We arrive at one of the highlight moments of the Raid on Onigashima – Sanji's capture by Black Maria and subsequent cry for help. It stands out as a genuine emotional high point in what is otherwise a long stretch of non-stop battles.
First off, I'll go ahead and get it out of the way: yes I'm biased for Nico Robin content of any kind, so I'm rounding up in that sense.
But I think what's important here is what this moment says about Sanji and Robin in the Straw Hat pirates. Setting aside my own personal hangups on how Sanji's uh… “dashing” character is portrayed, it is easy to see that he has a lot of pride in how he treats women and not fighting them. There's a greater sense that his self-image as this prince charming, dashing knight figure who sweeps in to save the day is very integral to how he sees himself. As such, he also tends to shoulder all of his burdens and share none of his struggles even when he desperately needs the help, such as his entire situation with the Vinsmoke clan.
So that's why Sanji crying out to Robin for help represents a major moment of character growth for him on multiple levels and why I think it works really well.
It also serves as a sort of full-circle moment for Robin. As we are reminded in the flashback, she was once the damsel in the tower who needed saving. And part of the reason why she ended up in that situation was – like Sanji – because she kept her struggles to herself out of a desire to insulate the other Straw Hats from what she was going through. Of course the Straw Hats showed Robin quite definitively that they want to understand her struggles and she realized it too, in one of the series' best moments (if not the best moment). Now she gets a chance to be the savior, riding in to save the day when a fellow Straw Hat is in distress. It's a really wonderful moment that adds that extra emotional and thematic weight to this fight (and something I feel the other battles going on right now lack).
Japanese studio to handle production slated for broadcast, streaming globally― Kadokawa and Singaporean game developer and publisher Garena announced on Monday that they are co-producing an anime adaptation of Garena's Garena Free Fire battle royale shooting game, with a Japanese studio handling the animation. Kadokawa's Kadokawa Qingyu subsidiary is the production manager. The anime is planned to b...
Healer Nanna's powers have one very unique caveat: she has to have sex with the person to heal them. See why Rebecca Silverman calls it "a cute story, decently racy, and generally good, fluffy fun."― One of the fun things about Seven Seas' Steamship line of racy manga aimed at a female audience is finding which romance tropes are prevalent in any given release. While every genre has its tropes and s...
What's the perfect recipe for waifu supremacy? Lucas and Nick look at fan-favorites from Yu Yu Hakusho to Spice & Wolf.― What's the perfect recipe for waifu supremacy? Lucas and Nick look at fan-favorites from Yu Yu Hakusho to Spice & Wolf. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the s...
Train to the End of the World and Voice Actor Radio are getting a lot of love these last few weeks! Discover which other series stand out in our weekly user rankings!― Let's have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season,
based on the polls you can find in our Daily Streaming Reviews
and on the Your Score page with the latest simulcasts. Keep in mind that these rankings...
Crystal Kay previously sang themes for 2004's Fullmetal Alchemist and Nodame Cantabile― Recently, Anime News Network was able to sit down with singer-songwriter Crystal Kay and talk about not only her involvement with anime over the years but also what it was like to grow up in Japan as the child of a Korean-Japanese mother and an African-American father. Anime fans likely know of Crystal Kay throug...
The plot is excellent in the romance camp. Everything that happens is to get Eui-joon and Gunwoo together, and it works pretty well.― You can read The Dangerous Convenience Store in English two ways. The first is to read it on the manhwa site/app Manta, which has all seventy-five chapters and four bonus stories available. The second is to read Seven Seas' print (or ebook) edition, which, as of this ...
Some older mysteries inch closer to resolution as the true nature of the Abyss slowly comes into view, and long-posed questions start to be answered.― Sometimes, being a fan of Akihito Tsukushi's acclaimed Made in Abyss series means acclimating to suffering. Like many Western devotees, I was introduced to this bizarre, squishy, disturbing world via the 2017 first season of Kinema Citrus' fantastic a...
60th, final episode of previous anime streamed on YouTube on Friday― The official Twitter account for the anime of Penguin Box's Odekake Kozame (Little Shark's Outings) manga announced on Friday that the manga will get a new anime series. Update: The staff revealed a visual for the new series in a press release on Saturday. The previous anime series debuted on YouTube last August, and its 60th and f...
As Slam Dunk reached its final stretch, I can see why this series is considered the sports classic that it is today.― This is the largest batch of Slam Dunk episodes that I've reviewed thus far. Originally, I wanted to review the show in more even seasons, but given its overall pacing and release, it wasn't easy to find a moment where it felt right to stop and start again. However, as we approached ...