Franky’s upgrades delight Chopper and Usopp to comical degrees. If that doesn’t make you smile…
What They Say:
With the Straw Hats discussing their final plans to set sail, the Navy makes a raid on Brook’s concert! Meanwhile Luffy meets fake Zoro and fake Sanji and is taken to fake Luffy – who wants to punish all those who have insulted him!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece has had some fun with the time leap so far, but it’s also had its problems. While there was reason for Chopper’s confusion as has been pointed out to me, the main problem that I keep having is the awkwardly drawn out Fake Straw Hats storyline. With the Fake Luffy having built up a bit of a reputation now, one that doesn’t really work in the slightest, he’s now got a lot of angry pirates ready to join up with him in a way for some fun and action. With his desire to hold sway over this particular place, he’s gotten everyone riled up to go hunt down those that have insulted him, which is pretty much the real Straw Hat crew.
Even worse is that a couple of the fakes, thinking that Luffy does know the real Straw Hats without realizing he is the real Luffy, has brought him to the Fake’s rally and are starting to get a clue that they may be going down a bad path. Luffy, however, doesn’t realize the fakes are fakes and just thinks they don’t talk much anymore. While there may be some reason for this in the past, it doesn’t reduce it from being a terribly boring and uninteresting plot point in the slightest. Watching them go through the motions here, which is all that they’re doing, has its moments at times but the whole Fake Straw Hats stuff is just plain bad.
Because of this, it actually makes Brook’s whole Soul King storyline interesting as he gets caught up in some bad action himself. With his intent to retire and join up with Luffy, it’s gotten his manager to call in the Navy to take him down since it would kill his business. The reactions aren’t bad here and it’s fun to see how Brook handles the whole situation. There’s also a lot of very good fun to be had back at the Sunny as more of the crew arrives there together and have fun getting acquainted again, especially with Chopper being hugely impressed by how Franky looks now and all his changes. Franky’s not a favorite of mine, but his time here really does help to make him a lot of fun and has me wanting to see more of where he’ll go with things.
In Summary:
While things are taking their time in getting going, there is a good bit of fun to be had here at times depending on the characters involved. I love Luffy, but his time here is ill spent. Brook is a relative unknown to me but his arc has been winning me over and does so to a good degree here. The real standouts (besides Nami’s chest seemingly getting some decent play) is the time spent between Usopp, Chopper and Franky as they basically geek out with each other for awhile. There’s a good camaraderie and silliness here that simply works very, very well and left me laughing and enjoying it. Unlike the first half of the episode where things centered on the Fake Straw Hats and the Fake Luffy’s attempt at a rallying cry. That just had me looking at the time stamp to see how far we were in and if it was getting closer to being over.
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.