Whether or not you enjoy the chaos of Wano week to week really depends on how much you enjoy the characters who are in the spotlight in each given scene. Given the sheer breadth of the cast, locations, and motivations coalescing in this grand battle, it can be a real crapshoot as to who you'll see on the center stage and whether you'll enjoy it. This week was a good one for myself at least, as it (mostly) highlighted characters I am deeply invested in.
The Big Mom and Marco fight was a bit mixed for me. No offense to the pineapple phoenix lovers out there, but he doesn't do much for me as a character, despite generally being the center of attention whenever he's on-screen. Big Mom is great though, so I'm a big fan of her knocking him around and generally being indestructible. Perospero is similarly kind of meh for me outside of his ridiculous design, but Carrot and Wando going sicko mode (sulong variant) is great. The x-slash across the face was gorgeous, and the Pedro flashback was great for highlighting that even the “minor” grudges at play are a big deal for the cast.
Nami and Usopp also get a brief moment to wrap up their scene with Page One and Ulti. I love Usopp and Nami of course—their goofy sibling antics and Usopp's cartoonish sneaking are terrific—though I find myself waffling on Page One and Ulti. On the one hand, they have really distinctive designs and turn into dinosaurs which is rad. On the other hand, the sibling rivalry and “Ulti whines a lot” shtick wore out its welcome with me fast. Hearing Ulti yell PAY PAY feels like we're just killing time at this point.
Surprising no one, the real treat for me was Yamato and Franky. Yamato has got to be one of the most memorable recent additions to the One Piece cast to my mind, and any Franky time is a good time. Yamato going all fanboy about Franky appearing and then one-shotting a giant on the way out was big Dudes Rock energy. And of course, every action was animated to the nines and punctuated with stellar emotional stakes with the Oden flashbacks. Momo has been mostly miss rater than hit for me, but seeing him managing to shed his fear over his father's death and learn to be inspired by it instead—all via Yamato and Luffy being shining examples to him—has been great character growth.
Japanese studio to handle production slated for broadcast, streaming globally― Kadokawa and Singaporean game developer and publisher Garena announced on Monday that they are co-producing an anime adaptation of Garena's Garena Free Fire battle royale shooting game, with a Japanese studio handling the animation. Kadokawa's Kadokawa Qingyu subsidiary is the production manager. The anime is planned to b...
Healer Nanna's powers have one very unique caveat: she has to have sex with the person to heal them. See why Rebecca Silverman calls it "a cute story, decently racy, and generally good, fluffy fun."― One of the fun things about Seven Seas' Steamship line of racy manga aimed at a female audience is finding which romance tropes are prevalent in any given release. While every genre has its tropes and s...
What's the perfect recipe for waifu supremacy? Lucas and Nick look at fan-favorites from Yu Yu Hakusho to Spice & Wolf.― What's the perfect recipe for waifu supremacy? Lucas and Nick look at fan-favorites from Yu Yu Hakusho to Spice & Wolf. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the s...
Train to the End of the World and Voice Actor Radio are getting a lot of love these last few weeks! Discover which other series stand out in our weekly user rankings!― Let's have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season,
based on the polls you can find in our Daily Streaming Reviews
and on the Your Score page with the latest simulcasts. Keep in mind that these rankings...
Crystal Kay previously sang themes for 2004's Fullmetal Alchemist and Nodame Cantabile― Recently, Anime News Network was able to sit down with singer-songwriter Crystal Kay and talk about not only her involvement with anime over the years but also what it was like to grow up in Japan as the child of a Korean-Japanese mother and an African-American father. Anime fans likely know of Crystal Kay throug...
The plot is excellent in the romance camp. Everything that happens is to get Eui-joon and Gunwoo together, and it works pretty well.― You can read The Dangerous Convenience Store in English two ways. The first is to read it on the manhwa site/app Manta, which has all seventy-five chapters and four bonus stories available. The second is to read Seven Seas' print (or ebook) edition, which, as of this ...
Some older mysteries inch closer to resolution as the true nature of the Abyss slowly comes into view, and long-posed questions start to be answered.― Sometimes, being a fan of Akihito Tsukushi's acclaimed Made in Abyss series means acclimating to suffering. Like many Western devotees, I was introduced to this bizarre, squishy, disturbing world via the 2017 first season of Kinema Citrus' fantastic a...
60th, final episode of previous anime streamed on YouTube on Friday― The official Twitter account for the anime of Penguin Box's Odekake Kozame (Little Shark's Outings) manga announced on Friday that the manga will get a new anime series. Update: The staff revealed a visual for the new series in a press release on Saturday. The previous anime series debuted on YouTube last August, and its 60th and f...
As Slam Dunk reached its final stretch, I can see why this series is considered the sports classic that it is today.― This is the largest batch of Slam Dunk episodes that I've reviewed thus far. Originally, I wanted to review the show in more even seasons, but given its overall pacing and release, it wasn't easy to find a moment where it felt right to stop and start again. However, as we approached ...