The crew are on the move again, but we have to get a bit more establishing material in first before really moving forward.
What They Say:
The Straw Hats set sail to the New World and discover the wonder of the deep ocean trenches – and the shocking news of which unknown ally has made their journey possible! And just when the Straw Hats think they are out of trouble, Caribou and his crew arrive to complicate things!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the crew having come back together, dealing out a little action against the Navy and the Pacifistas that were brought in to deal with the Fake Straw Hats who might have been real, the crew set sail in the previous episode and are now out in the world. Or under it, as the case may be, because of the bubble that they’ve had added to the ship which allows them to set sail underwater. It’s a nice visual change from some of the past travels since it opens up a relatively new world for them to see. There are some cute things figured out with the bubble early on but also we learn that Sanji’s even more susceptible to women than ever before as his first major nosebleed upon seeing Nami pose sexily has him shooting out of the bubble.
The first half of the episode deals with this kind of stuff well and just feels right when it deals with the crew and how easy they are with each other. The explanations about the bubble is pretty fun, especially as Nami goes into detail about all the things that can go wrong. And that just puts some of them in a real fear mode which is definitely amusing, especially with Chopper as he’s so expressive. This all comes after the news gets back to the higher-ups at the Navy about the truth of the matter about the Straw Hats and how much more powerful they’ve become. They were tough to face before and even the advanced prototypes from two years prior have fallen before their strength now, even after a couple of years of not working together.
The episode does do some rather good material explaining away some curious aspects to the show. Franky gets to talk to everyone about how the ship was protected all this time and how they all managed to get away from Sabaody all that time ago and how it may have been very intentional in its own way. With them all knowing it was Kuma that threw them to the winds, they didn’t know that he was the one that ended up protecting the ship from attack for all of it, even as his own memory faltered. It’s left to mystery at this time as to why Kuma did it, and there was nothing left of him at that point (though it appears he managed to leave without dropping his carcass somewhere), so it’s a potential future plot point. Kuma’s brief dialogue with Franky even offers up some further future plot material by talking about how Kuma works for the Revolutionaries, which in turn we learn Luffy’s father did as well. It’s all quite tantalizing with what it may mean and how many new connections it might open.
In Summary:
One Piece hits some good notes here with what it does, establishing a number of things and setting the stage for what’s to come. There’s a bit of a tease at the end for the next episode which is expected, but the two meaty areas here are what really drives the episode home in a good way. The first is covering the bubble and the fun of it all, but also its dangers, which in turn helps to bond the crew together again a bit more as it’s all down time with them just sitting together and talking. The other is understanding the sacrifices made for the Sunny over the past two years which may have connections to much larger plot elements going forward. There’s plenty to dig into here and it really does a great job of making Kuma an even more interesting character than before, making me wish that Sabaody material was on DVD here so I could actually see it.
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.
