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"The Arcana is the means by which all is revealed." - some really obscure video game series that I'm sure no one's ever heard of.
Title: ''Headliner! Enter Hawkins the Magician''
Chapters Covered: 913
Episode Director: Yasunori Koyama (*1/2)
Animation Director: Masahiro Shimanuki ()
Time: 8:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece
To me, it didn't seem that long ago to me that I read this chapter, now it's already an episode. Time flies.
One Piece Episode 899 Preview (15s)
One Piece Episode 899 Preview (30s)
Luffy & Zoro vs Hawkins - Episode 898
My personal opinion is that although the episode suffered without a doubt from the pacing issue i honestly think that although it wasnt overly animated the background and sound effects along with some good shots made it better overall.
Feels like they spent the whole budget on the Hawkins creature summoning. Still enjoyed it, as Hawkins is my favorite non-SH Supernova. Hopefully people learn to like him too as he gets more screen time!
I'm glad that Koyama's back on the show because he's normally a pretty good director, but this episode was just not good. Pad out content-heavy or otherwise dense chapters if you must anime, but whoever makes the decision to do that to a heavy-on-action chapter, and one that's not even a real fight at that, really needs to do some reevaluating. It never leads to a good product. The strawman Stand's formation looked neat, but Tu can't carry whole episodes by himself.
I still don't understand why anyone would want to be a part of Hawkins's crew given that if his voodoo Devil Fruit doesn't kill you, his magic Tarot cards will.
The Straw-Man transformation definitely dragged, but it was a real treat to see it all come together. Its creepy ass laugh was a nice touch too.
Again, as long as the anime looks consistently nice like this for the more average episodes, and keeps up the solid direction, then I can live with the expected pacing issues.
I still don't understand why anyone would want to be a part of Hawkins's crew given that if his voodoo Devil Fruit doesn't kill you, his magic Tarot cards will.
If you look at all of Hawkins' uses of his DF, he never has it affect his actual crew members. In Sabaody it was random people, and in Wano they're clearly Orochi/Kaido's men, not his own crewmates, so he wouldn't care about them either. The only one that appears to be from this crew in this episode is the guy with the hair.
Though yea, the tarot card thing could definitely be an exception to that lol
This was hard to watch. Probably the worst episode I've ever seen. The animation was amazing, but literally nothing happened. I would've preferred a break just so they could combine this episode with the next.
The episode was alright, but the pacing ruined it for me.
Going to say it outright, the first half of the episode was straight ass. Like, I can't think of any real redeeming qualities.
The second half was slow paced, but was still significantly better in pretty much every way. The storyboarding was far more abitious, there were some neat things done with the demonstration of Hawkins ability, and there was some really solid animation, most notably in Masahiro Shimanuki's scene at the start of the second half, and Tu's really great strawman sequence(that probably could have been a bit shorter really). There was some really cool bits of compositing in this half as well, I liked the initial reveal of the first doll crawling out of Hawkins and all the colours associated with that, as well the general creativity around the reveal of aspects of Hawkins ability, and the board itself was pretty dynamic. In saying this, the things that sort of diminished this half was A) the really slow pacing for some scenes, which was exacerbated by B) Some really odd picks of music placement or lack thereof, that was pretty consistent and awkward throughout the episode, it just creates a tonal dissonance in some scenes and feels odd in others.
Also, just going to mention there were a lot of really meh shots this week, that probably shouldn't have stuck on screen for as long as they did.
Overall, a pretty meh product overall. There is definitely some cool stuff in this episode, but there is also a lot making it hard to enjoy, and I'm not sure the good stuff really outweighs the bad in this case.
Next week looks interesting. Looks like they'll be expanding upon the conflict with the straw man, which I'm personally fine with, considering we had a 2 minute transformation sequence, and the hype around it this episode is pretty ominous, it actually doing stuff and having an extended fight scene seems a bit justified considering how much its been set up. No idea how the episode will actually turn out though.
Well that was not good. Sadly, this episode definitely broke the streak we were on.
Tu Yong-ce's animation, Keiichi Ichikawa & Midori Matsuda's corrections, a cool board here and there and amazing compositing can only take you this far. All of the cool stuff is negated when the pacing is just as terrible as it is.
Pretty much nothing happened. Koyama is a solid episode director but maybe his prolonged absence maybe is at the source of the really weak directing (especially during the first half), but at the same time what much can you do with only 9 pages. Koyama's definitely not the only one responsible when it comes to pacing control, there are many different factors that come into play.
Despite being an action centric episode, the movement was severely limited and downright clunky outside of Tu Yong-ce's cut. This shows one of the series main weakness, the lack of action animators the series has.
The 2nd half was better, but not by a landslide though. Is all hope lost for Wano to be good in the anime? Of course not.
Kudos to Ichikawa and Matsuda did their best to erase Shimanuki's poor art as much as they could.
Monkey D. D. Ragon! So beastly he got two D's in his name!
That was horrible
I wouldn't say horrible but very boring. The original content really helped and some animation saved it. Again you can see how the filters really save bad drawings, now they just look like beautiful imprefections.
Hawkins draws a card in the same time Yugi would complete a card game. Very hard to make a deadpan character interesting.
Sad that they split the confrontation between Luffy&Zoro and Hawkins in 2 episodes.
In any case, I like this 2 scenes with Zoro
https://i.imgur.com/NBph7WI.mp4
https://i.imgur.com/F3raQEm.mp4
It seems to me that they’ve made it an ironclad rule to stick to one episode per half a chapter, even if the content is bad for it. I’m looking forward to getting further into Wano, where the pacing gets whiplash fast. This last chapter had five scenes. At least that’ll feel better. Also, they seem to prefer sinking their resources in the back half of the episode, and the first half is usually bad.
It seems to me that they’ve made it an ironclad rule to stick to one episode per half a chapter, even if the content is bad for it. I’m looking forward to getting further into Wano, where the pacing gets whiplash fast. This last chapter had five scenes. At least that’ll feel better. Also, they seem to prefer sinking their resources in the back half of the episode, and the first half is usually bad.
Nah, every now and then it adapts a full chapter, like 902 for example. So not ironclad at all.
Man, just watched. The first half was pretty bad, mostly because they fought fodder for ten whole minutes, but I actually have almost no complaints about the back half of the episode, which was longer anyway. I loved the Straw man reveal, Zoro’s attack, and the transformation. My only complaint is how lazy the Animation was when Straw demon is moving toward them at the end—the last few seconds.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
If they would’ve just cut the first half of this episode, it would’ve been great.
Shimanuki cut was the best thing about this episode his monster drawing are excellent & the impact look brutal but damn his one of the weakest animator directors on one piece.
The filler scenes where Luffy cut people with the sword just felt wrong.
I like Thor lol.
The filler scenes where Luffy cut people with the sword just felt wrong.
In the manga, it’s just a gag where he punches with it in his hand, accidentally cutting those next to the ones he punches. In the anime, he actually uses it correctly and it feels very weird and uncharacteristic. How about we pretend the first half of this episode just didn’t happen…
There's always One Pace.
I feel like Luffy would be more likely to accidentally cut himself with Nidai then fodder.
The filler scenes where Luffy cut people with the sword just felt wrong.
I think in the manga panels we also see Luffy's sword cutting people. I think the running theory is that it's an effect of the demon sword
The guy in who attacks Zoro with his hair looks like this guy in Hawkin's crew at Sabaody
Any info in the credits on his name?
Sadly no. After Hawkins and "Strawman" everyone else is listed generically.
Let's call him Steve.
