This week's installement of the Wano arc in the anime was pretty strong.
Very clear improvement over last week's episode when it comes to the overall package. The pacing was a bit shakey during the first couple of minutes of the episode but it got better after the episode went past those 4-5 minutes.
The highlight of this episode was clearly the bathhouse scene which was eye candy for us gentlemen. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
…except Shinob...ouch!
Cringy sentences aside, what really stood out this week imo was the storyboard and the direction, which was what last week's episode has been really lacking. Those 2 aspects are what really make it or break it for me. Imo you can have a really slow episode when it comes to pacint/plot progression but great storyboarding & direction is something that can still make the episode engaging.
Yutaka Nakashima has really been on a roll as of late. He's been impressing me with each of his recent outputs and this week is no different. The creative way he's been representing certain scenes is just lovely.
The clever transitions such as the steam taking the shape of Hyogoro and transitionning back to him in the prison and the screen going dark with only the ashes from Queen's cigar lighting up before switching to him, the representation of the sumo inferno rules and Luffy's head being cut off via creative and colorful backgrounds, the interesting framing of Raizo and Kawamatsu's emotional conversation, those are all examples of great storyboarding. It's something that the average viewer usually wouldn't pay much attention to but it's those small details that make an episode stand out for me.
My favorite part was how Nakashima represented Shinobu performing the ball crusher in the fashion of an 8-bit video game from the 80's. I absolutely love the more unconventionnal and experimental stuff from him lately and I'm looking more of this in the future. He's an episode director with 10+ years of experience in the anime industry and despite that he's been attempting new things and I totally commend him for this.
--- Update From New Post Merge ---
@Zephray:
Getting real tired of the prison scenes.
Well…I got some news for you then.