Tag: 2008

Toradora!

Toradora!

Toradora! anime series cover art
Toradora!

Series Overview

Toradora! (とらドラ!) is one of the most iconic romantic comedy anime out there. Even if you haven’t seen the series yourself, chances are that you’re still aware of it. Its 25 episodes aired from 2008 to 2009, so it’s been around for a while now.

To start off this review, let’s take a look at the title: Toradora! The title comes from the names of the two protagonists, Taiga and Ryuuji. The characters’ names and the way they’re written in the title are flipped (Japanese/English).

Tora (虎) is the Japanese word for tiger, while Taiga is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word. And Ryuu (竜) is the Japanese word for dragon, while Dora is the Japanese pronunciation of the start of the English word.

Moving on to the plot, Taiga and Ryuuji find themselves working together in an attempt to set each other up with their respective crushes. Taiga loves Ryuuji’s friend Kitamura, and Ryuuji loves Taiga’s friend Minori. But, as you can probably figure out, they end up falling for each other instead.

Overall, Toradora! is a very generic rom-com in that it doesn’t shift away from the mold at all. Everything that you expect a rom-com to have, Toradora! has. But, that’s not a bad thing because it does most of those things better than a lot of more modern anime in the genre.

For example, I think the supporting cast of this series (the characters outside of the main five) is a lot better than in newer anime like Horimiya. Part of that is because Toradora! is two cours instead of one, and part of it is because the supporting characters aren’t forced to have a dedicated episode or arc.

They simply exist in the world as characters who aren’t the focus, but who still have their own unique personalities.

Main Characters

Ryuuji Takasu is the male protagonist of the series. He lives with his mother, Yasuko, and their pet bird, Inko. Ryuuji does all of the cooking and cleaning, which also happens to be 99% of his personality. I don’t think he’s all that interesting.

Next door to Ryuuji lives Taiga Aisaka, also known as the Palm-Top Tiger due to both her size and name. Taiga lives alone in an apartment, being estranged from both of her parents who are divorced. Her personality revolves around her explosive temper.

While I said that Ryuuj isn’t very interesting, he’s still probably the best male character in the series. The only other real contender would be his best friend Yuusaku Kitamura. However, Kitamura is pretty boring as well, simply being a quirky student council vice president.

Ami Kawashima from the anime series Toradora!
Ami Kawashima

Minori Kushieda is my least favorite of the main characters. She’s the obligatory sporty girl who’s also a simpleton. This has never been one of my favorite character tropes. And on top of that, she goes through a whole depression phase that I didn’t find particularly well done.

Now, I’ve saved the best for last, because Ami Kawashima is definitely the best girl of the series. She’s a teen model who fakes her personality. That doesn’t make her sound good, but over the course of the series, I’d say that she’s the one who develops the most.

Of course, there are also good supporting characters as well. My particular favorites are Yasuko (Ryuuji’s mom), Yuri “Yuri-chan-sensei” Koigakubo (the teacher), and Sumire Kanou (the student council president.

In fact, one of my favorite scenes involved Yuri being called a “single thirty-something” by one of her students in response to them being told that the class trip was being changed.

Episodes 24 & 25

Generally speaking, I think Toradora! is a good anime. But I also kind of wish we could all collectively forget that the final two episodes of the series happened. Episodes 24 and 25 represent a very sharp break from the previous 23 episodes.

Obviously, I’m going to spoil the end of the series now. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, skip down to the conclusion.

The choice Ryuuji and Taiga make at the end of the series comes out of nowhere. Was the series leading up to them dating? Yes. Was the series leading up to them running away and getting married while still in high school because they don’t want to fill out a piece of paper about their futures? No.

Ryuuji doesn’t want to go to college because his family is poor and he doesn’t want his mom overworking herself to pay for it. He would go if he could also help pay for it, but she wants him to focus on studying, not working. And so, he runs away.

Taiga Aisaka from the anime series Toradora!
Taiga Aisaka

Meanwhile, Taiga runs away just because filling out a piece of paper is too much work. I don’t think Ryuuji really has a reason to run away. But Taiga literally has no reason for doing so. She just doesn’t want to fill out the paper that says if she plans to go to college or not.

And on top of all that, why do they need to get married when they run away? I’m pretty sure that doesn’t solve anything. Like, I get it if they want to get married because they love each other. But it really seemed like they thought getting married would save them from something.

Oh, and then they don’t end up getting married, Taiga moves away, and everything goes back to normal. What was the point of those two episodes?

Conclusion

I’m going to give Toradora! a 7/10 despite the fact that I don’t think the ending was good. And even if we pretend that the ending never happened, it would still be a 7/10 — just a higher 7/10. It’s not as if the ending ruined the series.

As for the OPs and EDs, they’re all good. But if you want to know my favorites, they’re OP 1 and ED 1. The second OP has some better animation, but I like the song and visual style of OP 1 more. And I like the song of ED 1 way more than ED 2. It reminds me of the Tamako Market ED.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and Key Mochi~ for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika and Senpai tiers respectively, and the former for recommending I watch Toradora! To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 anime series cover art
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2

Season Overview

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch R2 / コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュ 続編) is the second season of Code Geass. I reviewed the first season way back in 2018, and I’ve only just recently gotten around to watching the second. So naturally, there were a lot of things I forgot.

However, one thing I did remember from the first season was how it ended. It ended with a standoff between Lelouch and Suzaku, with a gunshot ringing out after the screen cut to black. This was a great ending for that season because of the suspense it left the viewer with.

Unfortunately, R2 does away with that suspense by effectively retconning the end of the first season. It wasn’t literally retconned, but it was revealed that neither of them was shot, Lelouch’s memories were sealed, and the series continues on as if that scene didn’t happen. The scene is still canon, it just no longer matters.

I’m also pretty sure that there’s a year gap between the first season and R2. Nothing much happened during this gap though because, without Zero (Lelouch) to lead them, the Black Knights’ rebellion came to a standstill. It’s not until Lelouch regains his memories (this was obviously going to happen so it’s not a spoiler) that things pick back up.

Once the rebellion starts rolling again, it’s back to business as usual. Lelouch is using people as pawns and playing 5-D chess with them to achieve his goals. This can be entertaining at some points, but I definitely wasn’t as much of a fan of it this time around compared to three years ago.

I guess that’s to be expected though, considering I feel the same way about Death Note. I liked that series more years ago than I do now.

Things I Don’t Understand

From here on out there are going to be major spoilers for the series. If you don’t want everything to be spoiled, including the final episode, I suggest you stop reading at this point.

Now, many of the things I didn’t quite understand are probably my own fault for waiting 2.5 years to watch the second season. I’m sure there were a lot of things that would have made sense if I had just watched the seasons back to back. And one of those things is how people get Geass in the first place.

I understand that Lelouch received his Geass from C.C. and the emperor received his from V.V. That much is clear. But was it ever explained how the other people got their Geass? What about Rolo and Jeremiah? And I think there was some other random Geass user in the first season.

C.C. eating pizza from the anime series Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2
C.C. eating pizza

The next thing I don’t understand definitely isn’t my fault. Why does everyone trust Lelouch so much? There were multiple times when Lelouch outright betrayed people and then they forgave him and trusted him again just because he said he wouldn’t do it again (he did).

Lelouch betraying people and not even trying to hide the fact that he was betraying them became such a major recurring event that I could no longer suspend my disbelief when people trusted him.

There was also the whole thing about Suzaku nuking a city that infuriated me to no end. Nina built the weapon and repeatedly told Suzaku to use it. Then once he used it, suddenly she was shocked by the damage it caused. You can’t be shocked that your weapon of mass destruction caused mass destruction. Oh, and then Nunnally somehow wasn’t vaporized even though she totally should have been.

End of Lelouch

Honestly, I wasn’t much of a fan of R2. I liked the first season back when I watched it. But R2 just seemed to have so many contradictions and unnatural developments that I couldn’t get properly invested in the story or most of the characters. That is, until the end.

The end of Code Geass is often considered one of the best endings to any anime. And now that I’ve experienced it, even though I already knew what was going to happen since this is an anime from 2008, I can see why. The fact that I knew what was coming didn’t matter — it was still a great ending.

At the end of the series, Lelouch becomes the ruler of the world, only to be killed during his victory parade by Suzaku dressed as Zero. This was all planned beforehand by Lelouch and Suzaku — probably around three-quarters of the way into the season.

Zero killing Lelouch from the anime series Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2
Zero killing Lelouch

Why does this ending work so well? Because it resolves a lot, but not all, of the loose ends of the series. I mean, I don’t remember what happened to C.C. in the end, for example. But I also don’t really care about her anyway.

This ending allows Suzaku to get his revenge on Lelouch, it allows Lelouch to create a peaceful world for Nunnally, it removes the perceived antagonist of the world from existence, and it restores Zero as the champion of the people. And it does all of this without feeling like a Deus ex machina because we already knew that there was some agreement between Lelouch and Suzaku.

Honestly, I think R2 is worth watching specifically for the ending. Sure, the rest wasn’t that good, in my opinion. But the ending makes up for it, which isn’t something I often say.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 is a 7/10. That’s lower than my score of the first season. But I get the feeling that if I rewatched the first season I would lower my score for it.

As for the OPs and EDs, I didn’t think any of them were that special. I don’t remember which of the OPs it was, but one of them had a poorly drawn/animated horse that I thought was funny. And all I remember about the EDs is that they had nice art, but there wasn’t anything else to them.

If you enjoyed this review, click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Kiss x Sis

Kiss x Sis

Kiss x Sis anime series cover art
Kiss x Sis

Overview

Kiss x Sis (キス×シス) is another ecchi, harem series. However this time around there are two main girls, and they just so happen to be the protagonist’s twin step-sisters. Aside from that though, it follows the same route that most ecchi, harem series do.

There are the obligatory beach episodes, obligatory hot springs episodes, obligatory pool episodes, etc. But Kiss x Sis isn’t an anime with ecchi in it, it’s a full-fledged ecchi anime, and sometimes feels like it should have just been a hentai.

In fact, some hentai actually have more a fleshed out plot than Kiss x Sis does. In this series the entire plot is that the protagonist is trying to study for entrance exams and his sisters are competing with each other for his love. That’s it. There isn’t anything else, which is why there’s so much room for ecchi content.

Ako and Riko Suminoe from the anime series Kiss x Sis
Ako and Riko Suminoe

This series is also split up into two parts, a TV series and an OVA series, each made up of 12 episodes for a total of 24. Usually OVAs are extra episodes that simply add on to the story of the TV series, but that’s not the case this time around. The TV and OVA series are all one “narrative.”

And watching this series isn’t as easy as watching the TV series, then the OVA, or vice versa. Instead you have to constantly swap back and forth, meaning a viewing order is necessary. So if you want to experience this gem of an anime, here’s the order in which you should watch:

  • OVA episodes 1-3
  • TV episodes 1-9
  • OVA episode 4
  • TV episodes 10-12
  • OVA episodes 5-12

Keep in mind that although I numbered the OVA episodes 1-12, technically they’re numbered 0-11. Either way, there are 12 of them so you’ll be able to figure it out.

TV vs. OVA

While it’s a bit strange for there to be both a TV and OVA series for the same anime that are combined in this way, what’s even stranger is that they have different tones. Since the TV series is meant for, well, TV it’s much more tame than the OVA series.

This is what I meant when I mentioned that it sometimes feels like it should have been a hentai instead of an ecchi series. While the TV series can definitely get pretty raunchy, it’s no match for the content of the OVA series. And for this reason, the OVA series is far superior.

Interestingly, however, even the OVA series isn’t actually uncensored. Yes, you will see a lot more, and the things you’ll be seeing are a lot more explicit, but it’s still censored. That said, the censoring isn’t done by either random beams of light or areas covered by shadow, so it still looks natural.

But if the OVA is still censored, then how is it really superior to the TV series? It all comes down to the types of things shown in the OVA series that make it so great. While the TV series is fairly tame, anything goes in the OVA series which actually makes it pretty funny.

From the situations the protagonist finds himself in to the scene composition, there’s a lot to love about the OVA series. And if you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself saying, “ah yes, I too have been in this situation many times.” I mean, who hasn’t had one of their classmates pee on their head? This series is full of relatable scenarios like that.

Characters

Keita Suminoe is our protagonist. He’s a third-year middle school student (the equivalent of 9th grade in the US) and is studying for his high school entrance exams. He doesn’t really have much personality (as is the case with any good self-insert character), but over the course of the series we see him get a bit more confident in himself.

Ako and Riko are Keita’s older, twin step-sisters. Ako is the one with shorter hair, while Riko has the longer hair typically put up in a ponytail. Aside from their hair, the only other difference in their physical appearances are their bust sizes; Riko is larger than Ako.

And while Riko’s physical appearance is more my type, she’s also better character-wise as well. Ako is the more mature of the two and is seen as the more reliable of the sisters. Riko, on the other hand, is the wild card who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it.

Now that we’ve established that Riko is the better of the two sisters, who’s the best other girl? Without a doubt, it has to be Mikazuki Kiryuu. While Ako and Riko are both one year older than Keita, Mikazuki is one year younger than him.

Much like Riko, Mikazuki is fairly straightforward about what she wants. She’s also definitely the cutest of the girls in this series both from character design and personality perspectives. Mikazuki also has an older sister of her own, Yuuzuki Kiryuu.

Mikazuki Kiryuu from the anime series Kiss x Sis
Mikazuki Kiryuu

Not only is Yuuzuki the older sister of Mikazuki, but she’s also the homeroom teacher of Ako and Riko. Yuuzuki sees Keita as a problem child who is corrupting the girls he comes in contact with, especially his own sisters. Little does she know that it’s actually all the girls who are corrupting Keita.

It’s unfortunate that Mikazuki and Yuuzuki don’t get all that much screen time because I think they’d probably be the best characters if they did. Yes, even better than Riko which pains me to say.

The final, and worst, girl of the series is Miharu Mikuni. Her personality is bad, her hair is bad, and the role she plays in the series is bad. Basically she was put into the series for people who have a particular fetish, and while it’s funny because of the situations it comes up in, it’s not for me.

Mikuni is also the same age as Keita and is almost like the Tsubasa Hanekawa of this series. She’s the smart girl with glasses and big boobs. And if you know my feelings regarding Hanekawa, then my dislike for Mikuni makes sense.

Conclusion

Overall I’d give Kiss x Sis an 8/10, 7/10 for the TV series and 9/10 for the OVA. I know that those ratings might seem pretty high for a series like this, but it was extremely enjoyable to watch, especially since I was watching with someone else and we were commenting on it the whole time.

But regardless of whether you watch this series alone or with other people, it’s clear that the OVA is the standout portion of the anime as a whole. No matter what reason you have for watching this anime, the OVA will deliver better than the TV series every time.

If you enjoyed this review or found it helpful in any way, let me know by clicking the like button ❤ down below. Also follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. I tweet out every time a new post goes live, so it’s the best way to stay up to date.

Finally I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about becoming a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf anime series cover art featuring Holo
Spice and Wolf Cover Art

Overview

I think after 11 years of being universally loved, I can safely say that Spice and Wolf is a classic. However, I didn’t have high hopes for it when I began watching. I mean, it’s a series about a merchant teaching a wolf-girl basic economics, so how exciting could it really be?

As it turns out, all those people who loved this series over the past decade were onto something. Spice and Wolf isn’t really supposed to be an exciting anime, if anything it’s a cozy anime, and if I had watched it when it originally aired, I probably would have thought that meant it was boring.

Yes, there’s action at times, but I never felt that the action was all that important. What’s more important is the relationship between our main duo of Lawrence and Holo, and the suspense that’s generated due to the various situations they find themselves in.

The main draw to the series for a lot of people is probably the romance aspect between Lawrence and Holo. Over the course of the first season, which this post is exclusively about, the pair become near inseparable as they fill the void in each others’ hearts from years of living solo lives.

But, as I mentioned, there’s also a fair amount of suspense generated by the story even if there isn’t all that much actual action. Sometimes we’re left wondering how Lawrence is going to get out of some debt he’s incurred, and other times Holo is being chased down by the church for being a pagan deity.

Characters

This time around our protagonist’s name is Kraft Lawrence, and he’s a 25-year-old merchant. Honestly, when I learned that Lawrence was only supposed to be 25 I was shocked. I was sure he was supposed to at least be in his 30s if not 40s.

Lawrence is currently a member of a merchant’s guild and travels between various towns and cities with his wagon of goods. However, his true dream is to one day make enough money to open up his own store so he can settle down and truly begin his life.

Despite his apparent age, Lawrence is also highly skilled at his craft. He knows when to invest in certain goods, the differences in purity between all the coins from various cities, and they best ways to avoid being robbed; all skills a good merchant needs.

Holo and Kraft Lawrence from the anime series Spice and Wolf
Holo and Lawrence

However, it’s Lawrence’s unlikely companion who really pushes his ability as a merchant over the edge. Holo is a wolf deity who once watched over a particular village and helped its crops flourish. However, with the invention of new, more robust seeds, the people no longer have a reason to worship her.

So, she decides to return to her homeland in the mountains to the far North, and chooses Lawrence as her travelling companion. While he sees her simply as another mouth to feed at first, it quickly becomes apparent that Holo possesses unique abilities that will aid him in his quest for wealth.

Not only can Holo determine if people are being truthful, something merchants have to worry about on a daily basis, but she’s also an extremely sly negotiator. She’s able to talk vendors into decreasing the prices of their goods, or even convince buyers that Lawrence’s goods are higher quality than they really are.

Also, Holo is basically just an older, more tsundere predecessor to Raphtalia from The Rising of the Shield Hero. Her design isn’t quite as nice, and she tends to act more mature, but other than that they’re the same character as far as I’m concerned.

The third and final character I’ll mention is Nora. Nora is a young girl who works as a shepherd for the local church. However, because she and her dog Enek are so good at protecting sheep from wolves, the church believes she must be some sort of witch.

Ah, yes, the good old days when being good at your job meant you were a witch. Because of this fear, the church constantly sends Nora to graze her flock in the most dangerous regions where other shepherds dare not go.

Their thought process is that if she comes back safe, she must be a witch, but if she dies, then she wasn’t a witch, but also isn’t their problem anymore. It’s a classic case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Nora joins Lawrence and Hollow on their travels after she successfully leads them through dangerous territory multiple times safely. But, Holo isn’t exactly fond of Nora both because she’s a shepherd and because she thinks Lawrence will fall for her.

Conclusion

The first season of Spice and Wolf is a solid 8/10, which isn’t something I really expected from the studio Imagin. I’ve seen one anime they’ve produced, Alderamin on the Sky, and that was bad, so I wouldn’t have expected a series animated by them to be much better.

The second season is animated by two different studios I’ve never heard of before, so it’ll be interesting to see what differences there are between that season and this first one. Stay tuned for a review of season two in the eventual future.

If you enjoyed this review then be sure to click the like button ❤ down below. Also, give me a follow over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. I tweet out every time a new post goes live, so it’s the best way to stay up to date.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month, as well as Rob Wright and Keyboard Kadabra for their support at the Kouhai tier. To learn more about how you can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Spice and Wolf II is available now.

One Piece (Thriller Bark)

One Piece (Thriller Bark)

One Piece anime logo
One Piece Logo

Overview

Thriller Bark is the fifth saga of the One Piece anime and follows Water 7. Right from the start, I want to say that Thriller Bark is the best saga in the anime up to this point, which should really come as little surprise considering each saga seems to be better than the last.

So why is Thriller Bark so good compared to everything that came before? Is it merely that the story is better than the previous four sagas?

While I did enjoy the story, I don’t think this is actually the case. What Thriller Bark really had going for it was its length. This saga only contains one main story arc, with filler arcs both before and after it. So, not only is it the only saga with one main arc, but it’s also the shortest saga so far.

In my Water 7 review I mentioned that the major issue I had with that saga was that it was too long and drawn out. For comparison, Water 7 was 110 episodes long while Thriller Bark is only 45. This means that the story is able to progress forward before the content gets stale. If the Thriller Bark saga was another 110 episodes, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

Filler Arcs

Before getting into the main arc of the saga, let’s take a quick look at the two filler arcs that come with it.

The arc before Thriller Bark is the Ice Hunter arc in which the Straw Hat Pirates find themselves traveling through a winter pass that’s home to a bounty-hunting family. Not only does this family hunt pirates who happen to stray into their territory, but they steal their jolly rogers and keep them as trophies.

The leader of the family is a large man who has a devil fruit power which allows him to heat up anything he touches. While this power is fairly effective against Luffy, there are other, more versatile, powers which can do the same thing, such as Ace’s fire and Eneru’s electric.

The filler arc after Thriller Bark is the Spa Island arc in which our favorite pirate crew, the Foxy Pirates, make a reappearance. This time, however, the Foxy Pirates are only three members strong, after losing all of their members in the Davy Back fight.

Spa Island is an island spa, as the name suggests, and on it there are two girls searching for a secret treasure. Their father disappeared while searching for it, and so now the girls are attempting to find it in his place. In the end, the treasure turns out to be a 360 degree rainbow which holds the secret to manufacturing jewels.

Of these two arcs, I found the latter to be the better one, but this may mainly be due to the fact that it was the shorter of the two. It was also more obviously filler, which means it’s easily skippable if you’re so inclined.

Thriller Bark

And now, onto the main arc of the saga. Unlike the rest of the main story arcs since entering the Grand Line, Thriller Bark doesn’t actually take place on an island. Well, sort of. Thriller Bark is actually a giant pirate ship which happens to be carrying a piece of an island from the West Blue.

The captain of the ship is one of the seven warlords of the sea, Gekko Moriah. Moriah’s devil fruit power allows him to steal, control, and physically manipulate shadows. He typically uses this power to steal the shadows of passing pirates, and then having his ship’s doctor implant them into corpses to create zombie crewmen.

The Straw Hat crew find their ship trapped within the walls of Thriller Bark, and have no choice but to go “ashore” once Nami, Chopper, and Usopp go missing. Unlike the rest of the islands the crew has gone to so far, there isn’t really a point to them going onto Thriller Bark considering it doesn’t even interact with the log pose.

Because of this, the entire arc revolves around the Straw Hats regrouping to leave the island ship. However, a number of the crew also get their shadows stolen by Moriah, and so they need to defeat him and retrieve them before they can leave. This is because anyone without a shadow will be burned up by the sun.

Luckily, Thriller Bark is currently located in a portion of the ocean which is covered by thick fog, so the sun isn’t an immediate threat to anyone whose shadow is stolen. But, leaving this region and continuing on their journey without their shadows would be nearly impossible.

Also, the entire Thriller Bark ship is essentially a Halloween island, which was fairly interesting. Unlike the other islands we’ve seen so far which all seem to have a theme based on where they’re located or the specific properties of the island, Thriller Bark’s Halloween theme appears to be due to Moriah’s personal taste.

Characters

To save time, I’ll just be going over the two major characters of this saga: the new Straw Hat member, Brook, and the antagonist, Moriah.

Brook is a living skeleton who the Straw Hats found on a “ghost ship” which was wandering the seas. It turns out that he and all of his crew mates had been killed in battle, but Brook had the powers of the revive-revive fruit and so came back to life.

Unfortunately for him, his soul was unable to find his body, and by the time it was found, he had completely decomposed and been reduced to nothing more than a skeleton. Of all the devil fruit powers, this has got to be one of the worst, because although it grants the user a second shot at life, it’s not really helpful otherwise.

Yes, Brook got to come back from the dead, but all of his friends didn’t, which means he was left alone. Further, during both of his lives, the only inclination that he’s even a power holder is the fact that he can’t swim. So, in that regard, his power is just a massive debuff.

That said, it seems that the fact that Brook is now a skeleton actually makes his power useful. It’s unclear if it’s even possible for him to die again, and because he’s so light, he can even run across water, making his inability to swim less of an issue.

Brook’s role in the crew is as the musician and a swordsman. While he’s not as powerful as Luffy, Zoro, or Sanji, he’s probably about as strong overall as the likes of Franky, Robin, and Chopper. He’s at least stronger than Nami and Usopp.

Gekko Moriah is the primary antagonist of Thriller Bark and as such is supposedly extremely powerful. However, he didn’t actually seem all that strong to me, as even the likes of Crocodile, and especially Eneru, would have been able to defeat him.

Of all the weird devil fruit powers we’ve seen so far, Moriah’s is my least favorite solely because although his ability has to do with shadows, that’s not how shadows work. In fact, almost nothing about his ability makes sense.

I think the real issue though, is that Moriah’s shadow power had to be extra strange because Blackbeard already has dark power, and the two would have overlapped too much otherwise. So just what about his powers don’t make sense?

First of all, shadows are not the souls of humans. Even if you were able to implant a shadow into a corpse, that wouldn’t do anything because corpses already have shadows of their own. Also, on a similar note, even Moriah’s shadow had a shadow, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Second is the idea that not only do shadows mimic the appearance of the body, but the body mimics the appearance of the shadow. Moriah demonstrates this by compressing a shadow into a ball, and so the zombie attached to it is compressed into a ball as well.

The issue here is that, again, this isn’t how shadows work. If this were the case, then in the middle of the day when the Sun is exactly overhead, you would be a small circle, because that’s what your shadow looks like at this time. Likewise, during sunset when shadows are stretched, you would be elongated as well.

And, along with this same point, Moriah’s shadow is able to break up into hundreds or thousands of pieces and move independently, but this has no effect on his physical body whatsoever. There are just too many inconsistencies with his ability, which is why I disliked him.

Gekko Moriah (powered up version) from the Thriller Bark saga of the One Piece anime
Gekko Moriah (powered up version)

Conclusion

Overall, the Thriller Bark saga is the first 7/10 in One Piece. The combination of the story, length, aesthetic, and new character (Brook) made for this to be better than any of the previous sagas. And, as a bonus, the whale Laboon made a reappearance!

You may recall from my review of Water 7 that I though Laboon was going to make a reappearance at the end of that arc, but it was actually the Merry. Well, we finally came full circle, or at least half circle, with Laboon, because it turns out that Brook was a member of the pirate crew which Laboon was waiting for at the entrance to the Grand Line.

It’s said that “Oda never forgets,” and I think this proves that to really be the case. Also, I’m fairly certain that one of the minor, supporting characters from Thriller Bark, Lola, is going to come back in an important way in the far future. Those who are all caught up with the series should know what I’m talking about.

So what are your thoughts on the Thriller Bark saga? Do you think it’s as good as I do? And, if you’re farther into the series than I am, do you think any of the future arcs are better than it? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next saga is available here.