Depending on my audience, I love to pitch One Piece to people by illustrating its brazen, beautiful ridiculousness. After pointing out that the main pirate crew’s doctor is a reindeer who ate the Human-Human Fruit, I often follow up with, “and their resident musician is a skeleton with a ‘fro.”
But Brook, despite his initially absurd-seeming appearance, is much more than a visual spectacle. He’s a perfect illustration of One Piece‘s brilliance. So many characters initially seem silly and wacky, but turn out to have tragic backstories which give that wacky presentation a haunting gravity. And then, once you’ve had a good cry and endeared yourself to the character, they go back to being silly and wacky again—but now with a three-dimensional depth.
Sure, Brook may constantly, yet at least always politely, ask women if he can see their undies. As one of the final members to join the Straw Hats, he’s still a lovable, deeply memorable character, armed with one of the saddest backstories in the series. And if you’re familiar with One Piece backstories, you know that means something.
But when, exactly, did Brook join Luffy’s crew?
Brook’s first appearance
***Some spoilers ahead for One Piece up to the Thriller Bark arc (which is pre-timeskip)***
We meet Brook at the very beginning of One Piece‘s Thriller Bark arc, a very horror film and Rocky Horror Picture Show-inspired affair that happens to be one of the best arcs in the series. His first appearance is in chapter 442 of the manga and episode 337 of Toei’s anime, respectively.
Of course, Luffy asks Brook to join immediately, because he will ask anyone who’s particular to join. And a skeleton alone on an abandoned ghost ship definitely counts as “particular.” Most of the crew are not initially thrilled about this, but Brook boards their ship for a while—until he whisks away when they “land” on a giant vessel called Thriller Bark.
As such, Luffy’s ask doesn’t seem to stick. We see Brook in action during the heart of the arc, but Brook seems a bit like a third party. To know when Brook actually joins the crew, we have to fast-forward to very end of the arc, after all the fighting is over and all the good guys are having a banquet to celebrate their victory.
Brook joins in one of the series’ best scenes
At the banquet, Brook begins to play the piano, and Luffy pops on top as he listens, very Lucy-and-Schroeder-like. We learn Brook’s incredibly sad backstory: he was originally a member of the Rumbar Pirates, a jolly and music-loving crew who were tailed by and became close to a baby whale named Laboon. The crew was forced to leave Laboon, who would grow to an enormous size, with a friend at the onset of the Grand Line.
Brook became captain when the original captain and half the crew fell ill. Sometime thereafter, the rest of Brook’s crew was killed through the usage of poisoned weapons in a pirate attack while they floated through the foggy abyss of the Florian Triangle. Brook carries in his empty skull a recording of the final performance his music-loving crew ever gave, as they were all dying. But Brook had eaten the Revive-Revive Fruit, so his soul eventually turned to his body—long after his flesh had rotted off. The revived Brook was doomed to roam his ship, filled with the corpses of his closest friends, until someone found him in the Florian Triangle, a place where people don’t find things.
Brook waited 60 years. Then Luffy came. Can you imagine being by yourself, with no one to talk to, trapped in the location where all your friends died, with no sunlight at all, for sixty years? It breaks my brain a little bit to just consider it.
Incidentally, Luffy knows Laboon—the Straw Hats befriended him at the outset of their journey on the Grand Line. The fully-grown Laboon had gained scars from knocking his head against the rocks of the Grand Line’s entryway, grieving his long-lost friends.
So, obviously, Brook is destined to join the crew. Brook asks Luffy, and Luffy immediately accepts in chapter 489 of the anime and episode 381 of the manga. Both entries are named to celebrate Brook becoming the eighth Straw Hat crew member.
(Image credit: Toei Animation)
