All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy.
Title: ''Luffy's Determination - Beat the Sumo Inferno!''
Chapters Covered: rest of 944-945
Episode Director: Tasuku Shimaya (***)
Animation Director: Shigefumi Shingaki (**1/2)
Time: 8:30PM EST
Watch It: āwww.crunchyroll.com/one-piece
Did Sanji just defeat X-Drake? Well, that wasn't in the manga.
Major Spoilers below
! >! So you want all the half baked fights in the manga that Oda felt like skipping to have no satisfying pay offs? Ok.
One Piece Episode 944 Preview
Major Spoilers below
! >! So you want all the half baked fights in the manga that Oda felt like skipping to have no satisfying pay offs? Ok.
Nah absolutely not. The anime certainly fixes Wano's "teleportation problem.
Great episode. I like that the episode expanded on the Straw Hats fights against Orochi's army. I did a got a good laugh from Sanji's reaction to Zoro saving Hiyori. Also I really enjoyed the ending of the episode with Big Mom interrupted Overtaken with her arrival to the prison.
Year of sanji is back! You can always count on anime to give him good fights.
Quite an entertaining first three-quarters with a competent but not quite as impactful finish over in Udon. On the animation front I know that Kojima's scene is going to dominate the discussion and rightfully so, but I couldn't also help but be impressed by Dennis Cablao's bit of Zoro vs. Kyoshiro earlier in the episode. It's been a while since he's shown up on One Piece it feels like so it's great to see him come back after an extended absence with such a great cut with dynamic angles and striking effects.
Also I've been thinking that we're pretty lucky that One Piece airs on Fuji TV. If it aired on say TV Tokyo the Wano episodes would probably be dimmed to hell and back with how heavy all the aura and flash effects are.
Sanji was awesome <3
Really good episode.
Despite Aya Komaki only storyboarding this episode, the fact that Tasuku Shimaya is capable of replicating her direction style makes it feel like it the episode was directed by herself. The direction was really solid in this episode, I'm really liking Shimaya more and more as episodes go by. He's really starting to become a strong directorial asset.
The moment when Law was walking towards Hawkins was incredibly atmospheric and tense. That's a perfect example of great direction.
The snappy timing and the great effects work from Dennis Cablao in the Zoro vs Kyoshiro portion was really lovely. Definitely one of his strongest scenes on the series.
Takashi Kojima's Sanji vs X-Drake was absolutely gorgeous as expected. His loose linework and incredibly seemless timing is just a fantastic sight to behold. He's making the monster trio look like actual monsters.
My main man Brook looked like an absolute chad in this episode and I loved it.
All of the people who said that the quality of the Wano arc would drop after the first couple episodes and that only a select few anime episodes would be well animated, I can't hear you rn.
I remember how a couple of years ago people were regularely dogpiling on the series' animation, but now that we're getting well animated scenes more often than ever I'm glad that it's not the case anymore.
Sanji vs. Drake was awesome. Another great episode.
lol, Toei just gave Sanji a win against Drake without the Raid suit? They really gassing the Strawhats up in the anime (love it!).
Okay. Watched the episode in full.
That was incredibly good. From the music choices, to the storyboard, to the use of colours to the animation, everything was pretty much on point with this episode. Simple stuff like cutting between Udon being washed over with blue, and cutting back to Kid being dunked in a similar blue does a fantastic job of highlighting how Kid is very literally drowning in the depths of despair of Udon prison.
The episode had a nice balance of humour and tension. I will say that Udon is increasingly becoming more favourite part of Wano, and I think the anime has done a really good job of making Queen a really intimidating antagonist. From his voice acting to how his framed, his a character who really oozed intimidation in this episode. Even neat directional tricks did a fantastic job of emphasizing the incredibly power he has over the heroes. Stuff like him snapping his fingers to plunge Killer and Kidd into the water and Luffy into despair fantastically highlights just how intimidating a presence he is.
I really loved the atmosphere at the beginning of Law's scene right after the eye catch. The OST placement, the shot composition with a POV shot through Law's basket and the lighting all gave the scene an appropriately samurai esque feel.
The episode wasn't directed by series director Aya Komaki, but it was storyboarded by her, with direction credits going to newcomer Tasuku Shimaya. They did an absolutely fantastic job. There's just so much cool stuff to talk about this episode, and I haven't even gotten to the animation highlight scenes.
There were two main animation highlights this episode. The first being in the first half of the episode and presumably coming from Dennis Cablao was Zoro vs Kyoshiro. I really enjoyed the snappiness and smearyness of the poses in this fight scene, that are perfectly complicated by the incredibly intricate impact from and effects. The fact that a good deal of the action has incredibly intricate camera work, with the characters spinning around each other, and the camera being animated to follow the action, only elevating it further. A think a special bit of praise should be to how Zoro's long foreshortens as he comes down to perform the tower climb return at the end of the scuffle. Really fantastic stuff from Dennis Cablao if it is him(his an animator from Toei Phils). Hope to see more stuff from him like this in the future.
The next scene comes in the second half and is the return of Takashi Kojima from his prior scene on Zoro vs Killer in 933. He handles Sanji's beat down on Drake. The scene is a bit conservative at points, namely during the repeated animation during the Hashi on Drake, but it still has a lot of great things in it. Kojima does a fantastic job animating the fire effects around Sanji's Diable Janbe and I really like how he drew Drake's zoan form throughout the scene. He did a fantastic job of selling how slimy and scaly he was. Despite some of the more limited stuff, there was still some fantastic camera work as Sanji dashed around Drake, and some cool smears with Sanji's final concasse finisher. Another great scene from him.
Those were the main animation highlights. In saying that, there was some nice character acting animation throughout the episode, and the action was generally serviceable enough outside of these scenes. Masahiro Kitazaki was the top key animator on the episode and its presumed he handled Brook's scene scaring the crap out of he Ninja in the first half(and likely all the ninja stuff in the first half anyway).
Overall, an incredibly well put together episode.
I have no idea what to expect from next episode. Kenji Yokoyama is a competent animation director, and Masahiro Hosoda is considered a little bit of a mixed bag in terms of direction and storyboarding, though he has been decent in Wano.
While I can't see Sanji defeating Drake, animation was really top tier. Very good episode! One of the best!
I guess the anime realised they did a mistake with page1 and gave sanji drake as compensation.
"It's fun working with nasty ingredients"
So true 
I'm fine with this filler stuff, but I could have done without Drake calling Page 1 a weakling.
Loved the whole thing. Luffy's line at the end is very important and great. Sanji vs Drake completely stole the show for me to the point I had to look up who that animator was, utterly ridiculously good.
Croc or Enel would never.
Wanna see the "ancient civilization destroyed" thing done really well? FFXIV did a great take on it. The bar's high for One Piece to beat.
