Another week of Wano, another week of extremes. The raid on Onigashima is as intriguing a set piece as it is, simply put, LONG. There is so much happening across so many levels, with so many characters, for such a long time in terms of real-world publishing/production hours that it is difficult to keep track. If you were to ask me to sum up the entirety of just the raid itself—without all the prior stuff like the battle on the way in, the planning, etc—I'm not sure I could do it without opening a wiki or six. That said, mixed in with all the long-running battles are some incredible highs, and those are hard to overlook.
For example, this episode opens with Marco and Big Mom fighting. There's certainly nothing wrong with it: The animation is solid, we get a great fire beam struggle plus the phoenix wings effect, and the comedic bits with Prometheus are also well-executed. But then again, the fight is between… Marco and Big Mom; in other words, it just feels like one more thing to track in an already sprawling conflict, and it might as well be a hundred miles away from what's actually going on at Onigashima.
And what's actually going on is a lot of wonderful Straw Hat moments. Chopper and Brook discovering that our skeleton friend is immune to the pellets is another classic example of One Piece's humor, but more importantly we see Robin for two seconds we get some truly blessed Usopp and Nami moments. The back and forth between them about lying versus telling the truth is thematically rich, having not only the emotional layer of loyalty to Luffy's ideals but also the sub-text of Usopp's history with telling the truth. There are lots of great action sequences of Ulti headbutting people (including a Mortal Kombat style x-ray bone crunch, poor Usopp…), and a redone flashback sequence as well. The flashback to Arlong Park is powerful, though it does have a pang of sadness to it. Not only has the series come a long way from those beloved early chapters, to my mind this is yet further confirmation that we are entering the end game of One Piece.
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...
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 ...