“Get the Hang of It! The Land of Wano’s Haki – Ryuo!”
What They Say:
Hiyori tells Zoro a stunning story of escaping the incident 20 years ago and surviving until the present day. Meanwhile, Luffy stills struggles to master the Haki of the Color of Arms, but a surprising person steps up and gives an example.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As One Piece chugs along I keep waiting for this arc to click and connect. I continue to enjoy the animation for it and there are some great fights to enjoy watching play out because of it. It’s also enjoyable simply because Zoro has gotten a good deal of attention overall compared to his being largely absent from the last major arc or two. With him being the first person that Luffy added to his ranks back in the day, he’s always managed to be my favorite and watching his growth over the years one of the better parts of the series. But just like everyone else, it’s simply spread across so much sometimes and with the absences, it ends up feeling a bit disconnected.
One of the main focuses of this episode is that we get Hiyori filling in Zoro on what happened in the past with how her brother went into the timeline while she stayed in real time because it was necessary to have someone of the bloodline there to keep things moving forward. Even as we get the castle burning down and everything falling apart. Digging into Hiyori’s story works well enough as it fills in another of the details of what went down in Wano all those years ago so that we have a clearer view of the big picture.
Of course, the episode isn’t all flashback and storytelling as we have to keep up with Luffy and what’s going on there with his fight. Though the old man continues to give him hints and clues about things with what he talks about, we also see him step up to fight in this episode but in a creative way where he does so through Luffy’s direction, which is at least a change of pace. The episode also finally checks in with a few other Straw Hats as we see Nami and Usopp and I actually had to struggle on Usopp’s name for a moment because it’s been forever since he was integral to a story. There’s not a lot here beyond setting up more color for events at the moment that may be used later but it’s mostly designed just to fill in a few tiny story gaps.
In Summary:
One Piece basically just keeps moving right along and that’s about all there is to it. Are there important things within this episode being explored? It’s impossible to say because it’s felt like we’ve had so many arcs where key things are revealed and then left unused within that arc. Hiyori’s past fills in a little more of what went down and the bit toward the end with Nami and Usopp does the same. But it feels like a lot of what Wano has turned into feeling – does it matter? Luffy’s sequence works nicely to showcase the action in a slightly different way as we see Hyo stepping up to the plate under Luffy’s guidance but that’s still not much in the grand scheme of things.
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.