Is it finally time to set sail?
What They Say:
The crew is finally able to reunite and set sail, but with Navy forces flooding the archipelago, escape may not be possible! Luckily, Luffy and all of his crew have made more than a few friends in the past 2 years – and it is the bonds of friendship that will finally allow the Straw Hats to set sail!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While it took a few episodes, the show got appropriately big and fun in the previous episode with the arrival of the Navy and its peacekeepers to deal with Luffy, or Fake Luffy as the case may be, only discover that Real Luffy is there too and to start in on all that comes from that. It’s a fun bit that played out and worked to clean out a lot of the things that had been happening as the Fake Straw Hats got dealt with while Luffy ends up meeting up with the real Zoro and Sanji with Rayleigh urging them on. Rayleigh’s still not a character I’m too good with, but I like the way he handles himself here as well as the brief flashback it opens with that shows how he trained Luffy over the time leap period. It definitely reinforces their bond, though I’m just happier to see Luffy back with his friends at this point more than anything else.
When everyone is back together on the ship, thta leads to a good bit of fun as well since you have Luffy being so very much like Chopper in how appealing he finds Franky with all that his body can do. Unfortunately, while I would like to have a whole episode of just character dialogue driven fun, the Navy won’t let that happen as they’re intent on sinking them right away. Which is to be expected at this point since even if there was a good chance that they were going after Fakes, they’d also know there was a chance of them being the real thing and they’d come fairly prepared to at least make a good showing against them.
There are some fun bits that come out of the whole thing though, especially when Sanji learns that Luffy spent all this time on the female-only island and became quite close with the Pirate Princess. But these are just small moments that help to reflect that the core characters are who they are and haven’t really changed over the two years. They’ve grown more powerful, more assured in their abilities, but they’re still the very close group of friends that can just ease into things again the minute that they’re back together. There are a few tangents related to the Navy at this point and some nods towards how the Straw Hats ship actually works with the bubble coating, but mostly it’s just good fun throughout with some cute and fun doses of action tht work well.
Side Note: When Brook gets ready to sing for Nami but ends up instead asking to see her panties, was I the only one amused by the fact that based on the way her jeans were shown at the time, she couldn’t actually be wearing panties since nothing was showing?
In Summary:
As a prologue for what’s to come, One Piece doesn’t serve up too much with the storyline of the last few episodes when it comes to the meaty material. What it does do is show us the state of the world at this point and a very fun look at the main cast with all they’ve been through and where they are now with abilities and temperament. There are some neat little cosmetic chances that work well and some character growth that does fit into things with all that they’ve done, but mostly it’s served to just get them all ready for the next adventure. When you get down to it though and you have Nami calling Luffy Captain again and just awaiting his order, it all comes together perfectly and you can just feel the excitement and can’t wait to get to the next stage. Good stuff all around that should definitely please the long time fans.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
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.
