“A Legendary Samurai! The Man Who Roger Admired!”
What They Say:
Kin’emon tells Luffy and the others about how Kozuki Oden made Kuri into a peaceful region and became its Daimyo. However, he was set up by Kaido and Kurozumi Orochi and executed. Kin’emon and his fellow vassals ran to Oden Castle in flames to save Oden’s wife Toki and children but Toki told him a shocking truth.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece proved to be a good bit of fun for me the last time around even if it wasn’t doing a whole lot in terms of big picture stuff. Just bringing most of the group back together, dealing with catching up on some recent issues with who was where doing what, it was simply great to have the Straw Hats largely together once again. Most arcs operate this way – or much longer – where Luffy is out on his own for a while or with one other and they make some friends and enemies along the way. This sidelining of the rest of the group is my main frustration with the show and the manga it adapts largely faithfully. There’s more than enough things to do to flesh out the roles of others and it’d be a better use of time and resources instead of the drawing out of shorter chapters and the like.
With the tease of the time leap that Kinemon talked about the last time around and the twenty-year journey, he gets into describing things with a bit of history about Wano. The tale focuses on a warrior named Oden who was banished from the Flower Capital because of all the trouble he caused, which lead him to one of the lawless areas of the island where criminals ran free and engaged in violence with abandon. That place, called Kuri and where they are now in the present, began Oden’s journey into power as he was able to deal with everything that came his way with pretty much ease. We see several fights through this flashback and it’s done in an interesting way where Oden is the only one shadowed so as to obscure who he is in the present, which is supposed to be some sort of shock or surprise when it happens. Under Oden’s assumption of power here through his blade, he ended reforming the place and it became incredibly peaceful and advanced with a lot of beauty. It’s the radical change built on the crimes of before and he ascended to becoming the daimyo of it.
We do see how he struggled under this kind of position as it is confining to someone who lived openly and freely once before, just by the strength of his blade. As time went on, we see how Kaido and Kurozumi Orochi worked together and took down Oden and eventually saw the fall of the area back into darkness, particularly with the end of Oden Castle. Watching as everything falls apart, and then to see in the past as Kinemon was there looking for Oden and coming across Momonosuke and saving him along with Toki and Hiyori is a big moment for him. But even thins goes poorly as she’s intent on staying – but intent on sending them forward into the future. Utilizing the Time-Time Fruit is an interesting twist and having her use that as a way to save others in a perilous moment works well. It certainly makes you want to go back and re-evaluate everything we saw Kinemon say and do when he was first introduced oh so long ago.
In Summary:
With a whole lot of backstory dumped on us, One Piece does one of the things it does so well in doing that. It’s a pretty engaging episode even if you can figure out the broad strokes of it quickly because the details are where it’s fun and interesting. Oden is obviously going to be playing a bigger role later in this arc since they kept him shadowed but I like that the focus was done as it was. Kinemon had one of his rare moments of being compelling to me and seeing more of this story really does make you re-evaluate everything you know about him and the others that went through this time leap. Definitely a solid 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.
