So close to the Monster of the New World and yet still so far.
What They Say:
“A Desperate Situation! Luffy Fights a Battle in Extreme Heat!”
Luffy, Desire, and Bartolomeo go up against Bill! But the mad, Smelt-Smelt man becomes deranged and lets his true power unfurl! Do Luffy and the others have any hope of exposing Bill’s self-serving aims and turning his gang against him?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece has been having some generally light and silly fun wit hthis arc as it leads into the film out next weekend. It’s worked well enough for me but I also knew going into it exactly what it is and that kept me from wholly investing into it a lot. It’s the perfect kind of story arc to get things moving after the overly extended (but thoroughly fun) arc we just had with Dressrosa, giving us some time to blow off a little steam and just have something without any real meaning. Watching the previous seasons on DVD for review throughout all of this you know long time fans get how the structure of the show works and as we get closer to being caught up with the manga we’re hopeful for some fun anime original story arcs to expand on things and just enjoy itself a bit after dealing with a fairly serious arc overall.
With it being a short arc, things have moved quickly and we now have the core trio going up against Bill to deal with what he’s doing here. For Desire, it’s a harsh moment as Bill lays out how he’s basically taken advantage of her and most everyone else here by being useful idiots and little else in the end, which hits her deep and reinforces Luffy’s desire to set things right here. It’s a fairly fun battle throughout the first half as Luffy and Bill get into it and Luffy plays it well with his powering up and dealing with things in a straightforward way, which in turn reinforces Bartolomeo’s love of him. It’s the kind of fight that you’d expect in an arc like this because Luffy is largely holding back as he knows how to scale his level of power against varying opponents. He’s obviously not going as all out here as he did against Doflamingo, but it’s still engaging and fun because you never know what tricks may be up someone’s sleeve.
As a greater lead in to the film, Bill’s being beaten and tossed down a deep hole has him being told that if he can’t handle someone like Luffy that he’s going to be cast aside by the Monster of the New World, which gives us our brief shot of his past groveling in front of one of the characters from the film. That gets Bill to overpower himself and go all out against Luffy and friends with his lava ability and brutish strength. It’s a visually fun sequence overall and gives Desire and Barto some decent time together that even clears up a childhood misunderstanding that has haunted Desire. It all builds well enough in the action and scale for this small area and I’m a sucker for goofy lava based events anyway, so while it’s mostly fluff for me since I won’t be seeing the movie for an age, it’s enjoyable enough on a simple level.
In Summary:
The conclusion of the arc is about as expected and it has some fun action to it and some minor character bits that helps to smooth things out between Desire and Bartolomeo. There are some fun bits that we get throughout it, some nice action for Luffy to work with that’s properly scaled down, and just enough of a tease and nod toward what’s to come with the film. All in all, not a bad arc and better than some previous film lead-in arcs that we’ve had before as it can mostly stand alone.
One Piece takes next week off to let fans hit the theater to take in the movie.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.