We're back to Onigashima after our holiday rest and clip show, and what a return it is! Lots of action this week with a fair amount of plot progression in the ongoing battles dotting Wano.
It was great seeing Jinbei get plenty of time to shine this week. While Sanji's Chun-Li impersonation is wonderful and all, what we're really here for is the big fish uncle doing his thing. Jinbei squaring off against Gorilla Punch is one of those scenes that's a lot of fun to watch but completely incomprehensible if you're not a One Piece fan. I can easily imagine a conversation going like this:
“In this scene, a big blue fish uses underwater martial arts to defeat a man with a sentient gorilla torso for an arm.”
“Wait, what? Is that what One Piece is about?”
“No, this is a minor side fight between supporting characters in the middle of a samurai revolution on Fist of the North Star island.”
You know, typical stuff.
I also enjoyed the scenes with everyone drinking and partying at the Flower Capital while talking about the Onigashima raid. The fact that the very existence of the raid is a fantasy, that the people are so used to the current state of affairs, they can't even imagine a fight for change… I think it underscores how long the oppression has been going on and how effective it has been. Even though Kaido berates the Akazaya Nine for not being the same caliber of samurai that Oden was, the fact that they are challenging him at all puts them into that legendary status as well.
Then of course there's Kiku losing her arm, which felt just as shocking and abrupt as it had been in the manga. I still haven't gotten over reading it in the manga and now I'm DOUBLY an emotional wreck.
Lastly, there's the new OP! No offense to Dreamin On, which has me randomly shouting MUGEN DAAAAAAI NO CHIZU HIROGEEEE for no reason the past year, but I've been eager to see a new opening for a while. Paint is worth the wait, a slightly more subdued tune but coupled with gorgeous fluid animation. I played it back three times to soak it all in. Thanks again to the Toei team, One Piece fans have been eating well for a while.
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...
Recently ended manga follows middle school student living with mysterious bird-looking creature― Shogakukan announced on Friday that Akira Konno's Kujima Utaeba Ie Hororo manga is inspiring an anime. The "bird(?) home comedy" manga's story starts when first-year middle school student Arata Kōda meets a mysterious bird-looking creature named Kujima in autumn. Hungry and craving Japanese food, Kujima ...
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 ...