You ready for a live concert, baby?! It's time for the Soul King to rock your socks off and lift your spirits!
The past few episodes of One Piece have done a good job filling the runtime with interesting plot progression, though the show still isn't quite ready to pick the pace back up to normal, and slowing back down does hurt after everything was just getting interesting. That said, Brook and Pedro getting an explosive espionage subplot as they complicate the villains' plans is the most inspired thing going on right now. If there's anybody in the story who has a chance to turn things around for our heroes, it's them.
For manga readers, we've had the dawning realization that the heavily marketed Year of Sanji could just as satisfyingly be titled the Year of Brook, because throughout this middle portion of the arc, he's the one earning the most wins for the Straw Hats as he puts his undead life on the line to secure that Poneglyph rubbing from Big Mom. His big attack in this episode, where the embodiment of the Soul King erupts in the form of a big electric ghost, is one of the most memorable looking techniques of the arc.
Sadly, it arrives by way of one of the flattest directed episodes in recent memory. This is the rare example of an episode that stays perfectly on-model and looks pretty decent, but there's no pulse to be found at all. It's incredibly matter-of-fact compared to the usual chaos that the show's production values offer. This would have been an ideal time to continue to push the arc's musical theme, taking a break from the Disney-lite stuff for some good old rock n' roll. Alas, this episode plays it painfully safe.
Elsewhere on Whole Cake Island is the conclusion of the never-ending mirror-world subplot with Carrot and Chōpper, meaning the show's going to have to find some other interminable plotline to cut back to whenever it needs to buy a few minutes. The mirror-world stuff, where Carrot and Chōpper finally finish off Charlotte Brulee and her crazy animal friends, was getting to be so unbelievably repetitive and boring that I would be more relieved that the subplot has finally ended if I wasn't completely bemused by the fact that it lasted this long to begin with.
It's frustrating to be so happy about where the story is going, with one major subplot ending and another taking the reigns, but get bummed out by the pacing once again. It can't be helped, but this is an arc that I'm falling more in love with as it wraps up in the manga, and the anime version is giving itself way too much room to breathe. The final scene of the episode, where Pudding meets with the imprisoned Luffy and Nami, is a perfect example of how inelegantly the molasses pacing captures the structure of the arc, since it doesn't even get to the part that makes this an important moment of set-up. The manga's pacing, however frustrating you might find it week-to-week, at least does a good job making sure each chapter is a solid beat that moves the story forward. In the anime version, we're not just setting the pins up to knock them down, we're taking a leisurely stroll to the bowling alley first and calling it drama.
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 ...