Well, my high on the recent One Piece anime content could only last for so long. I knew it was bound to happen soon enough, but for the first time in a while, we got an episode that's just all around not-great. The story's still fine, but it's a stepping stone between much greater things, and the noticeable dip in production values isn't doing it any favors.
Last week, the audience was given a proper introduction to Big Mom, the big bad of the Whole Cake Island arc and one of the Four Emperors of the New World. However, the Straw Hats have yet to meet Big Mom themselves, instead getting introduced to Big Mom's daughter and Sanji's bride-to-be, Charlotte Pudding. Pudding is a sweet, attractive young woman who isn't presented as a villain, just another victim of her mother's whims. The biggest piece of information in this episode is the exact size of Big Mom's family/pirate crew: 39 daughters and 46 sons between 43 husbands. Big Mom has plenty of powerful underlings who are not related by blood, but the major members are her children, and they're all available to get married off for whatever political reasons Big Mom may desire (such as the Vinsmokes' military power).
Pudding's specific situation is a mystery, as there are plenty of reasons to suspect she may not be as genuine as she appears. This intrigue is deliberate given everything we've known about Big Mom up until now, and there are plenty of reasons to lean one way or the other. Pedro seems to think she's suspicious, but maybe that's a red herring? This will go on to be a major theme in the arc, where each character's true allegiance is impossible to predict. As it stands, Pudding is a delightful person who seems to be falling in love with Sanji, despite wanting to help him reunite with his crew. She knows he wouldn't be happy in a forced marriage, so she's willing to sacrifice her little crush to save him.
The animation in this episode is one of its two major weaknesses, the other being the fact that the majority of the episode centers around one drawn-out conversation between the Straw Hats and Pudding. It's alarming when they cut to another scene of Sanji preparing to confront his family, where the art quality ramps up drastically. These past few episodes are full of evidence pointing to animation teams with drastically different techniques and resources being delegated to specific characters and settings. I'm sure that's a common practice in anime, but rarely is it so jarring as it has been here. The bulk of this episode looks pretty bad, with everything looking flat and lifeless at best and the characters' eyes failing to point in the right direction at worst.
The episode does end with a solid cliffhanger though, as the Straw Hats return to their ship with fresh instructions from Pudding on how to get to Totto Land's main island undetected. Their temporary ally, Pekoms, is nowhere to be seen, having scratched a "turn back" warning for them into the walls of the ship. Luffy's response? "Things are getting exciting!" We're on to "act two" of the Whole Cake Island arc, where the anime adaptation is at its greatest risk of disappointing. Next week's episode looks fine, and I don't begrudge the occasional dud like this week's episode, but it's enough to make you sweat a little.
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 ...