One Piece Filler Arcs, Part 2 -- G-8, Dreams and Foxy

So a while back I watched some of the filler arcs in the One Piece anime. Now I'm watching a bunch more! Including the highly-regarded G-8 Marines Arc. 

G-8 Arc [Episodes 196-206]

I really don't know too much about this particular arc, other than it's highly regarded as one of the better One Piece fillers and alongside the Oda-involved movies like Strong World and Z, apparently one of the few that many people wants to be canon? Anyway, this is one of the longer filler arcs, lasting 11 episodes, and takes place between Skypiea and Long-Ring-Long Land. 

And... yeah, this is actually pretty great filler. And it is still filler, so everything that happens here is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of the story, and we essentially start and stop this arc at basically the same point, but what makes the G-8 arc so much more interesting is that whoever wrote this arc really actually took care to read ahead and foreshadow what was going to be the major themes of the next arc, which was... well, it's Foxy, but after that we're going to Water Seven, and a lot of themes about shipwrights, ship maintenance, and even a foreshadowing about the Klabautermann are all seen here. It's not the main focus of the arc, but it's prominent enough in a couple of episodes. 

Another thing that makes the G-8 arc so much more interesting? The concept and the villain. Most of the times with these filler -- and I include movies in this -- the Straw Hats just stumble upon some island and fight some huge, powerful pirate captain and/or marine. There's some conflict in the island, usually involving ruins or some backstory for a character-of-the-week, and that's usually it. No, in the G-8 Arc our heroes drop out of the sky islands and land smack dab in the marine base Navarone, an island fortress led by Vice Admiral Jonathan. And unlike most antagonists, Jonathan isn't just an enemy for Luffy to Gomu Gomu no beatdown at the end of the story. He's not even an asshole! He's basically just laid-back Smoker, who realizes that, hey, this silly 'ghost ship' that fell into his idyllic, peaceful marine base is actually a pirate ship, and he's got a half-dozen pirates running around the base. 

And that's... that's actually pretty refreshing. The Straw Hats get themselves split up, and since it's a filler arc we spend a good chunk of the first couple of episodes just doing nothing... on the surface. The anime, I notice, like to do this -- to use the filler arc as an excuse to highlight some of the Straw Hats' non-combative skills. None (at least of the ones I watch) do so as well as the G-8 arc, though, and it builds into the whole fact that the Straw Hats -- and the audience -- are learning quite a bit about Marine life and the non-combatants that work there. Hell, even things like there being a marine inspector and stuff is a pretty fun little world-building exercise. 

So at the beginning of the arc our heroes get separated and get into hijinks, which is pretty weak -- up until our heroes actually get into roles that suit them. Chopper's little moment of determination where he's unwilling to leave the novice doctor to do surgery alone and gives this whole rousing speech to Nami that he's a doctor dammit and he won't leave patients unattended was very good. Sanji (and Luffy) being mistaken as one of the two new chefs from Mariejois and ending up in a cooking competition looks like it's going to be boring, but the actual way he does it -- using up the ignored parts of the fish and vegetables of the G-8 cooks and giving the whole spiel of how they're in a military installation and they need to make use of every single resource? Pretty surprisingly good. Robin taking out Marine Inspector Shepherd and masquerading as him in order to look up maps and information? Amazing. And one of the more underrated moments is when Shepherd gets put into jail and Usopp just goes "ah, my comrade Condoriano, you got captured too!" was pretty fun. 

Usopp also befriends the base's resident shipwright Mekao, mostly setting up for Water Seven, although surprisingly the allies that the Straw Hats don't actually end up filling the role of temporary guest stars or whatever. Sure, Mekao and Dr. Kobato do help out the Straw Hats a bit later on, but they don't actually straight-up betray the Marines.

And, again, all the subterfuge and comedy work pretty well. Tying everything together is eccentric Vice Admiral Jonathan -- who I checked and turns out that the Vice Admiral rank is actually the highest rank our heroes have encountered by this point in the story. Jonathan's introduced to us as fishing in the night, and while it's not shoved down our throats, some characters compare his pursuit of the Straw Hats to fishing due to how indirect everything is -- and I really like what he's doing here. His investigation is seemingly lackadaisical (the more uptight Drake, his subordinate, make for a great foil) but he's actually far sharper than he actually lets on, actually knowing that Robin is impersonating someone. 

There's also the neat little begrudging-respect thing he has going on with Luffy, where the two clearly treat this as kind of a game. When our heroes are starting to make their move, I really do like it when Jonathan just goes around trying to cut them off and herd them towards certain parts of the island, minimizing damage while also easily noting what the Straw Hats would be after -- their ship, and later on, their gold. 

One of the better moments in the arc, I think, is the first climax where Chopper in his beast-man form shows up apparently holding two hostages -- Nami in a nurse suit, and Dr. Kobato, who temporarily hangs around to pay her debts for their assistance in the infirmary. And Chopper just pretends to roar and act like a berserker while Usopp and Zoro knowingly smirks... and silly ol' Luffy, not smart enough to understand what's going on, just goes "I'm disappointed in you, Chopper". The Marines are also acting very decently, too, with Drake unwilling to shoot hostages, and there being a pretty neat sequence where a Marine troop dropping his rifle is actually a sign for other Marines to rescue the hostages -- if Nami wasn't actually a pirate in disguise, it would actually work!

Our heroes actually manage to escape thanks to this little hostage trick (and we get a fun bit with Robin swooping in Tarzan-style with her devil fruit powers) but then Nami essentially convinces everyone that they had to go back and retrieve their gold, who Jonathan has taken. Which leads to a pretty fun sequence of Luffy, Robin, Zoro and Usopp trying to infiltrate and break into the massive vault... only to get themselves locked in. Usopp actually manages to open the vault only to find that it's all a trap and Jonathan lured them in with an empty vault. 

And honestly, it's a pretty great plan... if not for the arrival of Special Inspector Shepherd. Shepherd is already the source of some of the best moments in the arc by proxy, with Usopp's whole Condoriano thing in the prison cell, but he's also presented as the Spandam-esque asshole in this whole scenario, and he opens up the many, many giant doors that were locking in the Straw Hats so that he can show off his giant Eagle Launcher bazooka... and accidentally shoots his own men in the process. And then in one of the coolest usage of Robin's Hana Hana no Mi, she sprouts arms to spin the giant bazooka around and just pull the trigger many times to blow up the Marine forces.

After a bit of sailing around (which involves them disguising the Going Merry as a Marine ship), Luffy and Nami steal back the Skypiea gold from Jonathan's office, and the confrontation between the two is actually pretty fun. Jonathan isn't baffled or surprised in the slightest with anything Luffy does, treating everything as moves in a chess game. They get out of the trap Jonathan sets up in his office because of Nami's weather rod...

...and then the Straw Hats realize that the G-8 Marines are utterly unconcerned because at a nine o'clock, the tides recede away and will cut off any escape by ship. Ultimately they only manage to escape because Luffy shoves the sky octopus into his pants (literally into his crotch area) and Usopp uses Flame and Impact dials to launch the ship into the sky. And even then Jonathan's troops would probably have succeeded in shooting the Straw Hats done if Shepherd hadn't interfered and accidentally bazooka'd the side of a mountain, disabling the cannon. 

Honestly, Jonathan's plans were pretty damn solid many times. He manages to predict a lot of the Straw Hats' unpredictability by simply deducing what they were after and moves his troops accordingly, and his failures are only caused by rogue agents like Shepherd's interference, the 'hostage' situation, as well as all the unexpected Dials from Skypiea. I do like how they actually manage to end up showing Jonathan as being smart without going over-the-top. 

...and that's how the Straw Hats escape, anyway... but even then a lot of the middle portions of this arc end up in rather plot-relevant discussion. Mekao gets into a discussion about ship maintenance with Usopp at least three times in the arc, and the slowest episode in the arc (203) is a flashback about all the times Going Merry has saved them and how Nami's going to use a chunk of the treasure for Merry's maintenance. It's kind of a rarity in these older filler arcs (especially comparing it to Naruto and Bleach's many many filler arcs) for them to actually draw and foreshadow what's going to come in the canon episodes. 

This filler arc is honestly quite slow, but that's honestly what filler arcs should be, isn't it? The huge heart-pumping epic sagas are the Enies' Lobbies and Marinefords and Dressrosas of the series. Something that's a bit more low-stakes like this is actually a surprising break compared to how some of these filler arcs and movies try to hype up their villains as something uber-epic. Jonathan is such an likable and interesting antagonist too in that he just views catching the Straw Hats more of a challenge in his job and ends up handwaving it to his wife as 'whatever happens, our base gets an exercise in cooperation'. And... and we get a Marine-heavy arc for once, which I don't really think is something we actually really ever got in One Piece outside of Marineford. Overall... yeah, I do like this one. Actually more than I do the Long Ring Long Land arc, if we're being honest. 

Random Notes:

• Lt. Commander Drake showed up briefly at the beginning of the fourth movie, Dead End Adventure, as a Marine that pursues the Straw Hats. No, he's not to be confused with the Supernova X-Drake. Who turns out to be a Marine deep-cover agent. Duh-doy!
• In a hilarious bit, X-Drake shares his voice actor with Lt. Commander Drake.
• Jonathan is noted to be a friend of Akainu! I actually wasn't sure if Akainu is already known to the anime-watchers at this point in time. The Wiki tells me that Jonathan and Drake had a brief cameo in the anime version of Marineford, though neither of them did anything. 
• It is still a filler arc, and episode 203 in particular ended up being kind of a clip-show halfway through... but combining the flashbacks with the damages the Merry suffers in 206, this would eventually lead to the whole 'the Going Merry has to be repaired' storyline in Water Seven, it ends up being pretty appropriate foreshadowing, isn't it? The 203 clip-show ends up being a neat foreshadowing for the crew requiring a good shipwright. 
  
• This particular filler arc is great for Robin action scenes. In addition to attacking and taking over Shepherd's giant bazooka, we get the pretty cool assassination takedown scene; swinging around on a string of arms Spider-Man style; and briefly uses her arms as ropes to ride around on a giant gear. 
• In both this arc and the Ocean's Dream one, we get a fair amount of usage out of the Skypiea hoverbike. I like that!  
• I'm pretty sure that the Sunny's Coup-de-Burst didn't get introduced until much later in the series, so, it's actually kind of interesting that the Impact-dial Merry resembles it so much. 
• There is one particularly hilarious moment with Luffy sneaking around making funny poses around a guard in episode 196.

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Ocean's Dream Arc [Episodes 220-224]

So this is a bit of a weird one. Sometimes long-running anime would devote an episode or two to act as a 'prequel' to an upcoming movie. One Piece does this a couple of times, and I'm pretty sure I watched the buildup to Film: Gold. But the Ocean's Dream arc is a tie-in arc to... a video game! One Piece: Ocean's Dream for the PlayStation. It's really kind of weird. The episode itself is broadcasted in-between the Long Ring Long Land Arc -- itself an arc that's heavily expanded upon in the anime, apparently, by giving Foxy like a couple extra rounds... and probably a huge source of how people who watch the anime first say that it's the absolute worst arc among the canon ones. Don't worry, we'll talk more about Foxy below.

I don't really have much of an idea of what the video game's plot is about, and how much of this tie-in anime is an adaptation of part of the game's story or if it's just a prologue... but it's a typical plot for one of these anime fillers -- convenient ol' amnesia! Yeah, I hate amnesia plots. Some mysterious kid with a seahorse trumpet takes away everyone's memories as pirates other than Robin's, so she has to try and convince everyone with her regular deadpan attitude that, no, they're friends who have their memories wiped out. At least everyone reacts properly, I guess? Usopp immediately bullshits about how he's a member of a pirate crew, Zoro doesn't give two shits and leaves almost immediately, Nami is distrusting of pirates and escapes with her massive gold pile... it's mostly an excuse to have an amnesia plot and a bunch of origin story recaps and flashbacks. And apparently one of the big problems is that... Robin isn't caught up to anything the crew does pre-Alabasta? It's a bit weird, but okay. Luffy gets his memory back and it's basically just constant 'we need to do this!' on Luffy and Robin's part, while everyone goes 'we disagree, but not for long because we have to move the plot forwards'. 

Tatsu, the mysterious seahorse controlling the little boy, is able to eat memories, and is the one behind everything. He hypnotizes Zoro to fight Luffy, makes some illusions, and we do get a fight scene out of it. It's pretty neat, I guess? But after a bunch of short arguments, our heroes hunt down them and then quite literally beats the memories out of Tatsu. And... that's about it, really. I'm not going to say that this is entirely terrible, because there's the potential of a good story somewhere here where even beyond Nami's paranoia or Usopp's cowardice they're still going to be comrades and friends or whatever, but it's so haphazardly done. I really don't have much to say here, and it probably ran for two or three episodes too long.

One thing that I will praise -- since I praised that for the G8 arc -- is giving Robin a whole lot of screentime to foreshadow her prominence in Water Seven/Enies' Lobby. Granted, it's mostly just her being confused and going 'this is troublesome', but we do get a couple neat hints near the end how she isn't particularly fond of her own memories. 

Random Notes:

• Oh, hey, a scar-shaped blade slash on Luffy's chest! Yeah, that's kind of an unexpected foreshadowing to the scar Luffy will always have post-timeskip. 
• Tatsu (who isn't named in the arc) wants to become a Sennenryu, which we saw previously in the Warship Island filler arc. Usopp, Sanji and Zoro mention having met one of those before entering the Grand Line. 
• In the video game, Dream (named Noko in the game) is an actual antagonist who ate the Nemu Nemu no Mi (Sleep-Sleep Fruit) to steal memories. Tatsu here is just able to do it without any Devil Fruit ability, apparently, since he's just a magic seahorse that can swim? Eh. x

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Foxy's Return Arc [Episodes 225-226]

So the Long Ring Long Land arc had four extra episodes added in within the Foxy games, as I gather. And after defeating Foxy, our heroes go off to experience the Ocean's Dream storyline. And then they get these two episodes of a rematch with Foxy before we get the Aokiji scenes. And... and I get it, the anime wants to probably make a huge buffer since Water Seven and Enies' Lobby are pretty long arcs with no real breaks in-between to insert any filler, but still... Foxy is a character best served in small doses. In the manga he just gets a brief short role in around a dozen chapters and we're done with him pretty quickly, and even then to some people they still think the Davy Back Fight is a non-sequitur which really feels like the weakest part of One Piece. I personally never minded it, but I've never really liked it either. 

This two-episode mini-arc basically just, uh... foreshadows Aokiji a bit, while our heroes rescue Foxy and his sidekicks Porche and Hamburg from drowning. They bump into the S.S. Sexy Foxy pretty quickly and find out that their ship is taken over by the Fanged Toad Pirates that Foxy 'won' during the Davy Back Fight earlier. An attempt at a captain-vs-captain Davy Back Fight ends up with Foxy being beaten down by captain Kibagaeru. Foxy is basically a lesser brand of villainy, actually angry that Kibagaeru would attack his own crew members in his attempts to get to Foxy, and Luffy ends up interfering to help out Foxy. Kibagaeru's men are stupid enough to attack the others, and we get a standard and frankly lackluster fight scenes.

Because Foxy's kind of a cunt, he betrays the Straw Hats and tries to steal their gold. The Straw Hats fight back to get out of Foxy's capture... well, mostly Luffy and Nami versus Foxy's huge boxing... machine thing. And despite Foxy's defeat the rest of his crew still accept him as captain because, well, status quo. Oh, and there's a bit near the end where they bust out a Team Rocket-style giant crab mecha. And then they meet Aokiji in the last three minutes of the episode, which would be the huge moment that ended the manga version's of Long Ring Long Land. So...yeah, I can imagine that people who were already sick of Foxy from the anime's version of Long Ring Long Land would really not care for this pair of episodes for sure. 

Random Notes:

• Robin and Chopper just play a board game throughout the arc. That's cute! They quite literally don't give a shit. 
• Kibagaeru, by the way, wasn't named in the episodes proper. His name means... Fang-Toad. Okay.
• At least the writers gave us the return of Afro Luffy. They know what's the best part of the Foxy arc for sure. 
• There's a rather... odd sequence where Foxy's ship has a corridor with prisoners below that are waiting for women to pass through so they can look up their skirts. Yyyeeeeeeah, what.

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So, yeah. The G-8 arc was pretty fun, but the other two were pretty bland, and probably are some of the weaker ones I've watched. Join in next time when I finish the Ice Hunter arc, I guess.