Big Mom's wedding cake rampage has claimed its first victim with Charlotte Opera—just like Moscato at the beginning of the arc, Big Mom was able to yank his soul right out of his body. Since it's a soul-themed death, it's easy to imagine that he'll be revived at some point in the aftermath of the story (people die so rarely in One Piece anyway), but it's a blunt reminder of what the Charlotte family has to put up with on a daily basis. Their mom straight-up does not care about their well-being as long as it means she gets what she wants. The kids are still committed to revenge-killing the Straw Hats, but the more we get to see them as victims, the more we start to expect a change of heart out of them at some point.
The gear change from the assassination plot to full-on escape really goes a long way in bringing out the best in One Piece's glacial pacing. The thing that has always saved long-running shonen anime for me is the emphasis on propulsion, especially when there's a clear goal ahead of us. It's much easier to get lost in the moment, and it's more enticing to follow that 'To Be Continued' card at the end. Shonen momentum is a miraculous thing in that it still holds power even when you're witnessing everything in slow-motion. We're watching the heroes run straight for their goal (the ocean) and seeing the villains strategizing on how best to flank them. No more secret weapons or mysterious subplots waiting to surface. The audience is on the same page as everyone else.
On the good guy team, Luffy and his group are heading back to the Thousand Sunny while Chōpper and Brook break off to reclaim the Sunny's submarine, which was left on another shore. The Charlottes' plan to kill two birds with one stone is to lie to Big Mom and tell her that the Straw Hats stole a bonus backup wedding cake, getting her to move away from the city and after Luffy. Meanwhile, Katakuri is using Brulee's mirror powers to warp onto the Sunny and wait, just in case. So the Straw Hats have the strongest character in the arc chasing them, and if they manage to survive that, the second-strongest character has already taken their ship hostage.
I love this version of Big Mom so much. She's a big lady, but she can absolutely book it across the island. She's physically imposing all on her own, but she also has her sentient cloud Zeus that she can ride like the Kinto'un from Dragon Ball, and she has her hat Napoleon who can also double as her sword. Sword-swinging, bandana-wearing Big Mom is the most the woman's ever looked like a proper buccaneer, and it's the most ferocious we've ever seen her attacks. The Straw Hats may have gotten a head start on the chase, but Big Mom's on their heels the second she's in the game.
Meanwhile, a band from the Big Mom pirates are also attacking Germa 66 at their base and getting into a surprisingly well-animated scuffle. This battle was mostly off-screen in the manga, another example of a side plot that could have conceivably happened in the source material if the author wasn't wrestling with limited page counts so much. There's also some setup for what Pudding plans to do, which is track down Chiffon (who's considered a traitor to the family) and work together to bake a new cake that will calm their mother down once the Straw Hats are disposed of. Mom's hunger pangs don't end until she gets her desired treat, and the head chef is out of commission.
This is a mere baby step in the Big Mom chase, and yet it's so exciting and busy. The way the different groups have to split up and strategize keeps the suspense going, and Big Mom is such an offensive force that it's hard to imagine what it'll take to finally sail away from Whole Cake Island. This climax isn't structured like a video game the way One Piece arcs often are, where we slowly build up to the final boss battle. The final boss is right here, and she's like level two thousand in aggro mode.
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 ...