What They Say:
Luffy and Katakuri are locked in a duel to end all duels! Their powers ensure that each blow could be the last! Luffy must rely on his training, let all his thoughts out, and keep pushing on! Meanwhile, Sanji is about to land at Cacao Island!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I’ve hated feeling like a broken record with this arc for as long as I have but like a lot of other fans there’s just been an interminable element to the fight going on between Luffy and Katakuri. It’s had some fun moments to be sure but it really felt like we needed to just sidestep this fight for a while and focus elsewhere on the rest of the cast so that this didn’t feel so drawn out, instead revisiting it when it’s ready to reach its crescendo. Thankfully, things come to a new place here with one of the best looking sequences of the arc as a whole and in general in a while, making for some good thrills and a real hope for some forward progress.
Luffy’s shifting up of gears and his abilities, with some nice flashbacks mid-fight to the past showing what he’s capable of, is definitely exciting. Going into Gear Four here and having the visual representation fo it filling the area, the whole thing has a properly cinematic feeling about it. Though it doesn’t quite excuse the drawn out aspect and some of the weaker previous material, the money is spent here and the payoff is here with Luffy going to that whole other level with his Snake-Man shift. It’s impressive visually and it works well in context of this fight with Katakuri realizing that something significant has happened. It’s a great sequence with some real style to it that, as much as it is Luffy’s show, shines even more with Katakuri, particularly the moments just before the eye-catch as it’s stylistically gorgeous.
The episode does give us some time with Sanji and his small group as they close in on Cacao Island and it’s fun to watch them working together as well as they are, even with her almost holding his hand as she’s being more drawn to him. It’s amusing since the whole thing becomes a misread as he knows she doesn’t want to be seen as a couple but she’s internally quite smitten with him, resulting in playing both sides. It’s a nice little piece amid the main fight to ease things down before throwing us back into the main fight. The way Luffy is scaling things up as his Snake-Man mode gets used here is nicely done and while I don’t think Katakuri is the opponent that deserves to see this level from him, he’s providing to handle it beautifully visually as there’s a lot to love with how his powers provide some countering that works, but not perfectly, making it stronger than it should be.
In Summary:
I know a lot of One Piece fans will rate this higher because of the fight elements and I don’t disagree. It’s one of the strongest fight episodes we’ve had in a while and I think we’ve had some good ones in this ongoing fight already. But it takes it up a few notches here in animation and design. But that’s not why I watch One Piece overall as it’s the group character dynamics, the exploring of new areas and seeing large stories come together through multiple plot threads. We aren’t getting much of that in this one overall and it’s heavily focused on this back and forth fight. It’s really well done but I was looking for more Sanji material at this point or catching up with others that we haven’t seen in weeks upon weeks. For the fight fans, and seeing Snake-Man, this is a strong episode.
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.
