Thoughts on one piece (ch270 - ch494)

Heya! It’s been a while since i last did one of these posts. Life got in the way, i suppose. So, since last time I’ve just about doubled the number of chapters read. I also sadly didn’t take any notes, so some details are probably going to be a bit more fuzzy. Nonetheless, time to talk about the end of Skypiea, Water 7 and thriller bark!

So, first up, I had a lot of fun with Skypiea. Especially because in the last post I correctly called that Luffy would be immune to Enel’s lightning powers. Aren’t I smart?

Anyways, Skypiea was quite pretty. Looking back at it now, I don’t think it really had quite the emotional impact the other arcs had, but it was a very fun adventure. It’s one of my favorite arcs still, simply because it did really feel like a seafaring adventure much more than something like the Arabasta or drum island arcs did. Enel is also just a really cool villain, and his lightning powers are awesome. I was kind of suprised just how much of a step-up he was compared to previous villains, in terms of his destructive capablities.

I didn’t really like Water 7 at first. At lot of the initial setup just fell a bit flat for me. All of the stakes in the first half of the arc were things that Oda was just obviously never going to follow through on. Usopp was never going to leave the crew, the Pirates were always going to be able to find another ship, the residents of Water 7 were obviously going to realize at the last possible moment that the strawhats had been framed. Especially with Usopps whole arc, while I do appreciate giving him some spotlight, his whole leaving the crew just felt kind of pointless. He only actually left for maybe a couple chapters, before returning a sniper king (which, to be fair, was quite funny). In order to write these posts, i often look at the plot summarties of the arcs on the one piece wiki, in case i forgot any character names, and to jog my memory on some moments that might otherwise not have been at the top of my mind when making this post.

In the Water 7 plot summary, after Usopp leaves the crew, he is mentioned once, by the franky family after they kidnap him, a couple additional times when talking about the scene between Usopp and Franky in his hideout, when we first learn about the Klabautermann, and then finally one last time when he is captured by CP9.

So, in total, Usopp only really has one scene where he isn’t part of the strawhat crew, that being the scene immediately after the fight with luffy, where he leaves them and gets kidnapped by franky. The next time we see him, he’s already unofficially rejoined the team as sniper king. It feels kind of like a waste. It serves other purposes in the story of this arc, and does result in Usopp getting some character development, and some much needed power-ups, but I feel like Oda could have done a lot more here. Give me just a couple more solo usopp chapters before the whole franky kidnapping thing.

Anyways, moving past that, both Frankies and Robins backstories were incredible. I especially loved how they kind of overlapped, with Franky being so invested in getting Robin back because of his conviction that the mere existence of other people shouldn’t be illegal, due to his backstory with Tom’s Workers. Most backstories in One Piece are really good, but I feel having the story of these two otherwise unrelated characters intertwine like that, was really cool. The fight scenes in this arc are probably some of the best in the whole manga so far. Especially the panels in the Enies Lobby fight just have this incredible sense of momentum that I really love. Ocean trains are also just such an incredibly stupid concept, and i mean that in the best possible way. Also fight scenes on trains are awesome.

I also love the additional worldbuilding the world government gets in this arc. I love villains that have goals and motivations beyond just being pure evil, and i think Oda pulls that off really well here. They are obviously, clearly in the wrong, but you can see how they got there. Especially later on seeing the escalation of things the people working for the marines are willing to do in the name of “Justice” makes them seem less like just bad guys that are evil for the sake of being evil or like, destroying the world or whatever. It grounds them, it makes the organization feel very real, in a kind of horrible way.

Moving on, I don’t really have tons of stuff to say about Thriller Bark. The idea of a ship that’s also a haunted island is very cool, the drastically different setting to all previous arcs is a fun shake-up, and all the recurring jokes are very funny. Usually a lot of one piece’s jokes don’t really land for me, but Thriller Bark is just consistently really, really good. Especially with all the arcs proceeding it being a lot more serious, that was a very welcome shakeup. They also introduced Brook, who’s by far my favorite character in the manga now. Oda finally managed to give one of the strawhats a recurring bit that isn’t horiffically unfunny, I thought I’d never live to see the day honestly.

Overall, it’s been very fun. Thriller Bark so far is probably my favorite arc in the manga, simply because there hasn’t really been anything like it up to this point. I really like Water 7, but I also feel like Arlong Park kind of does a lot of very similiar stuff with Nami’s backstory, there, and I honestly kind of want to say that it pulls it off better than Water 7 does. Still, very solid arc, even if I didn’t quite like the beginning. Still, I do really think that Oda really needs to start giving things stakes low enough that they could realistically happen, and to ocassionally actually follow through on them and have bad things happen. Especially him bringing back Franky’s crew like, two chapters(?) after they """"died"""" just felt really pointless, and kind of solidified the idea to me that this manga will just never have anyone even somewhat adjacent to the main cast actually fail at literally anything, outside of backstories. It doesn’t kill the story for me or anything, but it is a bit of a dampener on an otherwise very good story.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got to say about one piece so far. I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts :3