One piece sub (up to date anime - no manga) MAJOR-SPOILERS

Skip wrote:

Zero wrote:

At least it's over. This arc reminded me of Thriller Bark, in that it was slower than usual in pace and wasn't that great until the Straw Hats showed up to play for the final fights. And they're the weakest two canon arcs IMO.

I knew, as soon as Zoro owned Hody earlier in the arc, that he wouldn't be a major challenge in comparison to the caliber of villains we saw before.

The latter part of Thriller Bark was great, besides, it gave us Brook. Who, coincidentally, was the stand out character in this arc because of the last two episodes. His fight was actually well done, my personal highlight of the arc.

What ever happened to Yahazugiri (Brook's signature attack that Ryuuma stole) though? Brook hasn't used it ever again. Thriller Bark jumped from just okay to HOLY FREAKING SHIT when the fight against Oz came up with the Straw Hats. And then when you thought Zoro couldn't get any better...

Zero wrote:

Skip wrote:

Zero wrote:

At least it's over. This arc reminded me of Thriller Bark, in that it was slower than usual in pace and wasn't that great until the Straw Hats showed up to play for the final fights. And they're the weakest two canon arcs IMO.

I knew, as soon as Zoro owned Hody earlier in the arc, that he wouldn't be a major challenge in comparison to the caliber of villains we saw before.

The latter part of Thriller Bark was great, besides, it gave us Brook. Who, coincidentally, was the stand out character in this arc because of the last two episodes. His fight was actually well done, my personal highlight of the arc.

What ever happened to Yahazugiri (Brook's signature attack that Ryuuma stole) though? Brook hasn't used it ever again. Thriller Bark jumped from just okay to HOLY FREAKING SHIT when the fight against Oz came up with the Straw Hats. And then when you thought Zoro couldn't get any better...

I'm pretty sure he used it at least once after then, if not more. And his attack in the recent episode was basically an enhanced version of it.

This weeks episode was 80% Luffy going "Raaaaaaaaawr!", 10% Shirahoshi crying "Luffy-sama!", and 10% random fishmen shouting "mugiwara!"

Not a bad episode I suppose, and the crew interaction at the start was great, but a few things felt off to me.

* Whitebeard's VA sounds off. Either they hired someone else, or it's the correct VA having a bad day.
* Chopper stayed in Monster point a hell of a lot longer than three minutes...
* For most of the episode, Luffy seems to be getting nowhere, we see a few fragments breaking off Noah, but it's not really showing any damage. Suddenly the end of the episode it's heavily damaged. There was seemingly no transition from showing "minor damage" to showing "twenty-minutes-of-elephant-gatling damage".
* Luffy, having passed out from blood loss, is allowed to crash a hundred feet into the splintered remains of Noah's deck. Shirahoshi is meant to catch him, not look at him falling with a stupid smile like everything's now ok. He's bleeding to death, he's very much not ok!

Let's be honest, random fishmen shouting "mugiwara!" was more than 10% of it.

Well it seems as though things are about to get a lot more interesting, since Luffy has started himself a war with a Yonkou.

Also I hated every second where the egg guy was speaking, this quite accurately sums up my reaction:

Spoiler:

I'd never noticed Tomago having an egg shell for a lower body before. Wierd. Anyway, okay episode. As a piece of world building it serves a purpose, and it was mercifully devoid of filler but it just wasn't very exciting.

Oh shit, Smoker's a Vice Admiral now? That's awesome.

Smoker is still pretty cool How did he get that huge scar though? How many people are strong enough to mark the face of a marine VA with a logia?

And that's the end of Fishman Island. Jesus, did that drag. The self-same arc in the manga was also poorly paced in parts, and while the anime did a few things to try and remedy the most glaring ocurrences, it also served a few too many helpings of crappy art, terrible animation and bullshit filler.

It'll be interesting to see if we get a filler mini-arc before the next arc proper.

SimianWonder wrote:

And that's the end of Fishman Island. Jesus, did that drag. The self-same arc in the manga was also poorly paced in parts, and while the anime did a few things to try and remedy the most glaring ocurrences, it also served a few too many helpings of crappy art, terrible animation and bullshit filler.

It'll be interesting to see if we get a filler mini-arc before the next arc proper.

I really hope not but we probably will. Yeah though, thank god that's finally over.

SimianWonder wrote:

And that's the end of Fishman Island. Jesus, did that drag. The self-same arc in the manga was also poorly paced in parts, and while the anime did a few things to try and remedy the most glaring ocurrences, it also served a few too many helpings of crappy art, terrible animation and bullshit filler.

It'll be interesting to see if we get a filler mini-arc before the next arc proper.

There's two filler episodes leading up to Film Z after next week's episode.

That I can cope with.

I just hope the anime does

Spoiler:

justice.

You can't just taunt me like that Simian, now I have to ignore that spoiler for god knows how long.

Don't worry it's just an arc title.

And they'll probably screw it up.

Not long, hopefully. The name of the next island is revealed in two or three chapters time, so even allowing for filler you've only got five or six weeks tops. It's - so far at least - a really good arc, much more satisfying than Fishman Island. Right, I'll mention it no more.

Oh good, now I don't have to wonder what's in that any more.

Also if you were interested Kaio, I've progressed more in the manga after staying on 191 for about a year; now I'm up to the beginning of Skypia. I went on a bit of a binge after I'd finished the main log of Pirate Warriors.

One thing I liked about this episode is it showed the straw hats all bettering themselves in the time skip, except for Sanji and Robin. Robin is just chillin' in her little flash back thing, and Sanji is just beating up trannies.

Sanji and Franky's flashbacks were straight from opening 14. How lazy.

I thought they were from that We Are! montage right before the timeskip.

Ah yes, from episode 516, you're quite correct.

For a filler episode, that wasn't bad at all. The movie might actually be quite good.

If Toei try and show that Shuzo can actually fight and hold off Luffy, Zoro, Sanji and Momonga all at the same time I'm going to scream. Bad enough they put a 300 million plus bounty on Panz for stealing food when Luffy had to lead the attack on the might of Enies Lobby to get the same figure.

Ranting about the usual filler bullshit aside, I did quite enjoy that though I was hoping for more of Momonga v Luffy or Zoro.

Well that sucked.

* Panz Fry has no personality at all, and has shown nothing at all to be worth a 300 million bounty.
* The animation was sub-par throughout. Only Luffy v Shuzo got more than a few frames.
* Re-using the knock-up stream mechanic. Lazy.
* Shuzo. I don't like his design at all, and he's typical filler crap; tanking Luffy's Jet Gatling (which aside from being total BS in the first place, was really poorly animated, looked more like regular gatling than Jet), then switching to fighting Momonga and downing him like nothing.
* Zoro v Momonga was a bit pants. I guess I'm amazed they even let a canon VA fight one of the monster trio at all, but aside from Zoro's phoenix attack, we saw almost nothing of their fight.
* The kamikaze torpedo squad. They can aim their subs and the first one still misses Sunny - a stationary and unaware target? Good going, you guys look like total incompetents.

Let's finish up this filler nonsense and get on with the next canon arc, can we?

Yep, huge step down from last week. It looked as thought it was genuinely going to be alright. Apparently not.

Jesus, that was terrible.

Pros
* Momonga got a scene at the end
* Ain and Z got a scene at the end. It was very well drawn.

Cons
* Everything else.
* No, really. It was garbage.
* The suicide torpedoes bursting out of the water to attack from the air? No, you're submersibles, you attack under the water not leap out like kamikaze salmon to give your target ample warning of your intent. And, as per last week, they're manned craft and they still all miss Sunny and hit the fucking reef. They must be piloted by retards.
* Robin having the physical strength to rip one of said subs in half. Robin has never demonstrated anything beyond regular human strength levels and last I checked none of us could perform such a feat.
* Luffy v Shuzo. Luffy looked like a punk. The filler villain giving Luffy a hard time was expected, but it was so poorly executed; once again, Luffy's "jet" tier moves appear to be anything but. Oh, and note to Toei; that was a regular Gattling Gun you animated, not the Gear Second enhanced Jet derivative. Learn the fucking difference.
* Luffy got hurt by a haki imbued cannon. Fine. Later on though, he gets shot by dozens of them and doesn't even feel it. Consistency please?
* Giant Luffy. Cool idea, granted, but again executed poorly. Luffy gets horns from Lily's helmet. Yes, I can see that. But he doesn't seem to show any of the other pieces of her armour, nor her breasts?
* Giant Luffy again. Luffy's a devil fruit eater. He's standing in the sea. What does the sea do to DF users? Yes, one of the most fundamental weaknesses of the Devil Fruits no longer applies in filler, people. You heard it here first.
* The other Straw Hats. Why the hell do they stay on the ship? Luffy gets impaled (nice attempt at mimicking Crocodile's hook attack by the way) by Shuzo yet not even Zoro or Sanji are willing to step off Sunny to help their Captain? No one tries to help at all, which feels so out of character for them all.
* Lastly, because I running out of patience and want to relegate this filler-trash to the abyss where I no longer have to recall it ever again, Panz Fry. Not only does he never get close to justifying a Supernova level bounty, let alone his reputed 300 million plus, the end scene shows him cooking on an actively erupting volcano with Sunny right next door. And no one thinks thats a problem? Good going.

Yeah, the filler mini-arc started with promise but the last two were utter tosh. Roll on Punk Hazard, that should be very special if the manga is anything to go by.