One Piece Episode 565

[Kraco]

Edit: http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Soul_Solid
Ok, so apparently it's Brook's spirit powers that allows him to imbue it with ice.

That's what the episode itself said, after all. Maybe the maintenance done by the longarm tribe was more of a psychological thing, a placebo effect.

A jolly good episode, all in all, even if I can't help but feel any grand new techniques are totally wasted, that is, used unnecessarily, against these opponents who are much weaker than the tougher enemies they faced before the time jump. The Luffy vs Hody fight is no different, even if Hody gets up after every beating, to pop more pills. The only real danger is the ship falling and that's it.

[DarthEnderX]

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.

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.

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.