Average One Piece Fans when you ask them to summarize the story in the shortest way possible:

As to the popularity of Ace, I'd say scarcity breeds demand. Just by making him strong, smart, and a super cool and good guy, and then limiting our access to him, Oda has made Ace a very desirable character.

Thriller Bark (based on The haunted mansion) was not threatening... Until Kuma. It was the horror of not having Luffy to defend the crew after they were exhausted. It was a great reminder that their enemies were not going to wait to be defeated one at a time.

My favorite Luffy moment in Arlong Park is definitely when he kicks in the doors and asks which one of them is Arlong. Mostly because he has absolutely no clue who the guy even IS, much less what he's actually done, but is absolutely ready to throw down.

After practically four days of watching this monumental piece, making sure to pay attention to every detail and not miss a single second of it, all I have to say about this masterclass of art is:

A small detail about the end of Enies Lobby. The crew all agree that if the first words out of Usopp’s mouth aren’t an apology, they’ll leave him behind. So every time he speaks to one of them, they pretend they didn’t hear him until he finally apologizes.

The new context you get about Arlong from sabaody is some really fantastic story telling. In east blue he’s just some monster that you quickly grow to hate and then you see how the script is flipped and realize that arlong is actually a tragic and sad character. Arlong park is basically an attempt to have all the things he was denied in life because of racism, and then he’s even acting like the celestial dragons.

“Act of dad… I mean act of god” when describing the loguetown beheading incident with luffy was the best thing I’ve heard in a while

Thriller Bark is thematically important because Moria is a reflection of where Luffy is at in the series at that time. Moria got to confident, he challenged Kaido way to soon and lost eveything. This whole arc is to set up the necessity of the time skip, at this point Luffy has beaten his opponents by the skin of his teeth and while he's come a long way and gottten stronger he isn't close to being as strong as he needs to be and that shows up even more with each of the Kuma encounters.

I understand some of the issues you had with Thriller Bark but I think you missed an important part of this - Moria used to be an ambitious pirate, just like Luffy. His dramatic failure when he reached Kaido, and his persistent funk since then is a dark mirror of what might happen to Luffy if he were to have all his crew torn from him too. When Oars is defeated, Moria snaps. He can't take it that there's this runt in front of him, so lively and happy with his whole crew while he's stuck here in the darkness of the Florian Triangle with crappy ghost-ship antagonists like Hogback and Absolom. In his mental breakdown, he loses control of his rationality and rather than wait for the sun to do it, he wants to crush them so much that he risks it all, takes in all the shadows he's stolen, and loses the fight. He's a broken man, and could never get past his own prior defeat. In his last words, he dares them to go to the new world because he is certain that nobody with his ambition can go there without being destroyed like him.

41:14 this just made me realize that Usopp’s fighting style is the classic cowardly character when honor was the name of the game. Snipers used to be considered cowards, and it’s a perfect fighting style for Usopp.

The scene where Nami asks Luffy for help is my favorite scene in the whole series. It was definitely the moment this became more than just another anime for me. And it's a testament to oda's talent that it's even better watching over a second time after getting through the rest of the series. I'm crying now just listening to you describe it

Trying to get Vivi's duck drunk is just the definition of a great friendship group XD