“Garchu! The Straw Hats Reunite!”
What They Say:
Luffy and the others survive the Rain-Ruption and learn of its vital role in maintaining life on Zou. They continue on towards the fortress learning more about the mysterious Mink Tribe, and are finally reunited with the others – but is that the whole story?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series begins to introduce more of its elements in this arc there’s the fun of trying to figure out what to really pay attention to and what’s just around for the moment. The Guardians as we saw them previously provided for some fun things to connect with, particularly since for Luffy it’s like an island full of Chopper’s in a sense. The show is a little frustrating out of the gate with this arc for me since we’ve got the fracturing of the crew already, which comes just after everyone got back together and we didn’t really get any time with them adventuring together. It’s a natural part of the series and I expect it to happen but I kind of just wanted more time with the larger group dynamic before Luffy gets split off and the others break up as well.
With the journey continuing for both parties, we get treated to something interesting right out of the gate with “Rain-Ruption”, which is essentially the giant elephant watering itself. It’s like a flood that hits a lot of areas of Zou and you can imagine it being really disruptive compared to normal rainstorms which do hit out at sea. There’s a kind of ecological balance that it must hit and serve but the fun is in watching the group trying to survive it. And just how well it’s animated as there’s some beautifully fluid animation here, from the leaping about to the water itself, that’s like they put a big part of the budget into those few minutes to make it important. Each of the groups handles it as well as can be, though I’ll admit that I like the idea of Kin’emon and the others getting washed away…
A decent part of the time after this is getting a better look at areas of Zou and seeing some really dark stuff with torture crosses on the main street and bits about how they’re used. It’s not terribly revelatory overall but it does establish that not everything here is full of positives and fun, which was a given. The episode is, once again, largely a travel episode as we get the groups moving along with a bigger focus on Luffy. When they arrive at their destination and the Straw Hats name is tossed about it’s good to see that there is a realization of who they are and Chopper’s excitement at his arrival is positively cute beyond words. It’s a nice reunion in the making, properly emotional and all, because I’m hopeful for Nami to have more time in this arc considering what happened with the Dressrosa arc.
In Summary:
One Piece doesn’t have a lot in the way of reveals here as it’s mostly travel and exploration of parts of Zou as they get on with reconnecting with Nami and her group. There’s a fun enough tease at the end about what’s going on since we get the mention of something having happened to Sanji and that’s an easy enough hook to bring people back next week. Mostly, this episode reveals just a bit more about the land, the people, and the various group dynamics in effect here that will be more clearly defined as it goes on. The Rain-Ruption at the start is my favorite part though simply because the animation team went all out to make it a beautiful looking sequence that was pretty much theatrical level in quality. Very good stuff there for an otherwise standard journey episode.
Grade: B
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.