Thoughts on one piece (ch495 - ch651)

Aaaand, I’m back again! This time a lot sooner, because I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do some reading!

First up, I don’t really have that much to say about either the Sabaody Archipelago or Amazon Lily Arc. I didn’t dislike any of them, and they introduce some fun new concepts, but… eh. They were necessary to set up some stuff for later arcs, but on their own i feel like they weren’t that interesting on their own. The whole fight scene at the auction house was fun, but that’s like the only standout moment for me there, i think.

So, anyways: Oda finally killed of an important character! Ace is dead now, apparently. At first I didn’t actually believe he was, considering Odas track record of… well, not doing that. But apparently Ace is dead now, and Luffy finally failed at something. Honestly, I feel like this sort of thing should have happened much earlier. The impact of the whole scene was very much undermined by me thinking that Oda was just doing another death fakeout. I only actually realized that he was dead for good when I talked about the chapter with psyche, and he told me.

Also, did I mention whitebeard is really cool? He’s really cool. Whitebeard is very cool. And his interactions with ace were quite touching. Also he’s very cool, i think i forgot to mention that part.

The whole battle at impel down and marineford was very fun, and having Crocodile help out luffy this time was just awesome. In general, having the whole baroque works crew get some more screentime was very much not something that I expected, but it left me liking their characters a whole lot more than I did previously. Mr. 3 is great. We also have blackbeard absorb whitebeards powers at the end of this whole thing, which probably would’ve been a lot more of a big reveal for me had it not been spoiled for me like, ages ago. Oh well, that one’s on me.

Still, I’m not too big a fan of Blackbeard as like, the big bad villain. He’s just kind of lame honestly, both design and personality-wise. At least right now, he does just sort of look like a one dimensional asshole, and not in a fun way. I’m just very ambivalent towards him as a character, I don’t really care.

Next up we have the timeskip, with everyone getting a big powerup, and luffy learning how to properly use Haki. I quite like everyones post-timeskip designs, honestly. I felt like they couldve done more with brook though? He just looks like pre-timeskip brook, for the most part. Still, I appreciate having everyone get a power-up, especially since they made usopp actually like, kind of useful. The whole botany thing seems a bit out of left-field though? It’d have been fun to try and give him some deception-based powers or something. Oh well, its still pretty fun. Luffy’s whole backstory was pretty fun. Nothing like, groundbreaking as far as backstories go, but showing the world government being evil pieces of shit again was kind of nice. Them burning down trash mountain just to look marginally better in front of the world government feels very realistic, sadly.

In the fishman island arc, the whole thing with Sanji’s Nosebleeds got kind of very annoying, very fast, and having them be fairly central to the plot early one is just kind of a baffling decision. Oda wrote a lot of really good jokes in Thriller Bark not that long ago, so its a tad dissappointing that we’re now once again stooping to the level of “oh look, sanji is a pervert, isnt that funny?”. In general though, I quite like this arc. It’s a very good continuation of all the stuff set up in Arlong Park, and I appreciate the additional worldbuilding the fishmen receive here. I’m looking forward to seeing the big mom fight later on, I wonder what her whole thing is. Turning people into candy maybe?

Anyways, that’s really all I have to say for now. Moving forward, I’ll probably try and start taking notes again as I read the manga, we’ll see how that goes. But yeah, pretty solid story-arcs, some very fun standout moments (mostly all the marine stuff pre-timeskip), but nothing I really feel like I can discuss at length, like I did with Skypiea or Water 7. Still, fun arc! I’m looking forward to the new world now.