Yeah, now that Ultimo has had a few more chapters under its belt, I can say that I'm enjoying it a good deal more. The goofy narration has all but ceased, the back and forth between the present day and Yamato's dreams of Raseimon is pretty cool, and the ever expanding cast seems promising. My only issue is the ever present pseudo romance between Ultimo and Yamato, which is reminding me quite a bit of Ryu and Lyserg from Shaman King... weird.
One piece is pretty consistently awesome, provided you have the patience to follow it through its 60 some books. Although I find myself dropping in and out of the series from time to time, I can honestly say I hope it goes on forever.
As far as Brotherhood goes, I've heard that while its accurate to the manga in alot of ways the original wasn't, its different in alot of other ways, if that makes any sense. I don't know why I haven't started watching, considering Funimation streams the show free on their website.
Which reminds me. Funimation streams a buttload of anime off of their website and hulu. Back in 04 I was looking for a means to watch Fist of the North Star. Back in 07, I was desperately looking for episodes of Space Pirate Captain Harlock to no avail. Now in 09 I find most of the shows free on funimation's website. I guess patience is a virtue?
Back to Ultimo real quick though... after only a few chapters (I think the first tankoubon volume was recently released) Ultimo has found a stateside release, serialized int he pages of the US Shonen Jump, which is cool, since it is one of the few comics in the magazine that isn't hundreds of chapters behind its Japanese counterpart (One Piece, for example, is some 500 chapters short). However, I find this quite frustrating, as my beloved Nobuhiro Watsuki's newest work, Embalming, has had 3 tankoubons released with a fourth on the way, but no word for a US release has surfaced at all. WTF!? Worse yet, scanlations of the series are inconsistent and few and far between. Too bad Stan the Man didn't have a hand in Embalming...