We're at the point in the Dressrosa arc where you pretty much have to be resigned to One Piece's excruciating pace and low production values in order to muster through. We continue with the one-on-one battle of Trafalgar Law and Donquixote Doflamingo, which has reached a phase of repetition that's really starting to challenge my patience watching it week to week. We get the usual shonen smack talk, an exchange of String-String and Op-Op powers, Law gets desperate and cocky, Doflamingo gets angry and then maniacally gleeful, etc. Thankfully, we seem to have reached the end of it due to an interesting development that I'll get to in a bit.
Continuing on from last week, it seems One Piece has temporarily bottomed out in its animation. Toei held on long enough to keep the Corazón flashback looking pretty nice, but now the toll has been taken. Throughout the episode we see the camera cutting away from the action just as the most interesting motions are in play, letting the sound effects tell the story more than anything. This has been used effectively in the past, but it feels so stiff and unnatural here, like the various shots are uncomfortably crammed together and desperate to make you look the other way just as things get to their ugliest.
Thankfully, this episode does have a bit more meat on it than the last. The way the modern One Piece anime normally operates is that each episode is a direct adaptation of a corresponding manga chapter, but every once in a while they do mix and match some of the scenes from nearby chapters. This week we're spared from the run-time being focused almost entirely on Law and Doflamingo and in addition we get a really entertaining scene from Zoro and pica's fight.
This is the portion of the episode that holds up the best, animation-wise, but the actual content is also really amusing. pica's comically high pitched voice is funny on its own, but it reaches it's peak mixture of disturbing and hysterical when he laughs. Their fight in general is one of the most interesting of the bunch as well, since you've got a regular sized Zoro smashing a mountain sized enemy who can move throughout the island with ease thanks to his stone-assimilation powers. There's a lot of room for big spectacle that carries the fight to a lot of different locations.
The most important event to happen in this episode, however, does occur back during Law's fight. Doflamingo has him pretty much beat and lands a nasty blow using something called a “string-saw” attached to his leg to cut Law's arm off. This is a crazy dramatic development for a series like One Piece. There are no expectations that Law might die by the end of the arc, but it's cool to think that permanent damages are still on Oda's mind. This is exactly the kind of edge that feels right for a series like this, which often aims itself at kids and teenagers, but also trusts them to handle violent and scary things. I just like knowing that things can be permanently lost or changed in this show (and to the people current with the manga, I know.)
This episode makes it pretty clear that Law is more-or-less out of the fight now, meaning the focus can change as we build back up to the real, no-holds-barred Luffy vs. Doflamingo fight. We've got a lot of other battles going on in Dressrosa, and we're really, really at the show's mercy right now in terms of how rewarding or exhausting each one can be. Fingers crossed we get more hits than misses with the next upcoming batch of fights.
Kaiju No. 8 takes the top spot this week while Tonari no Yōkai-san pushes to #3 in the cmulative! Check out 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 are based on how people rated in...
Mospeada is a work very much of its time, riffing on ideas and tropes that were all the rage when it was made, and doesn't do anything exceptional with them.― It can be easy for even longtime fans to forget that alongside Macross, there were two other 80's sci-fi anime that got Frankenstein-ed into what we'd eventually call Robotech. While this isn't the first time one of those series has made it to...
Main staff, cast reunite for new film― Warner Bros. Japan revealed on Thursday that it is producing a sequel film to its Batman Ninja CG anime film titled Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League. Junpei Mizusaki, the producer of the opening animation sequences for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders and Kamikaze Douga CEO/founder, is returning from Batman Ninja to direct...
Following the upcoming retro programming block Toonami Rewind, Chris and Lucas look back fondly on the afternoons spent watching Naruto and Sailor Moon.― Following the upcoming retro programming block Toonami Rewind, Chris and Lucas look back fondly on the afternoons spent watching Naruto and Sailor Moon. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the v...
Yeah, yeah, Kaiju No. 8 has all the great action scenes, but Yatagarasu is chewing up the scenery as the royal ladies absolutely lose their minds!?― Why Aren't You Watching This Anime Yet? Yeah, yeah, Kaiju No. 8 has all the great action scenes, but Yatagarasu is chewing up the scenery as the royal ladies absolutely lose their minds!? The ANN After Show streams live on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitte...
Here we have a from-the-ground-up remake, but does this beloved classic still hold up in a modern sense, or is that praise just nostalgia talking?― It's nice when Nintendo surprises us with a remaster or re-release of one of their more difficult-to-obtain games. The original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the Nintendo GameCube is a classic for many. However, since the game was never re-rele...
Miles Atherton crunched Netflix's latest numbers for some surprising anime discoveries, from the popularity of My Happy Marriage to the One Piece juggernaut.― Since the advent of streaming, it's been notoriously difficult to gauge how popular a specific anime is with international audiences, both for publishers looking to make informed decisions for a market that generates most of its revenue outsi...
Haruka Shiraishi, Jun Fukuyama star in EMT Squared anime― The official website for the television anime of Izumi Sawano's I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons (Kisaki Kyōiku kara Nigetai Watashi) light novel series opened on Wednesday and revealed the anime's teaser visuals, main cast, main staff, and 2025 premiere. The anime stars: Haruka Shiraishi as Leticia Jun Fukuyama as Clarke Uri Sugata, th...
Game also inspires 2nd symphonic concert 'with animation'― The official website for Palette's 9-nine- game announced on Wednesday that the anime is inspiring a television anime. To commemorate the anime announcement, the franchise will hold its "9-nine- Symphonic Concert 2 with Animation" on September 8. (The franchise held an earlier symphonic concert, without the "animation" tag, on October 17, 20...
With seven full routes and one mini-route with a character from the previous game, if you enjoyed Cupid Paradise, Sweet & Spicy Darling is worth playing.― The first order of business is this: if you haven't played the original Cupid Parasite otome game, there isn't much point in picking up Sweet & Spicy Darling. There is one new route for this sequel, but even that relies on you knowing the backgrou...
With the release of Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction, Nick and Steve take a look at it and some other manga that were thought to be "unadaptable"—and see if that was truly the case.― With the release of Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, Nick and Steve take a look at it and some other manga that were thought to be "unadaptable"—and see if that was truly the case. Disclaimer: The views and...
LiSA performs 'Black Box' opening theme― The official website for NieR:Automata Ver 1.1a, the television anime of Square Enix and Platinum Games' NieR:Automata action role-playing game, started streaming its "promotion file 11" on Tuesday. The video previews the opening theme song "Black Box" by LiSA, and reveals the premiere of the anime's second cours (quarter of year) in July. (The video below re...
When even the author says this story will hurt, you know it will be bad.― When even the author says this story will hurt, you know it will be bad. That's assuming, of course, that you weren't prepared for it going in. The fate of Astrea Familia is well-known to readers and viewers (and players) of the various Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon iterations, and the most recent season of ...
The documentary was full of cool tidbits about the 82-year-old producer and the anime he's worked on—including Ninja Scroll, Pluto, and In This Corner of the World.― Late last month, Japanese television network NHK put out a documentary on anime producer Masao Maruyama as part of their Anime Manga Explosion series. In it, the show delves into the now 82-year-old producer's life, philosophies, and so...