Flashbacks are akin to holy territory in One Piece, and you can always tell that the anime wants to go the extra mile in getting them right. Last week's episode began with Sanji's father disowning him so hard that he faked his own son's death and locked him up in a blatant Man in the Iron Mask allusion, all while Sanji's siblings get to grow up basking in approval.
It's here that we get the show's trademark flashback-within-a-flashback, as an imprisoned Sanji remembers his first attempt to cook food for his sickly mother, Sora. I think there's a good balance in giving Sanji a fascination with cooking, even back then, while also making it clear that he's awful at it and misguided at this point in life. A lot of his general philosophies both in and out of the kitchen will eventually be a product of his experiences with Zeff, so it's good to know that we can get this tragic prequel story and still preserve Zeff as his most important role model.
One of the things I found noteworthy was the use of distinctly old East Blue era tracks in the music, the kind of stuff that's sparse nowadays but always added a tender charm to the series. Child Sanji is especially emotional in this episode, looking cuter and sadder than I think I've ever seen. The scene where his mother eats his rotten dirty food after he trudged through a storm to give it to her is as genuinely sweet and adorable as you can imagine. There's a lot of contrast between happy Sanji and sad Sanji, especially once his mother passes away. It's heartbreaking.
There's also some down time spent with his sister Reiju, who cleans him up after his brothers discover him in the basement and decide to beat on him once more. There's a potential parallel between adult Sanji's love for women and the fact that women were the only nurturing figures in his life during childhood, but then you're kind of contradicting the Zeff stuff, and I don't find it all that compelling a connection to begin with. The most striking dynamic here is between Sanji and his father, where during the climactic scene of the episode, Judge gives him a chance to escape under the condition that they never discuss their familial relationship to anyone. It's a threatening scene that highlights Judge's patheticness. Obviously Sanji flees, and it ultimately leads him to a better life, but you can really feel how much damage it does to his own self-worth to be reminded that his father doesn't love him, even in an otherwise cathartic escape.
This is an episode that I wish could have looked a little nicer for the sake of the content that's being covered, but it's otherwise an installment that juggles a lot of unusual tones expertly. It's sad, it's scary, it's pleasant and hopeful. The episode ends as we return to the present where Sanji's brothers are giving him another brutal wallop, showing off how nothing's truly changed. The tragedy is that Sanji ever had to cross paths with his family again at all, and you really feel it as we close out.
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 ...