What They Say:
After talking to the mysterious disembodied head, Nami and the others learn more about the island but are confronted with even stranger creatures when they attempt their escape. Meanwhile, Luffy and the others learn from Brook about the abduction of their crewmates and decide to go to the freezing side of the island to rescue them.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With One Piece giving us a pretty amusing situation here on both counts, it’s the kind of story that’s going to be fun to watch come together. While Luffy and his group are out on the island and have dealt with a dragon and a bottom half of a body that interacted with them, Nami and her group are facing a weirder issue. Which is hard to say. They’ve been captured by some oddly suited people and now find themselves in a cell with just a head. A head that they had to put back together a bit like a puzzle and had fun with it. But now that things are where they are, it’s a matter of figuring out what to do next while not really acknowledging how bad of a job they did in putting the head back together.
While Nami and her group are captured, they’re not exactly down for the count considering their power levels. It’s amusing to see how easily they bust out with just Franky’s abilities alone, something that completely shocks the nameless head. A head that we do discover is actually a samurai from the Wano Kingdom, as Sanji has figured out how to put him together properly. With the gang now out of their cell, they get to explore the place a bit, though it’s with a fair number of people chasing them since such things can’t go without being noticed. It takes a weird turn quickly though when they come across a playroom for kids that has kids in it, but normal sized ones and giant sized ones as well. It’s a weird moment and all I could think of was the discovery of the playroom in the movie Akira.
The show also gives us some time with Luffy and his group, which gets pretty qweird quickly. While we have him with the bottom half of the samurai out there, they also come across a centaur-like guy with a jaguar style body that the gang ask for some help from. The gang does have a bit of luck when they come into contact with Brook and realize why he was passed over as well as the position of the ship. It helps to bring a few things together like this so they can start moving forward more. The show does start to see a few more things about what’s going in, hinting a bit at what Punk Hazard is al about but not giving a lot of real, hard facts, but tantalizing with the people we see and the locations they’re in. It’s all a good tease but without enough to really make you get excited, unless perhaps you’ve read the manga.
In Summary:
One Piece moves along decently here as we get some material for both sides of the crew at this stage by seeing how they’re progressing. Nami and her groups side is a bit interesting as we do get more on the whole head that they’ve ended up with, especially wit Sanji figuring out who he is to some degree. We also get the fun of seeing them bust out so easily but end up in shock when they end up inside a giant playroom. At the same time, Luffy’s story takes a bit of a back seat but does progress some, most notably for me in that they got to get back in touch with Brook and figure out where the ship is. Things are moving, but the destination certainly isn’t clear. It’s providing some neat aspects but the story itself hasn’t grabbed me all that strongly yet.
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.
