What They Say:
Katakuri notices his sister Flampe is sneakily providing poison needle back up in the shadows. Becoming enraged, he takes unexpected action that surprises everyone. Meanwhile, Smoothie increases her size and closes in on the Sunny.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The fight with Katakuri got more complicated over time thanks to the involvement of Flampe and what she’s been doing to weaken him. You knew that was going to cause trouble eventually because as bad of a guy as Katakuri is, he’s the type that has some level of honor as well. And having her weaken his opponent so he could win definitely goes against his style and nature. That didn’t dominate but it served as the bookends previously and kept this fight going much longer than it should have. At the same time, it’s hard to stretch out the fleeing via ship thing going on elsewhere but that’s where my attention wants to be since we’ve got more characters to work with and more wonky ideas that can come into play. It’s been getting used but it’s still pretty underutilized.
So, it’s no surprise that the episode opens with Flampe and her cohorts giggling like kids over how Luffy has been taken down and Katakuri putting two and two together. Flampe basically blows it here without realizing it since she just wants to please him and her distorted view of honor, not that she has one really, is what does her in here. The twist here is that just as he’s about to deal with Flampe, he ends up wounding himself in much the same way he did to Luffy before after Flampe wounded him. So he’s doing the honorable thing of putting himself in just as bad a position while also chewing out Flampe. It’s not bad and Katakuri comes across well here in his expressions and intensity, but it’s all just so utterly predictable across the board that it just kind of unfolds. This was something you could see coming a mile away in how he’d react because he’s obviously not going to really hurt Flampe. Of course, what he does upsets all of them because they can’t understand why he’d do it, reducing their admiration of him.
The first fifteen minutes or so of the episode sets all of this up and it plays out slowly, focusing on a lot of walking around step by step by step for Katakuri until he and Luffy come face to face once again. It’s a brutal piece for Flampe as she suffers the most here when Luffy goes all out but it just puts both he and Katakuri into a great fighting place to move forward from. This lets the rest of the episode play out with the others, showing how a truly hangry Big Mom is as she’s more powerful and mindless than we’ve seen before as she closes in on the cake and Bege’s crew. It’s a decent bit of ship-based material that we get here as things come together just a bit more but it’s for the most part not something that really makes a big difference. It’s not treading water as progress is being made and the action is fun, so it’s enjoyable enough for the most part.
In Summary:
One Piece feels like it’s now finally going to get serious about the fight between Luffy and Katakuri, though it remains to be seen how long it’ll actually go on for since it could be padded out for a bit more. It’s a predictable series of events in this regard with what it does but even that predictability can be fun – if it wasn’t drawn out as much as it was with Katakuri walking around. Both sides of the episode have their moments to them and it’s not a bad episode by any stretch but it’s just another piece of the journey overall.
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.
