Should've asked Santa for a new kidney!
Title: ''Lurking In the Dark - An Assassin Targets Luffy!''
Chapters Covered: rest of 892
Episode Director: Masahiro Hosoda ()
Animation Directors: Eisaku Inoue (**) and Hirotaka Ito (***1/2)
Time: 7:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece
FYI, Hirotaka Ito is the man formerly known as Kimitaka Ito. Turns out we were reading his name wrong and the man himself set the record straight.
**Luffy VS Katakuri - Episode 867 (New soundtrack): https://yadi.sk/i/SnP48otezDKBkw
One Piece Episode 868 Preview**
Line-up looks incredible for tonight….
Next week looks famtastic too
Next week's preview completely spoils the event that's going to happen next week. If you're anime only, avoid it
Surprised at the lack of discussion here. Is everyone okay?
The Luffy/Katakuri parts of this episode felt very well executed, I liked how the bout at the start of the episode showcased Luffy's improvement, with him actually managing to avoid several attacks using observation haki.
The animation this episode was pretty on point, with Tu Yong Ce doing a very solid job handling the majority of the action in the first half of the episode, animating an impressive 104 cuts. His contributions definitely elevated the fighting portion of this episode above what the direction really dictated it should have been, his intense drawings during the beat downs really did a good job of selling the impact and brutality of those scenes. I would also be remiss to not mention Katsumi Ishizuka's short, though great output this episode. Its wonderful to see him breaking away from his meme magic, and animating a genuine fight scene. I would say it was arguably his best work on this arc, and is easily one of his best works on the show in general.
The supervisors for this episode also did a pretty solid job, with both halves, although sporting different styles, feeling extremely polished in both halves.
Direction wise however, I was a little disappointed in this episode. It wasn't bad per se, but I felt it only really shined during the action sequences of this episode, which was mainly confined to the first half, and was otherwise enhanced by the solid key animators. It did cover a lot of dialogue content, and as a result, I felt the episode was a little slow in places, with the nuggets of the Katakuri vs Luffy fight being the only really noteworthy scenes in pretty much all fronts.
Overall, a decent episode, that was a little slow in places, but benefitted from solid animation and had consistently good artwork.
Next episode looks like all the hype. Though the staff list hasn't been revealed, Komaki and S Ito seem to be the staff on next week, and they seem to be knocking it out of the park.
I need a full release for the new track that played during the fight.
