I watched the anime crew eps and then re-read the last two chapters and it was a lot better. I think this could have been handled somewhat better, but I'm not sure how.
I see each character arc as being about 4-5 parts
part 1 = 1st manga cover, 1st anime ep
part 2 = 2nd manga cover, 2nd anime ep
part 3 = doesn't exist in anyform yet
part 4 = last 2 manga chapters and next chapter
part 5 = Some seem complete at part 4, but others seem like there might be more?
I'm guessing after Marineford the anime will animate part 3 -> Luffy's flashback then do the current part 4 and beyond conclusions.
It's pretty awkward, and sometimes important stuff happened in part 3 (Usopp actually getting strong and fighting back, Zoro meeting Mihawk, etc...). But otoh, if the manga took the long route and covered the entire story for each character from start to finish it'd probably be 2 chapters a character and that would mean 4 months of this stuff before the story moved forward, which would be a bad thing.
The next few weeks of manga and what Oda does with the story structure should be interesting. And I really hope the part 3s get animated so we can see them at some point.