Animation wise, this episode felt more stitched together than one of Gekko Moriah’s zombie’s.
A very rough first half animation wise, courtesy of Kazuya “how am I still the character designer” Hisada and Deguchi. Second half showed improvement with Isouchi taking over, but interestingly enough, there were no studio Guts key animators on board. The highlights this episode came from Masahiro Kitazaki, who handled a really nice stretch of action in the second half that did justice to the manga part of this fight, with the highlight of his scene being the grilled mochi. The other highlight came from Yoshikazu Tomita, who handled the gear 4th reveal at the end of the episode.
In terms of direction, it wasn’t particularly exceptional, however, the first half in particular felt like the staff weren’t quite able to bring the story board to life.The main draw of this episode I think, wasn’t really the execution of the content, but the content that was added to the scenario. I felt like Katakuri’s character was well captured in his inner monologue and his dialogue, and I enjoyed the extensions to Rayliegh’s training.
Overall, a little disappointing, and feels a little bit of repeat of episode 725. However, just like 725, we have next week to look forward to, with shit getting good and some of not only the best animators on One Piece(Tu Yong Ce), but also at Toei delivering action cuts. I am so ready for Koudai Watanabe(best animator at toei), Masami Mori and Naotoshi Shida to kick ass, even if their contributions are only short.
@Quexinos:
Something I really like that the anime is doing, is how it's showing Luffy's observation Haki progressing. Such as initially Luffy would just see a light in the direction of whatever attack was coming, but now he can see Katakuri fully formed. He can't see what's going on around him yet, but I think that's a nice touch for the anime.
I'm still concerned about next week as what happens in the manga probably happened in like 5 minutes and they're making a 22 minute episode (I guess more like 17 after opening and theme song) about it. This makes me think there will be a lot of shots of Luffy and Katakuri just staring at each other or that they'll add a bunch of ridiculous filler of Luffy getting beaten down and struggling to get back up (as they have been)
I'm hoping for the best though. This week looked amazing and thus far I'm pleased with how the anime has handled this. … I just don't have complete faith that they'll get it right but, as I said, here's hoping
EDIT
wait I guess with the clocks we see it takes like 20 minutes... but can Luffy stay in 4th Gear that long?
I definitely agree with you about the shown progression of Luffy's observation haki, that's something I think the manga really lacked in actually conveying to the reader, and while I do think there have been a few missteps in demonstrating that in the anime, I think overall its been very solid in its additions of those scenes(my favourite being in 867).
The fight in the manga, even in manga time, took 32 minutes. It was between 12:05 and 12:37. If you were to lowball the time, it was still between 12:05 and 12:28. I think next episode would actually benefit a lot from logical expansions to the choreography, considering a large portion of the fight was them trading blow to blow with each other. Either way, I wouldn't worry too much, we have some of the best staff regular animators on the show, like Tu Yong Ce, and we've also got industry big guns like Masami Mori, Toei's best animator Koudai Watanabe for the diced mochi, and Naotoshi Shida for the transformation, and apparently many more. So I wouldn't be worried.
I would however, expect a final Rayleigh flashback that will be anime only.