The sides are clear, the stakes are known and the fists are starting to fly.
What They Say:
Just as Luffy arrives on the scene, Hordy’s dramatic actions on the Noah spell doom for the Fish-Man Island! Meanwhile, a battle rages on below – one in which Zoro has a chance to prove his mighty swordsmanship!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the progress made in this storyline so far, it’s good to finally have mor eof the various characters back together in some way here even if it’s narrowing things down a bit. With events now shifting more to taking place on board Noah’s ship, we get the big moment right from the start as Hordy simply stabs right through Van Decken in a way that you don’t really expect. Hordy’s a rough player to be sure, but he’s basically just gutting a fish here at this point.With bigger expectations of what Van Decken was going to bring to the table in this arc, it’s a surprising little twist, though one that has plenty of room to move around with.
This just reinforces the intensity of what Hordy is doing though as every time he makes an achievement like this, it just rallies him all the more. Eliminating Van Decken is pretty key as well, since once he’s dealt with, the ship will start to fall back down towards the island and destroy everything. Which leaves him with just having to deal with Shirahoshi since he’s intent on eliminating her as well, particularly since it’ll just impact Van Decken all the more with his undying love of the princess. Shirahoshi continues to be an unusual character for me though as the arc goes on since it’s such a child-like character in so many ways yet she’s becoming an instrumental part of the arc now.
While the episode is billed as a big Luffy vs. Hordy kind of work, it’s a small part of things overall, though it does have its moments as the two start to trade blows again with the help of the Princes. What it does in addition to this is to keep the other Straw Hats involved to varying degrees as they fight down below against Hordy’s men who are still keeping some allegiance to him even as some start to realize he’s going to drop a whole, huge ship on top of them. What we get is some fun variety with the various characters that Hordy has in his employ as they get their powers worked up and do the transformations they need to really get into the fight. It sets up some decent secondary action to play out while the main fight happens up above.
In Summary:
One Piece has slowly but surely working towards all of this and in grand tradition, we’re getting a battle startup that’s about what one would expect. We don’t just jump to the big stuff and go from there but rather get the circuitous path taken while making sure the supporting cast get their due. It’s been a bit since we’ve had something like this but the tried and true method is definitely in play here. The battle on the ship has a lot to offer as it gets all its piece sin place while down below it’ll have a lot of variety to help keep things interesting and balance out Luffy’s fight as it actually gets started. There’s plenty to like here but this is essentially the first punch thrown in a much larger fight.
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.
