Thriller Bark Arc

The eighteenth story segment and the sole arc of the Thriller Bark Saga, this entry blends gothic horror with high adventure. The crew enters a fog-shrouded sea and discovers an enormous mobile island crawling with zombies, monsters, and shadow magic.

It introduces the musician Brook and pits the crew against the Warlord Gecko Moria, the mad surgeon Dr. Hogback, the invisible Absalom, and the ghost princess Perona, while building to a brutal encounter with the Warlord Bartholomew Kuma.

The crew meets Brook, a living skeleton whose shadow was stolen, leaving him unable to step into sunlight. When Thriller Bark traps the Thousand Sunny, Luffy insists on exploring. The members scatter across the island, encountering a three-headed dog, hordes of stitched-together zombies, and the sinister Hogback. They learn that Moria wields the Kage Kage no Mi to rip shadows from the living and implant them into corpses, creating warriors who inherit the victims' skills and personalities, their only weakness being salt.

Moria steals Luffy's shadow to animate Oars, a colossal ancient warrior, and the crew is forced into desperate individual battles. Zoro defeats the zombie samurai Ryuma and claims his blade Shusui, Sanji thrashes Absalom, Usopp outwits Perona, and Robin and Chopper take down Hogback. Empowered by a hundred borrowed shadows as Nightmare Luffy, the captain leads the crew in toppling Oars, then pursues Moria himself.

Cornered, Moria absorbs every shadow he commands to transform into a monstrous form, but Luffy combines Gear 2 and Gear 3 to force them all back out just as dawn breaks and the crew nearly burns away. The shadows return in time, and victory seems won, until Kuma arrives under World Government orders to erase every witness. After a one-sided fight, Zoro secretly offers his own life in exchange for Luffy's, enduring the captain's accumulated pain in silence.

With their shadows restored, the Straw Hats and the freed Rolling Pirates celebrate. Brook, revealed to be the last of the crew that once promised to return to Laboon, shares the sorrowful history of the Rumbar Pirates through a recorded final song before pledging himself to Luffy as the crew's musician.

Graves are raised for Brook's fallen comrades, and Zoro buries his broken sword Yubashiri there. Lola gives Nami a Vivre Card pointing to her mother in the New World, and Luffy notices the paper Ace once gave him beginning to burn, a sign his brother's life is in danger, though he resolves to trust Ace and press on toward Fish-Man Island.