To my dismay, Luffy denies the colosseum crew a place underneath his wing. It was naive for Bartolomeo, Cavendish, and the others to assume that he'd be totally cool with being responsible for thousands of men, and they had even broken out the alcohol already. It was a tease that got my hopes up, thinking that we'd see the Straw Hat pirates significantly grow in some official capacity. There's an exchange between the two sides about “doing what you want” and “freedom” and such, but long story short, the Straw Hat Grand Fleet is real, just not exactly with Luffy's blessing. He's being forced to have his cake and eat it too, I guess.
“I just want to become King of the Pirates! I don't wanna become someone important!” is something that Luffy says within the argument. The word “oxymoron” come to mind, but considering what we know about Luffy's attitude towards the Pirate King role, it's not exactly wrong. Luffy just likes his freedom.
A celebration commences regardless, as Luffy still thinks of the fleet as a group of friends and allies. The newfound commanders decide to partake in the exchange of sake, with or without Luffy's inclusion, and they swear their loyalty. Bartolomeo has to fight just to keep himself from happy-crying throughout the entire episode. It's here on Orlumbus's ship, anchored just a couple miles off of Dressrosa's shore, where we get the big celebration party that every One Piece arc needs to end on. Luffy's still a little peeved about the whole Grand Fleet thing, but a banquet featuring tons of meat gets him back in the party mood.
It's another episode without a whole lot of plot content to fill the runtime, though I really enjoyed the little montage at the end. I'm generally ambivalent toward the current opening ‘Hard Knock Days’, but I was happy to hear it as an insert in this episode, as we skim through the highlights of the Dressrosa arc. A little clip show from time to time doesn't hurt, especially in a series so desperately clamoring for a chance to include filler. It's a nice little look back through the longest arc in the series, and there's something that feels fittingly celebratory about it. It also reminds me of the ‘We Are’ and ‘We Go’ sequences that capped the Paramount War and Fishman Island arcs.
Lastly, the episode ends with a stinger from the narration: “These commanders will develop themselves individually and will eventually cause a major incident that will go down in history, but that's a story that no one could have known at this time.” Basically this 100+ episode arc just ended with the narrator telling us “but this was just the beginning."
So that's Dressrosa. I don't really feel comfortable declaring it as a good or a bad arc just yet (then again I'm biased and think all One Piece arcs are good), but I think it's one of the most clearly flawed in the series so far. It's insanely long and bloated, jam packed with a million characters and subplots that keep changing direction, all while rarely finding that big emotional catharsis One Piece is generally so good at. I'm curious as to what its biggest contributions will be in the grand scheme. Was it really just there to bring the fleet together and put Luffy and Law under Kadio's wrath? Feels like an awfully long-winded journey to get there. Then again, that's One Piece for ya.
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...
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 ...
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 ...