One Piece – 468

「激戦の連続! 能力者軍団VS能力者軍団」 (Gekisen no Renzoku! Nōryokusha Gundan VS Nōryokusha Gundan)
“Hard Battles, One After Another! Devil Fruit Eaters vs. Devil Fruit Eaters!”

So I start up OP 468, skip past the intro, and then the recap. Imagine my face when I noticed the recap was less than a minute long compared to last week’s almost 6 minutes. So I’m thinking, oh snap, they’re really getting serious about the battles! Turns out it was still your typical episode, where most of the good animation was shoved towards the last 6 minutes. Still, color me impressed, because that Smoker fight in the air was captivating as hell (although it doesn’t look very good as screenshots). The animation was also consistent throughout, so the animation tactic wasn’t too obvious by any means.

Buggy and Mr. 3’s antics, while seem like filler, were actually in the manga, and are quite hilarious. They sure got a laugh out of me, mostly due to Mr. 3’s commentary. I’ve been wondering how much more boring “war movement” scenes with fodder is left, and it seems it’s starting to finally pan out. I mean, when was the last episode where the entire episode had you sitting on the edge of your seat with drama and action? Probably Zoro vs. Kuma, I’d say. Of course you can’t always have that, but it’s been quite a while, and it should be coming up with the incoming one on one battles.

While Jinbei’s fight was a little lackluster, Luffy’s was great, and having Hancock come in to the rescue was even better. That’s the thing with how the war was written; Oda made it so there’s always a refreshing moment, something slightly unexpected, while also being able to include every important character on the battlefield. Something like this shouldn’t surprise me, but with all the sub-par story writing out there, it’s hard not to be. While there was never a stale moment in the manga, the anime makes it a lot harder to say that, with all the long “war movement” scenes aforementioned.

Regardless, next week will focus on Ivankov and Kuma’s relation. I’m not sure what’s been revealed at this point so far, but it should prove quite interesting.

Preview