With Luffy and Nami locked up in Big Mom's magical book prison, it's up to the rest of the crew to pick up the slack. Carrot and Chōpper are doing their best in Brulee's mirror world, but for the first time in a while, we get to set our sights on Brook and Pedro.
We're reminded in this episode that the Straw Hats' secondary mission on Whole Cake Island is to get a copy of Big Mom's Road Poneglyph, one of the giant stone tablets that makes reaching the One Piece treasure possible. It's almost a shock to the system to remember that we're in the proper final stretch of the series (however long that may take), and the way that this subplot weaves in and out of the Sanji stuff gives me goosebumps. It's Brook and Pedro's job to infiltrate and do what they can, all while we get to learn more about how the Big Mom pirates operate, as well as their storied and hostile past with Pedro specifically.
There's a real freshness to the tone of this episode, as everything reminds us how big a deal this arc is in the grand scheme of things. We get to meet Charlotte Smoothie, the long-legged giantess who belongs to Big Mom's Sweet Three and has a bounty even bigger than Cracker's at 932 million (the final member of the Sweet Three is still a mystery), and the finale of the episode pits Luffy and Big Mom against each other over the phone, like when they first argued back on Fishman Island. Luffy's the loser in this scenario, but he's being tougher than ever as he tells Big Mom to bring her smack talk to him face-to-face.
Numerous moving pieces are a big part of what makes One Piece exciting, especially when you trust that there's a reason for everything in the story. Everything is building and building, and all it takes is one really great payoff in a subplot for the entire story to change. Brook and Pedro haven't known each other for very long, but the trust they put in each other to pull off this near-suicide mission is commendable. They're very level headed and figure, "Well, if Luffy's going to be Pirate King one day, we're gonna have to go for it." It's great.
It also feels appropriate that the Luffy vs. Big Mom beef began back on Fishman Island, because the further we get into Whole Cake, the more this arc starts to reveal itself as the Act Two to Oda's race relation themes. So many new species of people have become apparent in the story by this point, and right upfront Big Mom's governing country of Totto Land is meant to be a utopia where people of all shapes and sizes can live in harmony, let alone Mom's army of multi-racial children. However, as Judge mentions to Big Mom while she's showing the Vinsmokes around, there seems to be a certain race missing. Now Big Mom is a big woman, but she's still technically just a tall human. She's not what we classify as a literal giant in this series, and there are no giants in Totto Land. The disgusted glare that Big Mom tries to hide when this is pointed out indicates that it might be a sore spot, and we start to realize that maybe this woman who keeps a living collection of rare animals pinned inside a book may not be sincerely benevolent. That kindness of hers disappears when her ego is wounded.
This episode is jam-packed with so much more content than the episodes proceeding it. We get major developments in all the subplots, even the repetitive Carrot and Chōpper stuff, and it ties the Whole Cake Island arc into the big picture much more than we had been seeing prior. Episodes like this make me sad that the rest of the arc has been so sluggish, because it becomes so easy to forget what else is going on in the story. There's a lot of plot machinery in play here, and that's the kind of complexity that a good One Piece arc thrives on.
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...
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...
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 ...