One Piece Episode 641
What They Say:
All but done for, Sanji is trapped by Violet and her crew when she suddenly changes her mind and mysteriously turns on her own men! Meanwhile, Robin and Usopp come face to face with the Little People known as the Tontatta Tribe and find themselves mesmerized — and Robin awakens to find herself pinned to ground!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One Piece had a good bit of fun last time around with its cast as it spent more time with Law and his group, wrapped up a bit more of what was going on with Luffy and the opening round of the fight that he was observing and then showed us how Sanji got taken in by Violet since she’s one of those that works for the big bad on the island. It was cute in its own way to see how Sanji got taken down a couple of pegs but still managed to hold his own mindset. The other part that we got that was interesting and will play a bigger role as it goes on is with the fairies as we had one group that came across them while also getting a clearer idea of the creature that Zoro’s been with that has been helping him locate his sword. It wasn’t much but it was enough to make it clear that these little guys are going to have a bigger role along the way.
While we get a little more with Violet at the start here as it seems as though she’s a little more malleable in terms of which side she may be on, the show turns its focus more towards the arena for this episode. Which is both good and bad since it means we’ll get some more action and a lot more characters to watch getting involved in order to gain Ace’s devil fruit. The downside is that it’s a bit more drawn out material with a lot of characters that are going to get themselves kicked down hard. But it does help that it’s the C Block and that means Luffy gets to be involved and hopefully it won’t go quite the same way that the B Block fight went which didn’t really captivate with its characters since we didn’t have any skin in the game and it wasn’t clear who would really rise to the top with who we should really care about.
While we get a few smaller areas with this episode, there’s definitely some fun to be had. Where the show goes in a fun area for some fans is when we find that Robin has been captured by the fairies and she’s been tied down, Gulliver’s Travels style, as the little guys are intent on making it clear that they have her fully captured. The others have been captured as well but appear to be elsewhere within the Tontatta Kingdom. What we learn is useful though is that it’s these guys that help to grow things so big on the island and that explains a lot. But they’re also smart enough to know what her powers are and have seemingly tied her down properly so that she can’t use them. It’s a rather fun little standoff at first and I’m sure some will just delight at the visual of Robin tied down with the little critters all over her while she figures out the best way to escape from this. Which, in itself, turns out to be hilarious while saying so much about the Little People.
In Summary:
One Piece isn’t focused too much on any one particular story in this episode, though Robin tends to get a bit more of the time here in general, and that allows us to touch on a lot of the cast and what’s going on with them. It doesn’t give us a lot of forward momentum, but we get a few pieces that does nudge things forward a bit. Sanji and Violet is certainly turning out to be interesting and that has an impact quickly on Law and Caesar at the end that has potential and I’m liking the whole Little People aspect that we get from Robin here. But I’m also cautiously looking forward to the next arena fight since it will have Luffy involved in things and it’ll be good to see how he handles this kind of fight with just how serious he gets – or has to get – in the quest to gain back Ace’s devil fruit.
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.