“Zoro’s Fury! The Truth About the Smile!”
What They Say:
By the time Kin’emon and the others notice that Yasuie is trying to sacrifice his life to save their raid plan, it was all too late. Ebisu Town’s people laughing out loud annoys Zoro, but when Hiyori tells him the reason behind it, he is in for a shock!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece is doing it’s thing once again and I really feel like I’m just going through the motion with it. We all end up in this place with the series at some point, right? You’re committed to the show because you’ve watched over 900 episodes. You’ve enjoyed huge swaths of it over the past two decades. You’re a fan of the characters, the worldbuilding, the larger storylines that are taking place. But something in the arc itself just isn’t clicking so you kind of just exist during it, trying to connect with it but being unable to do so. There were good chunks of Punk Hazard that were problematic in their pacing but I’m still finding myself thinking more fondly on that than I am the Wano storyline, though I continue to enjoy the animation itself a lot and the design elements.
The opening half of this episode deals a good bit with Yasuie and the sacrifice he’s trying to make and there are things that come across as reveals here, at least for the residents, since what’s said helps to confirm that Kin’emon and the rest weren’t rebels or anything but rather faithful servants that were wronged amid larger events going on. But it also comes as Yasuie, who is atop his perch going off on things with the flashbacks coming up, is about to be killed in a very different way by an oncoming horde. There are a lot of people invested in his death but the whole thing is about to become a bigger show, especially since it’s being broadcast around the area as well. That lets everyone have reaction shots, which helps to space out the episode even more.
The backstory gets fleshed out more as well, taking us back to Yasuie at his height and those that were aligned with him in seeing what the vision of the future was and how it all fell apart. Again, it’s decent and well-presented, though the binging model is what storylines like this really need because we’ve been going on with it for so long and introduced so many characters that it’s become ineffective on a weekly basis – and that’s not including taking a few months off for a pandemic. There are some nice moments in how Otoko ties into things as well which gives it all something smaller and more personal, but it is also just that, another piece on top of what feels like a thousand moving parts where you’ve lost sight of the big picture.
In Summary:
One Piece is One Piece. It competently puts together each episode, it delivers it with a solid look whose coloring I still think is fantastic to highlight the world of Wano, and it’s continuing its expansive worldbuilding. There are a lot of things to like about it in small pieces but it’s just not firing for me at all with the larger storyline so I find myself once again just going through the motions and waiting for it to feel like it’s advancing. We do get more backstory confirmed here that will help turn the tide in the future so it is an important episode, but it’s in a sea of episodes that have been bland which undercuts its intent.
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.
