Let's take a break from last week's flashback within a flashback in favor of a different flashback within a flashback! Yeah, the lives of troubled children is just kind of what this show does.
In this episode we jump back another few decades to explore the lives of the Donquixote family, fresh off of their departure from the Celestial Dragons' holy land. Doflamingo's father, Homing, has elected to remove his family from the lavish lifestyle of the world nobles in favor of a more “humble” living among the hard working regular folk. I really like Homing. You can tell how well he means and how much he just wants to see his family happy and healthy and full of character. He does not deserve all the awful stuff about to happen to him.
Unfortunately, living as a former noble is a lose-lose situation. It turns out the regular folk have nothing but grudges against the Celestial Dragons, who have historically hurt and killed a lot of people over petty, selfish reasons. No one wants to listen to Homing or believe that he's one of the good guys, and the Donquixote family of four find themselves the victims of lynching and their home destroyed. In a fit of desperation, Homing makes a call trying to get his family back into the holy lands, but is rejected under the condition of his family now being seen as traitors of the royal bloodline. Things really backfired for the man just trying to do the right thing, and it's really tough to watch as the situation gets worse and worse.
This is an episode that's just interesting, wall-to-wall. We see Doflamingo and Corazón (whose real name we learn is Rocinante, continuing the Don Quixote references) as children and, more importantly, we get to see a bit of an arc between who they were as kids and who we know they grow up to be. Considering the noble lifestyle he led, Doflamingo being a precocious, spoiled child makes sense. He's never once been given a reason to believe he should accept anything less than the most lavish. There's a scene in this episode where he's confused as to why his family is no longer living with slaves, which is pretty spooky coming from the mouth of a little kid. We know that Doflamingo as an adult is a pretty smart guy, which only furthers how dangerous he is as a man who grew up to have his hatred and resentment of the world go unchallenged.
But Corazón, on the flip-side, appears to have been a pretty shy and cautious child. He's young enough for new things to make an impression on him. Between Corazón and Homing (the mother of the family isn't given much presence), Doflamingo and his sociopathy definitely make him seem like the odd one out.
Back in the present day (not the present-present, the past-present) our little Law is being fully embraced as a member of Doflamingo's pirate crew. We montage our way through two years as his disease consumes him more and more. This episode would have been interesting enough as is, but it eventually leads to a pretty gnarly twist: Law's real full name is “Trafalgar D. Water Law.” What “Water” means is still a mystery, but any One Piece fan knows that the middle initial “D” is no small detail.
This is gargantuan. Law is officially in the company of people like Luffy and Gold Roger, a type of end-game chosen one. This is a pretty intense reveal because it changes everything and rewrites the rules for what we know is possible. This definitely feels like the kind of storytelling decision that was figured out by Eiichiro Odaafter Law became an absurdly popular character, but that doesn't take away from how dramatic of a surprise this is.
This revelation also stirs the pot in Law and Corazón's relationship, as upon hearing about this Corazón nabs Law off to the side and speaks for the first time, breaking the mute illusion. “If this is true, you need to get out of here!” he says. It turns out Corazón might be hiding a few secrets of his own...
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 ...