What They Say:
The plan is executed to sneak the Straw Hats out of Big Mom’s castle while hidden inside Bege! But the irascible Luffy can’t resist getting in at least one punch against his foe! Meanwhile the Tamate Box slips into the hands of some surprising agent!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece worked a bit better than I expected the last time around in how it handle the strategic retreat for the moment. The scale of what they’re facing is significant and there isn’t a quick and easy plan that works here because of the number of players involved. While we’ve seen bigger battles before, the emotions were different there and all. Here, we have a number aligned with Luffy and the Straw Hats that aren’t fighters and unable to really help in a big way. But we also got to see some really fun stuff with the Germa 66 group and what they’re able to do as they stepped up in a way that really surprised me. With a great look that just clicked, there was far too much fun involved in all of that.
With the Germa 66 group doing their best to provide cover for an escape with everyone inside of Bege, we also get Luffy and Sanji jumping into the fray to help out, especially as we see Reiju getting smacked around hard and both of these guys unable to just let that fly. Luffy stepping fully into view wasn’t the best idea as Big Mom focuses on him, reminding him of the words exchanged during his time on the Fish-Man island when he made the bold claim that he’ll come to her eventually and kick her ass all over the New World and take her territory. She’s spent her time learning about him since and this comes across as both a familiar and new dynamic between Luffy and his opponent. She knows exactly how to provoke him, something it seems like almost everyone does, and it doesn’t take much for him to gear up his level of intensity.
A lot of the episode is made up of action and it’s fun to watch the Germa 66 folks go up against Big Mom’s forces but it also doesn’t click as well as it should. All of these guys, even with what we got from Sanji’s father and a mellower approach from Reiju, have been presented in a terrible light for the majority of this arc so they’re not exactly easy to rally behind. That said, the action is fun in seeing them go at it because it plays in a kind of simple and colorful superhero/sentai kind of mix to it all while in the background we get Luffy in his powered up mode getting ready to really go up against Big Mom. I’m still not a huge fan of Luffy in this ironed up form that he has so I’m definitely amused to see how she takes him down so quickly with it, though he struggles to keep fighting even as Sanji runs off with him.
In Summary:
Big Mom’s in the game herself now having recovered from her cry and there’s a lot of fighting going on here. That’s definitely welcome after a lot of flashback episodes focusing on kids and minor action that was designed to give us a bit more empathy for Big Mom. The old truth is there to a degree that a villain never sees themselves as that and have their own issues that brought them to this place. It’s not wholly applicable to Big Mom but there’s that kernel in there with it. It’s a fun action piece with a good mix of crazy and wacky action to it and we continue to see the scales raise up with just how bad things are going to be turning before it gets better.
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.
