We continue our adventure on Thriller Bark this week and things get a bit more interesting. After the crew lost their shadows and was mostly defeated we get to see some pushback in this volume. A few things happen in this volume and just like with the last volume, I want to go through them rather quickly. Again, Thriller Bark isn’t my favorite arc and a lot of what happens during this arc is ultimately not very important for the overarching plot. Some of what happens definitely is important, but we’re not quite there yet.
Sanji fights with Absalom and we learn that as a child he was able to read a book about devil fruits. So he was probably from a somewhat affluent family back in North Blue. He wanted to get the invisibility fruit but someone else got it and unfortunately there’s only one of each. This does establish the notion that besides invisibility, Sanji doesn’t have a lot of interest in ever getting a devil fruit power. He’s perfectly happy with just kicking the crap out of his opponents. Speaking of this, that’s exactly what he does with Absalom. Unfortunately he doesn’t quite finish the job and while they’re regrouping it seems like Nami gets taken from him again.
Zoro meanwhile fights with Ryuma, the samurai from the land of Wano. The two are pretty equally matched but Zoro gets the upper hand. It’s kind of mean to Brook, but Zoro pointing out that Ryuma was being held back by Brook’s shadow shows us that Ryuma in his prime was a force to be reckoned with. This is where Zoro gets his next cool sword, Shusui. He was in need of a new sword after his last one was rusted away during the Enies Lobby fights. With this, Brook finally gets his shadow back, which is a big moment for the skeleton.
Usopp is the one that ends up dealing with Perona. Her ghosts allow her to make people extremely negative which makes for one of the memorable gags in this manga where Usopp is already so negative that the power has no real effect on him. Poor Perona, she’s fighting the one pirate that is immune to her power. Lucky for her, she has more tricks on her sleeve and she does a decent job fighting against Usopp until he figures out that she’s only a ghost and her real body is hidden elsewhere. He frees the bear’s shadow and then scares Perona with fake cockroaches and a hammer until she passes out. That’s three out of four important fighters down, which leaves only one.
The last one is of course Dr. Hogback, the man that Chopper respected until he met him. This is why you should never meet your heroes, they are always inevitably disappointing. Chopper lectures Hogback on the values of life but Hogback doesn’t seem all that interested. The two fight for a bit, with Robin fighting his assistant Cindry and they seem to be about to win the fight when Oars comes falling through the ceiling, allowing for Hogback to get out of there alive. Now the crew has to deal with this new problem, a giant zombie with Luffy’s fighting power, that’s going to be an issue. And that assessment is not wrong, when most of them get beaten into a pulp almost immediately by the giant zombie while Luffy is off chasing after Moria unsuccessfully. Things aren’t looking great for the crew at the end of this volume. Luckily there are still two volumes left in this arc so there is still time to turn things around.
That was my recap for volume 48. I’ll do my best to upload these posts more frequently and to not forget them every week. I’ve been too busy lately so I appreciate all of you who still check in to read these. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 