One Piece Episode 636
What They Say:
The battle heats up and the widely despised Bartolomeo takes the ring! But he’ll have to contend with both the Prodence Kingdom contingent, and Dressrosa’s own local favorite, Bellamy! Meanwhile, watching the battle for Block B from up above, Luffy risks having his cover blown!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece returns after a week off and the show naturally has a lot of things going on here. We’ve had some good character pieces coming into play as we get to know the new characters that are showing up and some of those from the past that have resurfaced. Bellamy in particular is an interesting one in that he’s made his appearance fully enough and kind of tormented Luffy a little, but also made it clear that he’s moved past him in a way, which is not what one might have expected in a show where grudges can come back doubled, if not more. The show also brought in Bartolomeo at the end of the previous episode where it wanted to get the next round of matches in the arena underway and he was built up pretty well if simply in a way.
This particular match amusingly starts off dirty since the audience is intent on thrown a lot of garbage out into the arena since they don’t care for him much, but the whole thing turns generally ugly from there since Bartolomeo just takes it as even more of an insult and you can see that he wants to just make a mess of everyone. Luckily, it doesn’t take long for a serious challenger to come into the arena to go against him since there are a lot that don’t like his insolent manner, and that gets the crowd all riled up to see a good fight. Having it be Bellamy admittedly isn’t a surprise, but it’s interesting to see how the various reactions work out for the group that’s there, especially since his winning will move him to the next level and get him closer to getting the Devil Fruit. Which is something that will naturally sit very wrong for Luffy should that happen.
The second half is largely made up of the right that goes on and it works out pretty well overall. We get a lot of smaller moments along the way with some of the other competitors in the ring as they go through their fights, which includes a comically dangerous moment where some fall out of the ring and into the water where oversized fish play with them before eating them up, off screen at least. Bellamy for his part has a pretty good run here as he moves through things with a kind of controlled eagerness that lets him be cocky by with enough power to back it up as he works through most of the crowd of competitors. We also get a good look at his spring-like ability as that plays out and it’s just comically stupid in a way, but works well enough within the weirdness of the show to make it not seem completely stupid.
In Summary:
With the episode focusing mostly on those within the ring for the current round of combat, the show works well enough as it’s largely giving us a feeling for a couple of the characters. The focus on both Bartolomeo and Bellamy lets us see different aspects of them and we get some decent action out of Bellamy as it goes on. There’s a little humor and commentary to be had by Luffy along the way, though there’s a great little bit of a gag at the end that could change his situation a bit going forward. For the most part, we get another stage setting episode but it’s one that works well enough since it lets Bellamy take the stage without being completely annoying or problematic. Not exactly interesting, but at least you can see how his turn in this arc could take a few different paths.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.