As astonishing as it sounds, Wano's finale has only just begun. I have been talking about it for over a year now, but the sheer scale of this arc is something to behold. Hundreds of characters, dozens of locations, countless plot threads – it's all coming together and exploding at the same time. Even when things feel like they could not get any more ridiculous, Oda finds a way to add more explosions to the top of the giant skull mountain.
Still, most of this episode's runtime was moving characters from point A to point B. This is typical of the connective tissue episodes for Wano – there are simply too many characters to keep track of without doing check-ins with them and figuring out how they're getting around. Law, Kid, Killer, Zoro, and the rest do a lot of walking and talking to remind us that they are present and on the move. The best bit in all of these scenes has to be Queen talking via transponder snails. His reactions when he is communicating with the various Beast pirates frontline units as they are being taken out one by one are hilarious, as are the tiny snails doing their overacting as troops die.
The pièce de résistance of Episode 997 has to be the full moon sulong gang facing down Kaido. While all these transforming bestial warriors facing off against an army of giants led by a dragon is a breathtaking and amazing setup in and of itself, it also speaks to the scale of what Eiichiro Oda is doing. Wano is, arguably, the post time-skip arc of One Piece. Oda has been laying the groundwork for this for literal years, at least since Kinemon's introduction at Punk Hazard (and clearly well before then in ways large and small). So many arcs, so many backstories, all coming to a head here at Wano. The world of One Piece simply will not be the same once the dust from this fight settles.
James and Lynzee look into Hideaki Anno's latest hint that there might be more Evangelion after the last movie and news on the Lord of the Rings anime film!― Could There Be More Evangelion on the Horizon? James and Lynzee look into Hideaki Anno's latest hint that there might be more Evangelion after the last movie and news on the Lord of the Rings anime film! Plus, we catch up with Kafka and the Ka...
Grant Jones dives into the wild world of giant monsters and how Kaiju No. 8 builds on their legacy.― Kaiju No. 8 is a series that wears its influences on its sleeves. As the first word in its title suggests, it comes from a long line of works in the kaiju genre, using giant monsters and burning skylines as a backdrop to tell stories. While many likely know kaiju in a passing sense, it may help to h...
This steamy manga's appeal is going to depend on how much you can stomach a female protagonist who kicks off the romance by assaulting her former fiance.― This is a tricky one. Before You Discard Me, I Shall Have My Way with You is, to all appearances, a story that opens with a sexual assault. Agnès has been betrothed to Crown Prince Lucilleur since childhood, and she's been in love with him just as...
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...
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 ...