My big question is whether Red Hawk is Luffy manifesting Ace's powers somehow, like the scene seems to imply, or if it's just some mundane method like Sanji uses.

Or if it's Luffy using Haki in another way that doesn't make sense with how it was originally described.

Quote Originally Posted by Kraco View Post
against these opponents who are much weaker than the tougher enemies they faced before the time jump.
I don't believe that's the case at all.

After all, Pacifistas, which devastated the group pre-timeskip, were being one-shotted afterwards.

The New Fishman Pirates, while not a truly credible threat, are still doing better than that. I'd say these guys are all tougher than CP9 or the Thriller Bark pirates, it's just the Strawhats have gotten so much stronger in two years that they're making it look easy.

Quote Originally Posted by Assertn View Post
It's interesting that Brook got anything of value from the longarm tribe. I wonder if it's one of the legendary grade swords. Considering that Zoro has used 4 different grade swords, and none of them had any sort of elemental affix, it would be disappointing if this one didn't.
I understood it as it's the same sword he had before, the Longarm Tribe just sharpened it with some high level of skill.