Luffy’s making his play at being a hero, but it quickly turns personal against Hordy.
What They Say:
Luffy and the others are finally on the scene at Conchorde Plaza, with the citizens of the Fish-Man Island present to cheer them on! But although Hordy takes a beating, he gets back up again to declare his intentions – to take over not only the island, but to become the next King of the Pirates!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we’ve had some dribs and drabs of Luffy and the Straw Hats over the last few episodes, the main focus has been on putting things where they need to be with Hordy and the people of Fish-Man Island. All of that changed at the end of previous episode though as Luffy made his appearance, kicking some serious ass quickly and effectively, thereby changing the tide of events. Not that things are done and over with of course, but it starts moving events forward in a new way after all the back story and dialogue that has dominated the series for a bit. Useful material to be sure, but I’m still of a mind that it could have been done with a bit more condensing and precision to tell what needed to be told while still keeping the overall impact of it all.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re free of back story though as we go back just a little bit to see what lead up to Luffy and the gang coming and doing what they do best. There’s a difficult decision for Luffy with all of this simply because he wants to go and kick ass and do what’s right, but Jimbei wants him to take a different approach with it because of the expansive history we’ve seen. With so much distrust over humans and their violent ways, having Luffy just show up and fight and move on will on reinforce the overall view of what the surface world is like and make things worse, especially since the people couldn’t free themselves from Hordy’s actions. The need from Jimbei for Luffy to be a hero is obvious, but there’s also the problem in that Luffy just wants to be a pirate, a good pirate, but a pirate nonetheless.
With the proper plan in place, we get a good mix of action in the present again, though there’s some amusement as the Straw Hats basically ignore Hordy’s crew for awhile and just go through the reuniting process now that everyone is finally back together again. There’s some good bits of bonding there as they all get back on the same page, but it’s mostly just to kill a little bit of time till Hordy stands up again and pushes back against them, verbally and physically. But we also get a clearer picture of what Hordy wants to do with the upcoming World Summit and his plans to make a name for himself. It’s a kind of grand plan in its own way and has the kind of world changing angle to it that should work. You know, if Luffy hadn’t gotten involved.
In Summary:
The show sets things up for some good fights to be had, once they deal with the low level stuff which should be pretty easy considering what Luffy hsa gone through before. We get a good hint at the change in things over the last few years with him and that really does prove to be a game changer. With the majority of the episode, it’s kind of awkward in that we have yet another flashback, albeit a brief one, before it gets to dealing with the issues at hand and the psychological aspects of what Luffy really has to do and why. It’s definitely a welcome bit of storytelling going on and pushing us towards the fighting itself that we crave at this point, to see Hordy truly challenged, definitely makes for some exciting moments at the end here.
Grade: B+
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.
