One Piece Episode 1089 is a joyful mix of nostalgic return to form and forward-looking novelty.
In almost every respect the series is returning to what it does best. I don't want to be critical of Wano per se, as Lord knows I've spilled a lot of ink discussing it over the past few years and I'm quite positive on a lot of it. Wano arc has many positive points and was the culmination of a lot of threads Oda has been working towards. That said, the length of Wano and its isolation made it literally and figuratively feel like a little bubble within the series. The sheer gravity of Wano's events seemed to pull everything in and this was heightened by the incredible length of both the in-text and real-world time spent in the arc. Wano offered a lot of enjoyable elements, but many were very distinctly different from the rest of the series. Again, prior islands and arcs have felt this way too, but the length of Wano exacerbated some of these feelings.
With 1089 we are back out on the open ocean again. The Straw Hats are all together on the Thousand Sunny, getting into shenanigans, having adventures, and sailing the high seas. Startling events are happening in the wider world with devious World Government plots and islands being erased by weapons of unimaginable power. The movers and shakers of the setting are, well, moving and shaking the existing power structures with new fissures forming in the status quo. Giant sea monsters, strange climatological phenomenon, Zoro and Sanji bickering… this is the One Piece that won me over and put a big dumb smile on my face. Heck, even characters who don't normally excite me much like Sabo get intriguing side stories that leave me wanting more. We are, as they say, so back.
And that's not to mention the visual and directorial delivery. This episode is just draw-dropping, which to be fair has been the norm for the series since the Wano arc, but here it is just simply incredible. Once again I find myself asking how the Toei Animation team manages to put out this kind of work for weekly television, even with the extra week break factored in this is movie-quality work. And the new opening and ending! Pure joyful celebrations of everything One Piece has been and can be… I love this silly pirate adventure story.
Rating:
"What other five-star anime are you watching? Vote on the latest episodes here: Your Score"
Grant Jones dives into the wild world of giant monsters and how Kaiju No. 8 builds on their legacy.― Kaiju No. 8 is a series that wears its influences on its sleeves. As the first word in its title suggests, it comes from a long line of works in the kaiju genre, using giant monsters and burning skylines as a backdrop to tell stories. While many likely know kaiju in a passing sense, it may help to h...
This steamy manga's appeal is going to depend on how much you can stomach a female protagonist who kicks off the romance by assaulting her former fiance.― This is a tricky one. Before You Discard Me, I Shall Have My Way with You is, to all appearances, a story that opens with a sexual assault. Agnès has been betrothed to Crown Prince Lucilleur since childhood, and she's been in love with him just as...
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...