I fell quite a bit behind on the ol' One Piece anime, but I'm blasting my way through Water 7 at the moment. It's amazing!
I'm up to episode 239 at the moment, and it's just amazing how much characterization has been fit into these 13 episodes already.
They pretty much throw up in the air everything you took for granted about the One Piece crew, which is amazing. It reminds me a bit of those last few episodes of Cowboy Bebop, in that you stop and think about how the crew traveling together is not something to take for granted.
The whole Usopp/Luffy conflict is pretty shocking, I can't think of a time when the Mugiwara crew had this much inner turmoil.
It's also interesting how Zoro is handling it. I'm not sure what the proper way to put it is, I don't want to say he's cold. But he's the only one who, at least outwardly, seems to have no problem with what happened with Usopp.
Plus, even when Sanji and Chopper just asked Zoro if he wanted to help look for Robin with them, Zoro declined and said he'd just wait and see how this all worked out.
I'm not sure what this says about Zoro, but it is definitely new. I do like how Zoro supports Luffy in his hard decisions though, definitely.
And of course, Luffy having to be a hard dude, and shoulder the burden, it's pretty interesting. It's also nice to see Nami as pretty much the moral anchor of the crew, her reactions pretty much mirror how I'd say the audience is feeling about the whole ordeal.
I posted this in the general One Piece section because, even though I'm watching the anime version, this applies to the manga as well I'd imagine.
Great stuff all around, and pretty crazy.
