion there's a ton of humor for from how mihawk talks to Zorro there's emotional investment from Zorro and there's sadness from running into the wall that is the world's greatest swordsman as well as the idea of what this means for the promise he made to kawina and Luffy the structure and value of fights in this series has been evolving and it comes to a head in our Long Park but it will also continue to grow as the series moves forward and you gotta remember up until this point he had written primarily one shots and worked as an assistant to other people and in those environments making one of those pillars shine on its own can often just be enough but one piece was not a one shot this was a whole new adventure for Oda himself and he wasn't quite confident yet and why would he be he was just some kid in his early 20s being given his first real shot at anything and as a result of still being in this learning phase I think that many of the early arcs especially leading up to the baratier and arlong park kind of show off the inexperience that Oda had at the time each of these early arcs kind of follows a formula Luffy lands on a new Island meets a new crewmate we get some kind of sadness or tragedy and of course we take out a new villain it's a much more simplified version of how we would deal with storytelling in the future this often leads to the first few arcs feeling very much like a villain of the week sort of thing we quickly move from one point to the next until the base crew is finally established but now that the crew has been established Oda has been doing this for over a year at this point and with the baratia behind us he had clearly become more confident in how to write impactful characters and stories while Dragon Ball had been a huge inspiration for him his series wouldn't be that same kind of fight-forward Storytelling instead it would become a heartfelt and emotional one where the fights facilitated those feelings and allowed them to come to a peak and get closure and closure is exactly what we got here but first some World building on the way to our Long Park we have our first mention of the three great powers and Morse specifically the Warlords of the sea with Silhouettes that are pretty far off what any of them would look like with the exception of mihawk speaking of these are the primary reason for the length of one piece or at least they're a symptom of the issue Oda has said that the reason his series keeps getting extended is because he thinks of a fun concept and believes that it wouldn't be right for him to exclude it from the series and Rob the readers of a fun experience and the first example of this is kind of the Warlords we've all heard that one piece was going to run five years through which the straw hats would take on the yonko but then as he put it it struck me that having these cool seven Warlords of the sea in the comic would be awesome and it was just a passing thought really and then like a horror movie it spiraled into such a long series and so the series would go on to span well over two decades back to the main story though we are told that mihawk is Warlord and we also learn that the leader of the Fishman Pirates jinbei is also a warlord as well and in becoming one he had released the monster arlong into the East blue speaking of arlong we jump over to our Long Park where he is bribing Marine Captain nezumi for turning a blind eye to his actions arlong is a massive shark fish man obsessed with money and power but we also have a few officers of his crew being introduced like the dim-witted but lovable octopus fish man Hachi and pretty shockingly Nami now our Long Park is a bit of a different Arc than what we've seen so far it is considerably longer than the ones we're used to with 30 chapters but it is kind of similar to Shell's town as we have a tyrant ruling over a city and corrupt Marines being involved but whereas shellstown focused almost entirely on the Marine base our Long Park is done in the more interpersonal level like syrup Village was it has the emotional depth of the baratia but held as a constant throughout its entirety this Arc is a culmination of everything Oda had tested out so far and while it's not perfect it is definitely the point where he hit his stride The Arc proper begins following two tracks firstly usop runs into nami's sister nojiko and learns a rough summary of what's been going on in the village and then we have Zorro getting captured by the fishmen and coming face to face with nami who tells arlong that Zoro is just one of her victims that she fooled as arlong laughs describing her as a girl who would do anything for money even forget the death of her own parrot adding in the last bit of detail we really needed for the puzzle that is Nami and why she hates Pirates so much speaking of despite the hardened exterior that she had put on until this point the moment arlong mentions her dead parent her face goes blank Zorro notices this and seeing through her lies jumps into the water and forces Nami into a position to save him saying that his Small Time crook who can't even let a person die shouldn't be acting tough very much mirroring nami's inability to let Luffy die in Orange Town Nami ignores what he says and orders that he be locked up while arlong heads to kokoyashi village where we get a better look at his rule with arlong in control no one is allowed to have any kind of weapons and all the people living there must pay outrageous tributes every month finally if even one person can't or won't pay him the whole village will be completely wiped out all while he holds a concept of racial superiority which makes him see human life as meaningless and that's something we need to bring up here as well how long as a fish man is much stronger faster and larger than most humans and he believes that fish men as a whole are better this is the first time that rather than just exploring existing stories like the boy who cried wolf or creating stories which were only relevant to the plot of that Arc Oda would instead explore real world issues within the story more directly and this would be a fairly large Mainstay of the series going forward in this case being racism now way back at the start of this video I spoke about Homer's Iliad and odyssey and how one of the most important and relevant factors which allowed it to become as historically significant as it is is the way in which it portrayed the realities of Life at the time of its creation it's both allegory and a time capsule and that's at the heart of why it's so important even a thousand years later and from this point on Oda would follow in Homer's footsteps just as we had seen him follow in the examples of stories before this by addressing real world issues like racism corruption and politics Revolution historical conquests religion mental health loss and so so much more one piece becomes a time capsule in itself and because the story has been going on for two decades the way in which this topic is addressed as well as if these topics get readdressed allow them to mean different things each time we look at them a discussion about racism in 1998 is not the same as the discussion about racism in 2008 or 2018 and with so few series throughout the history being written over such a long period of time let alone spanning a thousand chapters it makes the series something of a miracle at least in terms of Storytelling this opening section of the arc brings up so many interesting character points even showing us the Cowardly usop shooting are long to save genzo a villager he doesn't even know but of course the character who gets a lot of focus in this buildup IS Nami on the one hand she's trying to show herself off as this cold and heartless member of the arlong Pirates but on the other hand it is so clear to see that this isn't who she is we see her walking back to kokoyashi village where she just isn't welcomed then she visits a grave where she smiles this big hopeful smile and says that no matter what she will raise a hundred million berries and buy this town and slowly we continue to be drip fed her story and and we can begin to piece things together she shortly afterwards catches back up with arlong just as he's getting a hold of usop and they find that their entire base has been cleared out by Zorro usop for his part scolds Domi for betraying her friends and tells her how much Luffy trusted her even after she left a pretty early reminder of how important holding on to his friends is to usop but all the same once he makes too much of a scene and threatens what she's been building Nami decides that she needs to kill him he tries to escape with a smoke screen but by the time the smoke settles we see her standing with a knife pressed into his stomach as she pushes him into the water things are looking kind of Bleak at the moment but suddenly the Marines arrive to help not nezumi we saw him being paid off earlier but new Marines who are here to actually do good but this only lasts for a few moments before our long sends just three fishmen out there to take down their entire ship they destroy its Rudder and then create a Whirlpool that pulls them in and everyone else it just proves that there's no hope of being saved but while this is happening Luffy and Sanji finally arrive on the island they meet up with Zorro and Johnny and Johnny mentions that he saw Nami kill usop and Luffy blows up on him insisting that she would never do that and right on cue Nami arrives just after this to tell Luffy that everything up until now has been a charade they meant nothing to her and that they should leave the island because arlong's men were so powerful they would never beat them but the warning she's giving doesn't match the idea of her not caring if she actually didn't care she wouldn't say anything let alone offered to give them their [ __ ] back so they can actually leave she's just about ready to say goodbye and Luffy drops onto his back tells everyone that he doesn't want to leave the island but doesn't care what's happening either so he's just going to take a nap in reality just like we had when Zoro was fighting mihawk Luffy recognizes that Nami is dealing with something she clearly wants to deal with it in her own way and he's giving her time to do that but if she ever decides that she does want his help he will be right there waiting for her and meanwhile we jump over to usop who is very much not dead we see that Nami had actually stabbed through her own hands to cover him in Blood and fake his death nojiko then shows up to all of the other crewmates and offers to tell them everything about what is happening with nami if they promise to leave but Luffy tells her no he's not interested in her past and decides to go for a walk again he only cares who people are and not where they come from the rest of the crew though does find out everything although Zorro fell asleep part way through we learned how years ago the town screw up bellamir became a marine and how in battle she found two orphaned little girls walking alone how she managed to save those girls and brave the storm with them to bring them back to kokoyashi village where she ended up adopting them and how they lived a very simple life together belamere was by no means rich but if she made sacrifices here and there she could afford to support them with the sales of her tangerines but over time Nami would be tired of seeing her mom skip meals or watching her so nojiko's clothes so they could fit her and so Nami began to pick up the habit of stealing things like books so she could learn to become a navigator without putting extra stress on bellamere this often landed her in trouble with genzo the leader of kokoyashi Village but bellamere would just flirt with him make him flustered and eventually he would go away something Nami definitely picked up and would use very often as she became an adult one day though Nami and bellamir got into a big fight mommy calls her out on not being her real mom she says nojiko isn't her real sister and bellamere gets so upset that she hits her so Nami runs off to genzo's house and genzo for as miserable and grumpy as he can seem bursts out laughing when he hears what had happened and says Nami is just like her mother he tells Nami about how proud The Village was of bellamere for becoming a Marine and even more so for becoming a mother and how choosing to have taken these two girls was the decision in life that bellamir was most proud of and how she had even risked her own life to save them and after hearing all of that Nami is excited to go home and fix things but she never gets the chance the arlong Pirates show up conquer the town in moments and set in place an unreasonably High tax on every citizen one hundred thousand per adult and 50 per child and at first it does seem like bellamere will be spared because her home is out in the woods but eventually they find her too for her part belamere fights back as best she can but it's just not good enough our long bites through her gun crushes her arm and leaves her unable to resist Kenzo arrives and begins pleading with bellamere to just pay the money it's better to lose that than to lose her life and we find out that bellamere only has a hundred thousand berries and at the same time the village doctor manages to find nojiko and Nami to tell them to escape because they aren't on the town registry so if they get out now they can make it on paper all that needs to happen is the kids just have to run and belamere needs to say that she doesn't have a family and everyone can live but bellamere can't do that she gets up gives are along a hundred thousand berries and says the money is for her children but she can't pay for herself and not only that but she would rather die than pretend that she doesn't have a family even for a moment it is an incredibly beautiful scene especially when you consider it just followed Nami blowing up on her for not being a real mom the girls run up to belamere in tears and hug her and it is unbelievably heavy bellamere then turns to arlong and makes him promise not to hurt her daughters and he agrees if she dies quietly so he holds the gun up to her head she calls out her daughter's names and tells them that she loves them as the trigger gets pulled and a deafening explosion takes away every other Sight and Sound there are plenty of arguments for why someone might read the Manga over watching the anime but there are a few moments in the series that I cannot imagine experiencing only through the manga when I look at this image I can hear exactly the sound that the gun makes I can hear the exact tone of bellamir's I love you and it will be the same when we get to Robin's big moment later in the series and nami's big moment later in this Arc there are sounds and moments in this series that live in me it isn't that I'm a big fan of them it isn't that I love one piece as a whole these moments are ingrained in my mind because of all the phenomenal talent and emotion that the voice actors artists and sound crew put into making them and these are the few magic seconds that led me from being a fan of the series like any other that I might watch to this series being a part of my life in a very meaningful way but of course the moment doesn't end here if this wasn't all enough one of the fishmen would find nami's nautical charts and our long ends up kidnapping her to work as a cartographer Nami had just watched her mother die saw the other villagers who tried to act up against our long be brutal realized and beaten and as a child she just wanted any path that could lead the violence to stopping belamere had always told her to keep living and keep smiling and eventually good things would come for her but these moments are heartbreaking a few days later Nami comes shuffling back to the town with an absolutely shattered smile trying her best to take her mother's advice and this isn't like the one that we saw before at all the smile is hollow it's fearful and it's on the edge of Tears she tells the other villagers that she has joined the arlong Pirates and become their cartographer even being marked with their tattoo and in exchange they gave her money money being the thing that forced bellamere to starve herself money being the reason that she had to steal books and wear hand-me-down clothes money being the Difference Maker in why every other villager got to live while her mother had to die but all the same seeing her betray her Village and her family everyone else turned against her and exhaled her from the village nojiko would come find her shortly after and Nami explains that arlong made her watch as he sunk five Marine ships and slowly tore away any hope that she had for the village being saved but instead he made her an offer she could raise 100 million berries he would let her buy The Village back from him so Nami made a choice if she could get all the villagers to hate her then they won't try to stop her and try to keep her safe as she tries to steal treasure from Pirates and so she can work alone uninterrupted to save them and with that everything that we know about Nami clicks into place a girl who steals exclusively from Pirates because they stole everything from her she's someone who lost her Village to invading Pirates and so she stood with usop to defend his home so it wouldn't happen there she can't trust Pirates she wants all of them dead and that's why she's so conflicted when it comes to making friends like Luffy and Zorro and usop and Sanji who are actually good people she's someone who values money more than anything else but it's not because she wants to spend that money on herself it's because she never wants to be in a position where not having money stops her from helping those who are important to her and all of that comes from what arlong had done her but she was almost free now one more haul and she would hit 100 million berries and a happy ending was just in sight but of course this is the new Oda and once he has your heartstrings he will pull on them until you are raw just as Nami is ready to celebrate being one step from Freedom Captain Azumi the Marine that arlong had paid off earlier shows up and says that he needs to examine nami's property for stolen goods she was stealing from Pirates so he wouldn't arrest her but he needed to confiscate everything else she had collected what this really meant though is that arlong was not going to let her free ever not even letting the Marines arrest her and instead forcing her to continue to work for him Nami tries to stop them genzo even yells at nezumi for her revealing that the village knew what was happening the whole time but they didn't want her to feel like she needed to stay there and stop her from thinking that she could have escaped and lived her own life at any time but nothing slows them down Luffy sees her freaking out and asked if she needs help but she tells him that it has nothing to do with him tells him to leave the island again and bolts towards arlong's place to confront him but arlong just grabs her asks if he really broke any promises if she hadn't paid him yet and laughs at her as she begins crying and that's it Nami gets back to the town to find everyone in the village is ready to fight and despite trying to calm them down so that she won't lose any more people to arlong they just won't listen they tell her that she's fought hard enough for them and that they were only putting up with arlong because they had faith in her but now that he had betrayed her there was nothing left so they're going to go fight him but she should just leave the island while she has the chance Nami tries to hold them back with a knife but already committed to sacrificing himself genzo just grabs the blade and tells her to and this of course leads into another moment that lives in my head Nami grabs her knife screaming arlong's name and begins stabbing at her tattoo over and over again as you hear her voice actress making these painful strained screams until silence Luffy had grabbed her knife to stop her and in this angry Broken Voice she starts yelling at him saying he doesn't know the first thing about anything he agrees he knows nothing she says that it has nothing to do with him and she already told him to leave the island as she scrapes the dust on the floor towards him and again Luffy agrees she did do that but all the same he was still there for her and suddenly the screams are replaced with tears as she turns to him with no other options and asks for help and that is Luffy if he knows you are trying to do something on your own he will not interfere but he will always be close by and he will always be there for his crew the second that they want his help so he takes his hat the hat that is his treasure that this entire Saga of the East blue had spent a full year of time building up the value of and places it on nami's head yelling that of course he's going to help her and as he turns around to start moving towards our long Nami sees that it isn't just Luffy but it's all of her crewmates who have been waiting for her and who are ready to help she had been carrying everything on her own since she was a young girl but she didn't have to anymore these new friends that she had made were people that she could count on and who would carry that burden with her and so Begins the March towards arlong Park as Luffy Zorro Sanji and usop head to this demon who had been holding Nami prisoner for eight years and in a moment Luffy blasts through the wall asking who our long is and launches the fish man with a single punch yelling don't you dare make my navigator cry and each of these four Straw Hat men take on a different fish man in this fight Zorro takes on these six sword style using Hachi a fight in which Zorro is still on death's door from his injuries with mihawk and in which it seems like he's just outnumbered three to six however as he mentions while he only holds three swords the weight of those swords is completely different Hachi is fighting because he was told to while Soro is fighting to keep his promises to kawina and to Luffy as well as to liberate Nami Sanji battles kurubi with sanji's super powered kicks going against Fish Man karate Amplified by the water in this fight kurubi has a speed and power advantage while also just straight up trying to drown Sanji he keeps grabbing him plummeting him to extreme depths and bringing him back up to crush his organs with the change in pressure but Sanji manages to out-think him blowing into his gills to suffocate him usop our lovable coward battles chew and in the process has to come to terms with the fact that running away isn't enough at first he fakes his own death but he then thinks about his crew and how they're all putting their lives on the line constantly for each other and how he's sitting here faking it he thinks about how all of kokoyashi Village had put their faith in them and he's not even going to try he thinks about how Nami had been a slave for eight years and how she had helped his village avoid the catastrophe that had happened here and how he is just lying in a pool of ketchup so he wouldn't be in danger usof is a coward he is weak he runs away from his problems and if that's all he was then he would be the most hated character in the series but you know what else usop is he is someone who Time After Time faces his fears despite being weak stands up to dangerous enemies when the time comes and overcomes those odds he is a coward and that's what allows him to be the bravest member of the crew in moments that truly test his character Chu might be stronger than him but Usopp creates an opportunity sets a trap covers the fish man and alcohol and then sets him on fire and when Chu survives this Usopp takes out a hammer and bludgeons the Fish Man over and over until he can't stand up it wasn't pretty but it was something soon after Nami actually arrives to the battlefield and arlong offers her an ultimatum saying that he's going to kill everyone here but if she agrees to be his cartographer he will spare them to which Nami turns to the people of the village and says hey sorry everyone but will you please die with me she is no longer the girl who would rather live a slave then Die free she is no longer the girl not willing to put her life on the line or to risk the lives of others and it is a huge step forward for her character as for Luffy this fight just kind of a banger a little bit Unga Bunga but it's still excellent our long constantly talks down to him and says that he can't do anything because he's of an inferior race but Luffy just agrees with him he says yeah I can't do most things I can't swing a sword I can't lie I can't cook a meal and I can't navigate the ocean but that's why I have my crew and together they are more than the sum of their parts our long not understanding what this could possibly mean says that he feels sorry for the crew with an incompetent leader that can't do anything but Luffy corrects him saying that there is one thing that he can do and that is to beat arlong in this fight eventually the fight moves to the room where Nami was kept captive and forced to draw charts and arlong says that this is what she was born for there is no way that Luffy could use her better than he could and he holds a massive saw-like sword against Luffy's neck so Luffy looks around the room sees the symbol of nami's eight years of torment and destroys everything launches desks and charts out the window breaks the walls and shelves and flattens the entirety of arlong Park in a single gum gum battle ax that squarely lands on our long and with that the town is free nezami gets a beating from Nami and reports what happens to Marine headquarters and Luffy earns his first Bounty of 30 million Nami also gets a tattoo cover-up having the mark of arlong replaced with a tattoo of tangerines and a pinwheel to pay respect to bellamere and genzo speaking of genzo he gives this typical dad speech to Luffy before they set sail saying that Nami has finally found her real smile again and if Luffy ever does anything to steal it away he will personally come kill him it is a very small scene but I love ganzoni's a very good guy before we head on though I want to take a moment to talk about how Oda uses character designs as a means of World building and more specifically how he drops in mannerisms articles of clothing and peculiar details which might seem strange at first but which hint towards a deeper Story the perfect example of which is Kenzo a guy covered in scars from head to toe who wears a pinwheel on his hat this is a weird character design but it breathes life into his character Kenzo gets these scars from trying to protect Nami from the fishmen and as we learn on the last page of the arc he wears this Pinwheel on his hat because when Nami was a baby she was afraid of him but by putting a pinwheel above his face he could always make her smile coming back to the pillars of Oda is writing we get that comedy aspect of him looking very silly but it gets Blended in with emotional value to produce something truly special and it takes what five panels for him to make that effect then we have characters like Captain Morgan and Captain Kuro we find out that when Kuro had stopped being a pirate he crushed Morgan's jaw and then hypnotized him into believing that he was the Great Captain who captured Kuro so when we meet Morgan he's this overconfident man with his steel chin and when we meet Claud or the butler he's always adjusting his glasses with the palms of his hands because he was Captain Kudo who had attached swords to his fingers silly displays of character design that are backed up by storytelling they are tiny seemingly insignificant details in how characters all through the story look and act that hint towards more being there as well as tying into other elements to create this web of interconnected stories to build the world up from it is done you beautifully well and I think genzo is one of the best examples of it especially early on but with that we can enter the final Arc in the East blue log town the opening section to this introduces a few new things that would become a tradition within the series when we reach the end of a saga we are likely going to get a look at the newspaper which fills us in on world events as a whole this including something to do with the Marines in most cases as well as a look at other areas that we've already visited but just as importantly this often gives us a look at how the straw hats Coexist on the ship together usually usop is building or repairing something Zorro is training Sanji is cooking for Nami and later Robin and Nami is being a real adult while Luffy is just goofing off the Marines in this case are talking about the new biggest bounty in the East Blue Monkey D Luffy and it's not just them we even see mihawk visiting Shanks on a small island and having a few drinks together as it turns out they were old rivals until Shanks lost his arm and now their favorite new Pirates being Luffy and Zorro are on a crew together making a name for themselves similarly the people of fuchsia Village are celebrating his New Bounty while the mayor even mentions that he's unsure if becoming a pirate was Luffy's dream or his fate with that out of the way we head into log town the birthplace and execution site of the former King of the Pirates gold D Roger the town itself is largely inspired by Florence Italy fittingly a place in our own world called the birthplace of the Renaissance the origin of a new era something very in line with Roger's own themes a few threads to follow here Nami lends Zorro some money so he can buy a new sword he runs into tashigi on the way who is a swords woman working for the Marines who looks shockingly like kawina but who is also a bit of a klutz the typically calm and composed Zorro turns into complete mush every time he sees her and is unsure of how he should be acting he initially tries to avoid her but luckily she shows up at the sword shop that he goes to and saves him from being scammed she also explains that there are plenty of different rankings that swords can be now even avoiding being screwed out of his money Zorro is pretty low on cash and needs to buy from The Bargain Bin but in it he finds these sandai kotetsu a sword he is able to recognize as being cursed immediately the shopkeeper warns him that everyone who has used that sword has faced a tragic death so he refuses to sell it but Zorro insists that he wants it tossing it into the air saying that he's going to test his luck against the sword's curse as he sticks his arm into its path only for the blade to curve around him it is insanely badass and the salesman is so impressed by the absolute size magnitude and weight of Zorro's balls that he even goes out of his way to offer him another sword for free with that being yubashiri which is apparently the best sword he has it is an awesome moment meanwhile Luffy is checking out the plaza where Roger was executed he is climbing it to see what Roger saw before for his death and it is all good and great however he is confronted by a gorgeous woman wielding a club who it turns out is alvida after eating these smooth smooth fruit she has teamed up with the buggy pirates in hope of getting revenge on Luffy and they even managed to get a surprise attack locking him in a pillary on the execution stage and inadvertently alerting the Marine captain in charge of log Town smoker smoker is a bit of a hard ass he believes that all Pirates are evil and the Marines are always good however he has a genuine moral compass as well he is a hard ass because he knows many Pirates are dangerous and it's just safer to not give them a chance to destroy anything of all the Marines we've met so far is probably the one who most believes in right and wrong in his Arc through the story follows him seeing that maybe not all Pirates are evil and maybe not all Marines are correct it is an extended version of Kobe's Arc in the first few chapters and again Luffy is at the core of it now smoker is also our first logia devil fruit user logi as being fruits which allowed the user to turn into and control an element they can even become intangible in the process in Smoker's case he can turn into smoke as his name suggests he hurries out to the plaza to see buggy getting ready to swing his sword down on Luffy's neck and buggy asks if Luffy has any last words and in this impossible situation he yells out that he is the man who's going to be king of the Pirates and as the blade comes down on his neck Luffy calmly calls out to his crew smiles and says sorry but it looks like I'm dead and that smiling is something that smoker in particular takes note of as it's the same thing that Roger did when he was executed and there is just something very loofy about smiling as he is about to die Luffy wants more than anything to go on an adventure and find the one piece but ever since the start of the story when talking with Kobe about what it means to have a dream he has held fast that he is willing to die for his dream so here he is in this moment about to die and despite not reaching his goals he is completely satisfied that he gave it his everything after all it's about the journey not the destination and even if this journey was short he had made and saved four great friends stocked several evils and saw plenty of wonderful places so even if he died here it would have been a great journey but that's not how things go millimeters from Luffy's neck Buggy's sword starts sparking and a bolt of lightning hits him leaving Luffy unharmed as he's made of rubber and saving his life and all he has to say about this active Dad I'm the act of God is looks like I did survive how lucky from here we cut to a cloaked man named dragon with a tattooed face overlooking the town who for some reason seems to be proud that Luffy has become a pirate Luffy and the rest of his crew are making a break for trying to escape buggy and his Pirates but along the way Zoro was stopped by tashigi and Luffy is stopped by a smoker and for the first time Luffy is completely unable to fight back against his opponent as all of his punches just pass right through smoker it is a one-sided beat down until the cloaked Man shows up scares smoker for a moment and seemingly causes a gust of wind that is so powerful that it picks up all the members of the straw hats and brings them towards the Mary with this opportunity they set sail and once more they commit to their dreams to become the king of the Pirates to be the world's greatest swordsman to find the all blue to become a brave Warrior of the sea and to draw a map of the whole world and it all starts on the grand line that is the end of the East blue Saga introducing us to the main cast their dreams and presenting us with themes which follow us throughout this story corruption Injustice Independence found family and what it means to be a good person person as well though it gave Oda time to truly find what made him a great writer the ability for him to create phenomenal and memorable moments which Incorporated humor sadness and fun all while starting him on the path of blending those talents together and those allowed him to create a story which anyone can fall in love with and become a part of add to this oda's tendency to bring in references from Real World History to tie elements together to make a tangible and lived-in feeling world and we have the makings of something truly special it's kind of hard to recognize the kind of story that Oda is telling now when we look back at the East blue the scope and The rhythms are completely different but the feelings that Oda gave us 20 odd years ago are the same feelings that he gives us every week now and while the shape of the story might have changed the heart of it never has and this would especially continue to be true as we moved into the second Saga of the story Alabaster very fittingly beginning with reverse Mountain there's something that every big Endeavor every big Journey or change in life has in common the first step is terrifying once you've prepared once you've set your mind to your goal and once you actually make the effort to start it can often feel like you don't know what you're doing like any small mistake could be the end of the world and like there's no turning back and being the transition point from the East blue to the Grand line that is exactly what reverse mountain is dividing the one-piece world is the red line a massive wall encircling the entire planet and somewhere along the edge is the entrance to reverse Mountain a narrow path with water flowing into it that is Flowing so quickly that it actually shoots boats up the mountain if you miss even by a few feet your boat will be destroyed and that's the end but working together everyone putting in their all the straw hats manage to thread the needle and take the first big step up onto their Adventure however like any new Endeavor the second that things seem to be going too well something often goes wrong as the ship descends the mountain at incredible speeds they notice that something is blocking their path a gigantic Island whale named laboon Standing Tall in front of them and becoming the first obstacle that they just barely managed to survive as they slow the ship down just enough to not crash into him however them being the straw hats not crashing into it is not enough and they are just eaten by him moments later while being a parallel to stories like Jonah and the whale or Pinocchio this whale is a bit different having long metal tunnels running inside it as well as an entire small island and home surrounded by painted walls this small Arc acts as an introduction to Baroque Works through Mr nine and Miss Wednesday we're trying to kill the Boon and bring his meat back to their Village to feed them these two at first kind of feel like Jesse and James from Pokemon they are comedic relief who really can't seem to do anything right and they are a lot when we first meet them similar to how Kobe was however we're also introduced to crocus here The Keeper of the Lighthouse at this end of reverse Mountain he's a doctor who has taken care of laboon ever since the rumbar Pirates had dropped him off 50 years ago promising to return after they sailed around the world however as laboon is still here they obviously never came back crocus explains to us how the grand line is different from every other ocean in the world compasses won't work here as each island is incredibly magnetically charged and instead they have to rely on log poses these are essentially special compasses that will adjust to the field of an island once you reach it and then redirect you towards your next destination and supposedly once you reach the end that's where you will find laughtail of note though is that there is a second type of log pose called an eternal pose and the these will always point to a specified location now the relevant part of this Arc comes to a close when Luffy fights laboon and in the process befriends him you see laboon had been depressed from waiting for his friends and believed that the red line was what was keeping him away from them so he would try to Ram into it over and over again trying to break it only injuring himself in the process but Luffy spars with the big lad and ultimately saying that laboon will have to wait for Luffy to come back for their rematch and then drawing his Jolly Roger on Lagoon's head saying that he can't tackle the wall anymore or it might wash off again demonstrating Luffy's ability to understand those around him but also continuing a trend where he understands what animals want like with shushu in Orange town before we move on from here this Arc also gives us another first the Mary's Mast is broken in all the commotion with baboon and while usof would do his best to repair it it is the first sign of wear and tear air on the Mary and we are still very early on in the story now Usopp might be able to keep things together but he can never make them like new again and we will always be able to see every scar that the Mary picks up from this point on finally Mr nine and Miss Wednesday hitch a ride as they are left without options and Luffy is an Ever trusting goofball who doesn't know any better together we set sails saying goodbye to crocus and he thinks to himself perhaps they are the Pirates we've been waiting for what do you think Roger dropping a massive bomb as we are given a huge question that is left completely unanswered who is crocus really and how does he know Roger before reaching the next Island we're hit by a little bit of magic not literal magic but more in the sense of Whimsy and wonder something that's very important to the one piece experience apparently because of all the weird magnetism between islands the weather can just wildly change in an instant and in the middle of the ocean it starts snowing then the ship turns itself around and then the snow stops but insane winds pick up and finally it is completely calm which is naturally when Zoro wakes up from his nap after everyone else has dealt with the craziness the grand line immediately feels like it is full of danger but along with that sense of danger comes a feeling that the grand line is a place that anything can happen in soon after this the group reaches the next Island whiskey Peak a town filled with Baroque Works members in Disguise who throw parties for every pirate that shows up with the plan of feeding them getting them so drunk they pass out and then robbing them blind this Arc is just a bit of fun for the most part but also acts to show us just how much stronger Zorro and Luffy and by extension Sanji are in relation to average people Zorro catches the brokeworks agents trying to take advantage of the crew and we find out that they had actually tried to recruit Zorro in the past but he thought that using codename and all that was ridiculous so he had turned them down leading him to fight 100 Baroque work agents at the same time and this goes a long way of showing us just how powerful he is it really is no competition as he plows through all 100 members even crushing the head of a gigantic muscular woman with just one hand it is complete domination until Mr five and Miss Valentine show up and I should mention at this point the lower the number of a baroque work agent the stronger they are this meaning that number five and his partner are among the strongest that Baroque Works has to offer mr5 has the bomb bomb fruit allowing him to turn any part of his body into a bomb usually turning his snot into explosives that can be launched at his opponents this Valentine on the other hand has the kilo kilo fruit which allows her to make her body light enough to float with an umbrella or heavy enough to smash through the ground these two show up because there are apparently spies in the Baroque Works Network and it turns out that Miss Wednesday is actually princess VV nefertari of alabasta and igaram the leader of the bounty hunters at Whiskey Peak is the captain of her royal guard and seeing Vivi being put at risk from Mr five igrom would even turn to the straw hats to protect her which Nami would graciously offer to do for only a billion berries these two new agents show up and go on and Rampage cutting through any other members who get in their way but then Luffy wakes up and is told that Zorro is the one who attacked all the people laying around the town despite them having fed the straw hats this makes Luffy so angry that he actually attacks Zorro and for the first time in the series we see these two fight and just the collateral damage from them is enough to completely overwhelm Mr five and Miss Valentine they barely even recognize that they showed up and they completely rocked them all the same it's very funny watching the agents trying to get their attention just to be ignored and still run over and the fight between Zoro and Luffy would continue until Nami knocks some sense into them they might be the strongest on the crew but Nami is the scariest when things settle down Vivi explains her situation in Nami and how she 100 cannot tell them that the leader of Baroque works is actually sir crocodile the warlord oops and now the straw hats know they're marked as targets meaning they're basically forced to go along with Phoebe so that they can save Alabaster as defeating him is the only way to provide their own safety as well though Sanji and USAF were asleep during all of this so Baroque works is completely unaware of their involvement at all and lastly before we head to the next Island igaram dresses up as Vivi set sail to distract Baroque Works only for Miss all Sunday later shown to be Nico Robin to blow up his ship Robin then appears on the going Mary and is surrounded by the straw hats all totally ready to attack her but without really showing us what happens suddenly all of their weapons are knocked out of their hands and both USA up and Sanji are flipped onto the floor we don't know what her devil fruit actually does at this point it just seems like she has the ability to control everything around her and it is a really excellent introduction for her character she is ruthless she is Cutthroat she is very powerful and she is here to help offering them a shortcut to alabasta but Luffy refuses to take help from an enemy and so Robin gets on a turtle and sails away and we never see that Turtle again now I do want to take a moment to talk about Vivi now that she is properly introduced and as I mentioned she is the princess of alabaster Kingdom a place being manipulated by the warlord crocodile and she had joined Baroque Works to learn more about his organization find out his plans and maybe even learn a way to bring him down and that kind of takes us back to where we're at now in general Vivi is an optimist but she's also fairly naive thinking that people will always do what is right and that a positive change could be made without any sacrifice in some some ways she's kind of a foil to Luffy each being Leaders with their own way of being naive with Luffy always wanting to trust others and being quick to rely on actions when it comes to solving problems while Vivi is often too slow to act and hesitates to rely on others in the way that Luffy can the two of their personalities and leadership styles overlap in several ways but they still butt heads at a couple of core points these aren't really destructive differences though and in fact they help each other grow in those points that they're lacking oh and Vivi also comes with a pet duck named Karu and that's just fantastic Vivi and Nami explain what's going on to everyone else but Luffy is more focused on if it's going to snow again or not which about checks out for his character but as a whole Vivi notices something about the crew very quickly they're kinda idiots while she's explaining a bunch of serious things the other guys are trying to get the duck drunk and at first she's worried that things are going to fall apart if they don't take it seriously but Nami assures her that when push comes to shove they will always come through and that being on the ship makes you lose the will to even worry she just left kokoyashi Village a few days ago now but she is miles apart from where she was mentally when she was there but with that we go to little garden and in many ways this is kind of where we get the best look at how the crew interacts and where they start building into the relationships that we know them for towards the end of the series this is an Island covered in a massive jungle with plants that are overgrown in animals and dinosaurs way bigger than you would expect it's an island Frozen in time and it's like walking into Jurassic Park Luffy off the bat is ready for an adventure and surprisingly Vivi is the one to join him which she learns is super stressful as soon as Luffy starts riding on random dinosaurs so Zorro also heads out for a walk but when he does Sanji asks him to hunt for some meat and Zorro kind of jokingly says sure I'll hunt for something even you couldn't catch and thus began a pissing contest that continues for over two decades as these two try to one-up each other time and time again with each of them heading into the jungle this time to find a big catch and this leaves just Nami and usop alone on the boat as they suddenly realize that they are the weakest on the crew something which would needle into them over the next few arcs until it comes to a peak in water 7. however they immediately demonstrate what they are useful for as Nami remembers the name little garden from a book she had read which calls it the island of Giants and On Cue one of those giants arrives to the ship both Luffy's group and nami's group would run into Dory and bragi respectively and were introduced to the main plot thread of the island apparently these two have been fighting for over a hundred years we later find out it was lit literally over a fish measuring contest and ever since then they were on this island trying to settle things the Warrior's Way with trial by conflict fighting every time a volcano went off however over the 100 years they were here they would only ever draw and this has continued so long that they forgot what they were fighting for a not so subtle comparison to Zorro and sanji's rivalry which was just starting up Vivi tries to get them to stop because they can't possibly hate each other enough to fight for a hundred years but Luffy stops her saying that it isn't about hate it's about pride and in this battle of Pride Usopp learns what his dream really means his has always been the most ambiguous of the goals on the crew just wanting to be a great warrior of the sea but that doesn't really mean anything it's arbitrary but in this battle he sees men who are willing to fight and give up their own lives in an effort to protect their pride and what's important to them inspiring him so much that he sets a goal to visit elbath one day as it's the home home of these Giants it isn't the Giants fighting though that it's the biggest issue the straw hats have at this point is that the log pose will take a year to lock onto the next Island and if they have to wait a year they will not make it to Alabaster before Revolution breaks out but they aren't given a whole bunch of time to worry about this as Mr five and Miss Valentine show up again but having been joined by Mr three and Miss golden week this time they set a trap so that dory's booze would explode leading him to lose the next fight and unable to believe that bragi would do this Dory instead blames Luffy and BV forcing them into a fight Luffy ultimately manages to knock Dory down but after he does the volcano goes off again the Giants Clash and with a huge Advantage bragi takes the Victory and this is when Baroque Works strikes they managed to capture both Giants with Mr three's wax wax fruit as well as sealing Zoro Nami and Vivi on a big candle cake-like thing that will cover them in wax as it turns above them eventually transforming them into statues and each of them kind of reacts to this in their own way but Zorro gets the idea that if his feet are sealed in the wax he'll just cut them off and then fight which is an iffy plan at best luckily though he only makes it about halfway through his ankles before Luffy shows up and Zoro realizes that everything's going to be fine so he can just stop so now knowing that Luffy is here he opts to do a cool pose because even if Luffy ends up dying he might as well look awesome if he's going to be a statue and while this is kind of dumb but also very Chad of him all at the same time this is kind of a turning point for Vivi where she realizes that even in Hopeless moments as soon as Luffy shows up everyone can be calm and just have faith in him but there is a small kink in this when Miss golden week starts fighting and uses her color trap ability to manipulate and hypnotize Luffy and it is Usopp who saves the day by putting himself in danger and managing to free Luffy from that hypnosis so that he's able to fight again from there it's a combination of usopp's quick thinking and Luffy's resilience that will ultimately manage to free their friends Stevie and Nami arrive to save USA from Miss Valentine and usop tricks Mr five into eating a Tabasco star which we actually saw him working on on the ship which is a kind of cool bit of integration and while he's distracted by his burning mouth he's opened up for an opportunity for Zoro to attack him and that really just leaves Mr three who hides himself away in a bunch of wax copies without hesitating though Luffy throws a kick hitting the real one and claiming he was acting on Instinct now you may have noticed I haven't said sanji's name in a while and that's because here begins sanji's background escapades while he does often get time in the spotlight usually facing the second or third strongest opponent of each Arc he also tends to find himself doing things behind the scenes that make a huge difference here for example he finds Mr three's base talks to Mr zero crocodile on the transponder snail and Bluffs that he is Mr three telling the warlord that he eliminated all of the straw hats crocodile would send agents to double check this claim and when Sanji defeats those agents he finds their Eternal pose to alabasta opening a path off the island from here the Giants reunite Nami spends too much time not wearing a shirt and gets bitten by a bug and the straw hats head off the island as the Giants return to fighting and having a good old time together now back on the merry we see Zorro dedicating himself to becoming stronger realizing that if he can't cut through wax he'll never be truly reliable and saying that he really wants to be strong enough to cut through iron which we'll see time and time again from here towards the end of alabasta for example when they get stuck in crocodile's prison and he needs to be able to cut through things that he's just not able to do right now finally it turns out that bug that vietnami was dangerous and she becomes incredibly ill and this puts everyone in a bit of a tight situation because at the same time Nami lets Vivi know that a newspaper had mentioned the rebellion in alabasta is about to go full swing and now Vivi has to choose if we go towards alabasta to prevent the war that will destroy her Nation or stop to find a doctor that helps Nami and she makes the obvious choice of returning to alabasta the fastest way possible which in this case means finding a doctor so their Navigator can be at full strength it's a real wholesome little fake out and so they begin their search for another Island coming across a man named waffle who starts to eat the going Mary and causing the second big bit of damage for the ship before they finally find drum Kingdom however before they can dock they are stopped by all of the people on the island who show up and tell them that pirates are not welcome demanding that they leave leading up to one of my favorite moments for Vivi one of the citizens shoots Sanji for acting up and a second shot hits vivi's arm and Luffy is naturally about to freak out and fight back but Vivi stops him saying that these people are terrified and fighting will only make things worse even saying that Luffy is failing as a captain for overreacting and telling him that if he fights there will be no one to save NAMI so instead she bows Luffy follows and they ask the people to bring a doctor to their ship so that they can save their friend rather than entering the island just as we see Luffy filling in the gaps where Vivi has flaws and helping her realize that sometimes sacrifice and violence are necessary to make change Vivi also teaches Luffy a lot about what it means to be a considerate leader who isn't just someone who's ready to fight for his friends but also is willing to Humble himself and recognize that violence isn't always the answer to save them and with that lesson learned they're given passage onto the island drum kingdom is a place that is recently without a king waffle the previous king and the man that the straw hats had met on the ocean had been a brutal Tyrant who made it so that the doctors on the island were only allowed to treat him and everyone else would have to beg for medical treatment and shout out to Oda for commenting on privatization and inaccessibility of healthcare by the way it is one of the scummiest things that we have to deal with in the modern world and Waffle is a great personification of that however waffle wouldn't get to be king for too long in this story because Blackbeard shows up and after seeing how powerful he was Waffle and his men fled the country leaving a nation with no ruler and only one doctor remaining and I love seeing how upset Vivi gets here at the thought of a ruler being so corrupt and heartless towards their people it is incredibly in line with her desire to be someone respectable and honorable at her people can look up to and she's definitely not the kind of leader who would privatize Healthcare after all what kind of backwards country would do that speaking of how Healthcare though the remaining doctor winds up being a crazy old lady named kareja who lives in Waffle's old castle on the top of the drum mountains she occasionally makes trips down to the village where she helps people in exchange for taking whatever she wants from them saying that health is worth whatever materials she might steal and also she's like Santa Claus or something I don't know we don't focus on it too much anyways not knowing when kareja would visit again Luffy makes the choice to carry Nami up the mountain himself and much like the moment with Vivi this is one of my favorite moments for the dynamic of Luffy and nami's characters in the series I know a lot of great stuff happens later but I think this sequence is just so fantastic at showing what kind of Captain Luffy is but also showing the amount of faith in him that his crew has and it means even more that Nami is the one giving that Faith Luffy says that he's going to carry her up the mountain and when everyone else calls him insane telling him it's too risky Nami interrupts and says I'll leave it to you then Luffy putting her life completely in Luffy's hands something that she would have never considered doing prior to our Long Park so they tie her onto Luffy's back and together with Sanji they head towards the mountain this whole journey towards the mountain just reinforces the lesson that Vivi had taught Luffy as he is forced to avoid obstacles and try not to fight so that Nami doesn't get more sick and when Sanji gets knocked out suddenly he has to take care of two people but even through all of this eventually he reaches the base of the mountain and this is another one of those great anime moments as Luffy looks up towards this completely vertical and sheer-faced rock kicking off his sandals to get some grip tying Nami tightly onto his back and holding Sanji in his mouth as he starts to make this impossible climb the wind blows his coat off immediately and it looks excruciating but he just keeps pushing forward then three hours into the climb disaster strikes as his fingers slide and he digs them into the stone and Ice to stop his fall all and his nails start bursting with blood but ultimately he does make it he is completely drained his face is red and Frozen and he can finally rest but as he passes out the cliff starts to break below him and he is saved by a big yeti looking man that we later find out to be Chopper but what really seals this moment for me is when kareja shows up to check that they're alive and the barely conscious Luffy manages to stretch out his arm grab her and say they are my friends telling her to take care of them first Luffy does a lot for his crew throughout the series and he is always willing to die for them but here's a perfect example of him being willing to suffer for them to go through hell for the chance that they might be saved it is a very powerful moment for him and it's a personal favorite of mine that I think gets overlooked very easily some time passes and everyone eventually wakes up in the castle and we officially meet these shy blue-nosed reindeer Chopper and his very youthful 140 year old adopted mother Dr kareja at first Luffy tries to recruit kareja onto the crew but he is pretty quickly distracted by the talking raccoon dog and naturally he starts to chase him however something happens that makes Luffy particularly interested in Chopper the castle is freezing cold so Luffy tries to go shut the front gate a chopper goes nuts and freaks out on Luffy for even trying to close it because as it turns out there was a family of birds nested over the door and Chopper didn't want to disturb them or put them in any danger by closing it in short Chopper's a good guy and speaking of Chopper let's get into his backstory he was a Blue Nose Reindeer who didn't belong and it's just Rudolph his backstory is just Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer however it differs in that Chopper finds a Zone deviled root this being the last type to be introduced to us along with paramecia and logia as Zone fruits allow their user to transform into the animal that they are associated with as well as having a hybrid form between them and the fruit that Chopper 8 was the human human fruit which allows him to speak and gives him human level intellect which believe it or not did not make him more popular with the other reindeer he gets bullied and exiled and eventually finds his way to a nearby City taking on his human form but still looking more like a Yeti and as a result the people there attack him too it isn't until he finds Dr Hiro look that things begin to change and hero look is just a fantastic dad he is a bit of a quack Doctor Who believes that healing people's spirit is just as important as healing their physical injuries but despite his we'll call it very specific type of medical expertise he still takes Chopper in to help heal him he would tell Chopper all about the pirate flag and how it stood for Hope and over their time together he would teach Chopper all kinds of very questionable information on medicine that he knew however as more and more time passed here look got sick with not much time left he kicks Chopper out so that he wouldn't be there when he dies and he starts focusing himself on creating a medicine that could cure drum Kingdom's corruption Chopper refusing to let things end in this way though begins looking for the cure-all medicine that was listed in one of here looks books this being the amiodake mushroom and fun fact this is the type of mushroom that Chopper finds and this is the red and white mushroom the Amanita muscaria and specifically this is the mushroom that inspired both Santa and his flying reindeer which Chopper himself is inspired from the Amanita muscaria is a hallucinogenic mushroom that reindeer famously eat around Siberia and when people ate those mushrooms they would get so high that it would seem like the reindeer around them were flying it's kind of neat and it's just the One Step Beyond the normal Rudolph reference that most people see but it's subtle enough to be very easy to miss all the same back to the story Chopper brings the mushroom back to Hero look after being beaten and bruised from trying to get it and despite knowing that it is poisonous here look decides to make a soup of it and drink it anyways because he is a good [ __ ] dad he knows that he's going to die soon anyways so he wants Chopper to think that at the very least he had helped at the same time that all of this was going on waffle is spreading a lie that the 20 doctors who were working under him were sick in an effort to lure out here look and since he was doubly going to die now he decides to go and check it out when he arrives waffle tells him it's all a sick joke and here look just thanks God that no one was actually sick because it meant the country wasn't in crisis he doesn't care that he was fooled he's just worried about his people in contrast we have waffle this sick Tyrant who is ready to execute him but here look tells him to stop that it's not worth it and then he can't possibly kill him giving his famous speech about when a man's life truly ends and saying that even though he is sick even though he has been poisoned and even if he gets shot he will live on until he is forgotten and that even if his dream of care in the country fails someone will eventually make it come true and so he pours himself a cup of sake shouts that he had a wonderful life and blows himself up so that Chopper won't be the cause of his death after here looks death Chopper would begin learning real medicine under Dr kareja making a goal that if there was no true cure-all medicine in the world then he would become that medicine himself the ultimate Doctor Who Could cure any disease and I'm gonna be honest Chopper is not my favorite character he is definitely my least favorite Straw Hat he definitely has his moments but I think that Oda often has this feeling of not knowing just what to do with Chopper's character after all it isn't like he can make people sick every Arc and even when people get injured it isn't like he gets a ton of time in the spotlight because of this we have a character who doesn't really fit into the category of the Navigator or whether predicting Nami and the tinkering usop but who also doesn't really fit into that fighting category of Sanji Zoro and Luffy is definitely the odd one out most of the time and even in arcs as big as Alabaster it can feel like he's just not even there sometimes even despite this though I love this backstory I love hero look and his passion for life and his quest to bring joy to other people I love how much he cared for Chopper and it's just all done so well and just as I can hear bellamere saying that she loves her daughters I can always perfectly imagine here look yelling I've had a wonderful life when it comes to the final battle of the Ark we have Chopper's first big fight as he uses the rumble ball that he invented to become a special Zone user while typically zones only have three forms he has access to seven Each of which augment his body to allow for different skills and abilities and imma be honest it's pretty cool through most of the fight he's still wary of the straw hats but at one point waffle takes a shot at hiralux flag that's flying over the castle and shoots a cannon at it only for Luffy to spring up there and to protect it as is tradition Luffy doesn't know about here look doesn't really know about Chopper's story at all but he knows that a pirate flag stands for someone's dream and he won't let someone take that from anyone else it's a fantastic moment in isolation but outside of that I mean it's waffle the fight isn't anything crazy or interesting and I feel like this is my biggest gripe with this Arc while everything else feels so heartfelt and well thought out what the [ __ ] is going on with waffle he is probably one of the least interesting villains in the entire series he is completely one note with very little to offer and I'm not saying that every villain needs to have a deep thing going on but waffle is just spiteful and hateful for the joy of being spiteful and hateful there is nothing else to this character he is just a bad person there's nothing really else to his character he's just kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon villain like even later in the story when he gets a new nation to lead he calls it the evil black drum Kingdom and I just kind of have an issue with characters who know and are proud of the fact that they're evil like you can do bad things but if you have a reason behind it and you think that you're in the right that just adds so much more flavor to the character and Waffle doesn't have that even his Supporting Cast these two have nothing to offer like I've watched through one piece seven times now and I cannot tell you their names and every time I reach drum Kingdom I go ah I forgot about these guys and I think that sums up drum Kingdom's biggest issue the core of the conflict here wobble just feels vapid empty uninteresting and more than anything annoying and it just drags down an otherwise exceptional Arc Chopper ultimately decides to join the straw hats and his send-off from kareja is a more aggressive version of what zeph did for Sanji at the baratier the whole idea of Faking being mean to help them move on to a new part of their lives as Shopper leaves says that she isn't one for sad goodbyes and she cries with Dalton and then uses the remaining powder that hero look had given her before his death as a final goodbye supposedly with it being the sum of all of his research as a Young Man hero look had wandered onto an island filled with cherry blossoms that were said to be so beautiful that they cured his soul and in drum Kingdom he found a nation that was as corrupt as he was so he wanted to share that image that he had seen with the people of drum Kingdom and so he spent his life making this powder which could dye the snow a beautiful pink and as Chopper and the straw hats make their way off the island the drum mountains Bloom like sakura trees and an absolutely stunning scene of note here Dalton and kareja also talk about Roger for a moment similar to how crocus had just a few arcs back and kareja is the first person to correct his name to Gold D Roger rather than gold Roger mentioning how her Reindeer had set off with a very dangerous man and that the will of of D was still alive something that to this day we are still being drip fed information about and finally the last thing I want to mention before we leave is that Dalton recalls just before the straw hats get there a man named Ace appeared looking for Blackbeard and then asked if they had seen a pirate with a straw hat and if they did they should tell him to look for Ace in Alabaster a very early setup for the path that would be followed along with Blackbeard and Ace all the way up to Marine Ford over the next 300 odd chapters now the two things I need to talk about here are the change in oda's structure and how it became a signifier of his biggest weakness as a writer and this is a tendency to move away from multiple Arc sagas I made this quick chart here showing how many arcs are in each Saga as well as the amount of chapters per section and if you look at Alabaster here I mean it's a pretty massive jump from anything Oda has produced up until this point reaching a gigantic 62 chapter section please do not laugh as you think of dressrosa and wano and while alabasta and the following Sky Pia Arc would be the largest we'd see until dressrosa there's a clear drop off from this five and six mini Arc structure that we've had moving towards an average of two arcs for every Saga with maybe a post-event Arc to wrap things up and when you're looking at this chart it also kind of correlates to how people feel about these arcs in general people love the East blue people love most of the alabaster Saga but some people have an issue with alabasta Island specifically as it just feels slow and yeah that's going to happen when it is more than double the length of anything that came before it Jaya and Sky Pia people love Jaya and typically dislike skypeia even if they're very wrong and dumb for thinking that I don't make the rules but again skypeia is one of the longest arcs water 7 is a saga that people adore again and we're returning to this multiple Arc system Thriller bark we're dropping all the way down to a single Arc which is dog [ __ ] but has an admittedly very strong ending marineford multiple arcs some people call it the best in the series and post time skip we basically only received two Arc sagas and a consistent complaint each time that these arcs feel too long are drawn out and that the pace is too slow and the pacing will come from multiple areas especially if we're talking about the anime but overall this is oda's weakness he has a very strong more is more mentality as I mentioned when we brought up the addition of the seven Warlords when he thinks of something fun he has to add it into the series but suddenly we have seven crew members including Vivi and we have eight then nine and each of those crew members needs their own development and plot to follow on each island this often means that they need their own enemy to fight in each Arc meaning that the opposing crew or Marine Group also needs to get bigger and Oda has an inability to just make a character exist he also needs to give all of them motivation and backstories and they need to make us cry and it just keeps adding more layers every time until every Arc feels like it's 30 chapters longer than it needs to be and sure this allows for some more spectacular Oda moments but at the same time it would be great if we could just move on with the plot sometimes and so as we do move on I'm not going to be able to cover every little thing that happens in these arcs we'll cover the main plot any big character moments or super relevant stuff but just because Oda tends to bloat things doesn't mean I have to here no no don't look at how far through the video you are just trust me I am famously very concise I get to the point extremely quickly and you are not watching a six hour long video with that though we should probably get back to the actual plot ourselves alabasta is a desert Nation going through a multiple year drought well everywhere other than the area around the king's Palace as a result of this disparity the people are on a verge of Revolution unbeknownst to them though crocodile has been using something called rain powder to actively steal the rain from the rest of the country all while he has been planting broke work agents everywhere to act as Sparks for the Powder Keg that he was creating at the same time he was also elevating his own position by acting as a hero to the citizens stopping Pirates and bandits before they could cause any real damage and that is basically crocodile's plan in a nutshell make the current established Powers feel unreliable and untrustworthy make the people feel resentment towards that power and have his organization continue to strategically disrupt things from behind the scenes then once the people finally get fed up enough to revolt have them look to the hero of the nation to become its next leader which is kind of a pretty solid planet for being honest however the ultimate goal of this plan was to gain access to the nefertari Royal tomb where they supposedly have a pony glyph which would lead them to the ancient weapon pluton soap plenty of things to talk about here this is the first mention of both ancient weapons and the poneoglyphs these along with the suggested will of D kind of act as our first hints towards what the end game of the series will focus on as well as being some of the longest running questions that the series has to offer this is also the first big example of a revolution in the series now Alabaster itself is largely based off Egypt with a few hints of Indian culture here and there they have the c-cap as their sacred animal they have a jackal and a falcon being their Guardian deities and the name Alabaster is a reference to Arabia the area between Egypt and India as well as Alabaster which is a mineral found commonly in Egyptian artifacts on the way to alabasta they are met by the absolute homie Bond clay this ending up being number two in the Baroque Works organization but for now he's just an eccentric person with the copy copy fruit which allows him to change into anyone that he touches with one hand and undo the transformation with his other he puts on a quick show turning into Luffy Chopper Nami usop and Zorro as well as a few random extras including the king of alabaster and let me tell you if you're trying to frame a king as being a horrible ruler being able to turn into them is a pretty great first step of note here is that sanji's not around when Bonn is doing this opening up this opportunity for him to do things behind the scenes what this also does is give the straw draw hats time to make a counter measure specifically marking their arms with x's to show that they are real nakama and not bond in Disguise this is a very small scene it takes about half a chapter but in doing this we learn who Mr two is we see his powers and understand how they will be used against the king and we set up for a very powerful emotional moment at the end of the arc the first people we actually meet on Alabaster proper are of course Luffy's brother portcus D Ace and Captain smoker from logtown smoker mentions that Ace is the second division Commander for the Whitebeard Pirates and on that note I should probably mention that the Whitebeard Crest on Ace used to look a little bit different the Whitebeard flag used to look like this which obviously most average Western people will think of Nazis but this is the original sign that the swastika was stolen and inverted from a sign that was an indication of compassion strength and and Buddhism but just to be safe and to appease the audience of One Piece as a whole the icon was swapped out with a cross made of Bones Ace immediately feels like Luffy he falls asleep mid-conversation he eats way too much food and he has a great sense of humor however he also feels more mature more confident and all around like you might expect a big brother to be in comparison smoker has set himself up to capture Ace but before he can Luffy bursts into the restaurant and fanatically orders food he is so focused on eating that he doesn't even notice Ace or smoker at first until smoker tries to go after him using his devil fruit but Ace pops up like an absolute boss uses his flame lohia powers to stop him and it's just excellent this opens up a chance for Luffy and the straw hats to escape and Luffy tells us how Ace was always much stronger than him even before Ace had a devil fruit and not only that but it was never even close when Ace catches up to him he offers for Luffy to join the Whitebeard Pirates and even when a says that he will make Whitebeard the king of the Pirates Luffy just says meh that's fine I'll just have to fight him later then and so they head their separate ways Ace gives Luffy the first fever card that we see in the series basically a piece of paper that will always try to pull itself in the direction that Aces while also reflecting his physical condition I wonder if that's ever going to be relevant but ACE also thanks to straw hats for watching over his brother before he immediately heads out to hunt down Blackbeard for killing a crewmate and forget making an entrance this dude knows how to make an exit getting on his hybrid surfboard raft thing that's powered by his devil fruit he sails off and while he does doing a flip over a battalion of Baroque Works ships and punching through them with one attack and it is completely epic but that's it though he's gone after that the anime expands on this time together a little bit and I think it does a lot from making Ace feel like more of a relevant character but either way we really only see him for a short time as the straw hats travel around Alabaster they run into several towns and learn what's going on and in each one Vivi continues to promise everything will be okay and because of that Luffy quits BV is dealing with a civil war between a million people a warlord of the sea and a secret organization of bounty hunters and Assassins but the only life that she is willing to risk in this conflict is her own very similar to nami's perspective way back in kokoyashi Village she doesn't mind putting herself in danger but she refuses to risk anyone else but in vivi's case she won't even say that she wants to kill crocodile she will say she wants the straw Hat's help but she also doesn't want to put them in danger so Luffy calls her out on it telling her that people die at the best of times let alone when all of this is happening and that Alabaster needs a leader who can look at things realistically even even if they can stop the revolution crocodile won't stop until he's beaten and so Luffy and Vivi fight eventually bubbling over as he screams that they are her friends and the least that she can do is let them risk their lives for her country as well this is a perfect parallel to the moment that they enter drum Kingdom when Vivi teaches Luffy that fighting isn't always the answer as this time he reminds her that sometimes it is from here they go on the offensive taking on rain base crocodiles Casino in hopes of finding him but they fall into a trap along with smoker smoker for his part has been saying that a pirate is a pirate no matter what and that's all there is to it but then he sees the straw hats helping Vivi and he's suddenly unsure on top of that they seem to be helping trying to save alabasta and stop crocodile and now he's even more confused and speaking of crocodile this dude is basically a bond villain tons of Charisma this real Gruff and brutal attitude and just overflowing with confidence to a fault he has an absolute presence in the series and it's done really well he manages to lock the straw hats and smoker into a c prism cage which negates devil fruit powers and starts flooding the room before throwing the key to the cage inside the mouth of one of his massive banana Gators and as all super villains do he leaves them alone and walks away as they prepare to die issue here is that not all of the straw hats are present Sanji who still hasn't been seen by Baroque works is free and Chopper who isn't taken seriously and seen more as a pet is also on the loose so Sanji calls crocodile on the transponder snail lures him outside tells him to call him Mr Prince and then has Chopper lead him on a wild reindeer Chase as he sneaks into rain base and frees everyone this is classic Sanji behind the scenes work at the time crocodile realizes what's up everyone has already swam to safety which includes Luffy telling Zorro to save smoker this of course leading smoker to even more questions these are pirates and even more so Pirates he is hunting but they are helping people and saved his life so what does that mean recognizing that there might be some issue in his worldview he gives himself a moment to figure things out calls off the Marines that are hunting for the straw hats and instead orders reinforcements to come and save Alabaster and as the straw hats leave rainbase and head to where their action is we get our first confrontation Luffy versus crocodile and after some quality banter crocodile throws a timer into the ground and says he's giving Luffy three minutes and what is again a show of confidence but this is well founded just like in his fight with smoker Luffy is unable to touch crocodile because he's a logia user and for the first time in the series Luffy really loses a fight and it is not close Croc crocodile would end up stabbing him with his hook throwing him into a sand pit and again leaves however it isn't a straw hat who would save Luffy it was crocodile's partner Nico Robin who would then go on to ask why those who carry the name d choose to fight from here most of the major fights take place Nami vs Miss Double finger sees her using the climb attack that usop made for her for the first time which while it's mostly party tricks also allows her to manipulate the weather a bit so finally Nami has a real way to fight Usopp and Chopper take on Mr four and Miss merry Christmas as well as a gun who ate the dog dog fruit the battle is fine Gustav takes an absolute pounding before giving an iconic speech about when you have to fight no matter what again slowly learning what it means to be brave battle by battle and ultimately outsmarting the brokeworks agents for the win Sanji takes on Mr 2 in a battle of kicks vs Kenpo but Mr 2 continuously turns himself into Nami to get the advantage however eventually Sanji overpowers him and finally Zorro takes on Mr one Daz bones and learns how to cut steel in one of his coolest early fights and while all of this is happening the revolution is taking shape crocodile has cornered the king and is asking about pluton but Luffy arrives for round two this time sporting a barrel full of water to try and overcome crocodile's devil fruit even taking on his powerful new form water Luffy while Luffy loses this battle again he does manage to do damage this time a sign of his growth and creativity now through all of this Arc Robin has kind of been acting as a background character holding off hordes of Marines with ease taking down Pell like it's nothing forcing the king to bring her to the pony glyphs and at one point we get our first glimpse of who she really is as a marine mentions that she was eight years old when she sunk six battleships and earned a bounty of 79 million just about the same that crocodile had when he became a warlord but as she was a child by this point her devil fruit had also been revealed the Hana hananomi which allows her to bloom body parts on any surface within range for example she could Sprout arms out of tashiki's shoulders to pull up her neck and then make another pair from her wrists that grab her sword and hold it against her in terms of early devil fruits with the exception of logias in my opinion Robbins is by far the strongest the ability to take advantage of any angle and snap someone's neck is insane the amount of Limbs that she can create just adds on to that I'm not saying she would win every fight but she has an advantage in most of them from here though we move on to the Royal tomb and the poneglyphs but when robin goes to read them she says there's nothing there but this country's history and with no more use for her crocodile tries to kill her Luffy shows up and challenges him for the third time but this time rather than bringing a supply of water that will run out he uses his own blood to harden crocodile sand so that he'd be able to hit him and with his Advantage nullified crocodile is taken out as Luffy launches the warlord into the sky and drops him onto the city's streets couple things to note here is that this would be the first of many times that Luffy is poisoned in the series something which would become a bit of a running theme as he builds up his immunity second while this is going on there is a bomb in the city that the rest of the straw hats are trying to find and ultimately Pell sacrifices himself to fly away with it it sure would ruin the moment if he lived huh I guess we gotta talk about this here another of oda's biggest criticisms is his lack of killing off characters especially when heavily implying that they have died sometimes being called the will of P we have characters like Pell who survive situations which look like they should have killed them and in a lot of cases this takes away the sense of weight that many situations have in general though Oda very rarely uses deaths and often avoids sacrifices altogether he prefers to keep the topic of death to a very limited and impactful set of situations which we will talk about later anyways thinking that he died to save the city Vivi starts screaming over and over for the people Waging War below her to stop fighting but they're unable to hear her until crocodile comes shooting through the ground as he is defeated for the first time in years rain falls in alabasta and the whole War stops for a single moment to appreciate it just long enough for them to hear Vivi and for her to explain what has happened some time passes after crocodile is defeated and it is time for the straw hats to head out because they can't be seen with the princess but they do give her a choice she can come with them or stay behind in alabasta and it is an absolutely gorgeous moment as she escapes the capital finds her way to the coast and calls out that she can't come with them explaining that she she loves her country and needs to stay there it is actually such a heartfelt scene and I love Luffy's reaction just going oh that makes sense never wanting to be a person who stands in the way of someone else working towards their own dreams and goals as they sail off Vivi calls out to them one more time asking that if they meet again will they still be friends again very similar to Nami echoing her thoughts as she left the baratier but in this case the straw hats are unable to answer if they do they put her life and position in danger because the Marines will connect her to Pirates so instead as Vivi cries the music starts swelling up and the straw hats raise their arm to show off the X's that they Mark themselves with at the start of this Arc to prove that they are still each other's family and dang it sure is Dusty in this room my eyes keep watering this is a fantastic callback it's done in a way that is so in emotionally charged assigned to prove who they are and keep themselves safe being turned into something to show that they will always be connected and ah my heart now I did mention the Marines a moment ago and we do have a bit of a situation here as well obviously they can't say that one of their Warlords went nuts tried the conquer a nation and then a group of pirates stepped in to clean things up that is just bad PR so instead they give the credit to Smoker who is entirely against it he wants to tell the truth about what happened but he has ordered against doing so and in combination with everything that had just happened so far is suddenly completely lost Pirates are evil except sometimes they aren't maybe but at the same time Marines are good but then they wouldn't need to lie in a situation like this right and if they're lying here what else have they lied about everything that his character had valued to this point is now in question but with that we are ready to set sail again just as Luffy Zorro Sanji usop Chopper and Nico Robin has snuck on board not only that but she is the first person to ask to join the crew rather than Luffy offering it as it turns out the Royal tomb was collapsing after Luffy and crocodile thought and Robin was still injured down there content with dying it even seemed like she was pretty for the idea but instead Luffy saves her against her will and now she's saying that her life is his responsibility and Luffy being Luffy accepts her onto the crew in the most casual way possible to this point Robin has been a fairly cold-blooded killer but has also had this weird sense of humor and fun associated with her as well laughing when crocodile would slip up helping Luffy she's kind of a mystery so the crew naturally doesn't know what to think however she wins most of them over just about instantly she manages to make Luffy usop and Chopper laugh with her devil fruit she gives money to Nami she is a woman so Sanji automatically loves her and it's only Zorro that remains cautious but there isn't too much time to worry about that as a massive ship falls from the sky and almost crushes the Mary and when Nami checks the log pose it too is pointed straight up and we are headed for a sky island the sky Pia Saga is actually our first one to only be split into two arcs those being Jaya and Sky Pia itself despite that this Saga is almost as long as the East blew in its entirety and the skypeia arc is our longest Arc in the series to this point in fact it will be our longest Arc until dressrosa many years later as far as how the fans look at this Arc there's typically two camps the first group which find it incredibly boring and slow paced and the second group which thinks that this is the essence of of what makes one piece such a great Series in general so you know it's average anime fan discourse while Jaya is fairly universally loved and while I do think Sky Pia is great some of the issues that people have with this section include lackluster villains in the priests slow pacing and a sense of death not being very relevant in the series as we see people making it through things that there is no reason for them to survive and more specifically that are actually stated to kill them like the repeated use of impact dials finally Luffy is very intentionally removed from much of this Saga and his absence is tangible despite these flaws I think this section of the story is still something special and it all starts in Jaya now we do have the monkey see scavenger brother guys but I'm gonna be a hundred percent honest and say I'm not very interested in their storyline I find them pretty annoying and they don't really add a lot to what's going on so we're just going to skip on right by them to when these straw hats are actually about to arrive on Jaya and where they are scared by towering Shadows that cross the clouds in the sky and much like the marking on their arms in alabasta the emotions associated with this moment will be completely swapped out by the end of the arc panicked they make their escape and as they draw close to Jaya and more specifically mocktown but not so close that usop can see the island three seagulls fall from the sky having been shot something that usop our Master Marksman claims would have been impossible and this is our first introduction to the Blackbeard crew with Van auger but as we explore mocktown we would also meet Jesus Burgess and Doc Q making this a notably small pirate crew that wants to stay very intimate rather than sprawling out in the same way that Luffy does Nami makes Luffy promise not to get into any fights on this island as there are tons of very violent Pirates here and he takes it to heart even despite the infuriating pirate City comes across on this island Chief among them being Bellamy although Blackbeard is of course also present Bellamy and Blackbeard have this really interesting relationship with Luffy here in a way representing the opposite of who he wants to become as a pirate Bellamy's whole thing is that he believes that pirates consumed with dreams are fools why look for El Dorado or the Emerald City or the one piece when you could just use your own strength to take what's in front of you it's extremely antithetical to who Luffy is as a character Bellamy at one point beats the hell out of Luffy and Zorro in the bar but just as Shanks saw higuma as someone who didn't understand what strength was and who wasn't worth fighting back to Luffy sees Bellamy the same way he is a bully who doesn't understand what being a pirate really is the ultimate representation of people like Don Krieg arlong and Kuro who only care about greed and have no interest in adventure or being good people and by not fighting back Luffy wins this battle at the same time we have Blackbeard and one of the most interesting villain introductions in anime we aren't given his name at this point he's just some big round dude who sits next to Luffy at the bar and when Luffy likes the taste of something he hates it and when he likes the taste Luffy hasten they are opposites and after the fight with Bellamy Luffy leaves the bar to find Blackbeard waiting there and eating pie and Blackbeard would give a speech about how Bellamy is a fool who doesn't understand what being a pirate is all about and how the era of dreams will never die and despite saying everything that Luffy believes in Luffy does not respond at all he just blankly stares directly at him these two believe the same things but what they mean is drastically different to each of them it is a very simple kind of funny and unique way to bring a character like this into the story of course as we leave Nami asks Zoro what this guy's deal is and Zorro and Luffy both correct her by saying not him but more likely they opening up dozens of theories about Blackbeard maybe being several people or having several personalities from here the crew is looking for a way up to the sky and search for a man named Mont Blanc Cricket they find his house on the other end of Jaya and as they do Zoro mentions how beat up the Mary is and how it might be time for a new boat but Luffy just tells him that the Mary is an Irreplaceable part of the crew while digging around Cricket's house they find a picture book called Nolan the liar that Sanji recognizes from the north blue which apparently he is from it's a quick story about a man named Noland who went sailing and when he returned told his King about an entire city of gold they would travel to this place together but when they reached their destination there was nothing and so Nolan would be imprisoned and executed saying that the City of Gold must have sunken to the bottom of the sea with his last breaths and this brings us back to Mont Blanc crickets and the monkey brother who scavenge the sea looking for it because as it turns out Noland was a real dude and Cricket is his descendant who is trying to clear their family name Cricket has an idea for how to get them to the sky island but they're going to need a South bird so they can locate the knock-up stream a powerful blast of water from the ocean floor that can bring them thousands of meters up while they're gone to look for the bird Bellamy's shows up to steal crickets gold in doing so they'd beat The Old Man and the monkey Brothers half to death destroy his home and split the Mary in half which is unacceptable everyone is angry but the Mary needs to be fixed by the morning to catch the knock-up stream so there isn't time for everyone to head back to mocktown to deal with Bellamy but Luffy assures them that if they can fix the Mary he will make it back in time up until this point Bellamy has been insulting Luffy for only having a 30 million Berry Bounty and he hasn't really worried because his was so much higher at 55 5 million because of that straw hat couldn't be a threat but just before this confrontation we learned that for defeating crocodile Luffy's bounty shot up to 100 million and golly G does this fight ever reflect the difference between 155. Bellamy begins bouncing around the town taunting Luffy making this big scene and trying to rile up attention but when he finally goes into attack Luffy lands a punch so powerful that it is ingrained in Bellamy's face ending the fight immediately and good Lord is it satisfying this also reflects the shank spit from the beginning with higuman not being worth fighting when he attacks Shanks himself but once he puts shanks's friends in danger it is time to scrap Luffy doesn't care about Bellamy beating him up but breaking the Mary stealing from cricket that is more than enough reason for him it's a pretty direct parallel but I'll be damned if it doesn't work every time once he returns he finds the Mary has been repaired and upgraded to have wings to help it climb the knock-up stream and they set sail before actually heading into the sky though we get a bit of a catch up with people around the world a few panels with Ace visiting buggy and having a small party as well as being introduced to the gorosei the five highest standing World Nobles supposedly on top of being the people that the Marines directly report to we also pick up with the fleet admiral of the Marine sengoku the Buddha who is hosting a meeting with a few of the Warlords including Kuma and doflamingo and hey it turns out Bellamy works for doflamingo what are the odds it's not just the current Warlords though as one of Blackbeard's crew members Lafitte shows up here and puts Blackbeard's name forward as a suggestion to replace crocodile despite Blackbeard not having a bounty at this time for himself finally shank sends a messenger to see Whitebeard and suddenly we have half of the faces that make up two of the world power hours with all that out of the way though the straw hats set sail into the center of a Whirlpool get launched into the sky with a knock-up stream and it's one of those moments in one piece that just kind of feels magical skypeia tackles a lot of different topics however the core of it I would summarize as being based on colonization in South America Oda always sprinkles in history here and there but this Arc is very in your face with it and history is kind of my thing so I'm very into it you got the search for the City of Gold El Dorado you have half the people being inspired by Mesoamerican culture you got the idea of stealing land as well as enforcing a new religion then there's this strict adherence to religion that completely dominates Sky Pia as a whole and the way that religion is presented in Sky Pia kind of mirrors the way that the Marines and World Government seems to be shown as a corrupt dominating force on the ocean to put it briefly I think Oda might have an issue with authority while skypeia as a whole has a lot of interesting points and while plenty of seats are planted here a lot of this Arc can feel like it exists in isolation in a weird way so much of the story so far has resolved around Pirates Marines the world government and none of that is here on top of that we are quite literally separated physically as were ten thousand meters in the air with many characters who seem to fall out of the story once this Arc is complete and on this front it is a drastic removal from everything that we've experienced so far but do you know what else skypeia is it is a strange and wonderful place just like the floating restaurant in the middle of the sea shaped like a fish or a man 20 years ago who as he was being executed started a great pirate era or a pirate being made of rubber who sets sail into the world completely unprepared for his journey to become the next pirate king that's the part of one piece that skypeia falls in into it is a magical Adventure that you can't imagine anywhere else that is what skypeia is and that is what one piece is the arc begins as the crew crash lands on the ocean of clouds beyond the sky and we are immediately met with religious parallels as we meet the former God gonfall the skypeens having wings and conus is even playing a harp and I mean even the locations here Heaven's Gate Angel Island it's not very subtle and ultimately the conflicts arise when the straw hats inadvertently break the laws or Commandments of skypeia one of these Commandments is that they can't go to Heaven's yard however Nami goes out there on a waiver by mistake and she sees a man trying to escape only to be struck by a massive bolt of lightning that essentially turns him to Ash and lightning is an interesting tool here when you think of deities around the world many of the big ones aren't just generically all-powerful right but if we look at more polytheistic religions and mythologies especially some of the more popular ones who are the poster boys Zeus Thor set it's the gods of thunder and sure there's gods of the Sea Gods of fire gods of death those all have special places as well but Thunder comes from the heavens you can run from a flood or a fire but lightning is instant lightning can be seen as Divine judgment and the title of this chapter Judgment of Heaven reflects just that and this is how Anna rules over skypia it is hard to convince people that you are a God but when you can Smite anyone seemingly from anywhere with a bolt of lightning because they oppose you that it's a pretty good start add-on that he has Mantra an early demonstration of observation hockey which basically allows him to read the minds of anyone on Sky Pia and I mean sure you're a God who am I to argue and this bleeds into the white Berets and they're overly strict adherence to the laws making sure that people act in accordance to enel's will isn't just about keeping order it's about keeping the public alive and safe from his judgment conus once she is aware of the straw hats being criminals is supposed to get them to Upper yards so that they can face God's judgment directly and I love this moment we get close to the gondolas and Luffy turns to her and asks why she's been shaking the whole time the whole town looks very anxious and then she explains to them that she legally has to betray them at the risk of her own life and everyone begins freaking out because she told them but it's not just the citizens doing this the straw hats respond with why the hell did you tell us now you're going to be targeted they aren't mad they aren't scared to face a god they are just worried for their friends and luckily when edel does summon his lightning bolt gone fall arrives at the last moment to save them but naturally the straw hats need to head to Upper yard anyways to beat up this bully who just tried to hurt their friend there's a lot of interesting positions on religion in this Arc but one of the more subtle ones is with Zorro who openly says he doesn't believe in God at the same time he pursues his own personal growth later in the ark through Buddhist principles and while we have this whole discussion on religion going on we also have the shandorans the people whom upper yard originally belonged to but priests or as you might more accurately call them missionaries and conquerors stole it from them a land with a hidden city of gold within it which is obviously a parallel to indigenous Latin American groups such as the moisca and their El Dorado however in general the architecture here is more of a mishmash of moiska Aztec Incan and Mayan cultures with the Invaders not so much representing any individual European Group which might have tried to conquer the Americas but rather being depicted as the unifying religion that connected those Nations and while this is a very strong and intro resting thematic basis that kind of also brings us to our cast of characters once we reach skypia and in general I think this is the arc's weakest Point Enoch is fantastic we'll talk about him in a moment but his priests are forgettable at best kind of on the level of waffles men they're just flat one-dimensional characters who don't really offer a lot to the story I mean even enol himself sees them as disposable and on the other side of the conflict we have the shandorans you know with such memorable characters as Braham and genbo who I quite literally had to look up in reality wiper the leader of the shandoran offensive and I saw a girl with Mantra are kind of the only memorable ones here and I kind of remember brauhan because Zorro learns has pound a whole thing against him and kamakiri though I couldn't have told you his name before looking it up is someone that I remember that annel completely flexes on but overall we have two groups that just aren't interested and don't stand out back to animal though and he is perfect he's got this sense of Cockiness as you might expect he's got a bit of a God complex seeing himself as perfect in every way and he is a lightning lohia user meaning he is lightning and no one can touch him add in Mantra and you have this all-knowing all-powerful dude and although also has a bunch of details in his design which lean into this feeling of godliness as well he has fukumimi these long earlobes which look super strange to people in the west but can often be a sign of prosperity in Japan often also being associated with the Buddha himself which ironically is a bit of a weird moment of overlap between him and Zoro who doesn't believe in God although an argument could be made that if Anil is presenting himself as a God he probably doesn't believe in an all-powerful one then you have the drums looking exactly like the Japanese Thunder God rygin which you see extending from annel's back these being worked by tomoe and supposedly sounding like thunder when being played and also Anna looks like Eminem it's not super relevant but I did need to mention it the final selling point to anal though is the way he talks this dude looks down on everyone and solely exists to Hype himself up at the same time he has this playfulness to him allowing kamakiri to freely attack him as much as he wants just to prove that he will never do damage and that he has no chance of winning even falling asleep while being attacked he just feels Larger than Life but no matter how big annel feels we also have a bit of a confliction here enel is electricity and a lot of people might be thinking about now oh but Luffy is made of rubber and that takes away all of the tension but Oda does something very interesting here constantly taking Luffy out of the story by doing things like trapping him in a giant snake's stomach and in doing so at some points you almost forget get that he's even an option and while this is effective it also takes away one of one piece's biggest polls Luffy anal's big thing in the story is that he loves verse or solid ground and he wants to travel to a place of unlimited birth with whoever wins this death game that he puts on and once that game is complete he plans to destroy Sky Pia as it is unnatural and doesn't have any birth the death game is kinda fun but also gets a bit drawn out Zoro learns to pound a hoe Robin fights a fat dude and choppers stand on his own for the first time annel even dies at one point towards the end of it however he just restarts his own heart with his devil fruit which is a chilling moment ultimately though it comes down to just he and Nami being brought onto his ship the maxim and as he takes off to fly towards this land of infinite birth it is up to the rest of the straw hats to save her Luffy shows up first in a bit of an even match with Anna model on the one hand anal can't really hurt him because he's made of rubber but on the other hand Anil can read Luffy's mind so Luffy can't hit him either at some point though annel just gets tired traps Luffy's arm in a massive ball of gold and just pushes him off the boat as his tradition is Sanji who has some of the biggest impact sneaking onto the maxim and damaging its inner mechanisms before coming out to the main deck to save Nami and Usopp as he takes out a cigarette gets blasted by anil's lightning and says thanks I was just going to ask for a light it's just so good now before we reach the final battle for the ark Oda does something a little bit different from normal giving us a backstory to a character that we've barely heard of the true story of Nolan the liar this for me is the best part of the arc we see how Nolan had been drawn to the island of Jaya by the ringing of a beautiful bell he meets the locals stops their sacrificing of young girls and slowly earns their trust as he proves to them that they can't rely on just the gods to save them when science can do so much he helps to heal their people of this curse that they believe they have explaining it's just a disease and even becomes friends with their Greatest Warrior khalgura and khalgura brings him to the hidden city of gold as well as showing him the Golden Bell and obviously these themes of God fit in pretty well with skypeia as a whole however while much of the rest of the arc seems to scoff at religion this backstory shows us that there is value to it Nolan learns that the cause of this disease was the sick trees in the area so he cuts them down not realizing that this is a sacred grove which housed the spirits of the shandoran ancestors calgra thanking Nolan to be a monster for cutting down these trees and not knowing the truth tells him to leave the island but as he does Calgary's daughter explains what really happened so khalgara calls out to Nolan to return one day to follow the sound of the Golden Bell and I think that this mini storyline kind of discusses the difference between religion and Faith or at least religion and spiritualism this idea that this organized system under a God and Priests can be corrupted and come across as something like a dictatorship whereas Faith this idea of believing your ancestors are still around believing in the spirits of things like snakes and the forest that seems to be something held in high regard here and the rest of the story we learned in Jaya Noland would go home tell his talking about the City of Gold but when he arrived it was gone but Nolan was wrong Jaya hadn't sunk into the bottom of the ocean rather the knock-up stream had launched it into the sky and The Belfry was sent flying towards the top of a giant beanstalk however the shandoran's land would be conquered and they would never be able to reach it again as they were pushed off of upper yard and so Noland would be labeled a liar and executed while khalgura could never ring the bell to bring his friend back to him there's a few characters like this throughout one piece where we get these backstories from years ago that have very little to do with the straw hats themselves but that proved to be these wonderful and deep heartfelt stories in the moment Noland Fisher tiger rosenante they all give these amazing bits of World building and punch you in the feelings at the same time and that brings us back to the main story where Luffy still having that Golden Ball in his arm takes on Anna Let the peak of giant Jack and in one punch knocks out this false god and Rings the belfried behind him its sound Echoes through all of Skype here all the way down to Jaya where Nolan's descendant Cricket Smiles as he hears the bell ringing and looks to the sky to see Luffy's Shadows sprawled across the clouds in the same way that we saw Silhouettes at the start of the Ark it is a beautiful ending to The Ark and with that they have a massive party with the straw hats the shandorans and the people of Angel Island all at peace now I obviously skipped over a few notable things here the Mary gets attacked at one point and Usopp wakes up in the middle of the night to see a ghostly child fixing it Usopp learns about and gets his hands on a bunch of dials and all succeeds in repairing the maxim and just flies off to the world of endless verth which happens to be the moon this Arc as a whole would be a loose introduction to Luffy fighting Gods something rocinante would attribute to the D Clan later and which is doubled down on when Luffy attacks Charles and then defeats doe Flamingo and of course with the Belfry returned Robin reads the pony glyph attached to it and this is our first clue about the second ancient weapon Poseidon however Robin is upset to learn about another weapon clearly looking for something else and then just as she's about to leave she sees another engraving on the side of the Belfry that's also in the language of the pony glyphs saying we came here we found the texts and followed its guidance gold D Roger this tells Robin that the history of the Void Century had been discovered by Roger it means the shandorans don't need to fight or protect the Bell anymore because it served its purpose and it continues the parallel being built between Luffy and Roger execution at logtown beating crocus and kareja finding the bell at skypia We are following the same path as the former King of the pirates from here the straw hats quote unquote steal among bunch of gold that would have been gifted to them anyways get on the merry sail off of Sky Pia and fall thousands of meters only being slowed by a parachute like octopus that doesn't do as well as the job as you might hope so however as they descend the bell rings once more and the people of Sky Pia call for their friends to return in the future when the Mary hits the grand line she hits it hard and it's agreed upon that our girl has taken a boatload of damage see what I did there and that we need to spend all of the money we just got to repair her with the side goal of finding a ship right for the crew the anime does something interesting here we get this filler Arc called G8 and it's one of the most fantastic filler arcs in the series along with Jonathan who is a phenomenal character in his own right and condoriano the secret member of the straw hat crew what's interesting about this filler Arc is that we all agree it's dope on the other hand both in the manga and the anime we meet the foxy Pirates here and like they're awful foxy shows up they play games it's a mini Olympic Arc Luffy wears an afro that's vaguely racist the end moving on Snapchat I can feel that job like the fire in my soul before we reach the next Island though we come across the first Admiral in the series being aokiji a truly massive man who seems to know Nico Robin she tells us about the three Admirals and how they are the ultimate assault force of the world government and we almost immediately see how strong he is as he seems to freeze an entire sea in an instant lkg mentions how Luffy is just like his grandpa being our first real look at any of Luffy's family outside of Ace but then warns the straw hats that Robin will manipulate and lie to them just as she has to countless others before Robin loses her cool for seemingly the first time ever and attacks alkiji just to be frozen solid a moment later so to spare his crew Luffy challenges aokichi to a one-on-one fight and it does not go well for him not only is aokiji a logia but he's just much more experienced much more talented and way stronger but when he finishes beating Luffy he realizes that he had agreed to a one-on-one fight and now attacking the rest of the crew would be acting outside of his own sense of justice and speaking of that sense of justice he very well could kill Luffy right now but because Luffy had helped the Marines with crocodile he decides to spare him and call it even getting on his bicycle and riding it across the water to leave the island now everything here obviously turned out okay overall but two things one Robin is going to betray the crew at some point we just don't know when but they brought it up so it's going to happen and two Luffy is suddenly struggling to this point he's had it fairly easy the East blue enemies all went down pretty quickly waffle Mr three not anything crazy but things changed with crocodile Luffy was put on death door twice and only in the third time did they win and that's because he he thought of a workaround then enel Luffy had a severe advantage to but still takes two fights to beat him and it's not easy and finally alkiji isn't even close we are starting to see that while Luffy is very strong he has a peak and tenacity and endurance will not get him as far as he wants to go there are many people stronger than him out there any logia user without a distinct weakness is game over the Admirals are monsters there are many other Warlords that we don't even know about and we've seen Monsters like Whitebeard even Ace says he's no match for we were the big fish in a small pond who got brought into the ocean and is immediately humbled and that would only continue as we reach water 7. water 7 is a turning point for the series for a lot of reasons many of the issues have been festering for a while and are coming to the surface the biggest is obviously that the damage that the Mary has accumulated since reverse Mountain leaves her Beyond repair and this causes a lot of problems for the crew Luffy is placed in the position where he needs to decide what the best course of action is and eventually comes to the difficult decision that they need to replace the Mary or it will put the rest of the crew in danger he's even told that if they tried to sail it would be a miracle if they made it to the next Island alive and most of the crew understands that this is a difficult but necessary decision but Usopp does not when Usopp first met Zoro Sanji and Luffy he was impressed by their strength but over time that admiration had turned into a feeling of inadequacy since little garden he had been dreadfully aware of the gap between he and Nami and the others but through alabasta and Sky Pia this just became worse and worse Luke was out there fighting Gods while he was lucky to be able to run away and this was kind of the last straw for him Luffy replacing the Mary hits Usopp for plenty of reasons firstly he loves the Mary it is a precious Keepsake from Kaya to him and Luffy earlier had even said that she was part of the crew but just as importantly as how he interpreted the situation Mary was not strong enough to continue so his crew was casting her away but what does that mean for Usopp what happens when that Gap continues to widen what happens when he is deemed too weak to continue when his crew turn on him as well Usopp before finding out the Mary couldn't be fixed was carrying the money to repair her but was jumped by the Frankie family and he is broken the dude is so sorry and upset that he let his crew down and that he had proven himself to be as weak as he thought he was and because of that he wasn't able to protect those who were important to him so he gets up on his own already beaten to hell and marches towards the Frankie family to take them on however despite his best efforts they totally crushed him and of course when the other guys show up they literally tear the Frankie house down beat up everyone inside who had hurt their friends and obviously at no point do any of them see us up as weak at no point are they mad at him or disappointed they just know that their friend had been hurt and that is all that matters but again to usop this just shows the Gap and makes him feel like a burden this section of the story from water 7 to Annie's Lobby focuses a lot on Mental Health self-worth abandonment and loss we see usop struggling to find the value that others see in him and lashing out at those around him as a result meanwhile we see the inverse of this with Luffy who gets beaten by cp9 at iceberg's Place only to learn from that experience and become stronger it is a totally mirrored perspective where Usopp drowns himself in doubt because of his weakness while Luffy becomes motivated by his own failures beyond that Dynamic we also see Robin terrified of Abandonment to the point where she throws herself away so that the rest of the crew won't get the chance to do that to her like everyone else in her life had who had left her with this trauma it's the same fear that usop has coming from a very different place but then we have the Mary a friend who is not left behind because because she's abandoned like usop fears or betrayed like Robin had been but who has simply reached the end of her life both Robin and usop fear being thrown away by their friends choosing to Desert them but when someone does get left behind it's because that choice was never even there to begin with and from all of these feelings usof eventually feels the need to quit the crew even challenging Luffy to a duel with the Mary on the line and this fight I think is pretty universally agreed on as usopp's best moment in the series and arguably one of the best in the series in general usop pulls out all the stops setting traps using all of his different tools that he acquired throughout this journey and even gaining the upper hand for a Time against Luffy but at the end of the day the Gap that he was so insecure about was a real thing and when Luffy gets a hold of him it's pretty much done for on the spot and while all of this is going on we are also introduced to the galley law company a group of expert ship rights being led by Iceberg who is being pestered by the world government about something being kept secret now the last thing that I really want to talk about before moving on here is the leader of the Frankie family Frankie he runs the water 7 underground and as we find out he worked under the legendary shipwright Tom who built Rogers Oro Jackson Frankie used to build warships however one day they were used to frame Tom and since then he had to live with the guilt of his Creations being used for evil Tom would be taken to Annie's Lobby and completely distraught Frankie would jump in front of the C train to try and stop it only to have his body mangled and destroyed he only managed to survive by finding a ship that was lost at sea and completely reconstructing the front half of his body before he was taken away Tom wouldn't trust his students Frankie and Iceberg with the blueprints for the ancient weapon pluton so that they could build it if the original was ever let loose on the world and this is what the government had been bothering Iceberg about in the present Frankie is kind of here and there in water 7 without playing a huge role he talks to usop about the club outramon the spirit of the Mary that he had seen in Sky Pia and how it meant that the ship loved them so much that it took a tangible form to protect them he also has a quick fight with Luffy early on that shows him to be a decently strong fighter making use of a cyborg body complete with machine guns flamethrowers metal fists and even being able to spit Nails I'd say he's definitely on the upper half of the crew in terms of power maybe around Sanji or Robin and speaking of Robin she's acting weird this entire Arc at one point completely Vanishing and joining in on the assassination attempt of Iceberg with the cp9 members cp9 being a secret government organization that is used for undercover operations and assassination each of the members of cp9 needs to be a master of the Roku Shiki abilities these basically allow them to move faster make their body more dense jump through the air Dodge attacks kick wind at people and even use their fingers as bullets using these abilities they even manage to easily overpower Luffy and the others and from here Robin agrees to be taken with them to Annie's Lobby for judgment in exchange for ensuring that the straw hats will remain Safe Water 7 has a lot going on but it never feels scattered the new characters are interesting and multi-dimensional but more importantly the existing characters are faced with dilemmas which are believable and important to who they are and all of this is done in an incredibly tight and coherent way which easily makes this one of the best arcs that one piece has to offer by the time they leave for Anya's Lobby to save Robin Usopp still hasn't rejoined the crew but luckily sniper King arrives to help out and we have this whole section on the C train it's fine but it's just kind of a fight after fight sort of thing along with a little bit of usop and Frankie Shenanigans when we actually reach anislobby it's a bit of a mess while the second half of the Ark is just an absolute Banger the opening's kind of iffy for me at least it isn't bad by any means but it is kind of a Siege and as sieges tend to go it can be kind of slow progressing between the time on the train and actually getting into the main island it's just this long stretch where not much happens but let's talk the island real quick because this is one of the coolest things that one piece has to offer Annie's lobby as a whole is kind of a courthouse used to judge Pirates they can either be set free or sent to the underwater prison impelled down where they will never see the light of day again and luckily the judges are super fair and only 100 of people who show up get sent to impel down our villains for this Arc are the clownish spandom who is also the one who framed Tom and later accidentally enacts a buster call along with the much more serious cp9 a major complaint I have about the characters in cp9 is that their big thing is using rokushiki and while that's fine and dandy they can all kind of feel the same because of it or at least many of them do while each of them does have their own small twist or a devil fruit ability they're all basically relying on the same six abilities at the base of their fighting styles this doesn't ruin anything by any means but it does just feel like a lot of overlap as I mentioned though a few of them have devil fruits to set them apart Lucci has his leopard fruit Khalifa has a bubble fruit bluenot has the door fruit Jabra has the wolf fruit and Kaku has the giraffe fruit the most terrifying of all but again many of these fruits are just used to supplement the rokushiki abilities like Pluto will open a door behind someone and then finger pistol them it's just that kind of stuff what they are useful for though is helping our crew to evolve every single member of the straw hats has a major development in their abilities in this Arc as they need to push themselves beyond their limits Chopper is forced to eat three Rumble balls and turns into the gigantic monster Point form Nami gets her climb attack upgraded which allows her for greater control of the weather using several very powerful lightning-based abilities in this Arc as well as upgrading her Mirage Tempo Zorro uses his Asura 9 sword style for the first time Sanji uses Diablo jambe and usop or sniper King gets his new slingshot Kabuto which allows him to snipe from a distance farther than Marines are able to shoot and of course the biggest upgrade goes to Luffy learning from the rokushiki abilities that beat him in water 7 to create gear second and gear third gear second allows for a huge boost in speed and power but early on is said to stress his body to a point of possibly limiting his life and gear third sees him inflating body parts to massive sizes for powerful impacts at the expense of turning into a smaller version of himself for a few minutes these abilities come in at a perfect time because as I mentioned earlier Luffy was kind of reaching the peak of his abilities over the past few islands and these would help him even the odds going forward at least for a while this also helps the rest of the crew stay more relevant as we expand as well well except Zorro the dude's kind of always been relevant and almost never uses his new form really anywhere throughout the story of course the most notable point in this Arc comes when all the straw hats gather together and call up to Robin as we learn her backstory she is from Ohara an island of archaeologists who had learned too much about the secret past of the world specifically the void Century as a result the government enacted something called a buster call to wipe the nation off the map instilling Robin with a fear of Buster calls so severe that this was the deciding factor in turning herself into cp9 with the help of a giant called Jaguar D Saul a marine who deserted to help Robin's mother Robin manages to nearly escape the island only to be stopped by alkiji aokiji freezes Saul solid and then turns to Robin now aokiji at this point of the story has what he describes as a sense of burning Justice being passionate about fulfilling the Marines orders and serving Justice through them however this is very different from the aokiji we saw just before this Arc in the present he enacts lazy Justice and this change comes about in Ohara as he Corners Robin another Marine named sakazuki who would later become an admiral himself blows up an entire civilian ship just for the chance of possibly killing Robin seeing this blind absolute Justice corrupt his colleague into acts of violence like this aokiji instead chooses to save Robin creating a path for her to Road freedom and promising to catch her if she ever became a problem in the future this backstory shifts our understanding of the world of One Piece as a whole up until now the world government has always seemed corrupt but more in a classic anime way you know and yeah we had heard Whispers of this void Century here and there but we don't really know what it means but suddenly we have this hundred year period that the world government wants to keep secrets so badly that they would wipe an island off the map and Slaughter dozens of innocent people just to avoid the name of an ancient Kingdom from that time being spoken this stops the world government from just seeming like something corrupt to instead feeling like a force of mystery and evil it changes the void Century from something we had a bit of interest in to being one of the biggest questions at the Forefront of the series from here Robin would live on the run for 20 years jumping from home to home crew to crew and eventually finding her way to Baroque Works each time that she did move from place to place the same thing would happen though whoever she called friends whoever was taking care of her whoever ever she relied on and thought she could trust would end up eventually betraying her selling her to the Navy or just flat out trying to kill her it got to the point where she thought her own existence was cursed and like she couldn't be allowed to want to live because she only spread and experienced sadness and that brings us back to the present where Robin is throwing away the life that she thinks is worthless to save her friends to stop them from experiencing a buster call but those same friends risked their lives to come and save her they were friends who were going to Unthinkable lengths and doing the impossible to save that life that she thought was worthless she tells them that the world government would hunt her down forever and eventually they would find her to be a burden and that's what she was most afraid of them reaching the point where they resented her and eventually turned on her and so Luffy tells sniper King to shoot down the world government's flag because if Robin was worried that her being a Target to the world government would be become a burden on their crew then he would just declare war on the entire world government itself planting the target over all of them so they can share in that burden together Luffy then tells her that she needs to tell him that she wants to live and the voice acting here English Japanese it doesn't matter this scene is perfect I want to live take me with you take me away from here the way the voice tears as she screams the desperation the sadness the hope it is so so good from here we jump into all the fights as we look for the key to Robin's handcuffs but the big one is obviously Luchi versus Luffy and it is hype but it is also very drawn out and a little bit longer than I would like it to be if I'm being honest it's kind of an early version of the katakuri fight honestly all the same it is a fun fight that pushes our boy to the absolute limit and towards the end of the fight the rest of the crew gathers together and becomes stuck on a bridge surrounded by Marines Zorro loses his Yuba Shiri to a devil fruit user and everything around them is starting to collapse under the weight of the Buster call and even in Luffy's fight he is being pushed to the point where he can barely stand up again but then Usopp shows up and suddenly sniper King is gone for some reason I don't know but he calls out to Luffy and tells him to get get up saying that if Luffy can't take Lucian and Usopp will do it himself calling out and challenging the cp9 member who would certainly kill him on the spot Luffy is obviously very concerned that his friend is about to get murdered and he tries to get Usopp to stop taunting Luchi but usob just tells him he won't listen to someone who's already half dead so he'll need to get up and finish the fight if he wants Usopp to stop and our boy [ __ ] does it getting up taking another beating from Luchi before turning things around and knocking that cat bastard on his ass but that is all he's able to do and from here he just cannot move anymore he's stuck in the middle of a buster call surrounded by Marines so even despite his victory things are looking worse than ever but usop isn't the only voice calling out to them another voice appears and tells all the straw hats to look below and then to jump into the ocean they all leap blindly Robin uses her fruit to roll Luffy in after them and we find that the Mary despite all of her damage had been carried by the waves and made it to them just so she could carry them one last time still though they are surrounded by Massive warships at every angle things are not great until the ocean turns the gates of Justice behind Annie's Lobby had been closed by Sanji and this caused a change in current that forces the massive ships to crash into each other while the tiny Mary manages to squeeze through them now we are home free but even with our family united things are not going to be the same we already know that Mary is too damaged to continue and this pushes the ship beyond what it can take just as the crew comes across Iceberg and the galley law company's ship Mary stops and the point where Bellamy had broken the ship in half splits again she had gone as far as she could and then still continued to carry her crew one more time but now it was time to see her off they throw a viking funeral for the Mary setting her Ablaze on the ocean as it begins snowing and we see all these memories of the crew having fun on the Mary and damaging it by accident and suddenly The Voice returns and we hear Mary apologizing for not being able to bring them any further Luffy tries to correct her saying that they were all just too rough and stupid but she stops him and says she was happy all the same and thanks them for taking care of her and when I tell you that I have wept more times than I would like to admit over this stupid cartoon boat this moment is just brutal Oda has always had a philosophy that killing off characters was a bad thing and especially so in series where those characters end up being brought back to life to him that just meant that the author didn't know what they wanted to do and then backed up on their decision and sure we've seen death before in this series higama bellamir queena but those are all flashbacks and now here we are 430 chapters in nine years of serialization and the first proper death in the series happens it's not the Ferocious fish man who enslaved a village it's not the Tyrant warlord who put a nation through years of drought it is a crewmate a family member and it's devastating we return to water 7 and we learn a lot more about Frankie how after he had fixed his body he returned to water 7 found all of the criminals and drunks and outcasts around the city who had nothing and built the Frankie family around them giving this group of Thieves and miscreants that we had met had been brought together not by greed or anger but from needing to find a place where they belonged that Frankie gave them it isn't the Frankie organization it's the Frankie family and that's for a reason he's a good guy which means he needs to get on this boat not only that but he had used the money he stole from usof to order parts to build the perfect ship and over the next few days he would build the Mary's successor the Thousand Sunny his dream being to follow in the footsteps of his master Tom who had built the Oro Jackson and built the next ship which would sail all the way to the end of the grand line and of course he needs to join the crew as a shipwright making sure it doesn't retain any serious damage and ultimately ensuring that it will reach its goal the post and his Lobby Arc is a quick one it reintroduces us to Kobe and helmeppo who have been training under Luffy's Grandpa GARP which turns out is a marine vice admiral and while we're with GARP he tells us a lot about the the world we learned about Luffy's father Dragon the most wanted man in the world who is leading the revolutionaries we learn about the yonko the four strongest pirates in the ocean being Whitebeard Shanks kaido and big mom and speaking of the yonko shanks and Whitebeard finally have their meeting as Shanks warns him to call Ace back and not to hunt for Blackbeard because he is so dangerous and we also hear about Dr vegapunk for the first time in this section something to note here though is that things aren't all perfect with the crew while we did have Frankie join we got a new ship and Robin has come back usop is not back on the ship and Zorro being the good first mate he is doubles down saying that he can't come back unless he begs for forgiveness he had disrespected the crew and its captain and needed to apologize and understand his mistakes this Arc does a lot towards presenting Zorro as the first mate especially when Usopp first leaves the crew Zorro is the one that makes her Luffy won't go back and apologize to him you can't have a captain who doesn't demand respect at least on some level and a captain who grovels to keep his crewmates who disrespect him doesn't deserve the respect of the rest of his crew and that thread continues through here he says that usop is absolutely welcome back on the ship but he needs to apologize and for usab's part he does think that Luffy will come back and try and patch things up he's too proud to go make that first step but then suddenly the straw hats are about to leave and no one has come out to him yet so he starts screaming and crying about how sorry he was and Luffy immediately reaches out pulls him back on board in a fantastic moment for both of their characters and all that's left for this Saga is picking up with Ace in what is the fourth or fifth chapter we've seen him so far Ace has finally caught up to Blackbeard and we learned that Blackbeard has eaten the dark dark logia fruit this allowing him to absorb anything and also turn off devil fruit powers on contact and so begins an epic fight between fire and darkness ending in Ace's defeat and moving us one step closer to marineford from water 7 we head towards Thriller bark in the Florian triangle admittedly this is my least favorite Arc in the series and that is for plenty of reasons but all the same there are some moments and elements that just really stand out as something great Florian triangle itself is based on the real world Bermuda Triangle or the Devil's Triangle where ships and planes were said to disappear under mysterious circumstances which in itself is a very cool basis for a horror themed Arc and horror is a huge part of Thriller bark at least supposedly more accurately I might say that it's based around Halloween Thriller bark Falls in a very particular part of the story we just lost the Mary we declared war on the world government and face down a lifetime of trauma in Robin we had a feud within the crew itself self and we are going through some [ __ ] and after this the ark that we're headed to we have things like a human auction the straw hat separation impelled down Marine Ford basically we are surrounded by extremely emotional and heavy parts of the story so Thriller bark is kind of meant to be a breather in the middle this Arc has a heavier emphasis on humor and slapstick than most other parts in the story but there's a bit of a disconnect between how the villains present themselves and how the ark wants to be Moria Hogback and Absalom all take themselves incredibly seriously they want to be seen as these nightmare creatures but let's be real they are kind of just goofy of the antagonists introduced in this Arc the only one that really feels good at all is perona that's because she isn't trying to be something she's not she is a bratty goth kid and she rocks that but you're telling me that we move from fighting the head of a secret organization fighting a God to challenging cp9 declaring war on the world temoria the warlord who lost his motivation and whose whole thing is that he wasn't good enough and just kinda quit to this point one piece had been an escalating story not only in terms of power but in terms of the risk involved and suddenly that just drops off and I'm not saying that stories always have to escalate but if you're going to slow down the pace there needs to be a good thematic reason and I just don't think that lands here on top of that Thriller bark is the first Saga to only have one Arc there is no variety no change in Pace and fitting to Brooke's situation we're just kind of stuck here for too long conveniently continuing on for about one chapter for each year that he was trapped in the Florian triangle isn't that fun speaking of Brooke we finally meet him here after the crew had their fun playing around and exploring the sunny we come across a torn apart ship that was adrift in the Florian triangle with a singing skeleton on it Brooke had eaten the revive revive fruit when he was alive and now he's a living skeleton and Brooke immediately feels like a part of the crew he is hilarious he has high energy and he makes absolutely dog [ __ ] jokes he's like your goofy uncle and it's just a good fit right away however he does have a bit of a problem his shadow was stolen from him and he can't enter the sunlight without turning to Ash but he can't tell the straw hats who did it so that they won't be in danger because of this they end up going their own ways and the straw hats enter Thriller bark on their own and like nothing important happens for so so long don't get me wrong there's plenty of fun bits Luffy pushing the zombie back in the grave what a classic but it's just such a change of pace that it can feel very jarring as for Mario's group we largely have characters resembling classic horror and monster novel characters Dr Hogback is based on Victor Frankenstein a genius scientist who creates zombies that Moria brings to life using his devil fruit and hawkback himself has this whole thing where he's obsessed with syndry and after she died he began a partnership with morya so he could resurrect her as a zombie under his control which is a little bit sus but it is what it is then we have Absalom a dude with a lion's mouth stitched onto his face he has the clear clear fruit which allows him to turn invisible much like well the Invisible Man and he 100 uses it to spy on women showering and that's supposed to be the Charming part of his character so we are zero for two so far with these villains prona is this goth tsundere girl which I mean I'll admit I have a bias for but she has this awesome devil fruit ability that makes people lose all of their confidence and positivity to the point where they wish that they were a worm while prona is meant to show off this Gothic Lolita fashion style that's all there really is behind her character future and because of that she isn't pigeonholed into this weird Trope like the other characters in this Arc are and I think that goes a long way to making her more likeable well as likable as a character with this personality can be anyways and finally Gloria himself a gigantic warlord with the shadow shadow fruit allowing him to remove people's shadows and place them into corpses or people he used to be this young Dude full of ambition but he ran across the emperor kaido and naturally he faced a humiliating defeat where his entire crew was killed so he steals a legendary corpse from wano that being the swordsman ryuma and his sword shusui and leaves to create Thriller bark and the ultimate zombie pirate Army to get his revenge however over time he just becomes lazy he stops caring and felt that having an army of zombie servants was just enough for him the ark basically devolves into morya picking off the members of the straw hat crew one at a time and stealing their Shadow to expand on on his army meanwhile Nami gets kidnapped by Absalom who tries to marry her while she's unconscious but then this pink boar zombie lady named Lola comes in to try to marry Absalom instead it's a lot and it's very slapstick as I said earlier the ark really gives interesting moments in particular to three members on the crew though those being Chopper usop and Zorro Zoros is the most simple needing to step in to defeat ryuma and get Brook's Shadow back for him while also earning shoe Suite in the process Chopper who sees Hogback as a hero originally learns what he's been doing and has a crisis of character watching his icon turn to these evil actions this is kind of also one of the first things that Chopper actually has to focus on in an arc by the way he typically is a much more reactive character that follows the story along so it's interesting to see him put in this Spotlight a little bit finally usop battles perona in a match of negativity but because he is such a Negative person already he is unaffected by her devil fruit and it's absolutely hilarious beyond that what is done well in this Arc though is the introduction of Brooke as well as differentiating him as a swordsman from Zorro the crew has always felt like everyone offered something unique and special it's a family where everyone brings something to the table but for the first time we have overlap in two Swordsmen this is remedied through a few bits of detail first and most obvious they have entirely different styles of fighting with their weapon Zorro is a monster he does these powerful swings meant to cleave through buildings or trains or anything else it's all strength Brook on the other hand is more about fencing it's speed Elegance smooth actions that contrast Zoros entirely and because of this it can sometimes feel like sanji's fighting style is more similar to Zoro than Brooks's despite sharing a weapon of course Brooke is also supplemented with his musical abilities as well which leads me to the second big factor he isn't meant to be a strong swordsman Brook is a musician he isn't like Zorro trying to outdo mihawk Brooke wants to bring people happiness and fun the spirit of these characters are so drastically different that the overlap seems to fade away instantly and it's shown perfectly in the battle with ryuma Brooke for all of his talent and his effort is silly and fun and isn't strong enough to beat ryuma but Zorro is all business he goes in and straight up overpowers him while also earning his respect and I think that demonstrating the difference in these characters so quickly and so easily is really a testament to the characterization that Oda is able to put out that said the big climax for the arc begins when Moria steals Luffy's Shadow and places it in an ancient giant named oars to become the Ultimate Zombie the rest of the crew manages to group up and hold it off until Luffy has stuffed himself full of zombies to become nightmare Luffy to defeat him but this fight is 20 chapters long in a saga that is 48 chapters in total nearly two out of every five chapters in this section is dedicated to this fight with oars and let me tell you you definitely feel it drag on as the straw hats battle this enemy that they can't damage for seemingly ever but we are rewarded with a fight with Moria afterwards which is awful morya absorbs a thousand Shadows with his shadow Asgard ability causing him to grow even bigger and his neck to look like the worst thing I've ever seen and it just doesn't make sense because Moria to this point was impossible to deal with his shadow was effectively like a logia user that fought in his place and they could just swap spots whenever he wanted meaning that he couldn't be pinned down Luffy could not touch morya at all before and at this point in the fight all he has to do is stall for three minutes until the sun rises but instead he does this Shadow Asgard thing becoming this massive slow moving Target and the way they overcome this villain who had been effectively Invincible up until now is just I have to hit him real hard they don't have to think about overcoming the shadow they don't have to get around any of his abilities it is just dealt with with Brute Force while the oars fight took 20 chapters the fight with the actual warlord himself is resolved in one which as far as pacing goes is definitely one of the decisions of all time now I could complain about Moria all day trust me I would love to but the more pressing issue is that he isn't the only warlord on the island right now during the fight Bartholomew Kuma arrives and tells Moria that the world government is worried that the straw hats will take down another warlord and embarrass them which Moria assures them won't happen but of course it does so Kuma has to go in and clean up after him and this is why people love Thriller bark from this point on it is perfection everyone is at their limit Luffy is completely unconscious from pushing himself in the fight and stressing his body with all the shadows and Kuma just overwhelms everyone he compresses the air with his devil fruit and lets off what is essentially a bomb of air pressure leaving only Sanji and Soros standing Kuma goes in to try and kill Luffy but at the last moment Zorro arrives to stop him and offers his own life instead of Luffy's he says that his name isn't as notorious as Luffy's but one day he will become the greatest swordsman in the world and Kuma is actually moved that someone with so much ambition would sacrifice himself for their Captain but then Sanji gets up and tries to offer his own life for Zorro very uncare characteristic of how they treat each other but obvious for anyone who actually pays attention to their relationship as it shows how much they actually respect one another as Sanji goes to get in zoro's way though sorrow knocks him out and it's just he and Kuma left Kuma says that he would be humiliated to act against someone showing so much honor and conviction and agrees to spare Luffy in exchange for showing Zorro hell he takes out all of the pain and fatigue from Luffy's body with his devil fruit puts it into a big paw-shaped bubble and tells Zorro that in his already near-death State this will certainly kill him allowing him to experience a percentage of a percentage of the total before he commits to it and it is brutal even so Zorro and Kuma move to an isolated location where they won't disturb his crew and Zorro dives into the bubble with no regret the morning comes everyone wakes up Luffy is ecstatic for feeling so good and Sanji realizes that Zorro is missing he panics and starts searching for him only to find that he is standing completely drenched and surrounded in his own blood but all the same he is standing he asked what happened to the warlord and what happened and of course Zorro famously tells him that nothing at all happened marking what is very easily one of the most iconic moments in the series but the arc isn't done yet we still need to welcome our new crewmate and learn their story and this one is in direct contrast to the story that we just learned with Robin was a character who was always on the run and learned not to trust others as a result in the end not valuing her own life and refusing to be close to others until the straw hats forced her to Embrace Life but now we have Brooke and we learned that 50 years ago his crew had gotten sick and died but because of his devil fruit he would be given a second chance at life though because he was trapped in the Floridian triangle he would spend 50 years alone while Robin ran from others Brooke was dying to be around anyone while Robin was ready to give up on life Brooke was cursed with having a second chance at it they each faced their own form of isolation and of course in each case their paths change when they meet Luffy Thriller bark is a lot of things it has a lot of moving parts and I don't quite think most of it fits perfectly together but the last seven chapters after morya is defeated are stunning and they are capped off by my personal favorite backstory among any of the straw hats as I said Brook's crew became ill but they had made a promise to make their way back to their friend laboon this being the same whale that we met at reverse Mountain hundreds of chapters ago it turns out laboon is kind of their crew's Chopper but he had to be left behind because he was so young and they didn't want him getting hurt on the grand line but they did promise to return to him but now they're all sick their ship is broken and trapped in the Florian triangle and they're about to die so with the LA last bits of energy they have left Brooke takes out a tone dial and begins recording his crew singing this was the favorite song that they used to perform for laboon Binks sake and it is fantastic all these men on death's door singing happily together for the whale that they loved an entrusting Brooke to use his second life to bring laboon their final farewell and as they sing one after another The Men start falling to the ground but as they fell their crewmates would continue singing for lubun's sake until there was just five men left then a quartet a trio a Duo and finally now surrounded by the corpses of all of his friends and about to spend an entire lifetime in isolation it was just Brooke who comments on how cruel it is to just leave the accompaniment this backstory is heartbreaking it's tragic and every single time I hear Brook's voice here it absolutely gets me but he was not alone anymore he found his new crew and eventually he will find his way back to Lagoon with all that out of the way though Frankie sets up a proper grave for Brook's old crew and we notice that Ace's Beaver card is suddenly burning away and that is where we closed Thriller bark and begin our track towards the ending of the first half of the story the upcoming Marine Fork Saga is really the last time Oda plays around with having a lot of smaller arcs making up a saga with five sections that resemble the East blue in length instead opting to have very long singular arcs make up the majority of each Saga with maybe some flourishing on either end of it Thriller bark seems to have been a symbol of what is to come as more arcs would resemble this than where we had started and that change kind of begins with Saba ODI I'm gonna go ahead and skip the Duvall section here because honestly who cares but the big takeaway from this part is that we made a mermaid named Cami her starfish friend papagu and Hachi the octopus fish man from arlong Park and he is just as chill as ever somebody itself is supposedly the Midway point to the Grand lime a place where all the log poses sink up for a moment before heading Under the Red Line towards Fishman Island this is an archipelago with dozens of small segments making it up with each kind of having their own theme or specialty you might have a market on one some pretty nature on others the human trafficking Auction House on a third and Hey look it's an amusement park and wouldn't you know what that amusement park looks just like our Long Park well it turns out fish men are super discriminated against and often used as slaves but some fish men like our long had when he was young would swim up to the surface despite the danger and look up at sabode Park wishing that they'd be able to visit it someday and suddenly we have a bit of a crisis going on our long is a monster obviously but since the beginning our only view on Fishman has been that they are evil and brutish and now we are learning that they're just as much victims as the people in kokoyashi Village it doesn't justify our long at all but suddenly we understand where his anger came from or at least we're starting to sabodi also introduces the Supernova the 11 rookie Pirates Who had accrued a bounty of over 100 million who had all reached this point at the same time these including Luffy Zorro Eustis Captain Kidd killer jewelry Bonnie Capone beige scratch manipoo or Rouge Diaz Drake and basil Hawkins that said later Blackbeard would also be included in this list after his capture of ace finally we are also introduced to the celestial dragons in this Arc these are the world Nobles who you are not allowed to oppose no matter what they are seen as Gods on Earth and defying them is a death sentence whereas if you were to lay a finger on one a buster call could be put in place we see them putting explosive colors on their slaves killing people for not kneeling before them kidnapping women and forcing them to become their wives and just in general not being very nice fellas if I'm being honest and that all kind of sets the stage for what's going on here the excitement begins when someone notices that Kami is a mermaid and kidnaps her to sell into slavery and so it's up to the straw hats to make it to the auction house in time to save her and unfortunately she has one of those exploding colors on her so we can't just grab her and run instead we have to play the game of actually trying to buy her in an auction and believe it or not it is the money hungry Nami who suggests that they buy her a lot of people have talked about how this moment is out of character for Nami or how it shows her character growth but I disagree on both points Nami has always been obsessed with money ever since our long took over kokoyashi Village but she doesn't want money to hoard it Nami wants money specifically for this reason to help people that she cares about this is perfectly in line with her character people just misunderstand her as someone who is solely greedy the auction is a total flop as Saint Charles age Celestial Dragon shows up at the last minute and way outbids what the straw hats can do but as always Luffy arrives and brings chaos with him unlike Nami and the others he doesn't plan to buy Kami instead he's just gonna charge the stage Hachi tries to stop him but then everyone notices that he's a fish man and Charles shoots him on the spot and interestingly enough it is Nami who is shown screaming for him Nami the one who was held prisoner by his crew not even a year ago Charles starts chanting and dancing because he's a big man who shot a fish and the people in the crowd all talk about how they should be careful because the fish man is probably disease ridden or how he's so stupid that he has the brain of a fish and this Arc just hammers in this idea that fish men are seen as less completely being in contrast to arlong's idea of fish man's superiority Suddenly It's not that arlong was overconfident it seems like he was trying to overcompensate but you know who doesn't see others as less than based on what they look like Monkey D Luffy look at Luffy's crew he's got a rubber dude a couple of normies a reindeer that can talk a cyborg a singing skeleton he even asks gaimon a dude fuse for the treasure chest to join his crew and as we know later we get jinbei we travel and make friends with bounty hunters and criminals and fishmen and princesses and Giants Angels shandorans Samurai and Minx Luffy does not care what anyone is unless they demonstrate themselves to be bad or evil the world world is full of weirdos and freaks and he loves that everyone brings their own thing to the table look at how he reacted when he found the monster transforming reindeer Chopper he embraced the difference there's only one thing that Luffy seems to hate in this series and that's just bad people Hachi is laying on the steps bleeding out and begging Luffy to let Carlos get away with shooting him because touching him could lead to a buster call and he starts begging for forgiveness saying that everything he ever did was a mistake and all he's ever done is cause trouble he just wanted to try and make things up for Nami even a little bit and then Charles calls out telling him to shut up and says that his talking is making him angry so Luffy gets up marches towards the Celestial Dragon Dodges bullets and obliterates this man's jaw he literally punches the color off the screen it is a masterpiece of a moment and it feels amazing but it goes about as well as you'd expect he has just punched a God so they need to escape however before they do so they meet another prisoner who emerges from behind the stage a man that we had seen in a collar before but who had removed it himself the dark King Silver's Rayleigh the first mate of gold D Roger Rayleigh walks out looks into the crowd and a pulse of what we would later learn to be hockey passes through everyone knocking out every enemy soldier immediately then he walks to Kami and removes her collar by seemingly pulling it through her neck without hurting her this introduction makes him feel like he is Magic and adds a whole air of mystery around him immediately and what adds to this is that he turns to Luffy and says that the straw hat suits a Fearless man and he's been waiting to meet him from here it is utter chaos the auction Master calls his boss though Flamingo and dophi tells him that he doesn't care about trafficking because the future is All About Smiles also adding that a great battle between Whitebeard and the Warlords was about to be again Marine HQ sends Admiral kizaru to sabori to start dealing with all the loose Pirates and Luffy law and kid band together ish for the first time to create a path from the auction house through all the Marines and together they all managed to escape with kid and law ending up in a battle against Kuma shortly after and the straw hats making it to Shockey's bar with Rayleigh and here Rayleigh tells us about Roger it turns out Roger never got caught he actually turned himself in a few years before being executed they found out that Roger was sick so they gathered a crew picked up a doctor named crocus and set out to the end of the grand line soon after reaching laughtail they would disband the group and turn themselves in the Navy tried to show this off as a great Triumph but on his execution platform Roger did something to change the world as a man just about to die he smiled and called into the crowd telling them that if they wanted his treasure they just had to find it with seconds left of his life he ignited the great pirate era and turned the Marine's greatest Victory into a moment where a new pirate age would begin Rising against them and this is amazing for so many reasons but one of the biggest ones is that it protects the legendary image that Roger holds in our heads Roger is the perfect pirate there is no one greater than him right but then how did he get caught surely there must have been been submarine who was even more amazing but that wasn't the case he turned himself in he was told he was dying and rather than being sad he set out for the greatest Journey ever Conquering the grand line and then turning the last spark of his life Into The Inferno that would be the great pirate era he didn't die gold D Roger prisoner of the Marines he died Goldie Roger King of the Pirates and even in death no one can take that from him this moment doesn't just put Roger above others as this perfect pirate though it also humanizes him we aren't hearing about it from some history book or submarine or anything like that we're hearing about it from Roger's best friend this is an old man looking back on his life as he tells us about the time that he laughed more than any other and cried more than any other and drank more than any other this wasn't just a perfect pirate this was a great man who had friends and a crew who loved him a crew which we we learned here included Luffy's hero Shanks and buggy a man who tries to live as flashily as his old Captain had Rayleigh then tells the straw hats that he's able to coat their ship in a special material which will allow it to submerge and travel the Fishman Island but before he leaves the crew has a few questions for him Robin asks what the will of D is how Roger knew the ancient language of the pornographs and what happened during the void Century but rather than telling her Rayleigh instead says that it's best that she finds them out one step at a time experiencing and interpreting things for herself ending with even if he told her as she is now inexperienced she wouldn't be able to do anything so instead she should take her time read the pony glyphs herself and see if she can find a different answer than they did he also mentions here that Roger could hear the voice of all things which we could have learned more about but usop instead yells realizing that hey this guy knows what and where the one PSR and he asked Rayleigh if they're real but Luffy Cuts him off in one of his best character moments as he tells usop that he doesn't want to know where it is he doesn't want to know if it's real because this is all about the journey that he's making with his friends continuing that if Rayleigh tells them anything he will quit being a pirate because there's no point in a boring Adventure so instead of answering usop Rayleigh asks Luffy something he wants to know if Luffy is sure that he can conquer the wild sea and become king but Luffy looks confused at the question pauses for a moment and says I don't want to control anything the king of the Pirates is just the freest man on the Seas and it's just so Luffy to hear the word King and not think someone who rules over others but instead thinks someone who themselves is not ruled over one piece is a very long series with so many wonderful and magical moments but I think these moments in shaki's bar are easily among my favorites there's nothing super exciting we don't learn a ton that we hadn't found out before but there is so much character in these moments and both Roger and Luffy become so much more human as characters through this section and it's always just stood out to me as something special from here they split up Rayleigh goes to coat the ship and tells them that they need to lay low for three days but with an admiral running rampant that's pretty difficult and it isn't just the Admiral there are dozens of these giant Kuma look-alike robots called pacifistas hunting them down too and then the real Kuma shows up and now is about the time I need to talk about his other ability we have seen Kuma eject pain move quickly deflect attacks and all of that has been shown to be his devil fruit the ability to expel or bounce things but we also saw him swipe at perona back on Thriller bark and then she just vanishes Without a Trace and now he's here against the straw hats nothing they do even phases him but one after another he manages to close the gap swipe at them and make them disappear first Zorro is gone in an instant then Brooke then Usopp and it's this genuinely insane chilling feeling as we see one by one the straw hats vanish and as they do the remaining members start panicking and it just keeps happening until it's only Robin and Luffy left and despite Luffy begging for Kuma to stop robin goes too and Luffy just breaks down this is the Pinnacle of the wall that he had been running against since alabasta he had been fighting above his weight class and barely surviving with each fight becoming more and more difficult and also Moria was there but he just kept moving forward regardless of the risk and now he was face to face with Kuma he had lost all of his friends and despite the faith that they had put into him he couldn't save a single one of them and with one wave of Kuma's arm Luffy vanishes too as narrator tells us that on this day the pirate crew led by Monkey D Luffy was completely destroyed I love Saba ODI no one really talks about this Arc but it is so Compact and full of just powerful moment after powerful moment and it's an easy top five Arc for me because of it this is Oda telling us that our crew has always been strong but they've also always been Reckless it is one thing to challenge a warlord in alabasta it is another thing to challenge the world government in its entirety to take on the Admirals to punch a Celestial Dragon you cannot do whatever you want because there are consequences and you are not ready to deal with those consequences yet so we need to get stronger so luckily it turns out that Kuma isn't actually just deleting people he was just bouncing them to very far away places and since Luffy survives he is quickly relieved that his crew is likely alive as well Luffy is sent to Amazon Lily based on the Greek mythical island of themiskira where the Amazon tribe is supposedly from and just as in the myth this island only has women on it it opens with a bunch of episodes about haha women have never seen a man before let's make jokes about mushrooms and Family Jewels but once we get past that it acts as a way to show us where Luffy stands on the grand scale of the world seemingly every member of this Society is a master of hockey which makes him vulnerable to almost all of their attacks it was one thing when Luffy was losing to Admirals and Warlords but now even regular citizens can give him a run for his money and that's what it means to approach the new world he and the crew will need to become stronger to hold their own and that's all there is to it on the note of hockey this Arc gives us a rough introduction to all three kinds with sandersonia using a form of observation hockey very similar to anal's Mantra Marigold using Armament hockey which allows her to harm Luffy despite him being made of rubber and Luffy showing off conqueror saki just as Rayleigh had in the auction house we get introduced to plenty of different women throughout the island but the big mentions are the boa sisters and the former Empress of the island gloriosa the main relevant character through this is the final warlord to be revealed and the current Empress of Amazon Lily Boa Hancock and she is introduced very early on as vice admiral momonga with objectively the most fun name to say in the series who shows up and demands that BOA travel to marineford to assist with an upcoming war against the Whitebeard Pirates as they execute porcus D Ace there is a lot of info to take in there but boa shows up Kicks a kitten and refuses mamonga's demands still rather keep her position as warlord despite refusing and also asks him to hand over all of his cargo and that is BOA in a nutshell she is the embodiment of entitlement demanding everything that the world has to offer simply because she is beautiful and expecting everyone to comply based on that and for the most part yeah no she's right 100 we also see her devil fruit here which turns anyone feeling lustful thoughts to Stone though mamonga is able to resist this by stabbing his hand and focusing on the pain instead seeing that the conversation station isn't going anywhere boa returns to the island and malonga tells her that she has two days to agree to go with him or she will lose her warlord ship now all three of the boa sisters as the devil fruits might suggest are based on the Greek Gorgons there's even a rumor about them having eyes on their back that turn anyone who sees them into stone however this is tested when boa takes a bath and Luffy accidentally wanders in seeing her back recognizing a marking and decidedly not turning into stone for intruding on the empress Luffy is put on trial in the arena where he needs to fight both sandersonia and Marigold at the same time and throughout the fight some of the friends that he has made on the island are turned to stone eventually coming to a threat of them being destroyed and Luffy being forced to use conquerors hockey unknowingly to protect them as the fight progresses sandersonia is caught hanging over a spiked pit with her clothes on fire and it seems like her back is about to be exposed however Luffy jumps onto her and stops her secret from being exposed to the people even against those who are threatening his his friends he can still respect them enough to not humiliate them and share their secrets and recognizing that doing so has nothing to do with their fight at hand I think it's a very solid moment that demonstrates the kind of person Luffy is seeing Luffy do this boa calls off the fight kicks out all the spectators and once they're gone she even begins crying to herself as soon as the fight is over Luffy immediately goes to check on his Stone friends to make sure that they aren't cracked and demands that Bola turns them back to normal but she is still untrusting of him so she gives him an ultimatum she can either turn them back to normal or she can give him a ship to escape the island and make it back to his friends this is kind of like back at the start of alabaster Saga where Vivi had to choose between Nami getting a doctor or saving her own people and just like Vivi Luffy makes an immediate Choice smiling big and saying thanks please save these guys and taking a note from Vivi he even bows to her gloriosa notes that Luffy is a bit of a weirdo to have both the aura of a conqueror but to lower his head to someone else to say save people that he barely knows is just objectively strange and naturally that allows him to pass boa's test they bring him inside bola's room and tell him to pass through a curtain where he finds her naked and naturally he is disappointed that there isn't food there and unfortunately he only has the most beautiful woman in the world nude in front of him truly a tragedy boa isn't trying to seduce him though and turns around to show a mark on her back asking Luffy if he is sure that he hasn't seen it before but Luffy had confused it for the mark of these Sun pirates that Hachi had on his head gloriosa enters and comments on how Luffy is surprisingly kind and calm for someone who had just punched a Celestial Dragon and this is the moment that BOA Falls for him as he stood against these Celestial dragons just as Fisher tiger had the mark on boa's back is revealed to be the mark of these Celestial dragons a sign that BOA and her sisters had been slaves to the world Nobles in the past when she was 12 they had been captured and brought to the first men that she had ever met as slaves and she describes them as nothing but Terror you are free to assume what they did with these young girls especially to traumatize them in this way but it would be four long years until Fisher tiger would climb the red line with his bare hands to free all of the slaves who were captive Fisher had freed all kinds of people humans fish men anyone that he was able to but many of the fish man specifically would go on to form these Sun Pirates branding a son over the celestial dragons marking so that any former slave could not be distinguished from anyone else on the crew and speaking of which if you think back to our long screw yeah a few of them had the arlong tattoo that Nami had but many of them had the mark of the sun Pirates arlong had been on the sun Pirates so by now you can understand that he had been surrounded by slaves for the world Nobles his people had been marked when they were captured and that's why he does the exact same thing to Nami as well and it's this kind of parallel storytelling that always makes me appreciate the talented writer that Oda really is we're getting the same story from a very different perspective after sure boa shares her story she asks Luffy if he hates her for being a slave and he tells her that he only hates the celestial dragons and not their victims and so boa tells him that she has taken a liking to him and that she will bring him anywhere that he wants to go the timing of which couldn't be better because soon after gloriosa tells Luffy what's going on in the world and that Ace is about to be executed by the Marines in just under a week this puts Luffy in a bit of a hard spot where he can either try and make it to sabaoti where he can hope that his crew has returned or he can hurry to impel down where his brother is being kept without the help of his crew he ends up choosing his brother and by hiding under boa's clothes and having her agree to join the Marines at Marine Ford he manages to hitch a ride on the manga's ship which even grants them access to an ocean current to get there faster and suddenly we are at impel down boa in exchange for her cooperation has to be brought here for a tour and manages to sneak Luffy Inside by turning the guard to Stone also petition to bring Domino back for obviously wholesome reasons anyways impel down is not so subtly based on the Divine Comedy or more specifically Dante's infernal as you might have heard it called this referring to the first section of the story The Divine Comedy was written in the early 1300s by Dante Alighieri and is a journey through what he imagined hell purgatory and Paradise would be like with Inferno being the story in which Virgil guides Dante through hell impelled down being an underwater prison with several layers has a very easy parallel through the nine circles of hell and while not every level is a perfect match for example level 1 being filled with a forest made of razor blades is not exactly in the original text we do see other levels like level 3 the starvation hell matching Circle 3 where people are tormented for their gluttony in The Inferno this is through an icy slush while in impel down we have a burning desert of sand level 4's blazing hell matches the seventh circles rivers of boiling blood and fire level 5 the freezing hell correlates to level 9's frozen lake kokitis where the Sinners are trapped in ice and so on and so on it is an extremely cool bit of reference within the story like Dante Luffy is trying to reach the end of impelled down though Luffy is doing it to find and free Ace this whole Arc is just a constant show of determination as Luffy finds himself in more and more awful places and needs to power through them although we do see the benefits of Oda never killing anyone as he descends into impel down Luffy comes across buggy and Mr three both of which are basically using him until he can make an opening for them to escape however even though he's aware of this Luffy is just appreciative of any help that they're willing to give him sorry but if you know the truth I'll have to kill you you better take this now in case I forget later it's just bad guys being bad guys while Luffy is still Luffy and it makes for a very good time MR2 joins shortly after and we got a good little Squad here going into level four but then we come across Warden Magellan who beats Luffy down in a way that we have never seen before it isn't just that Luffy is overpowered it's that Magellan coats himself with poison and we have to sit here and watch as Luffy rationalizes risking his arms or legs one at a time to keep fighting seemingly making no progress but still hoping that he'll be able to beat Magellan if he risks it all and then I guess crawl to where his brother is but of course Luffy loses he is soaked in this agonizing life-ending poison which of note is the second major poisoning that Luffy goes through after crocodile and while I'm here a lot of characters in this Arc are presented in kind of goofy funny ways like Magellan for example is depicted as this big bad poison dude who runs the prison but at the same time he is always avoiding work and running to the toilet and I remember this kind of taking me out of it when I was first watching until I realized that just like the boa sisters are based on the Gorgons Magellan is also based in mythology with the balthagor in fun fact the belfigor is attributed with being a demon of sloth who avoids working as much as possible and is always depicted on a toilet just as Magellan is it turns this gimmicky character into this cool portal into history and suddenly makes him that much more interesting anyways best boy bombed the rescue he has consistently proven to just be a wonderful and loyal friend the entire Arc and everyone loves him for it he manages to break into freezing hell to save Luffy and starts to drag him to safety until a pack of wolves attacks him he does his best to fight them off but they slowly overwhelm him and Luffy needs to wake up for a moment to use conquerors hockey to scare the Wolves off and keep them safe as they both pass out when Bonn finally wakes up he finds himself at level 5.5 the secret okama paradise in hell and I'm gonna level with you I do not know how offensive this is like genuinely on the one hand is a complete caricature of the LGBT community through a cartoonish lens of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the other hand he's presenting them as Heroes who are totally confident and proud of who they are within a passionate Community it's somehow like it's poking fun on the topic while also being a hundred percent in support of it the big thing here though is that we meet Eva a revolutionary who worked for Luffy's father as well as the ruler of the okama and they used their devil fruit powers to pump Luffy full of hormones so that he'll be able to overcome the poison through an 18-hour excruciating recovery of which Bond spends the entire time he is conscious outside the door just cheering Luffy on and giving support to his friends that he will continue to fight part of the process for Luffy to cure himself here is basically forcing his hormones to go into overdrive and Eva explains that this will most certainly shorten his lifespan but Luffy chose to accept it anyway this is the second time a shortened lifespan has been mentioned after year second was first used from here Luffy gets ready to set off to save Ace and once Eva finds out that Luffy is dragon's son he chooses to tag along as well as taking all the other okama with them however they are too late in the time that Luffy had spent overcoming the poison Ace had been taken away to marineford to get ready for his execution and so Luffy sets his mind to going to Marine headquarters quarters and saving his brother but here we also cross paths with Jean Bae the former warlord fish man who set arlong free all those years ago jinbei had heard from Ace about Luffy and not only jinbei but crocodile is here as well they both offer to help Luffy Escape if he releases them and seeing this as his only chance Luffy agrees and suddenly it isn't just Luffy buggy and Mr three vs impel down it is Luffy and two former Warlords as well as two leading Revolutionary members that make this climb and this Arc shows the power of not just killing off villains each Arc like yeah sometimes it's Gotta happen it probably should happen more and that's fine but by keeping these characters in the picture we can use them in ways that we would have never imagined back when they were introduced buggy is shown to be this incompetent clown who tries to execute Luffy now he's acting as a tour guide for impel down crocodile is crocodile and now he's trying to team up with Luffy to work together to escape these things would never be on the table if Luffy had killed them in their first encounters that said I do think that it's it's important that I mentioned that while Luffy doesn't kill that is different from saying that he won't kill given the right situation as we saw in Alabaster Luffy recognizes that sometimes lives need to be taken to make things happen he doesn't take that lightly but it isn't off the table entirely between Luffy crocodile and Jean bait they devastate everything in their path and impel down Luffy even combines his powers with Mr three's wax to be able to punch and push back Magellan a bit but there is something more serious going on here as Luffy and his gang are trying to leave Blackbeard is trying to break in and for the first time since Jaya they come face to face they start a quick fight but jinbei calls Luffy off telling him that they don't have time if they're going to save his brother meanwhile buggy is freeing prisoners left and right and being seen as some kind of hero and all of the prisoners that he lets out start worshiping him like a god so all the inmates start their escape while Blackbeard continues on to level 6 and he has all of the remaining criminals fight each other to the death taking the strongest from each area and adding them to his crew in exchange for their freedom and this is another one of those history and culture moments as well which is awesome Blackbeard is effectively performing a kotoku basically a ritual where you put a bunch of bugs in a jar and let them kill each other until only one survives the winning insect would be considered cursed and could be used for different kinds of sorcery or good luck charms as long as the owner kept it well fed which could be symbolically connected to Blackbeard later feeding these characters devil fruits regardless in impelled down Blackbeard would pick up shiryu avalo Pizarro Katarina Davon San Juan wolf and Vasco shot anyways back to the main group with jinbei's help they managed to escape and steal a ship from the Marines however it is ultimately Bon clay staying behind and ordering the gates open which allows them to make it out of impel down alive this being at the cost of his own imprisonment and last fun fact here in Alabaster Bond was seen as sanji's counterpart and while Sanji is on kalabaka Kingdom right now learning more about what it's like to be like bon bon is out here doing the behind the scene things that Sanji is typically known for to ensure his friends make it out safely it is very cool paralleling so once again we say goodbye to a friend as we move forward towards saving Ace and with that we enter the craziest Arc up to date with Marine Ford a lot of the story of one piece is centrally focused on the straw hats and where their adventure takes them but Marine 4 begins with them nowhere in sight instead we see the world standing still talking about the impact of Whitebeard and showing us the 100 000 Marine troops which includes five of the seven Warlords and the Admirals but then we jump to the execution platform where sengoku is standing next to Ace and begins telling the world his true origin his mother porquez D Rouge had evaded the Marines after Roger was killed carrying him for 21 months and dying giving birth to him and finally revealing that Ace's true father was Goldie Roger so a few things here Ace has always been a fan favorite character since his introduction he has never left the top 10 of character popularity polls since he had been introduced to the story and that even continues up until today which is crazy to think about especially when you consider that he's only been in about a dozen chapters to this point in the story but why is he so popular the go-to answer might be just because he's Luffy's badass Big Brother with awesome fire powers but you know who stops to think about how Monkey D Luffy and portcus D Ace don't even share a family name and instead only share a middle initial even though we know at this point that it is Monkey D GARP and Monkey D Dragon who are Luffy's grandfather and father respectively none of us the only thing that these two really have in common aside from that middle initial is that they have black hair and like to fall asleep while eating outside of that we just said yeah they're clearly family no questions asked the moment is an insane Revelation and it fundamentally changes how we see AC Roger and even GARP who took Ace in these are some of the most popular characters in the series and in one panel their Dynamic has totally shifted and the characters in the story are reacting the same way that that we are completely blown away by it Oda then gives us a flashback just like when Rayleigh remembers him garp's memories also act to humanize this Legendary Pirate Roger calls his old rival to his prison cell which let me remind you he turned himself into to create this situation and Roger is just ecstatic that he's going to have a kid even if he won't be around to meet them he tells GARP about his son despite knowing that the Marines are hunting for whoever he's been with and Garf asks why he would tell him knowing what's going on but Roger continues that this is why he is telling GARP specifically he knows GARP better than anyone they have fought and almost killed each other dozens of times and regardless of the side they were on they understood and respected one another and Roger knows that GARP isn't the kind of person who would let an unborn child bear the sins of his father so with a shit-eating grin he tells him that he'll do it they'll take care of his child and of course Roger was right and naturally with Roger's air still around the Marines try to pin a plot on Whitebeard where he wants to make Ace the next king of the Pirates all of this so that they can justify killing him but then they arrive a fleet of 16 pirate Crews emerge in the distance as Whitebeard and his ship flowed up from the depths below Marine Fort popping up dead in the center of the Marine setup and the image we get of him is imposing standing up like a giant and calling out that his son had best be unharmed for Ace's part he is trying to tell the rest of his crew to back off as he is here for his own actions and decisions and choosing to hunt down Blackbeard despite being told not to we also learned about how he ended up on whitebeard's ship and how it was a very long friction-filled journey ultimately ending with Ace embracing Whitebeard as his new father but all this ends up showing us a very different side to Ace the ace that we met in alabasta was a pillar of confidence and strength he was happy hopeful and loving but the ace that we're seeing here is someone who sees himself to be unlovable and unworthy and now as someone who is putting his family in danger but as he calls out for them to stop Whitebeard is said lies and says that hunting Blackbeard was his idea and calls for Marco to double down going further to explain that Ace was just following orders and that they will declare war on anyone in the world who tries to lay a finger on their family and so the battle begins we see The Godly powers of the Admirals teaming up with the Warlords to clash against the strongest man in the world Whitebeard and his crew and it kicks off in Epic fashion the chapter opens with Whitebeard creating a tsunami to envelop the island followed by seven full spreads making up the rest of the chapter where aokiji freezes the wave solid whitebeard's crew charges onto the ice that's created and the vice Admirals emerge with mihawk launching a slash across the entire Battlefield only to be stopped by jozu and finally kizuru and Marco Clash on the last page everything in this chapter is on a scale that we have never seen before and Oda really makes you feel that with the layout of these pages and almost every chapter in this early section of the war is built the same way a lot of the this though comes down to just sheer fighting of note though is that doflamingo has taken down ore's Jr pretty easily and Boa Hancock is fighting everyone around her regardless of Friend or Foe behind the scenes though Kobe and helmeppo come across Akainu who is dealing with a soldier trying to stay safe so he can make it home to his family and this Admiral kills that soldier on the spot saying he shouldn't disgrace them if he cares so much about them painting a much more serious and violent light around the Admirals than we had seen before and fittingly Dopey starts laughing here talking about the absurdity of the idea that all Pirates are evil and all Marines are good just because those labels have been passed throughout a history that has been created by the victors adding on that there is no point wondering if justice will prevail here because there's never any other outcome to a battle as those left are the ones who choose what Justice is and when you think about how the individuality of character is one of the main themes of one piece and has been since the beginning this speech is kind of emblematic of the entire series and then in the midst of all the chaos Luffy and all of the impelled down prisoners come crashing down from the sky seemingly from nowhere and to top that off the first thing he does is pop up next to Whitebeard who warns him about how dangerous it's going to be with Luffy telling him to shut up and going out of his way to tell him that he will become the next king of the Pirates so Whitebeard should just give up and Whitebeard again the strongest man in the world loves this overconfident upstart from here it becomes project keep Luffy alive he charges in head first through Admirals Warlords average Marines and everything in between and the Allies he's bolstered along the way are the first to step in and clear off any Challengers that would Target him with mihawk mentioning that this is Luffy's true power the ability to win the hearts of those around him and make allies anywhere that he goes a power that mihawk considers to be the most dangerous on the sea for his part Ace is still trying to stop his brother from getting more involved in putting a Target on his back telling him he doesn't want a weakling save him but also asking why he would even come very similar to Nami all the way back in arlong park telling Luffy to leave so that he doesn't fight arlong telling him that it's not his problem trying to deal with it on her own insulting him and all the rest of she did only for Luffy to still be there when she needed him and as Luffy gets close to Ace he finally accepts his situation saying that he will gladly take any hand that reaches out to him or any blade that swings down to judge him refusing to resist fate any more than he already has the battle wages for a bit here Eva learns what happened to Kuma Luffy tries to avoid mihawk and shows early observation hockey and buggy is pulled in as a substitute so that Luffy can keep going for the most part though things are going our way that is until Akainu convinces One of whitebeard's men to betray him and stab him in the chest something which eventually acts as a rallying call for whitebeard's crew and finally Whitebeard himself goes on the offensive and Luffy along with him Luffy has jinbei use water to launch him up to the platform where the Admirals were and we get the this iconic shot of the three gigantic men standing between his goal and as he approaches the battle starts getting even Wilder and then we pause for a minute to look back on Ace's life and Oda loves to stop things in the middle of all the action just to look back and slow things down for a minute and to remind us of the emotional weight of the situation Ace has always been seen as garbage for being Roger's son people have said that he should be killed or wiped out and finally we see him with GARP asking if he had any other grandkids who are happy as well as asking if he should have ever been born and GARP just tells him that the only way to find out for sure is to keep on living now we skip forward to the present and Ace is bent over crying on the platform he's angry with himself because despite his friends and family spilling blood for him it's also proving to him that he was wanted in this world and he's happy because of it and just like Robin Ace says that he wants to live Whitebeard despite being a monster through all of this is clearly slowing down he has been affected by his age and being ganged up on by people like akinu and the Marines constantly is clearly getting to him little by little but he's still holding strong and moving forward and as such the Pirates are making steady progress so sengoku orders Ace's execution to happen immediately this way even if they lose the battle they can win the war but once again just like on Amazon Lily Luffy uses conquerors hockey taking down all of these small fry around him including the actual executioners and with that finally Luffy has made it only for GARP to jump in his way and it is difficult to watch we get these scenes of GARP raising his grandkids to be good Marines and being put face to face with the reality of their choices and so he resolves to stop Luffy despite how much it hurts him but as he goes in for the attack he just closes his eyes and lets his grandson knock him down with him out of the way Ace is essentially free they make a key with Mr three's wax and now it is the brothers versus the world and now that his son is free Whitebeard can give the final order telling his men to leave him live their lives and return to the Sea this will be the place that Whitebeard dies he will give his life to make sure his family escapes Ace realizing his father's resolve stops to bow down and thank Whitebeard and the old man just asks if he was a good father in the end in an absolutely wholesome moment however as Ace starts to escape Akainu shows up and calls whitebeard's crew cowards for leaving him mid-fight even calling Whitebeard himself a loser and adding that Ace's real father would have stayed until he won the fight basically checking all the boxes that are guaranteed to make Ace angry so much so that he ultimately decides to stay and challenge the Admiral but Akainu doesn't really care about Justice or Honor on the battlefield sees Luffy as a weakness for Ace and lunges at him and in an attempt to save his brother Ace sacrifices his own life after all of this after so many people came to him and threw their lives away in the process and after Luffy had done the impossible so many times Ace is killed all the same GARP has one of his best moments here as he is filled with rage and tells sengoku that he needs to be held down or he will kill Akainu it is so emotionally charged with this dude who was just forcing himself to take part in his grandson's execution being faced with what it really means to lose his family it's this moment of pure anger and regret but then we go back to the brothers with Luffy holding Ace and covered in his blood with his last words Ace tells Luffy to thank to Don the woman who raised them and says that he regrets not being able to see Luffy become the king of the Pirates but still being absolutely confident that he will finally Ace ends things by saying that he never wanted Fame that he was a worthless man who had the blood of a demon flowing through his veins and thanks Luffy for loving him all the same despite that and from here he smiles one last time and slowly Fades away in his brother's arms and Luffy is broken is so crushed by what has just happened that the entirety of the rest of the Ark is spent with him unconsciously crying Akino doesn't slow down though and tries to attack Luffy again so it's up to everyone else to keep him safe and ultimately Whitebeard would split the island so that his crew could finally try to escape and with that the opportune moment has arisen Blackbeard and his new crew arrive to execute his former Captain Whitebeard holds his own for a bit but being so tired so old and so injured he is eventually overpowered and as they are beating down on him Whitebeard remembers talking to Roger about what the will of D was and says to himself that Roger was not waiting for Blackbeard and that one day a man with a D in his name will arise to carry the weight of centuries on his shoulders finally warning send Goku that the war that will engulf the world is coming and everything will be shaken to its core and with his final breath Whitebeard calls out into the world that the one piece is real shutting down the naysayers like Bellamy and adding Ember to the flame that Roger had ignited with that just as the famous Japanese warrior Ben K had Whitebeard passes on Still Standing as the giant he had proven himself to be throughout the war even so it still isn't over Blackbeard covers him in a cloak hides himself within it and then emerges soon after to show that not only does he have the strongest logia fruit the dark dark fruit but now he also possesses the strongest paramecia as he has stolen whitebeard's Quake Quake fruit making him the only person in known history to have two devil fruits let alone fruits of this power level from here Luffy manages to escape as jinbei carries him on to La's submarine Kobe awakens the ability to hear other people's thoughts or feelings through observation hockey and is totally overwhelmed by the horror of this war and finally Shanks shows up and puts an end to things saying that the Marines had already won and there is no point in further Bloodshed oh and throughout the whole War lucky has consistently been placed in positions which make him seem much more qualified than he really is as well as getting praise for actions that he didn't really do which when put in combination with the cult of prisoners that he had developed who have been completely loyal to him for freeing them creates some weird legendary status for him in the eyes of the world or at least in the eyes of everyone who hasn't met him personally and knows better it's a very silly side plot that is very fitting for his character now I gotta mention at this point marineford is kind of an impossible Arc to talk about because there are so many powerful figures at play that any interaction between any two of them could be their own dedicated video in terms of what we need to talk about it's just this Luffy has failed again having just been defeated by Kuma and been unable to save his friends and now he has failed to save his brother as well he already knew that he wasn't ready before but now he is painfully aware of how weak he really is on the world stage even Shanks seems to know this as he has someone else return Luffy's Straw Hat saying that if I saw him right now it would be breaking our promise meaning that Luffy has not become a great pirate yet and speaking of that world stage Whitebeard was even more powerful than we had imagined which by proxy makes the other yonko seem more impressive but more importantly makes Roger seem even stronger remember Roger was whitebeard's rival but Whitebeard was second to Roger and this weakened tired sick old man was a far cry from his glory days but despite that he effectively took on the world on his own so what was Roger like and then there's Shanks who is also a yonko himself but for some reason he seems to be different when he arrives he stops akina's attacks seemingly with ease and Ben Beckman alone is enough to stop kizuru in his tracks it could be me but while everyone seemed to be afraid of Whitebeard and the rest of his crew wasn't really an issue with a few standouts it seems like the entirety of the red hair crew is a threat not only that but we also see mihawk refusing to fight Shanks despite being up for fighting Whitebeard and even Blackbeard now with two of the strongest fruits in the world is pacified and forced to leave when Shanks arrives and finally when Shanks gives his terms for ending the conflict sengoku says since it's you I'll take responsibility so while Whitebeard was the strongest man in the world Shanks seems to be one of the most respected or feared and with his word marineford ends and the audience has a fuller understanding of what the new world will have to offer and what it means to cross the red line and so we can enter the last bit of one piece's opening half we start off with a quick look into Luffy's actual backstory which up until now had been a complete mystery other than his time with Shanks but here we get a much more detailed look starting with GARP dropping Luffy off at the mountain band to Don's house and Luffy meeting Ace originally Ace hated Luffy and actively tried to avoid him so that he could hang out with his friend Sabo but over time Luffy would slowly win him over with the turning point being when Luffy was tortured for an entire day to tell the pirate Portuguese where Ace's treasure was only two never sell his brother out when Ace angrily asks Luffy why he wouldn't talk Luffy explains that it's because Ace wouldn't be his friend if he had and that he would be all alone Ace who is not used to being wanted as he questioned if the son of the king of the Pirates deserved to even be alive asked Luffy if he wanted him to live and Luffy of course says he did and so Ace Sabo and Luffy started training together stealing from diners in town sharing their dreams and eventually sharing sake cups to become brothers on sabo's part he was a runaway Noble from the town who was sick of how he and others were treated and eventually finds out that the rich people in town were going to set fire to gray terminal to clean up their Island before a Celestial Dragon visited during the actual fire Saba would cross pass with Monkey D dragon and tell him all about the evil that had happened there that he was ashamed to be a noble and tells him that he feels that he will never be free as long as he lives in the Goa Kingdom so once things settle down the first thing that Sabo does is set sail so that he can be free as he does his ship crosses paths with the celestial dragon's ship and they shoot him down for being on the ocean at the same time as them he did however leave a letter behind for his brothers in which he says that he hopes they're safe from the fire and explains that he had to leave without telling them he says that once they're all Pirates they'll all be free and he hopes that they will meet again on the ocean finally he tells Ace that Luffy is still a crybaby but he will always be their little brother so he has to look after them and for Luffy's part he promises to become strong enough to protect anything so he'll never have to lose anyone again making Ace promise that he will never die which of course Ace says that he never could because then it would leave his weak younger brother alone but the audience obviously knows the sadness behind that line at this point all the same they would train together until Ace was strong enough to head out on his own and three years after that Luffy would do the same and that brings us back to the present day when Luffy laments that he is no king of the Pirates he is still weak and nothing has changed Luffy is effectively broken he can't stop crying and despite his injuries he won't stop flailing around in his depression and it's actually jinbei who beats a lesson into him telling him that he can't just count what he has lost but also needs to think about what he still has that being a crew who still loves and depends on him and that he needs to set sail to meet back with and that is the original plan but then Rayleigh arrives apparently having swam all the way from Saba ODI through the com belt which is full of sea Kings and forces Luffy to Face Reality ultimately offering him a choice he reminds him about how overwhelmed he was the last time they were on sabahori that he wasn't ready and says that he can instead train him over the next two years so that he'll be able to take on the new world properly and won't put his friends lives at risk Luffy having been humbled time and time again at this point makes the decision that Rayleigh is correct but before he can start training he needs to return to marineford once there he rings a bell 16 times signifying the dawn of a new era and kind of being a mini pseudo-rodger moment as well letting the pirates of the world know that just because the Marines were victorious that doesn't mean the age of piracy is over however the real purpose of this was to get himself in the news Luffy had marked his arm with a message Crossing out 3D and instead saying to why letting the straw hats around the world know that they were no longer meeting in three days at shock eats bar like had been originally planned but they were instead to meet back in two years from here he returns to Rus Gaiden with Rayleigh and learns all about the mysterious power of hockey as for the other crew members Kuma sent each of them to different locations which would benefit them and develop their specific skills and abilities for example Frankie will was sent to the homeland of Dr vegapunk Nami was sent to the sky island of weatheria and Zorro was sent to mihawk's Castle where he begs to be trained putting aside his own Pride for the sake of his captain Marine Ford as a saga is the culmination of everything that had happened since we entered the grand line however we are forced to see most of the consequences of our actions through Luffy's eyes alone to this point the straw hats have been charging forward as fast as they could since crocodile they had kind of been in over their head and it had just gotten worse and worse with each island that they reached until they eventually hit their boiling point Luffy had kept putting his everything into each battle and just hoping for the best but eventually he was just batting too far out of his league and ended up losing What mattered most to him as a result and it isn't just the straw hats we see the other Supernova who did cross the red line immediately quickly coming to terms with that being a mistake this time Skip and training Arc needed to happen in more and more as the scope of the world expanded when the biggest thing you need to worry about is a shark dude that's one thing but when you have giants made of lava and ice and light when you're declaring war against the world over and over again eventually Luffy was going to fall behind and Marine Ford acted as a symbol that Luffy had reached Beyond his limit and something needed to change once the two years has passed the straw hats all reconvene on Saba ODI and we are introduced to the fake straw hats using their names to a mass an army of enthusiastic Pirates as well as Caribou a weird sadistic Swamp Man however the big point of sabori is to act as a quick way of showing that the straw hats are on an entirely different level as Luffy manages to defeat a pacifista on his own and Zorro and Sanji beat one together these being robots that were completely overpowering them before the time skip once they get back together Luffy yells up to Rayleigh to say thank you and just as he had at the start of the story he declares that he will become the king of the Pirates starting off on the second half of our journey the straw hats get back onto the sunny and thanks to the coding that Rayleigh had hooked them up with they set sail directly under the water towards Fishman Island and as they do Rayleigh remembers back to his youth when he was relaxing on his boat and approached by a flashy young pirate named gold D Roger who claimed that their meeting was fate and that together they could turn the world upside down as he remembers back on his life Rayleigh has tears in his eyes while he says that Luffy has taken another step towards being worthy of wearing Roger's hat and just like every moment with Roger and rayleigh's story it is both Bittersweet and extremely exciting all at once I think this last Saga of the story is arguably the most popular with water 7 being a very close second and while each of the sagas had experimented with plenty of new things the overall structure of this part of the story allows it to feel the most like one piece did when it started and it's on 4 fortunate that moving into the next Arc we lose a lot of that momentum with Fishman Island often being considered one of the weakest in the series that isn't to say that there's no good points in it that isn't to say that I particularly dislike it but as a whole many one-piece fans do not so coincidentally this Arc in a way mirrors skypeia focusing a lot more on lore building and moving at a much slower Pace to the arcs that came before it being very similar to Thriller bark and size again and realistically being a one Arc story leaving us in one spot for a long time and don't get me wrong people love specific aspects of Fishman Island but they either come in very clumped together or very spread apart and it can make the pacing feel kind of sloppy add in the fact that we had not one but two very lackluster villains in hody Jones and Vander decken which is sort of reminiscent to the issue that we had with waffle back in drum Kingdom while the Marine Ford Saga had been a celebration of everything that one piece had done right Fishman Island can kind of be seen as an example of many of the things Oda does wrong it's genuinely a very strange Arc as the amount of information was kind of overwhelming as Oda tries to catch us up on two years of development around the world as well as needing to show us the personal growth for each of the straw hat member at the same time he's telling us more about the void century and joy boy and Fishman relations with humanity and the Marines and the yonko we have a very slow Arc that is bombarded with information while everything in isolation might be pretty good it just feels like a lot to deal with because of the way it's presented also I feel like I gotta talk about Sanji here because holy [ __ ] after coming back from his time on kamabaka Kingdom he is so enamored with every woman that he sees that he gets nosebleeds so powerful that they make him fall unconscious and in this Arc it even hospitalizes him briefly and like it's just pushing that part of his character that's already super hit or miss to a more extreme place and it's just very uncomfortable this Arc also acts as a a cap to a thematic line that's been going ever since back in arlong park that being racism arlong Park had presented these brutal and aggressive fishmen who believed themselves to be racially Superior to humanity and taking them as slaves or prisoners and also Hachi was there this was again touched in sabaori but we see a flipped hierarchy with fish men being slaves and prisoners and Humanity being above them however there was also a unifying force above both the Fishman and Humanity in the celestial dragons a common enemy importantly this Arc shows us that while fish man and Humanity are often shown as opposing forces Celestial dragons are presented as antagonists to every race around the world Fishman Island focuses much more on the repercussions of the Discrimination that fish men have faced as well as the attempts that they had made to deal with it especially through characters like Fisher tiger and otohime's backstory with Fisher tiger taking a much more Hands-On approach while otohime was going a more social and political route and all of this is in embodied in gene Bay a character who would present his path forward through his interactions with nami as the straw hats manage their way towards the ocean floor they cross paths with the new Fishman Pirates these being the underlings of the villains in the ark many of whom suffer from being pretty forgettable it isn't that they aren't unique or anything like that but they just kind of sit in a group of thousands of Fishman Pirates and they kind of blur together these new Fishman Pirates recognize the straw hats as the ones who defeated arlong as well as being the ones who rescued Hachi so they give these straw hats a choice to either join them or be destroyed and while they give the straw hats an ultimatum we eventually decide to just force our way past them using a Kuda verse but this pops the coding around the ship and sends everyone flying around Fishman Island meanwhile we catch up with the rest of the new Fishman Pirates as well as meeting their leader hody Jones who inspired by arlong is looking to enact a revolution and take control of the island and spread their hatred of humanity basically this is a much more cut throat and violent version of arlong and his crew if you can believe that and speaking of our Long's past we get a good look into it through Gene Bay jinbei would offer this story of Fisher tiger and otohime Fisher as we learned on Amazon Lily is the fish man who climbed the red line into marijua to free the slaves including the boa sisters but we did not learn back then was that fisher himself was a slave when he had finally returned to Fishman Island he formed the sun Pirates along with our long and Jean bag the crew had a mix of former slaves and free fishmen but they were all marked with a son this would cover up the mark of the celestial dragons and ensure that no one could tell who was a slave and who hadn't been together they would fight against humanity and more specifically against the oppression they imposed but taking on the rule of never killing and lowering themselves to Humanity's level of brutality though arlong needed a bit of convincing on that part this ultimately leads us to them meeting koala one of my personal favorite stories in the series koala was one of these slaves freed by Fisher but who had been mentally broken by her time under the world Nobles watching this young girl freak out and fearfully wash the ship all while keeping this big depressing smile on her face so that they wouldn't offend anyone or get beaten or even get killed is just horrible she was terrified the entire time and while arlong couldn't sympathize with her at all the rest of the crew was able to see that she had faced the same oppression that fishmen had despite being a human she was just like them Fisher himself would take her into his cabin and brand the mark of the sun over her slave mark saying that she would never be able to move forward in life with a constant reminder of her past and then giving a heartfelt speech about how it's okay to cry after what she went through and that his crew was different from these Celestial dragons and that they refused to kill and would guarantee that she be brought home safely it is such a great moment and he starts seeing this crew full of people who had been hurt starting to heal around this journey to bring a human child home if they could make this journey successful if they could care for this human then maybe there was hope for their future but things didn't work out like that they did manage to get her home but someone would call the Marines on Fisher tiger leading to him being ambushed and mortally wounded all the good faith that one person had built up in their crew was stolen away by another Fisher could survive if he allowed a blood transfusion with human blood but after his time as a slave and the Betrayal he had just experienced he still hated humanity and said that he would rather die than live with their blood in his veins and so he would pass away but not before telling his crew that Otto he made his dream of Peace was the correct path forward and that he knew that there were plenty of great humans but he regretted that even knowing this he couldn't forgive them himself and speaking of otohime she was the queen of the fish men who tried to Garner good faith between the races by a more social and political method however in the end hodi would assassinate her and frame a human completely destroying her mission of peace and cohabitation this is Oda presenting the message that P police takes an active effort from both sides and that there will always be people who refuse to stop discriminating others just as there will be people who don't want to forgive others for the pain that they have lived through but then we come to jinbei and Nami jinbei tells her the entire story how he took over the sun Pirates after Fisher died and how arlong would be released from prison when Jean Bay became a warlord in an attempt to act as a peacekeeper inadvertently ruining much of nami's life and causing so much suffering for the people of her Village having heard the story Sanji is straight up demanding that jinbei end his own life to atone and jinbei is absolutely ready to do it but Nami stops him saying that jinbei had only done what he thought was best and that arlong was the one who had hurt her sure jinbei's actions had led to her suffering but they also led to her meeting the straw hats and she loved the life that she had now so she doesn't want him to apologize for his actions that led her into becoming the person she is and in exchange she won't hate him just for being a fish man the path forward through these situations isn't to ignore the pain that people have felt nor is it to obsess over that pain you can't blame yourself for the actions of others in your group but you also can't blame someone for what others had done yes there will always be bad actors but there will also be people trying to move forward and bring a better future and so it's important to look at things on an individual level rather than generalizing an entire group I don't think I need to spell out the parallels to the real world here as Oda is pretty on the nose with it but all the same I think it's presented in a pretty beautiful way as we see truly every perspective of the relationship between these races as we look through the lenses of characters like otohime Fisher tiger jinbei Nami arlong koala and hodi Jones there are so many paralleling and overlapping story beats that you just get this powerfully well-rounded view of how people have hurt and have been hurt by others but not only that you also see how different people deal with that pain throughout their lives Fish Man island is fine overall in my opinion but this section around Gene Bay telling his story to Nami is perfection now I've mentioned otohime a few times here and this Arc also introduces us to her family pretty directly those being the ruling King of the fish men Neptune their three sons and their daughter Shira Hoshi a lot of the plot revolves around the family for plenty of reasons again hody is looking to cause a revolution and overthrow Neptune at the same time his partner Vander decken is this weird old fish man who is obsessed with Shira Hoshi deccan's devil fruit allows him to throw things from anywhere and always have them hit their Mark he continuously targets shiroshi to the point that she needed to be locked in a tower to protect her shiroshi much like Vivi is a princess in need who forms a bond with Luffy however in this case we are still in that period where we're trying to see how much growth Luffy has experienced over the time skip so he kind of acts like a mentor for her in a much more direct way that he had with Vivi she is a frightened person who often cries is not so subtly similar to how Ace saw Luffy in the flashback we just had and throughout their time together Shira Hoshi like Luffy learns to stand up for herself and become more confident now we can Flash Forward a bit here and the new fish man Pirates have managed to capture King Neptune and are holding him hostage with an army of one hundred thousand men and this is where we finally get to see what the straw hats can do when they fully let loose to show off their new abilities Luffy immediately uses conquerors hockey to knock out fifty thousand fishmen which is insanely badass while also showing off that he has learned Armament and observation hockey Zorro is just all around stronger Sanji can jump through the air similar to how cp9 did usop has an upgraded Kabuto as well as implementing pop greens into his attacks Nami has these sorcery climb attacked Chopper can swap through all of his forms freely and only needs one Rumble ball to enter monster point which I guess allows him to control it Robin can straight up make clones of herself and can use Fishman karate Frankie has a ton of upgrades and confused with the vehicles he has made to become the iron General and Brooke can turn into a ghost as well as having more powerful ice and music effects there is so many cool things to show off here but at the same time it is such a blowout that there's no tension to go along with it however this isn't entirely true as there is at least one fight with tension that being Luffy fighting hody Jones now normally hoodie would not be a big issue but he has been pumped up with energy steroids to become much stronger and were fighting him underwater which puts him at an advantage while also disadvantaging Luffy despite this he's taken down pretty quickly all the same and Vander decken steps it he launches an ancient ship called the Noah straight towards shirohoshi and Luffy tries to stop it but Shira Hoshi then shows off a special power she can seemingly controls sea Kings who manage to step in and stop the Noah without destroying it and finally now that Luffy sees everyone is safe he allows himself to pass out from blood loss so it turns out just like Fisher before him Luffy needs a blood transfusion and it is Jean Bae who steps up to offer his blood as the fish man's blood flows into him Luffy wakes up and asks jinbei to join his crew but unfortunately jinbei says he needs to sever his ties with big mom before he can do that speaking of shortly after this two members of big mom's crew would show up we learned that yonko in general offer protection to different islands and after Whitebeard died big mom took over Fishman Island on the condition that they supplied her with candy however because of everything that had happened here recently they hadn't been able to supply their tax but rather than letting the fish men take the blame Luffy declares that he ate all the candy and declares war on big mom saying that he will head to the new world and defeat her and with all of that behind them the straw hats are ready to set sail promising to return one day and bring Shira Hoshi back to the surface now some stuff we skipped over here a fortune teller Madame Charlie predicts that Luffy will destroy Fishman Island one day leading many people to believe that maybe he will destroy the red line above Fishman Island and causing marijua to fall with no more Celestial dragons and Fishman Island being destroyed this would open up an opportunity for them to come to the surface and possibly cohabitate with Humanity inadvertently connect the four C's to create the all-blue and opening a path for Brook to reunite with Lagoon completing like half of the straw hat dreams in the process and it's definitely one of my favorite fan theories on top of that we have the pony glyph for Fishman Island Robin reads this and learns about a promise that a man named Joy Boy made in the void Century involving the Noah as well we find out a bit about the ancient weapons but specifically we learned the name of the third one uranos and confirm that Shira hoshi's power to control sea Kings actually makes her the ancient weapon Poseidon speaking of sea Kings Luffy is able to hear the voice of all things being shown to hear what the sea kings are saying something that gold D Roger was also able to do I also want to take a moment to point out a discussion that Luffy and jinbei had prior to the big fight jinbei tells Luffy that he can't defeat hodi as a foreign force of violence because this will just spread anti-human sentiment instead he needs to achieve Victory as the hero of Fishman Island and Luffy explains that he isn't a hero or he doesn't want to be one heroes are beholden to always doing the right thing they have to act whereas Pirates are free to do what they want they can save people or they can just ignore them just because Luffy always does help others doesn't mean that he wants to be told he has to help them I bring this up here because this is a Viewpoint that will evolve throughout the second half of the story pretty drastically finally that brings us to one of the most dreaded and exciting sagas of the story dressrosa plenty of great things happen in this Saga it is by far the longest that we've seen so far coming in at 150 chapters in fact we spend more time in the Arc of dressrosa than we do in the entirety of the East blue and let me tell you we definitely feel this change of pace almost immediately and this is kind of something that happens a lot in the new world we'll experience what is effectively the worst timeline version of things we saw in Paradise or the opening path for example drum kingdom was an icy Tundra with no doctors and punk Hazard is half ice half fire where we come across Caesar Clown who is doing medical experiments on children alabasta was the story of a warlord trying to overthrow a kingdom while dressrosa is the story of a warlord who succeeded in taking over a kingdom in the same way we got all the perspectives on fishmen and human relations we are now getting the same experience with many other elements of the story that we have explored so far it is a super unique method of Storytelling that is only enabled because of this long-running style that one piece exists in speaking of punk Hazard once our crew emerges the log pose directs them three different directions but our crew follows none of them Luffy Hears A distress call coming from Punk Hazard and chooses to go there instead because adventure and the straw pets aren't the only ones to hear this transmission as smoker is also nearby and heads to punk Hazard as well and punk Hazard is a Wild Island split directly in half between a frozen tundra and Inferno made this way because after marineford's sengo who stepped down as Fleet Admiral and the kainu and aokiji fought on this island to determine who would take his place the fight was so intense that it permanently changed the landscape of this island like this which is incredibly badass but also a little bit terrifying the crew decides on splitting into an exploration party of Luffy Zorro usop and Robin who check out the fiery side of the island and fight a dragon and a group which will stay on the sunny however they get captured and brought to a lab in the Frozen half of the island here we meet gigantic children who have been experimented on in the head of a samurai named kinemon we learned that his body had been separated by Trafalgar law who was now a warlord filling in gym-based spot along with buggy who took over Blackbeard's spot law is a little bit of a bastard in this Arc but but he's also extremely fun he fights smoker and removes his heart in a cube then swaps around everyone's personality leading to a very Burly tashigi and adorable smoker and jumbling several the straw hats as well however he doesn't Remain the antagonist for very long as he approaches Luffy and tells him about a plan to take down the emperor kaido Robin who has the most level head on the crew reminds Luffy that ba is a pirate and you probably shouldn't trust random Pirates because they might betray you so Luffy asks if he will and law says no and Luffy puts on the dumbest I Told You So face I've ever seen he's so so stupid but I love him so much once the alliance has been formed law starts returning people to their correct bodies and kineamon is reassembled and now we can take the first step towards beating kaido that being to capture Caesar Clown Caesar is a scientist experimenting on all the children on the island and he also has the gas logia fruit which makes him a real threat considering how goofy he is beyond this though he is producing dangerous chemical weapons called add material being used to create artificial devil fruits which he is selling to doflamingo Caesar himself can be a lot to take in especially that horrible laugh but he is more or less a stand-in for a darker version of something between vegapunk kareja and hero look along with as his name might suggest a clown-like design like buggy had but whereas we saw hero look and kareja working towards spreading Sakura snow in explosions to cure a sick Nation we see Caesar doing the inverse blowing up a bio weapon that spreads through the island and petrifies anything it comes in contact with very much the opposite of what here look was trying to do not only that though Caesar is looking to sell this and spread it to other nations as well something really interesting that happens here though is that this weapon had a devil fruit and once it dies we see that fruit being reincarnated towards the nearest fruit that's available giving us a clearer idea of how devil fruits work now capturing Caesar does not go super smoothly at first as vice admiral Virgo arrives as a double agent in in support of him and even Caesar himself has the ability to just remove oxygen from an area which is a pretty difficult thing to deal with but it's not a complete one-sided brawl as Luffy's actually able to hit him despite him being a logia user meaning our boy has made some progress to take down Virgo and Caesar the straw hats and heart Pirates join forces with smoker smoker who was someone who saw all Pirates as evil originally is again in a position where he has to rely on them even working directly with law to take on Virgo and eventually they managed to take him down the Shiki and Zorro though let's be real it is mostly Zorro managed to defeat a snow logia username Monet who is later accidentally killed by Caesar himself and Luffy finds a young boy named omonosuke who has eaten an artificial Dragon devil fruit created by vegapunk and who is unable to control this new ability also as it turns out momonosuke and kinemon are together and finally of course Luffy defeats Caesar and capture him towards the end of the arc doflamingo who is now lost contact with his supplier heads out to see what's going on on Punk Hazard as law explains to the straw hats that the next step is to head to greenbit an island on dressrosa where he can bargain with dophi for the return of Caesar kinemon and momonosuke also need to go there so they tag along and effectively become our new VVS as for Dopey he arrives at Punk Hazard shortly after sits on smoker implying he has butt hockey and is about to kill him when the former Admiral kuzan shows up to stop him this Arc is definitely not my favorite we're in a bit of a rough patch in the story but it does stand to set up a lot of the journey going forward but more importantly we set ourselves on a path towards taking down a yonko notably in the new world we are traveling with intention more so than ever before in the paradise portion of the grand line we almost always followed the log pose until Kuma split everyone up there are a few exceptions in Paradise like with drum Kingdom but those are the exceptions and not the rule now that we've actually crossed into the new world we are true using to go to punk Hazard and then to dress Rosa and then to zou and whole cake and finally wano there is never a Reliance on the log pose it's a lot more of an active story being told and I think that's an element that can be very cool but on the other hand it does admittedly take away from a bit of the sense of Whimsy and Adventure that can come from being brought to any kind of magical place with who knows what kind of weird phenomenon going on like in Paradise the log pose could take us anywhere a prehistoric island of dinosaurs and Giants an island in the sky or at the bottom of the sea in the new world it often doesn't quite feel like an adventure so much as a mission we aren't going to dress Rosa because we want to explore or because the log Post told us to we're going because we need to stop Dopey there's an obligation there we are going to whole cake Island to save Sanji I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing in the grand scheme of things it definitely makes it feel like there's a plan in motion which can help Luffy feel like he's a more thoughtful leader but it can also kind of make it not feel like one piece if that makes sense and a product of this change is that we might also get some longer arcs we aren't traveling to little garden just long enough for the log pose to adapt we're traveling somewhere with a goal in mind that needs to be completed before we move on and as we are on this Mission we obviously need to go to the kingdom of dressrosa next which is the first single Arc to cover over 100 chapters this Arc would continue the trend in the new world where holy [ __ ] there's so many cool things happening all at once the straw hats go above and beyond what we've seen doflamingo is one of the best villains we've seen so far the return of Sabo a tournament for Ace's devil fruit revolutionaries Senor pink the man and do you know what's around all of those fantastic things just so so many characters that I do not care about and I could not if I tried there are new character characters constantly being introduced in this Arc dozens of Coliseum combatants the doflamingo family fujitora the tontaras the revolutionaries Bellamy's back like be honest do you really care about Dellinger or Kelly Funk it seems like the further we get into the new world the more and more Oda fills these arcs with wider and wider casts of characters he also tries another Twist on his typical writing style which I think may have hurt the arc a little bit I've mentioned plenty of times how there's a ton of overlap in the themes and plots of each storyline in the series and of course dressrosa is a flip on alabasta where the warlord actually won and this repetition of themes allows us to explore different angles which can be really cool additions however in dressrosa we are also copying things that don't give us New Perspectives and instead just feel like these flat imitations with the worst example of this being devil fruits throughout the series devil fruits have always been one of the most interesting and magical things to explore every time we see a new one it's exciting and feels dynamic because they're all so unique well except for when they're not for example we have several different heat or Fire based devil fruits throughout the series Ace akinu that one fat guy from the filler Arc and that's fine but it can make some of them just feel strictly less impressive or interesting like why heat things up when you could turn into or control fire and with that in mind let's compare the devil fruits between Baroque works and the Don Quixote Pirates which again these are supposed to be selling points that make these characters feel unique and interesting dazbones had the ability to turn any part of his body into a steel blade and because of this he was difficult for Zorro to cut ab5 can turn any part of her body into any weapon an upgrade on the blades and Virgo could Harden his body to the point where he could barely be injured Miss Valentine could make herself light or heavy mock Vice same deal but more mr5 could turn parts of his body into bombs Gladius can make himself or any non-living things explode this Merry Christmas could swim swim through the ground so can seen your pink and Pika kind of a similar deal Mr three had wax powers and traveled with a girl who could control people treble controls mucus and travels with sugar who can control people on the one hand I like that we're getting a view of the what if Baroque works one perspective and the similar devil fruits definitely leans into that but on the other hand it takes away from these abilities and characters feeling special in a pretty significant way and the final nail in the coffin for this Arc especially in the anime is that it is as I like to call it tragically toei what I mean by this is that back in the day one piece managed to cover the first 100 chapters of the manga in 53 episodes of anime we were moving at about two chapters per episode and this has continued to slow Saga by Saga by the end of water 7 we were averaging about 1.5 chapters per episode not including filler arcs and certainly since the time Skip it's gotten even worse with it really coming to a peak in dressrosa where 101 chapters is covered in 100 and 17 episodes less than half the speed of the original Saga and less than one chapter in episode on average spreading the content as thin as possible to keep profits as high as possible to me this is where the one piece anime died many fans consider this the dropping point for the series where it just isn't worth the time investment and where you should just pick up the manga and as someone who typically doesn't like manga I agree and of course there's the argument that why does it matter it's just the anime but this is the entry point for a lot of people into the series you want the anime to be as good and as accessible as possible to as many people as possible slowing it down this way limits the audience that the series can reach and when the first thought that jumps into people's head when you think of one piece is oh it's so long then making slower arcs just makes that problem that much worse now that said it seems that since Landing in wano the anime has had a bit of a Renaissance with animation illustration music and quality on a level that the series has never experienced before but one know is still a ways off especially at the pace that we're moving at and so for now back to dressrosa and we have so much to explore here the group ends up starting with four different goals and from there it kind of offshoots into more individual goals as well originally we are trying to defend the sunny go to green bit to confront dophi and trade Caesar Clown for his stepping down as a warlord the samurai are looking for their lost friend conjuro and a Powerhouse group is tasked with sneaking into the country to destroy the smile Factory there's lots going on but then Sanji falls into this whole subplot with Viola Luffy gets lured into a tournament at korida coliseum as Dopey set up Ace's devil fruit as a prize and here we meet tons of people most notably among them being the Luffy Fanboy bartolomeo and the soon to be revealed princess Rebecca the former King Riku and several major Pirates like Cavendish haruden or lumbus Ideo Don chinjau and the return of both Bellamy who has grown a lot of respect for Luffy and Jesus Burgess though in total we go on to learn the names of well over 50 combatants which like dude come on and it doesn't end there though as Luffy's brother Sabo is revealed to still be alive and swaps places with Luffy to end up winning the maramara fruit and inheriting Ace's ability Sabo by the way is absolutely awesome he is a high-ranking officer in the Revolutionary Army and he comes back with Hawk and koala from the Fisher tiger story on top of that in this Arc we see him taking on both the new Admiral fujitora to a draw and later Jesus urges to a victory very much comes in feeling like Ace did and it's actually really nice as for those who lose at the Coliseum we later learned that anyone who goes to get examined after the battles are sent to see one of doflamingo's officers sugar and that she has the ability to turn them into toys and take control over them while also removing the memory of them from everyone else and that is horrifying in fact the island is covered with toys and is essentially a nation filled with slaves were forced to work surrounded by the ones they love who have long since forgotten them which brings in another plot line as Rebecca's father Heroes has become a toy soldier and is found by Frankie Hero's wife was also the daughter of the former King Riku and speaking of Riku we learned that he ended up here when years ago dophi arrived and used his devil fruit to force him to brutally attack his own people only for Dopey to step up as a hero who took down the Mad King and replaced him on the throne very similar to crocodile's plan except you know successful and while all of this is going on the straw hats back on the sunny get attacked by giola one of dopey's pirates who is easily defeated by Brooke listen I told you there's a lot going on in this Arc and we haven't even reached green bit law is originally supposed to go there to give Caesar back to dophi once he steps down as a warlord but before that Robin and usop get captured by a group of small elf dwarf Sprite dudes called the tontaras They too had an issue with doflamingo as he has enslaved many of their people and has been using them to produce Smiles as it turns out though they are super gullible and usop wins them over by saying he is a legendary hero which winds up placing him in charge of the mission with Frankie and the toy soldiers soon joining as for Law's trade dophi had faked his resignation having CP 0 explain this to the people Dopey is then joined by fujitora for a two-on-one battle against law knowing this might be a trap law actually came without Caesar and had left him on the sunny when things go south he tells them to head to the next Island zou to ensure that Caesar stays out of dopey's hands now a point I keep harping on over and over again as oda's biggest flaw as the story develops is that by expanding the crew the plot becomes more and more convoluted and I think the decision to cut the crew in half here is a method of alleviating that problem we are about 60 through this arc when they leave and while they haven't had a huge Focus until now doing this allows us to kind of focus in on what's really important and I promise that if you ask people which part of dressrosa they enjoy it's Sabo showing up and then the last 40 percent as they leave they encounter the main ship of the big mom Pirates Who are also trying to capture Caesar and Luffy gives Sanji permission to return fire especially considering they had already declared war against her on Fishman Island so what's the worst that could happen with fighting them from here we simplify into much easier groups first law has been captured by fujitora and dofi so Luffy Zorro and kitamon aim towards dealing with that second Robin and usof are working with the tontaros to stop sugar and Frankie is making a lot of noise to distract dopey's Pirates this is a far cry from where the arc started and it is much easier to follow Robin and the rest of her group with the exception of usop of all people are taken down by sugar and treble and usop berates himself for lying about being a hero pledging to become the real hero that he bragged he was and save everyone who had just been let down while he loses at first he does manage to fantastically terrify sugar to the point of making her faint which undoes all of her powers and releases everyone who had been turned into toys and suddenly we have an army of allies thanks to the straw hat Pirates and God Usopp and so the crazy battle begins and there are plenty of big moments here from Zorro slicing up the mountain that Pika turns into to Frankie's Battle of machismo with Senor pink but the biggest focus is of course on Luffy vs doflamingo feeling as though he is pushed into a corner dophi sets up the birdcage essentially using his string fruit to create a massive ever shrinking cage on the island that would eventually slice through everyone in its path not only that but he also puts out bounties on all of his enemies so that the citizens and his crew would be incentivized to attack them with the biggest being given to usop as he had annoyed him the most by freeing all the toys fujitora gets deterred from hunting after law and Luffy when he's stopped by Sabo and instead aims to help as many citizens as he can you know almost something like a marine might do go figure also of note here though is that fujitora mentions throughout the ark that he is only helping Dopey because of his orders however in General he opposes the warlord system and wants to see it abolish and speaking of people who hate the Warlords we learn that law has fooled Luffy and had never intended to go after kaido but instead was planning to use Luffy to help get revenge on doflamingo naturally leads us into their backstory together basically law was born in a town that was filled with poisonous Amber LED causing everyone to become very sick and the government's response to this was to quarantine the town and kill everyone within it or at least to allow them to die however law manages to escape by hiding in a pile of corpses that's being removed from the city and eventually finds his way to the Don Quixote Pirates here he would form a bond with dopey's brother rosinante or Corazon who was actually a double agent working for sengoku and the Marines we find out that Law's full name is Trafalgar D water law and Corazon realizes that dophi would kill him in an instant for having a D in his name and decides to take action to save him he finds the ope ope Nomi and forces law to eat it this allowing him to cure himself of the Amber lead poison and this also also being the devil fruit that dophi is looking for as its user can make someone else eternally youthful and eventually Corazon would even give up his own life so that law would be able to escape from doflamingo alive here we also learned dolphy's backstory the reason he would kill law for being a d is that dophi is a Celestial Dragon who lived on marijua until his father homing decided they should live among the people and the d-clan is supposedly the fated opposition to Celestial dragons the village that they moved into would not take well to the celestial dragons taking out all of the rage that they had towards the other world Nobles on the Don Quixote family despite these Celestial dragons having actually taken measures to enter the relationship between themselves and Humanity they would torture them Lynch them force them to eat garbage eventually leading to the death of dopey's mother it would get so bad that doflamingo as a child would vow to destroy the world and everything in it for what he has gone through and that brings us back to the present where we follow the threads started with annal where Luffy is put in a position where he needs to fight light gods and finally we can get into our main action Luffy shows off his new form gear 4th bounce man which totally manages to overpower go Flamingo but it's on a very tight time constraint and it completely wears Luffy out once he's done with it because of this he's eventually forced out of it and it is actually up to the citizens of dressrosa to keep him safe long enough for him to use hockey again meanwhile Zorro kinemon Frankie fujitora and a bunch of the Coliseum dudes and seemingly everyone else who can is trying to push back the birdcage to slow it down and while they barely manage they do slow it down a bit even if it only bought a few moments those moments were enough for Luffy to regain his strength and her bounce man and end things with one final Massive Attack and with that dressrosa is free fujitoro would have all of his men bowed down and apologize to King Riku for allowing things to get so bad despite being ordered to take credit himself which mirrors alabasta where smoker received credit for stopping crocodile even so he is still an admiral and moves to stop Luffy from leaving the island but they become so sworn by Overjoyed citizens that is unsafe for him to use his gravity powers and he just allows him to go stating that for the first time he is upset that he had blinded himself because he wished to see what Luffy looked like having gained a massive respect for him before we leave the island a few days pass and in that time many of the pirates from the Coliseum joined together in wanting to join Luffy however Luffy refuses as he doesn't want to rule over others this as you might expect just reinforcing their views of him being someone truly worth following and begrudgingly Luffy eventually allows for the creation of the straw hat Grand Fleet a group of pirates who were not subservient to him but who vowed to arrive should he ever need them and suddenly Luffy's numbers jump from 9 to over 5 000 and along with that Spike we also get a spike in Bounty with Luffy's going up to half a billion and usops even briefly passing sanjis speaking of Sanji his bounded poster finally actually looks like him and suddenly says only alive I do want to remind everyone that Sanji Brooke Chopper and Nami have already left for so but even well before that all the way back in chapter 701 at the start of dressrosa that is the last time that the straw hats would all be together in one place for the next 250 chapters that is from March of 2013 to October of 2019 for anyone who's curious add in that just before the time skip we had another two years with just Luffy and that's nearly a decade of Separation which is absurd to think about finally we get our first Glimpse at the final yonko kaido as he tries to end his own life by jumping from a sky island only to land unharmed and surrounded by Kid Apu and Hawkins and so we move on to the modern era of One Piece where whole cake Island and wano are sometimes grouped together as The yonko Saga but Imma Be Real that is just an unmanageable size so we're going to put them up into the whole cake Island Saga and wano Saga respectively as God who sup intended speaking of whole cake Island this is the first Saga to be split into more than two arcs since marineford and while we do spend a long time on whole cake Island itself having those little breathers on zou and the revelry Arc are so refreshing speaking of so this kind of fits into the genre of arcs like Sky Pia and Fishman Island which seemed to happen every time we are drastically away from sea level what I mean here is that we're looking at a lot of lore and expanding what we know about the world as a whole as especially when it comes to the poneoglyphs so the remaining straw hats and the samurai arrive thanks to a ride from bartolomeo and Zoe isn't so much an island as it is a civilization on the back of a 10 000 meter tall elephant inspired by Salvador Dali painting and it is entirely inhabited by minks these are animal people like Beppo quite a lot has been going on here since before the crew arrived as Jack from kaido's crew had demanded that the Minx hand over a samurai named rhizo but when they insisted that he wasn't there It ultimately devolved into a battle between Jack and an alternating force of nekomomushi and Inu arashi who alternated between night and day for five days straight Jack would eventually get tired of fighting and just resort to using chemical weapons made by Caesar to win however once it's announced that doflamingo has been defeated Jack leaves though and tries to free him although he is stopped by sengoku and fujitora on the way and as such Luffy defeating doflamingo inadvertently saves all the minks the before the rest of the crew actually arrives Capone Beijing shows up with some of big mom's crew and demands Sanji come with them as big mom would like him to marry her daughter pudding and to the surprise of everyone Sanji agrees to go to keep his crew safe and deal with the past that we knew nothing about which is very similar to Robin in water 7. Sanji who throughout the series has been calling himself Mr Prince and the like well as it turns out he is a prince from the north blue specifically for the germa kingdom and here we learned that his father judge Vin smoke had offered him up to form an alliance with big mom once sanji's gone the rest of the crew finally makes it onto the elephant's back and it is revealed that rhizo the ninja that Jack was looking for actually was on the island and despite everything that they had gone through the minks were protecting him and it isn't just rhizo that was being hidden but we also find a poneglyph which decidedly looks different from everyone we've seen so far as this is a rather deep red instead of the normal blue gray that we're used to this is a rode ponoglyph one of the four which when combined Mark where laughtail is and this is kind of the marker towards the end of the series as the minks are holding this one both kaido and big mom have one each and the last one had disappeared from Fishman Island years ago however While others might have a head start there is one thing that they don't have and that is Nico Robin the only known person alive who can actually read the ancient language and on that note since we've entered the North Blue we have seen plenty of people working behind the scenes or hinting towards kidnapping her and the more information that she gathers the more vibrant a Target will be on her back what I do love here though is that when it's brought to her attention that she will be hunted she just says well it's okay my friends will protect me clearly Having learned her lesson from water 7. here we also find out that kaido had conquered wano and that the samurai we've met until this point are all looking for allies to save their country starting yet another alliance between these straw hats Trafalgar law the minks and the samurai of wano however now we have an issue wano is in severe danger our friends are in trouble but Sanji has been taken to Big mom's Kingdom and our options are to focus on one or take on two Emperors of the sea at the same time and with Luffy being Luffy he makes the obvious choice of doing both and taking on the world so half of the crew Luffy Nami Brooke and Chopper will be joined by a few of the minks being carrot Pedro and peckhams and head to totland Big mom's Kingdom and the rest of the crew will head to wano and get things started as Luffy and the gangs set sail the tottland they come across two of sanji's siblings Raju and yonji and thank God they did because Luffy poisons himself again and Raju manages to save him after they go their own ways the straw hats then cross paths with a woman Sanji is meant to marry pudding she seems Pleasant enough but ends up leading them into an ambush by Cracker and brulee the group again splits up Brook leading the charge towards finding big mom's Pony glyph the furries get caught up in the mirror world where they eventually overpower brulee and force her to help them and Luffy and Nami fight cracker who is one of big mom's strongest children managing to clutch out a very long-fought fight and by clutch out I mean he uses gear 4 Tank Man and becomes very fat as he just keeps eating crackers soldiers also jinbei is in totland here to sever his ties with big moms so he can finally join the straw hats it's still going to take a while but our fishy friend is nearly on the crew while all of this is going on Sanji is dealing with his family we learn about how when his mom was pregnant his father had performed experiments to make their children super powered and how she managed to have Sanji born as a normal person at the very least we learned about how he used to cook for his sick mother how she would even eat food that had been ruined when he had fallen in the rain and how she was just this really great mom who loved him very much in complete contrast to his father judge saw Sanji as such an embarrassment that he would even fake his death to hide him from the people he would place an iron mask on sanji's head and keep him in prison however Sanji would eventually manage to escape and cross paths with judge on the way out his father telling him that as long as he promised never to tell anyone that they were related he could go free so I guess he could say it wasn't a great childhood now that Sanji has returned all these years later things aren't really much better with judge even threatening to kill zeph if Sanji ever opposed him so Sanji does his best to just go along with things sacrificing his life to the path that his family had Chosen and tries to be a good fiance to pudding however he soon overhears her calling him pathetic and plotting to murder his family around this time he crossed his path with Luffy for the first time on this island and knowing that he can't go with them and wanting to keep zeph alive he is forced to brutally attack Luffy Luffy refuses to fight back and even after Sanji lays him out he calls out to him saying he refuses to eat until his cook is back on the crew and from here Sanji and the VIN smokes leave and an army of big mom's Pirates marched towards Luffy capturing both he and Nami and that leaves us with the final straw hat party on the island as Brooke and Pedro managed to find big mom's pornoglyphs just as she arrives leading to him being captured as well big mom by the way has an interest in collecting weird people as well as trying to make a perfect Society by having children from every race except Giants eventually jinbei would arrive to free Nami and Luffy mirroring Luffy freeing him and impel down and everyone would jump into the mirror world to free Brook who also snagged a copy of the pony glyph Luffy alone though would go to the place he told Sanji he would wait for him and speaking of Sanji things continue to spiral downward as he learns that pudding is going to kill him after they get married along with having the rest of his family executed so that big mom can steal all of germa's technology and now Sanji is at his breaking point he goes to reunite with Luffy in an absolutely beautiful moment and finds that Luffy had just fought against an entire Army of big mom's crew and is basically on death's door he is barely hanging on when Angie arrives and by the time that Sanji shows up the basket of food that he brought for Luffy has been crushed ruined by the rain and probably tastes terrible but just like his mother did Luffy eats every single bite and says it's delicious noting that Sanji had made the favorite food of each of the straw hats and clearly he didn't forget where his real family was Luffy asked Sanji to come with him and Sanji finally explains his situation firstly he made his captain go out of his way to save him then he attacked and insulted him so now he feels like he can't go back to the ship second zeph is being held hostage so he feels that he can't escape without putting the old man in danger and third his family is about to be slaughtered and despite how much he hates them he cannot bring himself to abandon them so he tells Luffy to leave because he clearly is stuck and there's no hope for him and Luffy lays into him yelling for him did not tell him what his worries or problems are but to tell him what he really wants and what he wants to do so he tells Luffy that he's afraid to run and that he wants to save his terrible family and and Luffy Just Smiles and says of course you want to save them that's who you are and as is Tradition now knowing what his crew wants it can work on making that impossible thing happen with this being a pretty direct parallel to both Robin in any slavi and Nami in kokoyashi village and that ultimately brings us back to Capone beiji and jinbei who have plans to assassinate big mom along with the help of Caesar Clown and again I'm sure you're all thinking that Luffy being part of an assassination plan is pretty weird as he doesn't kill people but just because he doesn't doesn't mean that he won't especially if it's to save a friend the general plan here is to show big mom a picture of the woman who ran the orphanage that she was raised in who she had accidentally eaten it's a long story doesn't really matter and then to smash it in front of her hopefully shocking her and making her so angry that she becomes vulnerable for a few seconds things do not go as planned though and they're forced to run with the big mom Pirates not very far behind this including a very hungry and very angry big mom who is going on a rampage and to escape they'll need to satiate her hunger to which Sanji will make a massive wedding cake for she isn't the only threat though as big mom's son category ambushes the rest of the Pirates at the sunny leading to a way too long fight between he and Luffy in Mirror World we'll come back to that in a moment first another of big mom's sons and if it seems like I'm saying she has a lot of kids because she has 85 of them this one being perro Sparrow shows up and Pedro needs to sacrifice his life in an explosion to open an opportunity for the sunny to escape but that brings us to Luffy's fight katakuri has a devil fruit which seems to be an upgraded version of Luffy's in every way this is the mochi mochi fruit allowing him to bend and stretch his body as well as produce floating arms or Mochi weapons to attack with but this isn't the biggest issue the real problem is his observation hockey continuing a trend that we saw with Virgo making hockey a bigger problem than devil fruit in this case katakuri is able to see a few seconds into the future which gives him time to manipulate populate his body and kind of turns him into a phony logia user essentially if Luffy goes to make a punch he can just bend himself around where the impact would be and while Luffy has become much stronger since the time skip he is no match for katakuri at all at least at the start of this fight however as I mentioned this is a long battle and Luffy refuses to stay down no matter what happens to him he will continue to throw himself at katakuri over and over again studying him each time and getting closer and closer to figuring him out being very similar to his experience being beaten by cp9 only to come back having integrated their techniques into his own skill set and creating gear second here though there is no break in the middle Luffy has to figure it out on the Fly and slowly begins to learn how to improve his own observation abilities until he is able to see into the future as well and this doesn't come from nowhere we saw Luffy being able to appear into the future all the way back at marineford as he goes in to attack mihawk and gets a premonition of his arm being cut off so he chooses to take a different course of action and what is more this being more of Oda showing us a glimpse of something that would come to reality 300 chapters later maybe Oda has observation hockey ultimately a mutual respect would be built throughout this battle between Luffy and katakuri as they both continue to push themselves beyond their limits but on katakuri's side he sees Luffy as someone who Endeavors katakuri himself was born with a super strange mouth and continues to hide it while trying to overcompensate by pressuring himself to be perfect at all times he always needs to be the most powerful he always needs to be the most capable and he can never make a mistake but Luffy while strong is not the strongest while capable he hasn't finished developing and he never shies away from making mistakes but learns from each one that he does make katakuri is always presented as better than Luffy in terms of ability but Luffy in many ways is better than katakuri in how he deals with himself and the world around him he isn't holding himself to any standard he's free but most first of all it doesn't matter what is in front of him he will endure until he can change any future that katakuri sees speaking of pushing himself we would see Luffy use yet another gear fourth form in Snake Man during this fight but ultimately the fight comes down to one final Clash leaving both of them completely exhausted Luffy barely manages to get up after this 10 hour long brawl and finds katakuri still standing in front of him he asks Luffy if he really believes that he can beat big mom and when Luffy says of course he will katakuri looks relieved and Falls onto his back for the first time almost seeming hopeful for a totland without his mother's tyrannical rule as well as saying that Luffy is seen very far into the future himself it is a great fight it drags out a little bit it's very long but I think without a doubt katakuri goes down as one of the most iconic opponents Luffy has ever had to face and I'm curious as to see if he will always be an opponent down the line based on the respect he had garnered with Luffy even using his extra hat to cover category's mouth and hide what he is a aimed of in the same way he had for the boa sister outside of mirror world back with everyone else there is chaos with the big mom Pirates but between jinbei and the germa and jinbei's old crew the sun Pirates the straw hats are managing to hold their own once Luffy arrives again Jean Bay finally agrees to join the crew but asks Luffy if he can stay behind a little bit to help the sun Pirates as they deal with big mom properly and Luffy agrees on the condition that jinbei must absolutely survive and make it back to them on wano from here he actually managed to escape and that's kind of the main of it for whole cake Island this Arc is nearly as long as dressrosa was and certainly some spots drag here and there but it also has a lot of things going for it that dressrosa did not despite whole cake having the whole big mom family Capone beiji and the sun Pirates we don't really need to know many of them and the plot is way simpler the pony glyph and the Brule subplots are resolved very quickly as well as the cracker fight and from there we just focus on one or two things at a time and if we do have to split our Focus most things are going on for quite a while for example when the world is in chaos during the Escape Luffy's subplot is just fighting katakuri and that goes on for about 20 chapters we never need to think about what is going on there because we know it's still happening whereas in dressrosa things would change at the drop of a hat and there were like 10 plots to follow structuring the ark with these long through lines while also simplifying the plots make this Arc a lot more digestible because of this even though dressrosa has a lot more exciting elements individually I think that whole cake island is actually a lot more enjoyable as a whole at least for me personally add into that that we get these short buffers with Zoe and revelry on each end and it feels much more balanced it's still slow but it's balanced and it also brings back that magical feeling as everything in totland is made of or covered in food totland basically asks the question what if Candyland crossed with the Wizard of Oz and it just feels Whimsical and fun even despite the heavier themes and tragedy around Sanji in this Arc moving on from here though we have something a bit different than we've seen before a short Arc involving very little of the straw hats at all and instead focusing on the government as the world comes together at revelry and just a quick check in with the crew before we head over to wano we get new bounties as Luffy's jumps up to 1.5 billion for embarrassing big mom in her own nation and defeating katakuri with some even calling him the fifth Emperor sanji's Bounty surpasses Zoros for the first time and Nami has added the homie Zeus to her climate act making her a hell of a lot stronger and also Chopper and Brook are there over at the holy land of marijua all the rulers under the world government are meeting at Pangea Castle this including Dalton and kareja from the newly named Sakura Kingdom princess Vivi and her father shirahoshi and Neptune and many more there's a bit of a kerfuffle when Charlos sees shirohoshi and wants to own her you know as he tends to do but another Celestial Dragon Don Quixote miasgaard who was saved by Queen otohime years ago steps in to save her because as a Celestial Dragon he can't get in trouble for attacking another Celestial Dragon thus saving Neptune from imprisonment as he was just about to murder Charles on the spot here we also get a better look at cp0 and find several members of cp9 have joined including of course Rob Lucci and while all the political stuff is good and Grand the more interesting things happen behind the scenes there is a symbolic empty throne in Pangea Castle meant to represent a world of equal nations with no true ruler but we soon find the gorosei showing up to bow to a person named imsama who is sitting on that Throne that is meant to be empty a secret ruler to rule the world Nobles not only this but we see eem looking through wanted posters and photos of Vivi shirahoshi Blackbeard and Luffy and also opening a hidden vault where a massive straw hat is being kept opening up plenty of question as we approach the climax to the story meanwhile several revolutionaries have infiltrated revelry including Sabo though at this point we don't know exactly what happened with them and that's more or less revelry in a nutshell introducing us to a huge new force behind the scenes and setting up a powder keg waiting to go off and do you know what the best part of this Arc is it is only six chapters and doesn't linger making my job much easier as we head into the longest Arc and Saga of the entire series welcome to wano sitting at a monstrous 150 chapters to put it lightly this Arc is full long and that is For Better or For Worse this more than anything we've seen before is more filled with characters excitement battles upgrades alliances history depth and growth however as is tradition The Wider the net that Oda casts the more controversial The Arc he produces people love so much about wano but it is definitely mismanaged in some places things drag on get it drag on dragon and it is filled with many plot threads that can make it feel very messy now add into that that Oda tried something new in modeling The Ark in the structure of a kabuki play and you have a Melting Pot of ideas that sometimes Blends very well and sometimes does not now I'm not going to cover every little thing that happens here obviously but I do feel it's important to talk about the most important man in wano kozuki Odin who it turns out is momonosuke's Dad Odin is basically Hercules as early as four he was picking up Boulders and throwing them at Bears he was drinking booze by eight and picking fights with the Yakuza by nine and some of his labors even directly mirror Hercules as he curves a river to solve a city's drought much like how Hercules did this to clean the algae and stables in Odin's case this kind of backfired flooding the capital Odin would even be imprisoned in a quarry and forced to work only to end up becoming a master stonemason and earning everyone's respect the time he was 18 his father disavowed him and Odin slowly began amassing a small but loyal following including people like rhizo conjuro kinemon and izo all while he dreamed of escaping this closed-off country he wandered off one day and found himself in the Lawless region of Curry defeating their leader ashra doji and here rather than killing him Odin makes a stand and decides to become king asking for the strength and wisdom of his followers and reforming the hellish Curry region into a wonderful place and regaining his father's favor even being given the title of daimyo of Curry one day Whitebeard and his crew would crash onto the shores and it was assumed that Odin would go to fight them off but instead he asked for them to allow him to sail with them Whitebeard immediately turned him down because Odin was clearly someone who couldn't be under others but when he set sail Odin attaches a chain to the Moby Dick and held on for dear life Whitebeard would finally cave and offer a deal if he could hold on for three days a Odin would be allowed on board but of course this is Odin so of course he managed soon they would cross paths with amatsuki Toki a woman with the ability to LEAP into the future she wished to go to wano and since eventually Odin needed to go home she hitched a ride with the white-beard Pirates together they would sail and Odin would experience new animals and places and people and ideas that had never existed on wano all while building a name for himself that Drew the attention of Roger Roger would show up and tell Whitebeard about the road poneoglyphs and the island Beyond lodestar Island at the end of the grand line saying that he would go there to find the final Island that the world government was trying to hide and asking to take Odin with him for one year Odin would join him and make it all the way to laughtil where Roger and his crew learned all that the world had to offer and laughed at what they found apparently because they had arrived too early meanwhile anwano a plot was being hatched for Orochi to take over the nation and by the time Odin returns he finds a hellscape conquered by Orochi and his new partner kaido normally Odin would just be able to kill him but rochi was protected by the previous user of the barrier devil fruit which made him effectively invulnerable and so Odin was forced to bargain Orochi promised that if he would dance in a loincloth on the street once a week and humiliate himself then he would not kill all the citizens and leave after five years with kaido and so Odin did this not telling anyone of their agreement those five years came and went and arochi broke his promise deciding instead to turn wano into a weapons manufacturing nation and so Odin and his retainers the nine red scabbards would finally set out to act and it would go okay he even managed to wound kaido but an old woman with the Clone clone fruit would turn into Odin's son and pretend to be held hostage to distract him giving kaido the chance he needed to win and leaving Odin and his men sentenced to be boiled to death however Odin struck a deal with kaido who felt bad for winning unfairly if any of his men were to survive from being boiled for an hour then they could go free so Odin would get in first grab a large plank of wood and hold his retainers above the pot for a full hour making them promise to open up the borders of wano in his stead as retainers jumped off the plank at the end of the time period he would challenge kaido once more only to be shot dead on the spot the samurai would revolt against kaido but this ultimately led to the burning down of kozuki Castle and Toki sending momonosuke and a few of the retainers 20 years into the future where they would eventually meet Luffy and be able to fight back and that brings us to the modern day and the beginning of wanu a Nation poisoned by pollution a starving population forced to eat smiled devil fruits and suffer their side effects and a Tyrant King Orochi actively trying to destroy the country and being emblazoned by his partnership with kaido and the Beast Pirates now a lot happens in the opening half of this Arc Zoro return shoe Suite to ryuma's grave and gets Odin's sword enma we see all of these starving people who are cursed to smile and laugh no matter how poor their conditions become and of course we take on kaido for the first time in what is my favorite chapter title in the series remember Luffy has been built up as the fifth Emperor being held on the level of the Old Guard and even defeating katakuri as he is stronger than he has ever been so we go into this thinking that yeah maybe he can do it but then we reach chapter 9 23 titled emperor of the sea kaido vs Luffy and we are hit with the wall of reality Luffy is not an emperor and no matter how strong he is right now he is certainly not strong enough to take on kaido in fact no matter how hard he tries he can't even leave a scratch meanwhile kaido takes him down with a single hit Luffy would be imprisoned to work in a quarry like Odin had been but rather and learning stone masonry Luffy treats this as a training Arc using the guards as fodder to train his observation hockey so that he could more accurately see into the future not only that but inspired by other forms of hockey he had seen he tries to learn a new form of armament which would allow him to make impact without contact possibly allowing him to injure people with thick armor even kaido luckily in this prison is an old Yakuza boss named hilgoro who knows a technique which is effectively wano's version of hockey and it's exactly what Luffy is trying to learn so hyogoro would become the new Rayleigh this supplemented with Queen showing up to put Luffy through the Sumo Inferno basically just throwing a bunch of dudes at him and hoping that they would eventually beat him down or wear him out and you have a very good place for him to practice while this is going on we have more troubles Zorro meets up with momonosuke's older sister the Beast Pirates now aware of the straw hats begin attacking Sanji uses a raid suit given to him by his family to become super powered like they are someone on our side is leaking information to Orochi and big mom arrives on wano hitting her head and losing her memory briefly after a shipwreck Chopper finds her and works her into their plans using her to attack the prison that Luffy has kept in only for her to take on Queen regain her memory and pass out before Queen brings her to kaido but with Queen gone Luffy and the other prisoners are free to escape not all is good news here though as kaido and big mom realize that there's no point in fighting right now and that they could just form an alliance to deal with their enemies and sort things out later and it wouldn't be long from here until it was time for our own Alliance to make its move the raid on onigashima and things immediately fall apart as only the samurai show up despite this though kinemon still decides to press forward with the attack with conjuro shortly after revealing that he had been the traitor and taking momonosuke hostage luckily kid law and Luffy show up shortly afterwards and explain saying that they were late because kinemon had made a mistake and told them to show up at the wrong place which oops I guess and that's not all though Jean Bay finally returns and becomes an official and present Straw Hat member The Raid enters full swing and of course Luffy winds up going on his own for a bit only to run into kaido's kid Yamato lots of stuff going on with Yamato's identity they idolize kozuki Odin as he opposed kaido and is a symbol of Hope and so they began to identify as Odin while all this is going on momonosuke is set up to be executed by kaido and Orochi and the scabbards show up to protect him only to be crushed as they launch into what is we'll say lovingly called roof piece a long long and did I mention long stretch of battles between kaido and big mom standing opposed to kid Killer Law Zorro and Luffy half of the supernovas versus half of the yonko but despite this incredible tension being built up Luffy walks right past the yonko towards his Fallen allies and finally he comes across kinemon who begs him to save wano very reminiscent of Nami back in our Long Park from here there are plenty of big matches but the most important ones are jinbei versus who's who Sanji vs Queen Zorro vs king law and Kid vs big mom and Luffy vs kaido also just a heads up spoilers from this point on jinbei's fight is not important because of of the battle itself however this is the fight where we find out that Shanks stole the gum gum fruit from a marine ship that who's who was on and more importantly that maybe there is more to this fruit than meets the eye in sanji's fight he is kind of getting bodied and refuses to use the raid suit because it makes him too much like his family while Queen is specifically using germa technology to attack him however the raid suit had already affected Sanji and empowered him to be like his brothers making him so fast that Queen can't see him so durable that he breaks Queen's sword against his neck without taking damage and making him able to instantly heal after having every bone in his body broken all of that on top of giving him enough power to beat Queen in One Barrage of attacks for zoro's part he fights King the last of the lunarians which is a race of people who were more or less Invincible depending on the state of the fires on their back Zorro manages to fully Master enma during this fight feeding it all of his Armament hockey and then entering the king of Hell's dance along with with learning that he has conquerors hockey which ultimately allows him to defeat King kid and law fight big mom which is basically just a bunch of Unga Bunga until they reveal it their devil fruits have awakened and in a combo attack they take her out and finally Luffy vs kaido Luffy is finally in a point where he's able to damage kaido because of his new training but it is a slow process and being real he still is much weaker things eventually play out until Luffy is completely exhausted and one final attack comes out just as a member of cp0 arrives to distract him allowing kaido to knock him out and the fight is over until it isn't zunesha the giant elephant that zoresan arrives and speaks to momonosuke saying that this is the first time in 800 years but joyboy has returned as we see Steam come from Luffy as his hair begins to turn white the Goro say are the ones who really fill us in on what's Happening Here as for centuries they have been looking for a specific devil fruit but it had always slipped through their hands seemingly having a will of its own they had even gone so far as to give it a different name to avoid suspicion and this is the mythical Zone devil fruit the human human fruit model Nika a devil fruit which was the embodiment of the sun god Nika a warrior who had fought for Liberation and freed countless slaves the devil fruit itself Works through imagination giving the user a rubbery body that allows them to do whatever they want and to move freely supposedly being why Luffy is able to do things that rubber should just not be able to do like gear fourth for example or generating electricity like in Thor elephant gun and as Luffy lays there next to dead the fruit awakens within him turning him into The Reincarnation of Joy boy this new form called gear fifth basically gives him cartoon Powers he can bend the ground spin people so fast that their eyes pop out of their head or even grow himself to be so giant that he can grab lightning bolts from the sky and though it would still take a moment this is ultimately the power which would allow him to defeat kaido of note here is Luffy's idea of what he is Has Changed by this point in the story as when he thinks of all these starving people of wano he says that he wants to create a world where all of his friends can eat as much as they want a very far cry from not wanting to be a hero because he would have to share meat and yeah I skipped over some stuff here momonosuke becomes an adult to better help in the fight Orochi gets killed yada yada but the big thing is that kaido and big mom have been defeated momonosuke isn't stated as the new Shogun of wano and now we have access to one final set of Secrets we learned that Odin's father the old Shogun is still alive and he brings Robin deep under the country where he shows an older wano submerged under the water but not just that he also tells her that the ancient weapon pluton is also here the reveals do not stop though as Luffy is declared an official Emperor and because he has teamed up with both mihawk and crocodile and been putting out bounties on Marines buggy is instated as the fourth yonko which I think is a Fitting Place to end things for now what I wanted to get across with this retrospective is the ways in which Oda has changed over the years focusing on the way which his arcs are getting wider longer and more intricate with each passing Saga but what's more important is the way that things don't change at the beginning of this video I talked a bit about Homer's Iliad and odyssey long Journeys that use allegories to teach lessons to the people of the ancient world about things that they should value Adventure family honor Duty pride and wisdom to name a few and these are the core values that even into the modern day hold a lot of weight which is why these stories are so important and respected even to today they show us that as Humanity grows there are still roots that reach back hundreds and thousands of years they show us where we came from what was important at the time and what it means to be human in the modern era we still value things like honor and wisdom those are kind of commonplace virtues but they aren't what we really need to be discussing anymore the world has gotten more complicated and more interconnected and one piece being a work that spans over two decades and about 30 arcs with dozens of characters and Stories being spread throughout each acts as a time capsule that explores what is important not just to the general Human Experience but to the here and now when we look at the straw hats they each offer a note of interpersonal relationships in the world we live in jinbei is someone who has faced discrimination who will inadvertently hurt others in overcoming that for himself and now he's trying to build a path forward for his people Brooke undergoes severe isolation and loss which I think it's safe to say now more than ever is a present part of our world Frankie explores our relationship with technology how it can easily be used to help or hurt those around us and how it's becoming more and more a part of who we are Robin has the importance of knowing our history of where we came from and how it shapes where we are while also struggling with issues of self-worth and abandonment Chopper shows us this idea of what it really means to be able to support others and sometimes that means taking care of them but in other cases it means helping them heal emotionally Nami brings in economical issues that sometimes life or death difference between having money while also discussing the idea that groups are not monoliths and just because one person or fish man had hurt you that doesn't mean all of them are bad and the important thing is recognizing that everyone is an individual Sanji teaches us the value of a found family and that the people that you're born with aren't always going to be the ones that you stay with for the rest of your life at the same time his character addresses plenty of things in regard to how women are treated and seen Zorro brings us back to those classic ideas of Honor pride and respect and Luffy stands to challenge oppression and uplift everyone around him so that they can succeed and outside of the characters you have each Arc focusing on more direct issues in the world corruption in police government and religion racism and discrimination slavery Health Care propaganda Justice and so much more only to spin those around and get different perspectives on each topic when I say that one piece is the modern Odyssey I am not saying that it is perfect or that it's The Greatest Story Ever Told what I'm saying is that it addresses countless important themes to our current culture with an evolving perspective that is shaped throughout its writing and just like the Odyssey has stayed the test of time despite it being a story about return learning from War as it shows off things like cyclopses and a bag that holds the wind in the same way I also think that one piece this story of a rubbery boy setting off to become pirate king despite all of its goofiness will also carry with it a lot of weight and meaning as to what it meant to be alive in our ERA this is a very special story that I don't think comes along too many times within a lifetime and I'm glad I've been able to share it with so many people in my life as well as all of you thank you all so much for watching and until next time remember to stay excellent

Channel: AxelBeats!

Views: 1,120,215

Keywords: One Piece, One Piece Odyssey, One Piece Odyssey Walkthrough, One Piece Walkthrough, One Piece Manga, One Piece Manga Review, One Piece Anime, One Piece Anime Review, All One Piece Arcs, One Piece Retrospective, One Piece Video Essay, Anime Review, Manga Review, One Piece Chapter Review, One Piece Theory, One Piece Discussion, One Piece Dub, One Piece Sub, One Piece Romance Dawn, One Piece Water 7, One Piece Enies Lobby, One Piece Marineford, One Piece Luffy, Luffy, Gear 5

Id: prOeb5wnNEk

Length: 358min 16sec (21496 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023