Last week ended with Pudding visiting Luffy and Nami in prison, but the fact that it cut off halfway through the scene perplexed me, since this week kicks off immediately with the dramatic setup that this visit was intended to create: Pudding whispers some kind of secret into our heroes' ears to their absolute shock. Is it a good shock? Bad shock? We can't possibly know. Why they didn't pace last week's episode to make room for this moment is a total mystery to me, since it barely buys this episode a whopping two minutes, but whatever.
Regardless, the intrigue is running strong this week now that Pudding has some kind of plan to stop the wedding, and by the time the episode wraps up, Vinsmoke Reiju is limping through the halls with a bloody bullet wound from an unseen gunman. The pulpy whodunit conundrum is a strong element, even if it's only going to last us a couple of episodes. Meanwhile, all the other expected subplots roar ahead.
With each scene of this week's episode, the content of last week's feels more inconsequential. It's that problem of building up to the setup that makes the roller coaster of this arc more exhausting than fun, but at least relegating the boring parts to last week means that this episode gets to be chock full of entertainment. I was wrong about the Carrot and Chopper subplot being over, but this half of the climax is significantly more enjoyable, as is Brook vs. Big Mom's minions. There's more variety to the action, and it's much more lively and animated overall.
This episode also marks the first time that one of the Sanji-retrieval team meets Big Mom face to face, as she unexpectedly bursts into the treasure room just as Brook is about to secure the One Piece-locating Poneglyph. On one hand, an enraged Emperor who's extra-touchy about her treasure is way out of Brook's league as a fighter, but on the other hand he's also the exact kind of rare species that she has an affinity for collecting. There's also the competitive relationship between their Devil Fruits, where Brook has control over his own soul and Big Mom has control over others'. Elsewhere on the island, Pedro begins his poetic rematch with Baron Tamgo, as it's revealed that the two of them took each other's eyes at at some point in the past, and the conviction that the show sells this "manly" duel between a jaguar-man and an egg-man balances tone in the way that One Piece has always excelled.
This episode has a lot going for it as various forces cross paths, and a lot of great mystery is being established. I'm always somewhat wary when the art style starts to deviate from the norm, because "unique" in this show is sometimes a synonym for "ugly", but in this week's episode (and some of what we can see in the Next Episode Preview) there's a lot of energy being drawn from that messiness. The flavor is right where I want One Piece to be as the melodrama cranks up. As usual, I think this part of the arc, which is full of action and turns of fortune, is where the pacing ideally would start picking up. This episode thankfully feels packed, but knowing that the most interesting events don't get to happen back-to-back like they should is a little sad. As it stands on its own, this episode is pretty strong.
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 ...