“Brutal Ammunition! The Plague Rounds Aim at Luffy!”
What They Say:
Queen hastily ties up the sleeping Big Mom and carries her to Onigashima leaving Udon to Babanuki. Babanuki uses a weapon that Queen made to threaten inmates and make them catch Luffy, but a mysterious figure emerges from the forbidden cell to save Luffy.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having Big Mom rampaging being the highlight of the show in quite some time may not say much about One Piece at this point. We all know about the ebb and flow of the series and its fanbase has very different wants when it comes to what appeals to it. Normally, it would be an eye-rolling event for me – especially after the lengthy escape from her at Whole Cake Island – but it was a welcome part of this phase of the Wano story because it felt like something was finally happening and starting to change the course of things. We’ve had a lot of lightly spread out informational episodes here and there but they didn’t engage with a lot of viewers in making us connect with the arc. Big Mom smashing up parts of it at least started to change the narrative.
With a decent mini-recap of recent events and the fight, and Big Mom coming to the realization of said recent events as well, everything takes a pause with Queen able to take her down for the moment with a bit of luck in the maneuver he uses. And if there’s anyone that they need to cuff quickly, it’s her. Though I dislike the item itself and what it does as an easy cheat, it’s fun to watch them wrap her in sea prism chains and to do as much as they can to try and medicate her down since she’s an immense threat. If there’s someone that you want to make sure that they’re actually down and out, it’s someone like Big Mom and I’ll give Queen all the credit in the world for being as angrily proactive as he can be here in order to achieve that – right up through getting her on his ship and heading to Onigashima.
Of course, all of this leaves us with Luffy back at the mine and still pretty free for the moment. With Queen and several others gone now to deal with Big Mom, there aren’t as many powerful guards left but still a good number, plus the rank and file. The problem for the prisoners is that the agreement that both sides have is that if one of the prisoners goes out of control, which they’re now being told is Luffy, the prisoners have to be the ones to put them down otherwise the guards will put everyone down. And a lot of them will get hurt before Luffy can actually bring things to a calming point here. Plus, the rank and file prisoners haver the numbers and Luffy’s good nature on their side in trying to get him under control – while trying to find another way.
In Summary:
With teases of something new at the end as Kawamatsu shows up and speaks of another big group for us to deal with, One Piece has a decent episode here. Things actually happen, the status quo is changed somewhat in a couple of different ways, but there’s some consistency in that the labor camp is about to become even more of a warzone. But there’s enough here on a basic level to hold your attention which has not been true for a while. It’s just a sad sign that it took the arrival of Big Mom for it to happen.
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.
