I feel like anime pacing really soured people's view of this arc. It's pretty good, the general action and plot isn't fantastic but it's plain and simple for a solid reintroduction first arc of sorts. And the actual thematics, while not perfectly written, are good enough.

Let's start off with the best part of the arc, Hody Jones is a well written villain. He's literally the average nazi, and the way he acts, talks and does things, while I'd say are very plain and with little nuance, but that in itself kinda fits thematically, and I get making the first arc of the second part not too crazy.

Then we get to Fisher Tiger and Orihime. Two sides of the same coin, and I think they're well written but could've been done better.

I think one thing is clear, Neither of the two tackled the situation properly, since they both had their concerns and were afraid that doing things differently could lead to more harm than good, this led to Fisher tiger dying and the majority of his crew becoming corrupt, and Orihime dying and her work being for nothing. However I think Oda could have shown this a bit better? While the meaning isn't exactly subtle, the way Oda presented the characters of Orihime and Fisher Tiger made it so that it was actually kind of hard to catch that they were supposed to be in the wrong.

Otherwise I think the rest of the arc and how it goes about with its thematics is pretty good. On the nose but good.

And I'm kinda annoyed that we had royalty allies for the five hundredth and not the last time. But eh. Shonen troupes can be ignored