The climactic battle between Oden's small band and Kaido's forces commences. A thousand beast pirates face off against eleven samurai and the world shakes as their leaders duel. Oden and Kaido trade blows, their mighty attacks ripping apart Wano even as both fight for it as their prize. Oden puts up a valiant effort, as do his followers, but the tide turns when Momo is captured and held at knifepoint. Oden leaps to save his son and is cut down from behind, only to find that the captive was not Momo but Orochi's shapeshifting ally.
In the aftermath of the battle, Oden and his followers are imprisoned. Many others go into hiding as a new era descends on Wano. Eventually, they are to be executed by boiling, and a great pot is made in the flower capital. As Oden goes to be boiled first he puts forth a proposition: let them all go in at once, for the duration of any stipulated time, and free anyone who survives after that time frame.
I don't know how else to say it but One Piece is on a whole other level right now.
Folks I've been shouting One Piece good One Piece good for weeks on end at this point and now I'm here to tell you that, actually, One Piece great. The battle between Oden and Kaido is a visual spectacle of an entirely different breed in an arc that has been nothing but eye candy from the get-go, full of gorgeous, vibrant colors and dynamic motion. After the tracking shot where Oden slid down Kaido's long dragon neck, it took me a few minutes just to get my jaw up off the floor.
Let me try to put things in perspective. I recall seeing the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie in theaters and being absolutely gobsmacked by the visuals. I was in awe of the energy, creativity, and fidelity I was witnessing. I remember thinking: this is what the Toei team is unable to do week to week because it would be too much effort in too short a timeframe, but wow in a feature film format they can just cut loose. Honestly, the Wano arc has made me… completely re-evaluate that stance. In fact, I recently watched Stampede and while I enjoyed it, I found myself thinking “This is… just what Wano arc looks like every week.” I cannot heap enough praise on the Toei team, and I hope they get the recognition they deserve for what is honestly just a triumph of weekly animation.
Grant Jones dives into the wild world of giant monsters and how Kaiju No. 8 builds on their legacy.― Kaiju No. 8 is a series that wears its influences on its sleeves. As the first word in its title suggests, it comes from a long line of works in the kaiju genre, using giant monsters and burning skylines as a backdrop to tell stories. While many likely know kaiju in a passing sense, it may help to h...
This steamy manga's appeal is going to depend on how much you can stomach a female protagonist who kicks off the romance by assaulting her former fiance.― This is a tricky one. Before You Discard Me, I Shall Have My Way with You is, to all appearances, a story that opens with a sexual assault. Agnès has been betrothed to Crown Prince Lucilleur since childhood, and she's been in love with him just as...
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...