The gang gets closer to the New World and has quite the interesting discovery.
What They Say:
While ascending through the sea to the New World, the Straw Hats get caught in a giant whirlpool called the Whiteström and their only chance to escape the whirlpool is bumping into someone whom Brook has been waiting to see for a long time! On the other side of this adventure is the New World!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the Fish-Man Island arc now done and over with, we’ve gotten the gang on the move once again as they make their way towards the New World where they’ll have to deal with Big Mam and her vendetta against them. The leaving part is naturally drawn out but we’re now finally past that and getting the crew in their ship and going through the sea once again as they ascends closer and closer to where the New World is finally gives us a real sense of forward momentum once more. We had some of it at the start of the whole arc, but it was a whole lot of circling the same issues for far too many episodes. Here, we get the movement. And a Nami shower scene.
Because of the nature of this crew, we get a fair bit of silly journey style material here, from Nami putting the guys in their place to the usual array of food related issues that come up. It’s fun to have them all together once again since they were often separated in the previous arc and to get some of the basic humor. But it’s not all fun and games as the crew comes across an intriguing whirlpool called Whitestrom where ships that get sucked into it are sent far, far off and usually without any crew surviving the trip. Luffy, for his part, simply wants to eat it. Nami at least understands the danger as do others but Luffy’s shenanigans are causing a fair number of troubles here that makes everything far more difficult than it ought to be.
Of course, the show works out in a way that only One Piece can and we get a huge call back as what saves the day is a whale that looks like Laboon, a whale that they had seen hundreds of episodes ago. And one that Brook has a connection with as well, which is fun to see. The confusion is fun at first, but it’s also a tie that binds that story to this one as the crew works with the Whale Island pod for awhile in order to survive. Everything in the end here is just a fun bit of forward progression to get the gang and the Sunny to the next stage of things in a way that, well, only One Piece can do. It’s light, fun, silly and still has an edge of danger to it while also giving a proper nod towards the past in a way that hits all the right notes for those that have invested the years in the story and know that most everything does come around again.
In Summary:
One Piece serves up another transitional episode here, one that some will call filler without realizing what filler really is, and it works well. Bringing the crew back together for this is definitely needed after the way they were separated for a bit and doing various subplot arcs in different configurations. The way they interact as a whole is a big part of the draw for me, though I like when they break it out in smaller groups at times, and having them deal with the threats here while knowing that it’s mostly cause of Luffy and the guys causing a lot of the problems that makes it fun. The call back to Laboon is really good since I had recently seen those episodes again in rewatching the collections on DVD that have been coming out so it was definitely fresh in my mind when the Island Whale’s showed up. The show may just be moving us closer to the next arc but I always like these kinds of in-between episodes where it’s about the journey itself.
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.
