We’re nearing the end of the year and with that we’re also nearing the end of Thriller Bark. I was originally hoping to finish this story arc in 2023, but it seems like the final fight will be left to next year. I know that the next volume also includes some material outside of the ghost island, so look forward to that. For now, let’s have a look at some of the more interesting parts of this arc.
First and foremost, let’s talk about Enel. Remember the guy? Ruined Skypiea, claimed to be a god, only really lost because Luffy is his natural counter due to being rubber. Anyway, after the events of the Skypiea arc, Enel made his way to the moon and actually managed to reach it. There he ended up in the middle of a fight between robots (automata) and dangerous space pirates. Using his lightning powers, he manages to power up the automata and their city and they now treat him as their god. That is where we leave the lighting man. Fans of One Piece have speculated for over a decade that Enel will return to the story at some point and considering the fact that many cover stories end up being important to the world of One Piece, this is not unlikely. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.
Going back to the problem at hand, the crew still needs to deal with Oars and Moria. We get a great compilation of the entire crew minus Nami and Luffy fighting Oars. After a while, even Nami – who is fresh off of defeating a weakened Absalom – and Brook join the fight and they do serious damage to Oars. Unfortunately for them, Moria built a piloting room in Oars stomach and with the intellect of the warlord the giant zombie is much more of a threat. Most of the crew gets wiped out and things are looking fair dire.
Separate from this and before joining up with the rest of the crew, Nami went looking for Moria’s treasure. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the first person who had this idea and Perona (the ghost princess) has already taken the contents of the vault to a nearby ship, ready to abandon the crew. There she comes face to face with another member of the seven warlords, Bartholomew Kuma. After a short talk he asks her where she would like to go on vacation and after listening to her answer he taps her and she vanishes from sight. Nami is rightfully shocked by this, but after asking her a few questions, Kuma leaves her alone. A lot of Kuma’s actions throughout this arc are a bit odd and these set the tone for things to come.
Back at the big fight, Luffy comes in to save the day. It turns out that the people hiding out in the forest, who have lost their shadows to Moria, had a trick up their sleeve. Lola as well as her crew have captured about a hundred shadows and are now feeding them to Luffy in an attempt to power him up. This works wonders and with the help of Luffy, the straw hats finally manage to defeat Oars. Moria is now all that’s left and with the shadowy warlord absorbing every single shadow on the island into his own body as dawn creeps on the horizon, things are still looking scary for the straw hat crew. But to see the conclusion, we’ll have to wait until the next volume.
Thanks for reading, I hope you’re enjoying this series, even though I’ve been a little bit inconsistent lately. I won’t make any false promises but I do plan to be more consistent in the near future.
Opal Kaharis 