Oh man, it feels good to be a One Piece fan sometimes. I don't think of myself as a person with especially high standards for animation quality or direction of each anime compared to others shows airing, but I do think there is a difference between an episode that respects the property and an episode that treats it like a commercial product. So on that note, episode 753 fills me with a lot of optimism.
Last episode, we finally encountered the traveling “island” of Zou, a living, breathing, giant elephant that has been roaming the New World for over a thousand years. Sanji's half of the Straw Hat pirates are up on top somewhere, and now it's time for Luffy and company to reunite with them after they split early on in Dressrosa. Their mode of transportation? The living drawing Ryunosuke, courtesy of Kanjuro's Devil Fruit. The majority of this episode is focused on the climb up the elephant's leg, a scenario that is granted immense scale throughout the journey. Even when the Ryunosuke crew is a speck on the screen, we still can't see the edges of that leg.
This climb is slow and not especially eventful, but holy crap is it beautiful. After some time, the sun begins to set and the entire episode is cast in a breathtaking combination of blues, purples, and oranges. I'm trying to think of the last time One Piece ever attempted to feel this atmospheric. There's a shot of Ryonosuke climbing, sans music, that really looks fantastic as we just get a breathtaking view of the aforementioned sunset. I got butterflies in my stomach, just feeling so happy to see the anime once again try in ways I had started to lose hope on.
Most of the episode doesn't even strike me as especially high production. The animation looks average, with a few notable exceptions, and I would even nitpick some of the off-model stuff, but that color palette goes such a long way regardless. One Piece arcs have always tried to capture their own unique color scheme in the anime, and if the Zou arc plans to stick with this blue/orange thing, then it could easily be my favorite yet.
Story-wise, there are a few noteworthy things. First, Ryunosuke is a total trooper. Right up front, this little dragon doodle guy is portrayed as the ultimate woobie. He tries so hard to fulfill his given task, and yet he seems to be in some kind of existential pain the whole time. When they finally reach the top he turns back into a drawing, and the crew cries and thanks him in an overdramatic way. Robin especially seems to have grown attached to him, fawning over how cute he is the whole episode in one of those perfect character-breaking moments for her.
Second, we do finally reach the top and begin to explore the rundown remnants of civilization that they find. The top of the elephant is a sight to behold, with an enormous forest and even cities to discover. The land is not uninhabited, however, as a pair of Minks (animal people like Bepo from Law's crew) attack and stall our heroes from traveling further. The episode ends with a dog woman arriving on the scene riding a giant alligator. The dog-Mink happens to be wearing Nami's unmistakable bikini top and jeans combo, raising fear that something bad must have happened to her and the rest of the crew on Zou.
It almost feels weird to say, but the colors are far and above what has me the most excited about our upcoming adventures on Zou. My first and foremost thought when critiquing the anime is always to ask myself “would this have grabbed me if I was channel flipping when I was fifteen?”, and this episode definitely would have convinced me to watch more. We get a nice little complete story with Ryunosuke, along with the freshest sense of adventure I've felt in this series since at least the beginning of Dressrosa. One Piece is a very important show to me, so it makes me happy to see the anime do its audience proud.
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 ...