The crew of the Sunny find themselves moving further and further down below to strange new worlds…
What They Say:
As the crew plumb the depths of the sea in search of Luffy, Sanji and Zoro, they encounter the terrifying and mysterious secrets of the deep – including an undersea volcano whose eruption almost spells “the end” for the Straw Hats as they continue on their way to Fish-Man Island.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Considering the number of things this crew has been through over the time that they’ve been together, you kind of have to chuckle at the way that they all freak out when they see the Flying Dutchman underwater and panic over the concept of a ghost ship. With the things they’ve seen… Well, it at least gives them a chance to talk about the Flying Dutchman concept again in another anime series and at least within this one it makes a certain amount of sense since they are pirates and are out in the world’s oceans. Add this to the kraken that was just seen and some of them are acting like real kids here. Which is cute, but, well, it just slows things down a bit from a crew that you expect more from.
Thankfully, one of the things that’s fixed quickly here is that the trio that got separated are quickly returned, at least momentarily eliminating the possibility of an extended time already where the Straw Hats are separated. Dealing with the bizarreness of the undersea world is definitely taking its toll already though as some are hugely into it but others like Usopp and especially Chopper are just barely coping with it at best. The whole Flying Dutchman thing is fun to watch though as it gets to basically chasing them and you have Luffy using his newly friended kraken to help them get as far away from it as possible in a way that just has to be seen. It’s filled with danger, but there’s such a feeling of lightness to it that the two don’t exactly come together believably. Luffy’s eternal smile and simple frustrations just leave me shaking my head.
Most of this episode just flies by because of what’s going on as the cast rolls with the punches, so to speak, and they find themselves either cowering in fear or just moving quickly to avoid danger. After so many relatively quiet episodes, this one simply feels like it’s much louder and outgoing than the series has been in some time. Part of it is that the crew really is getting back on track now and they’re just being silly and outgoing. And it’s even more noticeable towards the end when the crew hits the ten thousand meter mark in how far down below they’ve gotten as it’s very, very quiet. The contrast is really striking, but it works as they get to take in the beauty of the deep. And the sheer amount of surprising… light?
In Summary:
The further we get into Eiichiro Oda’s epic series, the more and more impressed I get, even at the simpler episodes like this. That after some five hundred episodes we can just grin and enjoy something that has the cast acting as silly as they might have at the beginning really does feel right. A good part of this realization comes with the fact that we had well over a hundred episodes that were very, very serious for the most part in dealing with Impel Down and Marineford’s storylines and even the lengthy flashback piece had a lot of serious material to it as well. This shift to lighter material, at least for now, is definitely welcome because we’re still enjoying the way everyone has come back together at long last, grown in different ways but also still very much who they’ve always been. This episode gets us further into a much more interesting area to explore and it’s definitely piquing the curiosity, in the usual One Piece style of course of teasing it out.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.