 Hello and welcome to the Groundline Review, your source for everything on peace and more specifically, Saga's In Minutes, the series that aims to equip you with the basic knowledge to leap into the wilderness of One Piece. And today, we'll be delving into one of the most mysterious areas of the world to take part in the adventure known as the Thriller Bark Saga. Thriller Bark is the fifth Saga in the series consisting of but a single arc spanning 48 chapters and 45 episodes, thus making it the shortest Saga in the entire series thus far. After leaving Water 7, the Straw Hats have their sights set on traveling to Fishman Island. However, in order to get there, they are forced to enter a stretch of sea known as the Florian Triangle, which is categorized by being covered in fog so incredibly thick that sunlight simply cannot penetrate it. As a result, this area of the world is very creepy and mysterious, kind of like the beginning of a horror film. And expectations of this location are fulfilled immediately with the appearance of a ghost ship and more importantly, a talking skeleton named Brooke, who is a self-proclaimed gentleman despite his habit of continuously asking to see women's panties. Now, of course, there is an in-world explanation for this skeleton man being that he consumed a devil fruit that allowed his soul to return to his body after death. However, due to the thick fog of the Florian Triangle, it dare well hit, took him an awfully long time to find his body, by which point it was just bones. Well, bones and an Afra. And in a move that shocks everyone, Luffy immediately invites Brooke to join the Straw Hats, to which Brooke casually agreed. However, there are, of course, complications that need to be solved before this idea can be brought to fruition. These complications being that Brooke's shadow has been stolen and in the One Piece world, if you do not have a shadow, apparently you burst into flames of old school vampire style upon contact with sunlight. Now, Brooke's shadow was stolen by the ever-fiendish Gekko Moria, a warlord of the sea who reigned supreme in the Florian Triangle, aboard the world's largest pirate ship, Thriller Bark. So there are two very important things to know about Gekko Moria. One, he has a distaste for performing any sort of physical activity whatsoever. And number two, he is building an army of zombies to allow him to take down his old rival and now one of the emperors of the sea, Kaido. And beyond that, he is also pursuing the dream of becoming the pirate king. And so the Straw Hats bought Thriller Bark, resulting in a lot of zombie shenanigans and in the process, the shadows of Luffy, Zoro Sanji and Robin are all stolen by Moria. Now, Luffy being worth of whopping 300 million berries these days was deemed a powerful enough shadow to insert into a particularly special corpse and alleged evil giant once named Oz. So with Luffy's shadow and Moria's powers, Oz is reanimated, but with Luffy's personality. But Moria and him in a bit because soon enough the Straw Hats become engaged in a conflict with the mysterious four, a group of individuals, including Moria himself who command the most power on Thriller Bark. In addition to Moria, we have Absalom, the user of the Suke-Suke Noomi, a devil fruit that allows him to turn invisible and his motivations for the large majority of the arc are to forcibly marry Nami. He attempts this many, many, many, many times, one of which is put to a stop by an enraged Sanji, enraged for two reasons, the first of which being his own personal affections for Nami and the other being the fact that consuming the Suke-Suke Noomi had always been a dream of his in order for him to be able to spy on naked ladies. Then we have Dr. Hogback, who was the mind behind fashioning together a legion of corpses for Moria to insert shadows into. Hogback was once well respected by Straw Hat member Tony Tony Chopper. Although this turned into fierce disgust, once Chopper realized what Hogback was using his medical knowledge to achieve. And as for the final member of the mysterious four, we have Perona, a girl with the power of the horror horonymi, which allows her to, amongst other things, conjure ghosts that force people into crippling depression. And unfortunately for her, she is matched up against Usopp, who holds a natural immunity to the ghosts due to the fact that he is already overly negative about life in general. In the meantime, Brooke also embarks on a mission to retrieve his shadow, which has been inserted into the corpse of a powerful legendary samurai named Riemer. Brooke proves unable to defeat the samurai zombie, at which point Zora steps in, eventually overcoming Riemer, which not only returns Brooke's shadow, but also earns Zora a shiny new sword named Shusui. And after the Straw Hats had taken down the primary members within Moria's crew, they are immediately forced into combat with Oz. And while this proves to be quite the spectacle, they are unable to overcome him, especially once Gekko Moria himself enters the zombie and begins piloting him like a giant robot. However, elsewhere, a band of pirates who had become trapped on thriller bark see some hope in Luffy and insert 100 shadows into him, transforming him into Nightmare Luffy. Nightmare Luffy then goes on to prove exceptionally superior to Moria and Oz in every way. However, Oz would return to combat, requiring the entirety of the Straw Hat crew to work together to put him down for good. At this point, Gekko Moria assumes his final form by absorbing 1,000 shadows. However, the power becomes too overwhelming for him to control and he is defeated by Luffy in one-on-one combat, resulting in all of the shadows being returned to their previous owners. And this is usually where we'd start wrapping up the arc, I guess. However, there is a plot twist afoot here. But as it turns out, Gekko Moria was not the only warlord of the sea present on thriller bark and Bartholomew Kuma emerges, easily defeating all of the heavily fatigued combatants remaining, all but Zoro, that is, who offers his own life in exchange for that of his captains. Kuma then agrees to the deal and uses his devil fruit abilities to remove all of the pain and fatigue from Luffy, passing it on to Zoro. However, phenomenally, Zoro survives this encounter and at which point Kuma promptly leaves the island and when questioned what had occurred while everyone else was unconscious, Zoro simply claimed that nothing happened. Having defeated the big bad, a party then occurs at which point we are treated to the tragic backstory of Brooke, who has a connection to the whale lagoon whom the straw hats had met upon entering the ground line. And as it turns out, it is his dream to return to reverse mountain and deliver the last song of his long past on pirate crew to the now adult whale who once followed them at sea. And in order to one day achieve this, Brooke officially joins the straw hats and they leave thriller bark. But not before the narrator ominously points out that while thriller bark had been anchored in the Florian Triangle for 10 years, the mystery surrounding the waters began long before that and we get a glimpse of a certain creature in the fog that completely dwarfs the largest pirate ship in the world and thus bring an end to the thriller bark saga. Next time on sagas in minutes, it's a big one because we are going to be bringing the entire first half of the series to a climax with the world-shaking events of the paramount war saga. 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