Hogan Reviews

At just six episodes long the “Return to Sabaody Arc” is pretty much just a reintroduction to the Straw Hat crew, revealing their post two-year time skip looks before moving on to the first proper story arc in the New World, which um… yeah, I’ll get to that next time. That doesn’t mean the arc doesn’t have some merits though, and certainly some future arcs could’ve learned a lesson about being more concise, but there you go. Let’s take a look!

The basic premise of the arc is not just “the Straw Hats all arrive back on the Sabaody Archipelago and reunite” but it also sees a fake version of the Straw Hat crew using their names and general look (well, clothes-wise) to recruit people and create a pirate army despite not actually being very good. This comes up quite a bit, like a reunited Nami and Usopp taking out Fake Luffy and Fake Nami in a bar nonchalantly as they chat, or Chopper mistaking the Fake Zoro, Sanji and Robin for the real ones and eventually getting upset when he sees them doing horrible things. There also a fun couple of scenes where the real Luffy takes out his doppelganger with little fuss (and even less of an idea as to what’s going on). Franky makes to the Archipelago and heads straight for the Thousand Sunny, while Sanji walks around the different Groves looking for people and Zoro accidentally gets on the wrong ship and nearly leaves before realising his mistake (and chopping the ship in half to get back). It’s all good fun.

Luffy vs. Luffy! But which is the real one?! (by the way, these pictures come from the One Piece wiki as my pictures from two or so years ago when I actually watched this got lost in an accidental OneDrive activating incident. Pictures captured by me will resume next time!)

Things do take a turn for the mildly more serious as Sentomaru and two Pacifistas head out to tackle the Straw Hats while the Fake Straw Hats’ recruitment drive leads to several dangerous pirates assembling, including “Wet-Haired Caribou”, a Devil Fruit user and all-round creep who can turn into liquid mud (and boy-oh-boy does he ever have a bigger part in the overall story than you’d think at this point!) While they’re assembling Chopper, Usopp, Robin and Nami all arrive at the Thousand Sunny and reunite with Franky, while we find out that Brook has become a world-famous rockstar in the intervening two years but he still forgoes his fame to rejoin his crew, avoiding Marines as he heads to the ship.

Caribou being his usual subtle self!

This then leads to the Marines arriving in the same Grove where the Fake Luffy has assembled his group and after Caribou shoots a Marine dead the two sides clash, only being broken up when Sentomaru arrives and outs the Fake Luffy as Demaro Black, a low-ranked pirate. Amid all this confusion though the real Luffy is spotted by a Pacifista and it goes in for the attack…

Like I said, it’s a short arc but given all it had to do was reunite the post-time skip crew before they head off it over-achieved, if anything.

Overall Thoughts:

The unstoppable villains from last time have arrived! Surely there no hope now!

The “Return of Saobody Arc” is a fun quick little slice of One Piece full of mostly well timed humour and a bit of action to boot. All it had to do really was reunite the Straw Hats and then have them sail off to Fishman Island, but it added a few other fun side-stories without dragging it out within an inch of its life like other OP arcs. As good as a six episode story can get, really!

In a clear showing of how much he’s improved Luffy defeats a Pacifista by himself with little effort thanks in part to now being able to coat his skin in “Haki”, and similarly a newly arriving Sanji and Zoro destroy the other Pacifista themselves. Luffy thanks a watching Rayleigh for all the training before the trio of Straw Hats make a break for the Thousand Sunny, with the former Gol D. Roger crewmember cutting off a bunch of Marines to help them. As Brook arrives at the ship Chopper heads off riding on one of the large birds from the island he was stuck on and soon swoops by and collects Sanji, Zoro and Luffy and before you know it the entire crew are reunited on their ship.

Reunited and it feels so good…

As they have a few catch up chats and head off the ship is attacked by Marines but the newly arriving Boa Hancock and the Amazon Lilly pirates hold them off. Sanji has a couple of serious nose bleeds due to having spent two years with only men but otherwise they get off unscathed as the special coating activates and they head underwater towards Fishman Island…