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I really wanted to make this anime filler arc a part of my One Piece journey, even though I'm reading the manga. This is technically still a part of the Sky Island Saga, but we're giving it it's own section because, I don't know, it's an excuse to embed another one of the openings.

A part of the reason for that is because One Piece is pretty infamous for having really slow pacing, but also really bad filler in the Toei adaptation. So, why is this considered the exception?

I'm a bit old-fashioned in that I can appreciate episodic detours, it's something that I miss from TV these days. But the thing is, in an anime adaptation specifically, it's entirely reasonable to not enjoy the story coming to a complete halt in order to make way for fanfiction written by some nameless executive.

I genuinely liked a lot of the Dragon Ball Z anime filler, just for comparison, and I vastly prefer this method to Toei padding out arcs with hours and hours of characters just standing around, glowing and screaming.

It helped to expand the world and it even tricked you into thinking there ever was a reason to care about characters like Tien.

But One Piece anime filler is genuinely some of the worst trash that's ever been animated and they interweave it into major plot points. So, I don't know, maybe Akira Toriyama's simple storytelling lends itself to expansion, whereas One Piece is already so expansive?

We open the arc with the Going Merry falling out of the sky and landing right in the middle of this super high security stronghold. I enjoyed how we got to see this from the Marine's point of view, something that we rarely get to see, if ever. We see them investigate the ship and they're puzzled as to where everyone disappeared.

Commander Jonathan... has a mustache. He lacks a lot of the humour and bombast that you see from a typical One Piece adversary and we never get to see him fight. I'm not against this, a meticulous planner and strategist, he just needed some "oomph" to really make him feel more organic to the series.

Luffy and Sanji are in the kitchen and we get to see a cooking battle between Sanji and Jessica. Sanji calls them out for being wasteful and using all of the parts they didn't, to whip up a meal just like how Zeff taught him back at Baratie.

Luffy downs 100 dishes, similar to during Whiskey Peak, as Jessica bans the use of Sanji's recipe, simply because he's a pirate.

I really appreciated this scene. You'll notice how back during the Alabasta Saga, I wrote about "true beginnings" for all of the main characters, except for Sanji.

He gets cool moments and is given some interesting things to do, don't get me wrong, but it's clear that Eiichiro Oda was struggling to include him, a little bit, and keep him feeling relevant, especially amidst the rest of the main characters. I'm fearful that this might become more of a problem, especially as more of the core cast gets introduced.

Zoro, who is trying to get his swords back, gets caught in the process. Thus, the first member of the crew has been captured.

Meanwhile, Chopper and Nami have disguised themselves as Doctors. I wish that we got to see this Cat Burglar side of Nami more often, it's fun. And it's really nice getting to see some agency from Chopper, whereas unlike him just being thrown into the problem, he chooses to confront it and carries out his duties as a Doctor, even at the risk of his own safety. This is very very big.

Usopp has found the Going Merry, but he gets caught and is taken in to be questioned by Johnathan. He lies and spins the situation into them believing that he is an inspector, but that doesn't work for too long as Robin shows up with the exact same plan, so Usopp gets captured alongside Zoro.

After Sanji and Luffy arrive to break Zoro and Usopp out of the cell, it's time for Nami and Chopper to regroup, and blah blah blah you get the picture.

In Conclusion

It's easy to see why this filler arc was so beloved. It does a few things differently, it has an adversary that focuses more on strategy than confrontation, it's got some good jokes, and it does a great job of shining the spotlight on each Straw Hat, every single one of them.

These are all, I would say, have been One Piece's greatest weaknesses up until this point. The bad villains, lame and repetitive jokes, and unbalanced character writing outside of dramatic flashbacks.

This is going to be a very hard pill to swallow for some people, but world-building does not matter. Lore and continuity are something that only hardcore nerds and obsessives care about, the casual audience does not.

The setting can just be some random marine base because it's the characters are what matters, not the world, the world can take a backseat.

This G-8 filler arc essentially turns One Piece into something that a more casual audience can watch and enjoy, take that for what you will.