What They Say:
Luffy arrives for the final showdown with Caesar while Sanji faces off against Vergo in order to save Tashigi and the other G-5 soldiers from the deadly super-weapon Shinokuni, whose deadly gas continues advancing. And while chaos breaks loose in the laboratory, Law’s true motives are revealed!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece has worked the expansive cast of this arc pretty well so far so that we’ve had a lot of stories and they’ve all slowly come together, which is pretty much expected. Things have moved quickly in the last few episodes though as it’s almost a rush towards a climax approach since Luffy and his group got freed and started down separate paths to deal with what’s going on. Thankfully, one of the biggest changes was seemingly getting nearly everyone back to their proper bodies and that helped to ease some of the confusion, though there was some degree of fun with that. But now the various forces are really coming together to fight and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the situation, especially for Tashigi as she realizes that they’re not being saved by Vergo but rather assaulted and killed.
Not surprising though is that things break down into a few ways. For Vergo and what he’s up to, it’s Sanji that shows up since he can’t let a woman get attacked like she is and that sets him against him easily enough. On the other side, both luffy and Smoker are arguing over which enemy is theirs since Luffy wants Caesar while Smoker wants Vergo since that’s more of an internal issue. Of course, they both run into Caesar which complicates matters. The fight with Caesar is a lot of fun as Luffy gets to dial it up a few notches and it gets hot and intense quickly since he’s so intent on taking him out quickly after all that’s happened. Similarly, while Smoker heads off to find Vergo, we get to see Sanji really going at it when it comes to his opponent and there’s a great intensity there as he kicks his way across Vergo’s body.
The bulk of the episode is the back and forth fighting that goes on with some of the nods towards what must be done, such as Trafalgar having made clear to Smoker that hthings must be done in a certain way in order for him to get his heart back. But it the fighting side of it is fun as we see a stronger focus on Luffy going after Caesar and making some progress but also discovering that his opponent is probably a lot stronger than he realized. There’s also the fact that Caesar still has a few defenders around him and that makes the situation just a touch more complicated. But through it all, I just kept wanting to see more of what Trafalgar was up to since he could be the real wrench in the works, and we see that come up just towards the end as it leads us to a whole new area.
In Summary:
One Piece has a pretty good episode here overall with some solid action to it as we get the main fights getting underway in earnest but also some plot developments as well. That area is admittedly small, but seeing how intense both Vergo and Caesar get when they realize what Trafalgar is up to definitely makes you want to know more, and wonder just how much you can trust him. Luffy and Sanij both do well here though I wanted a lot more of seeing Sanji going at it than Luffy since we often see so much Luffy, but with him being captured for awhile there was just a need for him to cut loose for a bit, which he does. A solid episode with some decent progress that hopefully leads to even more interesting reveals.
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.
