What keeps me alive in this world is neither bodily organs, nor muscles - it's my soul!
"Soul King" Brook is the musician of the Straw Hat Pirates, one of their two swordsmen, and one of the Senior Officers of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. He is the ninth member of the crew and the eighth to join, doing so at the end of the Thriller Bark Arc.
Brook ate the Yomi Yomi no Mi, which allowed him to return to life after death once. Brook eventually learned to tap deeper into the powers of his Devil Fruit, giving him significant control over his own soul and the souls of others.
Originally a member of the Rumbar Pirates, he died and was resurrected through the power of the Yomi Yomi no Mi. However, due to the amount of time it took for his soul to find his body, it was reduced to a skeleton, keeping only his afro intact. Brook drifted alone in the Florian Triangle for 50 years, eventually meeting Luffy and serving as the Straw Hats' ally during the Thriller Bark Arc before officially joining the crew. His dream is to reunite with his old friend, Laboon, at Reverse Mountain, where he resides with Crocus.
Before his death, Brook was a tall, tan, skinny man who had a rather distinctive face. He had a slight goatee on his chin and some side burns. He typically wore shades never revealing his eyes. On his forehead was a scar that slightly resembles a diagonal omega sign (Ω). This scar was retained in his skeletal state as a distinctive crack across his skull. Brook's facial appearance, accompanied with his style of clothing, resembles a type of appearance and style that is commonly associated with various music artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Jimi Hendrix, Slash, and other musical celebrities with similar features.
Brook is an extremely tall skeleton dressed in formal attire complete with top hat and cane. Standing at 266 cm (8'8½") in height, he is the second tallest member of the Straw Hat crew, having been edged out by Jinbe. Despite having no skin, he still has an afro which he says is because his hair has very strong roots. Brook's style was that of a gentleman consisting of a coat, top hat, trousers and afro, which were black, while the inner linings of his coat were yellow-orange. The cravat that was tied in between his coat and around his neck was blue. The outer covering of Brook's cane sword which he carries was purple. Also, due to his many years of seclusion his clothes were somewhat tattered.
During the Return to Sabaody Arc through Fish-Man Island Arc, he changed to more colorful and high-end clothes, as though to represent a rock star. He had heart-shaped sunglasses, a yellow feather boa, a new top hat with a giant crown on the brim and orange red trousers with a floral design. Despite being a skeleton, he grew to 277 cm (9'1") during the two-year timeskip.
During the Wano Country Arc, Kin'emon used his ability to change Brook's appearance so he could blend in with the country. Brook now wears a pure white kimono, with triangle-shaped headband and two arrows stuck in his body - an appearance befitting of a ghost, as Kurozumi Orochi's Oniwabanshu members mistake him as a gasha-dokuro. Before the Raid on Onigashima, Brook wore a samurai armor complete with a kabuto helmet and cape. He also wields a katana rather than his shikomizue. When departing for Onigashima, Brook traded his samurai armor with a black vest and cravat and also a top hat. Like everyone else participating in the raid, Kin'emon gave Brook a Beasts Pirates disguise with a dark-colored furred coat and one-horned hat.
As much as Brook normally goofs around on the ship engaging in acts of silliness with Luffy, he is still a formidable opponent. Due to his previous experiences and skills that he amassed from the days when the Pirate King Gol D. Roger was still active, Brook, in all respects, is a veteran pirate (though these attributes are somewhat downplayed by his overall demeanor, along with the fact that his isolation in the Florian Triangle seemed to have eroded his knowledge of modern society). Brook is a talented swordsman, has extraordinary speed due to his light frame, and is astonishingly difficult to harm because of his undead state.
Brook has demonstrated tactical ingenuity, as shown when he used his music to act like he was on Giolla's side, allowing him to regain his sword from her and defeat her. He also got the idea to store the copies of Big Mom's Poneglyphs inside his head before she confronted and later captured him. He is very good at working with others to execute plans in tandem, as shown when he took advantage of Pedro's distraction to get around his strongest opponents and enter the Room of Treasure. He also disguised himself as a clone of Luffy to take advantage of the chaos when Luffy crashed Big Mom's tea party, and he destroyed Big Mom's portrait of Carmel without being noticed.
Brook is a virtuoso musician who is extremely skilled in playing all kinds of instruments, particularly the violin, his favorite instrument. After he was separated from the Straw Hats, Brook picked up the guitar and, within two years, he became so highly skilled in the new instrument that he came to be regarded as a world-famous rock star. At testament to this fact, his records in Tone Dials sold in the millions, and his fans during his final world tour stop in Sabaody Archipelago were either crying or fainting at his presence. Brook can masterfully play enchanting songs that are so melodious they can completely captivate even animals like Laboon, who used to sing along to Brook's music. In addition to singing and playing music, Brook is also a skilled composer, having composed songs such as "Bone To Be Wild" and "New World", which proved to be very fashionable among music fans and lovers.
While he was still alive, Brook ate the Yomi Yomi no Mi, a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit that allowed his soul to return to the world of the living and reinhabit his body after he died. This allows him to reside within his own dead body, which had already decomposed into a skeleton by the time his soul found its way back to it, and he can even perform all the functions he did when his body contained flesh and muscle. Other than bringing him back from the dead, Brook's fruit initially seemed useless. However, he later discovered that he could exercise the power of his strengthened soul, which he discovered is what allows him to animate his body.
He can make his returned soul temporarily separate from his body so that it can move independently of his body, effectively making him a ghost. This leaves his body a lifeless husk, but as a spirit, Brook is capable of moving through walls and going to areas that would be impossible for him to physically reach, though he cannot grab hold of anything.
If his skeletal body is broken into pieces, he can extend soul tendrils to the severed body parts and pull them back into place. He is also capable of exerting his soul power to affect and overwhelm beings with weaker souls, such as Homies.
His soul energy exudes pure coldness, called the "chills of the Underworld", and allows Brook to transfer this freezing aura to objects, like his sword. With this aura, he is capable of freezing his surroundings, as seen when he turned the ground around him on Zou into ice.
Brook uses a type of sword called a shikomizue, a sword concealed inside a cane. He uses this sword in conjunction with his fencing skills and has had it for at least fifty years.
As a former battle convoy leader and pirate captain with years of experience in the Grand Line, Brook is a master in swordsmanship. Despite his usual goofy personality in battle, he is an extremely skilled swordsman who is able to dispatch numerous enemies at once with swift and precise strikes. His swordsmanship is a combination of classical fencing and iaidō.
Brook's Gentle Blade style is more focused on speed and precision while Zoro's style is more focused on power and thus uses a tremendous amount of physical strength. Brook was unable to defeat Ryuma no matter how hard he fought and while Ryuma only used a fraction of his power, he noticed that Zoro was able to defeat him at full power with only two of his swords, although Ryuma did say that Brook's protectiveness of his afro held him back somewhat.
After the timeskip, Brook has named his sword "Soul Solid", due to him developing the ability to coat it with the aura of his soul, freezing it in the process, and anyone who comes into contact with it. He also claimed that the Longarm Tribe has helped him sharpen the sword. His power and skill in swordmanship have also increased to the degree where a samurai from Wano has commended his skill and he is also now able to use flying slashes as well, which were on par with Zoro's and Kin'emon's. Like Zoro, Brook can now cut materials that are harder than steel as he was able to cut down a dragon, whose scales are tougher than steel.
Chō (チョー, born Shigeru Nagashima (長島 茂, Nagashima Shigeru), December 15, 1957) is a Japanese actor and narrator. His former stage name was Yūichi Nagashima (長島 雄一, Nagashima Yūichi). He is a graduate of the Nishogakusha University Department of Literature and received training at Bungakuza's research establishment and the Seinenza Theater Company before attaching himself to Production Baobab in 1986. He transferred to the Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society in 2007. On August 23, 2006, he changed his stage name to Chō after his character in Tanken Boku no Machi. His hobbies include badminton and jogging, and he is a licensed teacher in calligraphy.
Ian Sinclair (born March 2, 1984) is an American voice actor and voice director who works with Funimation and Sentai Filmworks. He provides voices for English versions of Japanese anime series and video games. Some of his major roles include Toraji Ishida in Bamboo Blade; Dallas Genoard in Baccano!; Douglas Rosenberg in El Cazador de la Bruja; Takeru Oyama in Maken-ki!; Brook in the Funimation dub of One Piece; Juzo Sakakura in the Danganronpa series; Whis in Dragon Ball Super, and the title characters in Toriko and Space Dandy. In addition he performs the voice in video games the likes of Battleborn, Zaveid in Tales of Zestiria, Baron Flynt in Borderlands, Professor Nakayama and Jimbo Hodunk in Borderlands 2, and Berkut in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Ian was in the English Dub cast as Yasuda in Shin Godzilla.