This was a very difficult chapter to adapt but thankfully Toei got the right woman to direct it! So yeah, the ending sequence was absolutely fantastic. Great use of color and lighting, timing, and fun storyboarding choices like overlaying Big Mom's visage over the Queen Mama Chanter when it's looming over the Straw Hats, Big Mom's finger snap synching with the Gatling gun opening fire, or following one of the shots of Big Mom swallowing a chunk of cake with Luffy, Chopper, and Carrot gulping in fear. Those last five minutes or so are really effective and yet another feather in the anime's cap.
! And yet again I get a little upset over how Oda copped out here on actually having the Sunny destroyed or heavily damaged.
I stand by what I said last week in regards to the preview that this episode is the best-looking Deguchi episode of the show. Some of the art around the episode's middle was more typical of him but all the important stuff that was 100% him unfiltered looked good. An interesting choice in just straight-up showing the dectuplets fusing together whereas in the manga we had to figure that out ourselves. Tomita just does not stop - his work this arc has really been straight-up unprecedented. I'm a little surprised we didn't see Hisada at all since this was an important episode and his wife was the director but I suppose he must be neck-deep in drawing design sheets for the cavalcade of characters new and old who're scheduled to show up in the coming months.
That was pulled off with aplomb.