Occasionally, anime is tasked with asking life's biggest questions, such as "What would you do if you wielded the mighty power of carbonated water?"
This week, the battle with Cidre the bountry hunter barrels towards its natural conclusion, and the Straw Hats are finally steered in the direction of Stampede's plot. Among the plethora of movie tie-in filler we've received over the years, this Cidre storyline doesn't stand out amongst its brethren, serving as easily the most mild experience of the bunch. That's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether or not you like the weird WTF-ery that often comes with these specials. Film Z's tie-in filler had vore and gigantification going on at the same time! Cidre and his goons have boring ol' soda.
Spectacle-wise, this episode has a significant leg up from last week. The action is exciting an impactful, even if the story is not. Despite being the suppose "greatest bounty hunter of the generation," Cidre can't do much to stop our rubbery captain, and the conflict escalates to to a pretty standard finisher where Cidre equips himself with a more powerful battle suit that barely look different than his normal one, and Luffy one-shots him after delivering a speech about conviction. There's a surprising amount of pontificating about the differences between pirates and bounty hunters, but nothing insightful ever comes of it.
Generally speaking, these recent One Piece movies have opened the doors for a truck ton of world-building and thematic exploration, even within the confines of filler and extraneous specials. The fun comes from the fact that their main villains are fixtures of the One Piece world and you can imagine they exist somewhere in the manga's canon, even if they're never directly mentioned. Cidre is connected to Stampede's main villain, Douglas Bullet, by virtue of having been defeated by him in the past and developing a grudge towards pirates as a result, but that's hardly the hook that's going to get our butts in theater seats. The more interesting angle is how Buena Festa is connected to both Bullet and Roger. There has got a be a more compelling idea for a filler arc tie-in than a bounty hunter scrub that the show can't even pretend to care about.
As the episode ends, Luffy receives his invitation to the Pirate Festa and the events of the movie are sure to roll out from there. We get a very brief montage of all the big name characters who are scheduled to show up, but there isn't anything novel here that isn't already in Stampede's trailer. It's a little odd how none of the other Straw Hats wound up playing a part in this filler arc outside of beating up grunts on the shoreline, since I'm sure they'll all be fighting for screentime once the movie comes out (not to mention this is the rare instance where the anime gets to have all the Straw Hats in one location again), but otherwise this episode is notably more entertaining than last week's, for whatever that's worth.
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 ...