Yohohoho, I am one day late with this post due to *gestures at my life being a mess*. I would cry about this but I am just bones and don’t have eyes. Yohohoho. Enjoy this recap of volume 46, posts will become somewhat more regular in December as we ramp up towards the end of the year. Thanks for your patience people ❤
Now that we’ve made it through one of the best arcs of One Piece, let’s take it slow and move into one of the weaker arcs of the story. I’ve said that, but this arc is still very good, especially towards the end. It’s just that some of the pacing is pretty weak, but I wonder how I’ll like this arc in hindsight. There’s been quite a lot of story after this that has its roots in this arc, so perhaps looking at it with all that in mind changes my perspective on it. I hope you enjoyed our little break last week, which gave me time to catch up on other writing, and let’s dive into Thriller Bark. Yohohoho!
But before we head to Thriller Bark, we first need to finish up business between Ace and Blackbeard on Banaro Island. The two former crewmates face off in a battle between fire and darkness. Blackbeard’s darkness powers allow him to damage and grab onto other logia users, nullifying their powers upon contact, which is an incredible ability to have. The downside to this is that his darkness attracts everything like a gravity well which means he doesn’t have the normal logia benefit of being able to nullify attacks that aren’t coated by haki. He destroys a town with ease and after Ace rejects his offer to join the Blackbeard crew for a final time, the battle comes to a conclusion in a clash between their powers.
We then head into Thriller Bark. First we meet Brook, a gentleman skeleton who is immediately invited to join the crew. It turns out Brook was once alive and through a devil fruit he ate while he was alive was granted a second chance at life after he died alongside his crew. Unfortunately his soul couldn’t find his body in the thick fog and by the time he finally found his way back, he was nothing but bones. He’s also a musician, so he’s prime material for the crew who is still lacking a musician. They get spooked by a ghost during dinner and find themselves inside the premises of Thriller Bark. Brook is glad to have been able to talk to people, but now he must find the person who stole his shadow, who is on Thriller Bark. He advises the Straw Hats to leave while they still can and of course they listen to him, right?
Nami, Usopp and Chopper are the first trio to make it to land. This more by accident than by plan. They set out in the mini Merry, a cool addition that Franky made for the ship in honor of their old friend. It’s a nice gesture and a convenient way to send a few people to shore. That’s exactly what ends up happening here. They run from a strange cerberus and encounter a bunch of zombies in the forest before being picked up by Hildon, who brings them to Hogback’s mansion. Hogback is a famous doctor who disappeared years ago. Chopper is apparently a big fan of his. Hogback also has an eccentric assistant called Cindry who hates plates. They get invited into the mansion but quickly figure out things aren’t as nice as they seem when Nami gets sexually assaulted by an invisible man. They try to get out of there and find out that Cindry is actually the corpse of a famous actress who died a decade ago. Things keep getting scarier and they find themselves in Hogback’s operating room with an enemy right behind them.
Meanwhile Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hats have also made landfall in search of Brook’s shadow and their lost friends. They come across a bunch of zombies and we get one of my favorite gags in the entire manga where Luffy encounters a zombie crawling out from a grave and he simply pushes the zombie back into the ground. The first time I watched that scene back in the day it caught me so off guard I couldn’t stop laughing. After encountering both zombies and wounded old people, they make their way to the mansion as well.
We learn that in Thriller Bark, the sailing island in the Florian Triangle, are four dangerous people. The first one is Hogback, the zombie creating doctor. The second one is Absalom, the leader of the zombies who can turn invisible. The third one is Perona, the ghost princess who employs negative ghosts to demoralize her enemies. Finally there’s Gecko Moria, one of the seven warlords (just like Crocodile and Mihawk) and the leader of the entire group. Things are looking scary for the crew, in more ways than one.
Last but not least we have all the extra touches from this volume. A big part of the question corner has been replaced with sketches of the interior of the Thousand Sunny. There’s all sorts of rooms and it’s incredibly detailed. The second extra we get from this volume is a continuation of Enel’s story on the moon. It seems like there’s native people on the moon, the ones that Enel encounters first, but also space pirates that seem to want to colonize the moon. Keep in mind that all of this is canon to the main story and thus might become important one day. I’m curious to see where it goes from here. That sums up this volume though, I hope you enjoyed reading along, and this brings us to the end of the second box set. Time for the third one, we’re far from done. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 