What They Say:
After revealing the horrible history of Dressrosa, Toy Soldier is now shares their plan to liberate the Tontatta Kingdom and bring down the Doflamingo Family — Operation SOP. Meanwhile, rushing to find the exit of the Colosseum, Luffy bumps into a heavily-wounded Bellamy and Bartolomeo – and another person who causes Luffy to lose his cool to a flood of emotions.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece started to hit more of the connective material in the last couple of episodes as everyone got caught up on events together and filled each other in on the missing pieces of the whole Dressrosa arc. While they have their larger goal there of dealing with the factory and pushing back against all of it, there’s also an intent on fixing what had happened because of Doflamingo there. With their history with the guy and the personal connections established, that’s no surprise. But as they start to get themselves moving towards that with a strong and unified front, things took a disastrous turn first with Law being shot pretty hard by Doflamingo in the street and the arrival of Big Mom in the area with the very massive ship sailing into view. That’s just one of those weirdly scary moments.
Events here move forward in other directions first as we get more of what’s going on with Bellamy getting the snot beat out of him, which further makes him realize just how far he’s fallen overall combined with a realization of the scale of people he’s trying to deal with. He does get an amusing save along the way from Bartolomeo, but the whole thing is just one of those weirdly comical moments. But for Bellamy, he realizes that Diamante is involved in things and that puts a good bit of fear in him as he realizes that they’re really trying to kill him this time. The first half introduces some decent bits with this as it keeps it personal but ups the ante a bit with the connected side of things. We also get some time with Robin and her group as they start to figure out their plans to help the island, which will involve freeing the Toys from what they’ve been transformed into and returning their memories to them. That will be a huge change to the dynamic on the island, but also will destabilize things hugely.
The second half of the episode brings things back to Luffy a bit as he’s focused on getting things done now that so much has been revealed. His sense of justice and right is always fun, if a bit simple. His coming across Bellamy and Bartolomeo fills him in a bit more on the arena and the issues involved there, but it’s a good moment that forces Bellamy into helping him so they can all get out of there. While Luffy has engaged with several people in this arc, putting him to work together with these two for a while should be pretty fun. But into every arc there must be a twist as just as they’re solidifying what they’re going to do, there comes the arrival of Sabo, who makes it clear that he’ll be taking Ace’s devil fruit for himself. While it’s not covered in-episode, Sabo is an important arrival in the mix because of his relation to Luffy and Ace and just seeing how Luffy handles it with some pretty significant crying going on for awhile is great to see. Especially as we see how Sabo is now taking on Luffy’s role in order to win the fruit.
In Summary:
Though not named in the episode, the arrival of Sabo is an interesting twist to the series for me since I’ve not read ahead in the manga. There’s some knowledge though because of the character’s casting and the small reveals that come from it, but mostly the episode works to tease you greatly about what’s to come and what more of the past will be revealed along the way. There’s a lot of small and incremental build-up going here within the episode about what’s to come and it works well to touch on a few key areas and to reveal how they can possibly turn the tide against Doflamingo and his group. But it also provides a very emotional moment for Luffy amid his plans to do what’s right and seeing him once again wearing his heart on his sleeve is good to see. Very fun stuff and definitely one of those moments that makes you wish the next half dozen episodes were already available.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
