One Piece Episode 640
What They Say:
Zoro tracks the thief who stole his sword – and learns about a danger facing the Straw Hats! Meanwhile, Law, Usopp, and the others arrive at Green Bit only to find it inhabited by strange creatures, and swarming with the Navy soldiers! All this while Sanji learns the mysterious identity of Violet, and realizes he’s in deeper trouble than he knew!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With its focus largely on the B Block fight in the previous episode, we got to see a good bit of powers and ability used. While it covered several of the fighters, it was mostly to showcase that Bartolomeo has a pretty interesting ability about him that allowed him to move forward fairly easily without breaking too much of a sweat. What was interesting was seeing that Bellamy ended up getting pretty well abused, something that I didn’t expect to see happen. But that allowed for a rather nice moment between him and Luffy after the match which shows how each had grown over the years. As interesting as the episode was, it was one that was still largely focused on the fight between characters we haven’t truly invested yet so it wasn’t exactly the most engaging piece in terms of the larger story, though the bridge sequence with Law and his group definitely helped to move things along a bit.
Thankfully, this episode moves forward more with Law and his group as they’ve reached the new island where they’re going to do the trade for Caesar, who has actually been a bit helpful recently. The island is a bit more traditional in some ways with a lot of lush greens and foliage along with some oversized aspects that feels a bit natural. While they’re making their plans and being careful and cautious in their progress, they end up running across a group of Navy men in the midst of the forest that end up being accosted by some mysterious creatures in the shadows that totally torment them down to their underwear. What they turn out to be is a group of little people that can basically fit into your hand. Which Robin does do to try and figure out what’s going on, which is certainly comical since she uses a couple hundred hands to try and figure out what’s going on.
This also clues us in a bit with Zoro, who has been searching for his stolen sword, and has found himself with one of these little people himself that’s been riding inside his shirt as they race through the town. There’s some cuteness with it early on, but we also get a good bit of information out of the fairy as Zoro learns that the Don Quixote family is going to attack the Sunny soon. That sets him on the path he needs to protect it and find the others, but he’s still having to work with the fairy since he got himself rather easily lost. This blends into a couple of the other pieces that are going on here as we get a little more of what’s happening at the arena and we also touch upon Sanji a bit who has realized that Violet has completely and totally used him and deceived him since she reveals that she’s part of the Don Quixote family. Which reinforces the fairy talking to Zoro about how the whole thing is just one large trap. Which, well, the Straw Hats should have expected, right?
In Summary:
One Piece has a pretty decent episode here as we get some good new bits taking place with Law and his group on the island that will lead to some potential new allies down the line against Don Quixote. It’s not gone into deeply, but you can extrapolate a lot of easily enough. Zoro’s arc gets a little bit more information here and we can start to see how things will tie together there, and it works as the opening and expected moment about what the Quixote gang is going to be up to here. Which in turn allows events between Sanji and Violet to finally come to light as the truth about her is finally revealed. They skirted around it easily enough up until now, but it could go only so far before it just got frustrating. Of course, for Violet, it’s going to be really frustrating for her since she gets a glimpse at what makes Sanji who he is and that’s just not what she expected in the slightest.
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.