“The Truth Behind the Disappearance! Sanji Gets a Startling Invitation!”
What They Say:
The mystery of Sanji’s disappearance deepens as Luffy learns that Big Mom’s lackeys have caught up with him and the rest – and carry with them an invitation from Big Mom that simply can’t be refused!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The way One Piece can take its time to get to what it wants to do has plenty of positives and negatives and it’s interesting to see which arcs play out in which way for people. Though the last couple of arcs have kept me engaged as we got into them, even with some drawn out processes, I find myself feeling distant from the Zou arc so far. Part of it is that we’ve had the team split and finding out what’s going on with Sanji is taking longer than it should when you factor in that the Dressrosa arc ran for over two years and this part of the crew was absent from the bulk of it. We’re making progress here and getting plenty of background material on Zou as a whole, but it’s not exactly captivating with what it wants to do just yet, particularly with the Minks.
The fun in watching Sanji as we do get him here in the flashback side is certainly worthwhile, along with the others, and it adds more of the weirdness of what was going on. Such as when they’re essentially accosted by Big Mom’s guys that play up the whole mafia-esque side of things. What we get here is Sanji and Brook dealing with Capone “Gang” Bege, who ate the Castle-Castle fruit, that has a fun old school aspect about him with his design that makes him a classic tough, right down to the cigar. The reveals of all of this with Brook detailing it to the others and providing the connection to the present is decent since it does keep those characters in the loop, but it’s hard to explain how the power works and how Sanji and his group essentially ended up inside of Bege in order to deal with the deal at hand. Bege’s at least sociable.
And that dealing is amusing as Sanji discovers that Big Mom has an event coming up where Sanji is set to marry Pudding from the Charlotte family at a tea party. The reactions are as you’d expect and that means it’s fun to be sure, especially with Sanji not sure how to deal with it at first. The episode works through a few ramifications of what would happen should it go through, but it’s amusing to see Sanji basically declining the whole thing since it’s not anything he’s actually compelled to do. Naturally, Bege has his own plans within this and he’s looking to make that clear with the threats through his power here and it’s an interesting presentation of it with how far he can go in this special place. It’s the usual kind of anything-goes thing but it’s well presented and makes for a challenge for Sanji, one that you know how will play out.
In Summary:
One Piece does some fun stuff in revealing how things went down with Sanji and the others when it comes to Bege. Digging into the tea party/wedding aspect is something that certainly is out of the blue, but in the right way that a series like this can do with so many characters and expansive arcs. Bege kind of wins the episode overall just for the open-ended creativity of his abilities, but it’s just good to see Sanji taking the center stage once again and coming across as cool as he does. It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes and how that particular part of the larger Zou arc unfolds.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
