In many ways, Charlotte Katakuri is the perfect opponent for Luffy. He's the embodiment of the "everything you can do I can do better" mantra. His mochi powers give him the same malleability as Luffy's rubber, but even more troublesome is his extremely adept Color of Observation that allows him see further into the future than your average Haki user. No matter how hard Luffy tries, Katakuri can dodge his every attack.
Visually, the show is still going strong. It definitely feels like the anime staff wanted to make sure to do the arc's big title fight justice, although Luffy vs. Katakuri will eventually go on for so long that I'm certain we'll see several peaks and valleys in the production values. Spiritually, this fight evokes Luffy vs. Rob Lucci, the only other big villain fight in the series to offer this much blunt physicality. It's just two dudes putting their dukes up and punching each other. (Or at least it will be as soon as it stops being so one-sided.) I was worried a few months back about how the anime might handle the comical size difference between the two fighters, but so far so good. They're currently zipping around like DBZ characters and making good use of the mirror world's three-dimensional space.
Elsewhere, the Sunny crew has gotten some distance between themselves and Big Mom, as they lick their wounds in response to Pedro's sacrifice. This is clearly where the episode is trying to buy time, getting saccharine with repeated footage of Pedro's role in the arc, but it's a good chance to see how the different Straw Hats deal with grief. Brook collapses and blames himself for being too weak, while Jimbei has to play Mr. Pragmatic and remind the others that they can't let their feelings slow them down, because they've still got a long fight ahead of them. And boy, do they! Coming up on their rear is none other than Big Mom herself, now walking on water with the aid of Perospero's candy powers. Even the ocean can't get in Big Mom's way.
We also continue to follow Sanji, Pudding, and Chiffon flying their way to Cacao Island on Pudding's magic carpet, Rabian. Pudding remains conflicted about Sanji, so she's choosing to hide in the carpet's roll, lest the two of them be seen still dressed as a bride and groom. She could fall if she's not careful, but she's willing to risk it. We also briefly see Pound (Lola and Chiffon's dad) for the first time in ages, though he's in a dinky rowboat heading in the opposite direction.
This episode is asking the audience to take a deep breath and pace themselves. It's extremely indulgent on the story's end to constantly be introducing new problems and obstacles, each one practically announcing itself as the real beginning of Whole Cake Island's climax. I really enjoyed this week's episode, since I think it succeeds in priming the viewers for a lot of classic shonen brawling, and the animation looks great in the final stretch, but as usual there's the caveat that this show is asking a lot of its audience. We're over 60 episodes into this arc and only just now beginning a Goku vs. Frieza-length fight. At the very least, this kind of episode makes me excited to see how a "One Piece Kai" might look.
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 ...