One Piece Filler Arcs, Part 4 -- Caesar, Silver Mine, Marine Rookies & Cidre Guild

The final batch of my coverage of One Piece anime filler arcs! It's been a surprisingly fun ride, actually!

Caesar Retrieval Arc [Episodes 626-628]

...and this one is surprisingly interesting in the setup of its plot. Most One Piece fillers and movies prior to this tended to be along the lines of "the Straw Hats stumble upon an island/some people and get embroiled to a self-contained plot", but this time around we're actually slotting this in-between the canon Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs, which is interesting! Caesar Clown gets kidnapped by Breed while the Straw Hats and Heart Pirates are moving Caesar over to Dressrosa to continue their little plan to use Caesar Clown in their long-term plan to take down Doflamingo, Which is kind of an interesting little roadblock. I guess in-canon Doflamingo did send Buffalo and Baby Five to Punk Hazard, but I do like the idea that Caesar is actually kind of a much-desired figure in the underworld that people would be hunting him down...

Except, uh, Breed is just kind of a second-rate Shiki, which is kind of disappointing... but I guess they really wanted to bring a villain that would have minimal ramifications to the canon story. Luffy, Law and Chopper go after Breed and his army of initially-shadowed minions that kidnapped Caesar, and turns out that Breed uses the Peto Peto no Mi, which allows him to take control of animals? That's actually kind of a neat throwback. Among them is a Kung Fu Dugong from Alabasta, who apparently ended up becoming a Luffy fanboy (intentionally foreshadowing Bartolomeo?) and went out to sea to be a pirate. And even drew an X across his chest to mimic Luffy. 

Breed shows up and uses his Peto Peto no Mi to put shackles on Luffy, Chopper, Law and Caesar to turn them into his obedient pets. It's a pretty nasty devil fruit, too -- you're forced to obey his commands, but your mind is still your own. He is enamoured with Chopper's cuteness, but then proceeds to beat him up with a whip because, well, he's just a bit unhinged. His master plan is to get Caesar to mass-produce SMILE fruits to turn people into animals, so that he can create essentially a zoo kingdom? Because he's disappointed in humans? Okay?

Law outsmarts Breed by figuring out that his 'pets' need to actually hear his voice for the mind control to take hold, and then fakes his and Luffy's death. Then Breed pulls off a less-cool Shalnark and uses his Peto Peto powers on himself, somehow 'bringing out his inner strength'. We get a typical freedom speech, then Luffy and Dugong sends Breed flying. Honestly... kind of forgettable. The Kung Fu Dugong is easily the best part of this arc, but Breed is such a one-note villain and the stakes are so bland that I really can't bring myself to care all too much. 

Random Notes:

• Earplugs stopping sound-based powers would later be used in the fight against Apoo.
• Breed's mind-controlled animals includes a sea-faring variant of the Lapins from Drum Island and a tiny kraken.
• The Kung Fu Dugong can actually use haki punches! And he's got his own crew of wacky animals!
• The scene of the Straw Hats reading the news of Doflamingo's abdication and the Kid-Hawkins-Apoo alliance takes place at the end of 628. 

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Silver Mine Arc [Episodes 747-750]

This time, this one takes place after Dressrosa, and before Zou, although it's also a tie-in to Film: Gold. The most important part, though, is that we get more Bartolomeo screentime. That's very important. Unfortunately... I don't really care a whole ton about this arc.

Anyway, Luffy and Bartolomeo get kidnapped by the minions of Bill, leader of the Silver Pirate Alliance, who the arc quickly establishes as a bit of a superstar beloved by the many nameless pirates that he had saved in the past. Among them is Desire, a pirate modeled after a motorcycle delinquent. She's got huge abandonment issues, and was apparently Bartolomeo's old friend. Her entire pirate bike gang got wiped out by a battleship at one point, reducing her crew to four people, and she was taken in by Bill.

However, turns out that Bill's actually a psychopath, enslaving the pirates that are supposed to be working for him and making them mine silver ore. Luffy spends the first two episodes trapped inside a giant silver ball, and with Bartolomeo's fanboying help and Desire's reluctant help, they enter the inner parts of Bill's base and find out that... well, Bill's a lunatic that enslaves other pirates and all the talk about helping them realize their dream is kind of bullshit. It... it would probably have more of an impact if we actually get to see more characters believe in Bill, and if Bill's assassins didn't immediately go "we will murder you!"

Anyway, our heroes beat up Aveyron, a guy who eats one of the more ridiculous devil fruits out there -- the Koro Koro no Mi (Roll Roll Fruit), that turns him into a human rail carriage. We get a typical freedom™ speech, then Zoro shows up for a single episode just to Kokujo O-Tatsumaki another goon, Peseta. The final episode has the fight against Bill, who ate the Gutsu Gutsu no Mi (Smelt Smelt Fruit), which means he can eat silver ore and forge any sort of metallic weapon from his abs. He's, uh... not really much of a threat. Luffy easily takes him out, then he overdoses on ore and turns into a red-hot version of the Hulk. With a bit of Bartolomeo assistance, Luffy Grizzly Magnums the shit out of Bill, and the entire silver island melts. Oh, and also we get a rather by-the-books confrontation between Desire and Bill, and to the shock of no one, Bill actually killed the rest of Desire's crew and capitalizes on her loss to pretend to be a saviour. 

And... honestly, I really felt like this arc has a bunch of interesting themes and ideas. The idea of a charismatic leader who manages to wrangle together a bunch of loyal weak troops isn't a bad one (though arguably already kind of done with Doflamingo) if Bill himself wasn't so obviously evil. Desire's character actually felt pretty interesting on paper -- her backstory, her connection with Bartolomeo, and eventually realizing that she needs to pick her role models carefully... except it's really not executed all that well and for all the bickering she has with Bartolomeo, we don't really get any satisfying resolution. It's really kind of a shame -- even having a bunch of quirky antagonists really didn't go anywhere, because the action scenes feel pretty repetitive. Not terrible, but also kind of forgettable at the same time. 

Random Notes:

• 747's beginning adapts the 'Barto Club are idiots' scene with the hailstones, which I distinctly remember from the manga. 
• This isn't the first filler devil fruit that allows the user to use heat-based abilities. We've got Don Accino, we've got the second movie's Bear-King, and Largo also makes fire nets. 
• The only real tie-in to Film: Gold is the rather off-handed note that Bill's silver mine is a business partner of Gild Tesoro. One of Tesoro's henchmen, the cat-like Tanaka, shows up briefly in the first and final episodes to egg on Bill. I'm not entirely sure how Bill's little slave army operation has anything to do with Tesoro's entertainment casino? (The actual prequel would be the OVA 'Heart of Gold')
• In addition to Zoro, Kin'emon gets a brief role cutting the flames of a group of flamethrower-wielding goons. The rest of the crew stays on board the Going-Luffy-Senpai, though. 

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Marine Rookies Arc [Episodes 780-782]

This one takes place prior to the Whole Cake Island arc, between Zou and Whole Cake Island, and lasted 3 episodes long. It's... it's all right, I suppose. I like it better than the Silver Mine arc?

In this arc, our heroes ran out of food while going to Whole Cake Island, so they decide to stop at a random island... which turns out to be the G-F Marine base. I do like the little explanation that it's a forward base meant to keep an eye on Big Mom's territory, and that Pekoms is aware of it. And throughout the arc Luffy just literally does not give a shit. He is really hungry, and he wants food goddamn it, and he will do so even if he has to infiltrate a Marine base. ...which they actually do pretty successfully. Chopper and Nami try to be a bit more sneaky about it; Brook goes around in ghost form... Luffy and Carrot just literally stride into the mess hall and eat entire buckets of curry. I want some curry now. 

What makes this arc stand out a bit more, I think, is that the three antagonists are actually somewhat well-realized. None of them are going to vie for 'best antagonist in One Piece' or anything, but our main antagonist this time around is the youthful captain Grount, who is a marine captain with anime-main-character colourful mohawk and a metal arm. He gets transferred to G-F and is quickly introduced to be pretty prickly... but also extremely defensive of his old teacher Aokiji. Grount is quickly reunited with his two buddies, the muscular longarm Bonham, and the weirdo-swordsman Zappa. 

And, again, unlike Bill or Breed, I don't really think that they tried to make these three guys feel like they're a threat to Luffy. And they really don't pretend that they are. They're more of a inconvenience; and, in Zappa's case, a running gag. And I think it works a lot better, y'know? They know these guys will be disposed of in three episodes, so instead they try to make them at least memorable, and they're 'threatening' so much in the vague sense that they'll call down the entire Marine base on the pirates.

We mostly see Luffy and company goof around, and Zappa is apparently not only a huge Nami fanboy, but is also a creeper that wants to propose to her, and later on also gets to creep on Carrot. He's basically a version of Sanji that's a lot more self-pitying and leans too hard on the 'creeper' side instead of the 'charmingly lecherous'. Zappa and Bonham show off a bit of their skills; Zappa has twin fire swords and Bonham uses Rokushiki, but Nami and Chopper respectively manage to take them down. 

And then there is Grount's little emo storyline that goes throughout the second and third episode, where his two friends basically call him out for giving up almost immediately after Luffy effortlessly bonks him once. At one point Luffy even effortlessly parries his swords with a frying pan and a ladle! We also learn his backstory that, uh, within his giant robot arm is actually a... giant gorilla demon arm thing? Okay what the fuck? We never get an explanation to this, just roll with this random superpower that would feel more at home at another Shonen battle manga. Yes, we see a flashback of Aokiji essentially Professor-X-ing him and helping him to keep it under control, but this really comes out of nowhere. It's just something that's an excuse for Grount to 'gain control of'. He gets some determination, gains control of his Mr. Hyde arm, and he fights Luffy for a bit before getting Elephant Gun'd to the face. At least he regains his confidence and sees Luffy as a rival or something to surpass or something? All right, sure. 

And... I don't know. I guess it's because there's no real sense of artificial tension, and so I appreciate the 'hey let's have fun' idea of this arc a bit more? It was entertaining, if nothing else, and I do like how Grount feels a lot more different compared to your typical run-of-the-mill filler arc guest star. 

Random Notes:

• Bonham isn't the first Longarm member of the Marines that uses Rokushiki extensively; Shuzo, the Neo-Marine antagonist from the Z's Ambition arc, is also a Longarm ex-Marine that uses Rokushiki. 
• How cool is it to see Chopper fight? Did we ever see Chopper have a straight-up fight since New Fishman Island? 
• The leader of G-F is Vice Admiral Prodi, whose gag is that he's doing everything he does not for any sense of justice, but to avoid a demotion. Relatable. 
• Supplemental material would explain that Grount ate a Zoan devil fruit... which raises even more questions about his weird demon-hand thing. What Zoan devil fruit does that? Make just a single part of your body go berserk and shit? We've never seen any Zoan fruit do that at all. 

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Cidre Guild Arc [Episodes 895-896]

This one was broadcasted randomly in-between the Wano arc, and is meant to tie into Stampede. And Stampede could charitably be said to take place... before Dressrosa, I guess, since all the Straw Hats are around? Film: Gold and Stampede both just shrug and really don't give a shit on where they could be handwaved into the canon timeline, really, beyond a generic 'hey, we're in the New World with our New World appearances but the whole crew except Jinbe is here'.

This is just two episodes long, and the shortest filler arc... and it really didn't feel all that important or that it leads into Stampede at all. Sure, there are mentions of Douglas Bullet; and secondary villain Buena Fiesta gets a brief speaking role, but other than that the only tie-in to Stampede is Hancock talking to Luffy and giving him the invitation to the pirate festival. 

The plot here? The Straw Hats get attacked by a group of bounty hunters from the Cidre Guild. They stop at an island to refuel for cola, and Luffy literally wanders off alone and when the Cidre Guild attacks, he gets shot straight into the bathing pool where Boa Hancock is naked... because of course she is. The anime specials really like Hancock, huh? Between this and the 3D2Y special OVA? And Stampede itself? 

Anyway, Cidre is a pretty bland "me hate pirates, me kill pirates!" enemy whose motivation is... hating pirates? A vague meeting with Douglas Bullet in the past? He sure got beaten by a Gomu Gomu Elephant Gun. He's got two goons, one's the knight-lady in the poster with cute hair, the other one is a burly dude. They've got giant soda-themed cannons and jetpacks, and Hancock just easily beats the shit out of both of them and turns them into stone. 

Really nothing too much to say here, it's probably the most boring out of the filler arcs, but at least it's pretty short. 

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...that's about it for the filler arcs of One Piece! It took me surprisingly not too long to watch them. Probably because, as people tell me, there's not actually too many of them! Again, I guess it's a bit harder to fit in fillers into the One Piece timeline so the anime tended to just prolong the action in canon chapters instead. It's not like, say, Naruto or Bleach where there's an easy status quo and an easy home base where you can pretty easily fit in a 'oh, there's a minor mission' or 'oh, Konoha or Soul Society needs to fight a batch of six villains' or something along those lines. I dunno.

It is interesting, still, to see these fillers. I understand there's a lot more than these. Loguetown has like three or four episodes' worth of extra fillers, and they padded the heck out of the Foxy arc, and Marineford has a bunch of extra minor fights to pad out scenes and stuff... but ultimately, most of the One Piece filler arcs are pretty, well, throwaway? The one I really actually unequivocally like is the G-8 arc, plus a couple of standalone episodes in the post-Alabasta arc and that one Brook episode. The Apis arc, Z's Ambition and Marine Rookies are decent, too! Otherwise, though, I think if you want some extra Straw Hat material, the movies are by and far superior. 

Now excuse me while I watch Wano!