With all three initial Zou episodes being home runs, it was only a matter of time before we got an episode that was just “pretty good.” The majority of the crew has reunited, minus Sanji, so most of this episode is the crew sitting around with their new Mink friends and filling each other in on the events that they've missed out on since splitting up early in the Dressrosa arc. As a result, this episode is low on the awe and wonder that this arc was off to such a great start with.
That being said, there are still a few things that I have to give Toei props on, mainly the continued inclusion of genuinely entertaining filler sequences. At the beginning of this arc, the samurai duo who had been tagging along with the Straw Hats, Kin'nemon, and Kanjuro, got knocked off the back of Ryunosuke and had to restart their climb up the elephant on their own. This time, they're using a new living drawing in the form of Nekozaemon the cat. In the manga, that's about as eventful as their re-climb gets. But in the anime, we see their trials as the elephant's run-off water from last week knocks them back down yet again and Nekozaemon just barely survives being washed away, remaining as this horrifying zombie-looking monster that insists on continuing its climb. That image got a big laugh out of me, and I was happy to see Toei editorializing the story in a way that was actually fun to watch.
The rest of the episode centers around a flashback as we learn the immediate events of what went down with Sanji's half of the crew after splitting from Dressrosa and getting chased by Big Mom. We get confirmation that Bege Capone has joined Big Mom's forces and is assisting them with the capture of the Straw Hats' mad scientist hostage, Caesar Clown. The ensuing fight is one of those cool team-up attacks that we don't get to see from the Straw Hats often enough, and I really like seeing Sanji's Sky Walk ability animated in a way that actually has a sense of speed and impact. The crew does manage to escape and even blow a big hole in Big Mom's ship. Not a small feat when your opponent is one of the Four Emperors.
The episode ends with the promise of the continued story of the “Twirly Hat Pirates” and the eventual explanation as to where exactly Sanji has been this whole time. The flashback is to be continued as the crew travels across Zou to meet one of the county's two Dukes, a man named Dogstorm (or “Inuarashi” if you prefer the Japanese name).
This episode isn't exceptional like the last few have been, but it's solid nonetheless. In an ideal world, this is what the lower-end episodes of this show would look like; it's not especially stylish or ambitious, but more of a connecting information episode designed to transition us between the really cool parts of the story. The flashback to the Twirly Hat crew had some good action, and Brook's arrival on the scene was super funny as we learn the natural relationship between a batch of living bones and a community of dog Minks. Lastly, the episode preview for next week looks especially cool as we step closer the the grittier side of Sanji and company's previous adventures on Zou.
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...
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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 ...