The journey down below brings the crew to new dangers and old friends.
What They Say:
With the Fish-Man Island in sight, the crew is confronted with the terrible and fearsome New Fish-Man Pirates – but they just may have enough cunning and guile to escape… to the wonders and mystery of this undersea paradise!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a big bit of luck through the encounter with the kraken and al that came from it, Lufy and the crew have gone down as far as they can now and believe that they’ve arrived at the Fish-man Island. Luffy’s awe over it is priceless as he’s like a kid in a candy store with how he views it and the various large sea monsters that have now stood before them. Even as everyone else is freaking out, Luffy just thinks everything is absolutely cool and wants to see and learn even more about it. But you know things just aren’t going to be easy when even the kraken itself is freaked out by this monsters and high tails it back to the level that they were just at, leaving the Sunny and her crew stranded down at the bottom of the ocean.
Having these Fish-men monsters make demands about having Luffy and his crew work for them is amusing, but there’s some back story to it as they know exactly who Luffy is, citing the events all the way back to Arlong and his plans as well as others. That’s not something Luffy will go for and the panic that Nami has is spot on considering her history with them. So they do what they’ve always done in not thought things through and just made a big push not to fight the Fish-men and instead barrel directly into the Island itself. It’s the kind of fun moment where we get to see a bit more of the Sunny’s capabilities and watch it thrust the crew into a new area to deal with.
The time inside does feel a bit surreal though once it gets going as it turns out that Camie is there and that she was intending to meet the crew in another month to bring them down to the island. She and her many mermaid friends just had the whole date thing wrong. Similar to some other recent things in the series though, everything here is over the top in its silliness and reactions as they all get along, even though several of the crew aren’t with them as they got split up when they crashed through the barrier of the island. The place is definitely interesting though with its visual design and how appealing it is underwater like this. The whole thing has a reverse version of what Skypiea was like in a lot of ways and seeing the awe and excitement from everyone is infectious.
In Summary:
One Piece does start to move the plot forward a bit more by bringing in a few of the Fish-men pirates that knows who the crew is. That’s going to come back to haunt them easily enough, especially since they know there will be others that will be going after them as well. While things are tense in the first half, it largely goes silly and over the top after that with the focus on just a couple of the crewmembers getting familiar with the area and meeting up with old friends. But as much fun as there is with it, I have to admit that the wacky factor has gone up so many notches here as to be too much over the top for my tastes. It’s always been a part of the show, but here it just feels like it’s trying far too hard. You don’t want it to be a heavy, serious work all the time, but this just feels like too much at the moment.
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.
