As normal, this isn't so much a review as it is just me going over One Piece arc by arc for the first time having never seen the show before. If you have not seen the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece, avoid this review as I'll likely go into spoilers. On with the rest of the post!
If this arc ended when the crew first met Brook and he answered yes to joining the Straw Hats, I would not have minded. From the moment he was introduced, Brook has been hilarious. That said, going with a full story arc was probably for the best. I was legit surprised when they tied his back story back in with Laboon back from when the crew first entered The Grand Line. I don't know how far ahead Oda planned for Brook, but it does all come together very nicely. Brook was probably the character that I grew to like faster than any other. Even though I had to look up why the forty-five-degree angle joke was funny, I still laughed when I learned why. This guy's pun game is on point.
That said, despite my love for Brook, I can't say Thriller Bark is one of the best arcs I've seen, there have been a fair number of problems I've had with it. The biggest one is it feels like it can drag things out a lot longer than it needs to, as well as some nowhere plot twists that pull me out of it. Both of these issues I have with the fight against the strongest zombie Moria created, Oars. The entire Straw Hat Crew just can't do anything about Oars, everything they try gets shut down. And this fight goes on for a good long while, and its resolution comes in big part because people that just suddenly showed up found out, off screen mind you, that released shadows could be captured and put into someone else to boost their strength. Luffy is stuffed with one hundred shadows and suddenly goes on to absolutely wreck Oars. Eventually, the shadows leave Luffy and the fight goes on as normal, but it starts to feel like they just dragged this fight out way longer than was necessary. You could have done the same thing without Shadow Luffy at all, and I think the fight would have been better for it.
Sanji also seems to be the Strawhat that is made to look worse again, and I don't understand why. The way he just up and loses Nami after finding her just makes him look a bit daft, and again there wasn't a need for it. Could have just had him win this fight, and let Nami go on to do her thing. It's not like Absolom did anything important after this. It's just another thing that seems to be padding out the length of the arc in addition to making Sanji look silly.
The negative is out of the way, there are still many fantastic fights in this arc. My personal favorite was Ussop versus Perona. At first, I wasn't looking forward to the fight, because as soon as they realized what the ghosts did, I realized Ussop was going to be the one to take on whoever was controlling them. That said, the show committed to the joke by having Perona try to cheer up Ussop because of how utterly pathetic he seemed to be to resist the power of her ghosts. The whole fight got even better when Ussop starts arguing with himself in his mind, but the two people arguing are himself and Sogeking, which seems to imply Ussop's character development has been him losing his mind and developing a split personality that is almost identical to his personality. I loved this.
I know I said more negatively about this arc, but everything it does right is basically what One Piece has always done right. I loved the characters, a lot of great fights, and more that prevents the above-mentioned issues from ruining an otherwise great arc.
When I do my next One Piece write-up, I'll not do an arc-by-arc thing like I have been doing, but I will be talking about all arcs involved in the Summit War Saga.
