One Piece Episode 1073 brings us back down to earth, so to speak. While there are some high-flying moments and great action, the majority of the episode leaves the rooftop battle and clues us in on the fallout of the fire.
It's hard to keep up the same kinetic energy of the past two episodes. So, understandably, this week is a downshift into the regular weekly territory. Of course, a regular weekly episode of Wano is still a cut above what most other shows offer - every moment looks anywhere from good to great - but like so many prior entries in this long-running arc, it's hard to follow such a stellar act.
It also takes a more mundane approach for the majority of the episode runtime. We get a sizable chunk of Luffy and Kaido duking it out, though it is far shorter once the replay of last week's animation is factored in. Instead, we are back to the typical raid episode, traveling about through the bowels of Onigashima and checking in on our various heroes as they try to escape. As I've said previously, many of these moments will vary in enjoyment based on your connection to the character(s) in focus in that particular scene. In the past, this has been a struggle for me as the often complex windings and sheer number of characters have left me disconnected from certain individual threads.
I have to say that this section kept me engaged across all the sub-stories, though. I think this is due in part to the fact that there is a common thread across all the different vignettes: fire! Fire is bad, as they say, and each character/group is trying to get around this and escape. This commonality makes it easy to jump from one section to another without having to remember what the particular motivations or the last state of play were in each scene. It's also fun seeing all the hilarious little moments sprinkled in for a bit of levity, from samurai apologizing for Brook's death to Usopp trying a sprinkler flower in vain. Raizo capping everything off with my favorite jutsu he's used is a real treat.
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