Remember: Nazis.
Title: ''Back from the Brink - Germa, the Strongest Reinforcements!''
Chapters Covered: 898
Episode Director: Satoshi Ito (1/2)
Animation Director: Kenji Yokoyama ()
Time: 7:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece
Remember: Nazis.
Title: ''Back from the Brink - Germa, the Strongest Reinforcements!''
Chapters Covered: 898
Episode Director: Satoshi Ito (1/2)
Animation Director: Kenji Yokoyama ()
Time: 7:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece
Vinsmoke Family Vs Big Mom Pirates - Episode 873 https://yadi.sk/i/jdGMuC04H3scfQ
I loved this episode soooooo much. Can I say the anime is doing a better job than the manga in the past few episodes?
I couldn't believe that all the butterfly scenes in Whole Cake Island arc were anime filler indeed. Yeah they were filler, but they made all the Sanji, Reiju and Sora plots much more emotional.
Reiju is one of the best characters in One Piece.
Reiju is one of the best characters in One Piece.
Reiju is a terrible character, then again all the Vinsmokes are bad besides Sanji and Judge.
https://i.giphy.com/media/GBElw2nPerMVa/giphy.webp
Reiju is a terrible character, then again all the Vinsmokes are bad besides Sanji and Judge.
How is reiju terrible? Idk if Id go so far as to call her one of the bet but she is a consistent character with a recognizable personality, interesting skillset, core flaw of her guilt for not doing anything earlier to help sanji and an interesting relationship with her brother
@Long:
How is reiju terrible? Idk if Id go so far as to call her one of the bet but she is a consistent character with a recognizable personality, interesting skillset, core flaw of her guilt for not doing anything earlier to help sanji and an interesting relationship with her brother
Reiju:
! Katakuri and Brulee easily have a better Brother and Sister dynamic, I just don't see anything that interesting with there relationship especially since as per Sanji words he could have gone his entire life without seeing his family and he be fine.
Terrible is a strong word, unintresting and boring fit better:
Then again like I said besides for Judge and Sanji all of the are just kinda there and the weakest aspect of the arc.
I don't remember the manga having as much of an emotional punch as this episode, so props to the studio for doing a great job adapting it. Last bits with Reiju were definitely the highlight for me.
One thing I hate (maybe not a blame for the anime, since they are just adapting the manga) is just how nerfed they had to make Sanji to allow his siblings to help him. Like the average goon should not be giving Sanji trouble, but he's constantly with the SHOCK face at any bazooka or gun fire going his way. Isn't this the same guy who speed blitz'd Oven without anyone seeing him? This guy can do heavy damage with his legs too and has taken much more damage than anything the goons can throw at him…ugh....just wanted to went my frustration here.
Overall, I enjoyed the episode a lot more than expected. Looking forward to the conclusion of the arc!
Yeah this gif best describes Reiju for me:
Love the Germa powers but still do understand why both manga and anime make Sanji so slow.
A competently made episode.
What really stood out to me this episode was Satoshi Ito's awesome direction skills. What a shame they wasted his talent on such a low importance and staff deprived episode.
Really enjoyed the Sanji and Reiju added moment, showing a clear contrast between her and the other cunts of brothers.
Is it me or have they forgotten to add the name of Reiju's attack in Kanji?
Animation-wise, nothing noteworthy. Yokoyama was the biggest name on the KA list and he solo supervised this time. Quite some bank animation this week. Kitazaki bank and Shida bank.
Sanji getting shot in the arm even though his good observation haki game, don't know how to feel about that one.
EDIT: Sanji getting shot was cannon, so unread what I said pls.
I thought the episode was fantastic. Lots of dynamic action, very touching emotional moment, thought the animatiom was flashy as it should have been. The thing I enjoyed most was Reiju's moment since she's such a great character.
Only thing that kind of let me down this episode was Ichiji's sparking valyrie move I think it was? In the manga it looked like wholesome red lasers flying upwards and piercing through Oven, here it looked flashy and the sound effects sold it really well but I was expecting red lasers, not tiny sparkly beams.
Now that I've finally gotten my computer troubles sorted I'm just going to throw all my missing episode commentary into one post:
870:
! What is there to say about this one that hasn't been said already? Without a doubt this was the most lavishly animated episode in franchise history, full of much of Toei's top talent, old and young. Toei must've had a lot of faith in Kureta, a relative rookie in the director's chair, to hand such an important episode off to him and it paid off immensively. From Katakuri turning into a mochi donut and wheeling around like Sonic the Hedgehog to dodge attacks all the way up to the explosive finisher (I'm noticing that since he came back to One Piece Ishizuka seems to be following the Yutaka Nakamura path into "light this shit up fam" territory) this episode was just a blast.
! Kodai Watanabe's part flowing directly into Masami Mori's sequence was really fantastic. Someone should check to see if Nakamura is still alive because Mori was channeling him hard there. Not just in the cubic shape of the debris but in things like Katakuri subtly repositioning himself before he slammed Luffy down, and how his face was trembling just his scream as he did so - those were all right out of the classic Yutapon playbook. All that was missing were some extra bright sparkle effects on impact. Then after that, Tomita! I thought his little Snakeman preview bit in the previous episode meant that he wouldn't be showing up here but yet he did, and for a complicated sequence that was two minutes long! The man has been with the show in some form or another since practically the very beginning and now almost twenty years later he's putting out some of the best work he's ever done all in one arc. It's incredible. Then finally we have the show's other current workhorse, Yong-ce Tu, putting out some of his best work in his documented career (that cut of Katakuri flipping in the air to land on his feet reminded me a lot of Hiromi Ishigami's work - specifically the cut of Sabo snatching the Flare Flare Fruit in Dressrosa) and the fact that he had the opportunity to collaborate with Ishizuka himself on the final blow speaks well of the staff's faith in him.
871:
! Hey, Pudding's line about wanting to apologize to Sanji for everything she did was good, it actually ameliorates somewhat the problem I had with the manga where her whole involvement in this scheme, and not entirely as an innocent victim, pretty much got swept under the rug. Sanji himself still does that, but hey it's something. Also I'm surprised that they didn't show or tell how Pekoms got into the Mirror World. Us hardcore fans can figure it out, but casual viewers less so I'd think. I guess that anime-only bit of Brulee freeing herself at the start of the episode was meant to be enough.
872:
! I guess they tried to give Pekoms more of a spotlight here and not have his Sulong transformation be a complete nonevent but he's not a cute girl so he still gets the shaft - literally in this case. Odd that they left out the lines that were explicitly ordering the pirates to put out Pekoms's eyes when earlier in the arc we had Pedro holding his gouged-out eyeball in his hand but perhaps Toei got some angry letters about that one. I still don't think Pekoms is dead though for the same reason I don't think Pound is either even if it doesn't make any sense. It just feels so out of character for Oda to completely fuck over a character like that, even if the anime did give Pekoms a bit more of a sendoff.
873:
! Kind of an archetypical Yokoyama episode. Competently directed, competently drawn, average animation at best. I'm kinda surprised that he didn't work with Yasuko Fukumoto like he has for the majority of his Totland episodes. Instead I swear I saw corrections by Hisada all over the episode though I could just as easily be mistaken. The Vinsmoke attacks were begging for some fancier animation but I imagine the production is both still regrouping from 870 and gearing up for 875 which will be a very tricky one to pull off. As for the character drama side, eh, year Reiju's a rather overrated character. I remember that she was depicted as being rather selfish when she was first introduced and it would've been more interesting if she had held onto that trait instead of dropping it once Oda needed to push Sanji as being "the kindest".
I thought this episode was terrible. They slowed everything down to a snail's pace and had Sanji looked shocked at every little thing. It made him seem much more incompetent than the manga version. The action was mostly slow and boring. I felt no impact from Yonji's attack.
The scene with Reiju was decent, though. Mostly because of the music.
Really liked this episode.
There isn't too much to say about this episode animation wise. It was perfectly competent, Yokoyama did a very solid job of selling the layouts, but there really isn't much in the way of real animation.
Saying that, Satoshi Ito's direction, and storyboarding more than made up for the lack of any really complex movement, with everything feeling really on-point, and there being a lot of really fantastic layouts in the episode that really do a good job of selling the drama of scenes. I really liked the use of Difficult, its my favourite OST, and I think it was very well placed with in this episode. Think they did a fantastic job of expanding on things that didn't make a lot of sense in the manga. For example, showing Oven rushing to catch up to Sanji was really well done, as opposed to him seemingly appearing out of nowhere, and not to mention, was a very tense scene.
Overall, good episode, not sure what to expect from next one, but I'm going to keep my expectations fairly low considering its Ueda's return…
As I expected, this episode was a step up over the previous one. It got off to a pretty strong start, and although some moments didn't live up to my expectations (namely, Ichiji's attack on Oven had no impact at all), the impact and pacing of the action overall was fine. As for the flashbacks, I liked Reiju's one a lot, the brothers' not so much - it felt rather weird seeing them mock Sanji for being a failure, and having the episode reinforce that by them saving Sanji in the present. Yeah, I know the manga and the anime's main point is that Sanji's worth isn't defined by his physical strength, but I could probably talk for a while about how that overall theme wasn't particularly handled in the best way.