The reputation of the One Piece anime has surely not been lost on anyone. Generally speaking, I'm probably kinder on it than a lot of people have been if only because I still have so much room in my heart of the hundred episode marathons that I raised myself on over the years. Between One Piece and DBZ and the like, I get it. I get that these shows are slow and not always the prettiest, but there's still a charm to be found in a pulp-y alchemic kind of way. Though, even by my own personal metric for One Piece, the point of diminishing returns started somewhere at the 300 episode count. The rise of much higher-quality Shonen Jump adaptations like My Hero Academia certainly haven't helped my ache for something better, either.
Starting with the new opening theme 'Over the Top' by Kitadani Hiroshi, the differences this week are staggering. It's an actual anime opening! One of my big pet peeves with the New World openings was how they always defaulted to the Straw Hats' Fishman Island outfits, as if that was what the characters actually wear on a regular Tuesday. This new opening shows the crew in their new ninja/samurai duds, really selling us on what's actually going to be happening in this story arc. The new sketchy hand-drawn art style is also greatly appreciated, and the (slightly) shorter runtime for the opening means there isn't as much room for bland or generic shots. It's all action and exciting teases for scenes to come, even if that means the opening isn't shy of spoilers.
As we step into this brave new world, we need to catch up on what the missing half of the crew has been up to since Luffy made his trip to Whole Cake Island. Zoro, Franky, Usopp, and Robin have been blending in as citizens of Wano, taking up local jobs and Japanese aliases. (Zoro's Wano name is "Zorojuro", for example.) They've been instructed by Kin'emon not to make a scene, as they need to wait for Luffy and the others before they can properly begin their attack on Kaido and his crew. An important motif of the arc is introduced to us in the form of a stage curtain opening to reveal Wano's landscape. This arc is a samurai film/kabuki play/rakugo performance and this is formerly 'Act One' of Wano. The curtains go along with the masked shamisen player—a teal-haired woman who's sure to become an important character soon enough. I eagerly await how this arc is going to develop its act structure hook. I feel like we have to see the artifice take on a literal meaning by the end of the story.
For all the updates to the visual and directorial style, the question of pacing is still a big one. I felt as though the voice actors were talking slower than usual this week, like the anime is trying new ways to pad the story out without it becoming immediately apparent. There's at least one significant flourish to the plot, as we're being led step-by-step through the events that led Zoro to being tried for murder, something the manga just cut to in media res. Obviously, he didn't do it, but the sequence leads to a showstopping fight scene where Zoro smokes a bunch of swordsmen with a tiny seppuku blade. He's not blending in very well, is he?
Things are really looking up for the Wano anime, as we've barely gotten started and the visuals are already singing. At its heart, this is still a fairly standard One Piece episode, but there's so much more care put into avoiding the trappings that made our last few adventures feel like a chore. Even when the animation quality inevitably takes a backseat again, the new art direction will ensure that there's at least some baseline charm keeping the show's head above water. There's a lot of good anime being released every season, so it'd be nice if One Piece had a chance at competing with any big franchises other than itself for once.
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 ...