1054: ''Death to Your Partner! Killer's Dangerous Gamble''

Crossword

True friendship is formed over silly laughter and messy spaghetti eating.

Title: ''Death to Your Partner! Killer's Dangerous Gamble''
Chapters Covered: 1029
Episode Director: Yuji Tokuno
Animation Directors: Keita Saito + Toshio Deguchi
Time: 8:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece

So the anime's finally back after a couple weeks of preempted airings due to sports' coverage. After how good episode 1045 was it's nice to see that Tokuno appears to be sticking around for a bit instead of being a one-off. And speaking of sticking around Vincent Chansard tweeted today that he'll be working on One Piece full-time for the next couple of months (normally he works in the French anime industry plus some anime freelance work here and there) so from now until the end of Wano at least we'll continue to see a bunch more of his work.

Sano

Great episode to come back from the break. The animation was great throughout the episode. The anime did a great job of the finale of Killer Vs. Hawkins. I really like the new music that was playing when Killer did his finisher move on Hawkins.

Crossword

That track wasn't actually new, it was from Stampede. Amusingly enough in the movie it was explicitly the Supernovas' theme but it was also included in the anime's latest OST release under the new name "Eustass Kid's Theme".

By this point in the manga I had kinda mentally checked out on Onigashima so I had absolutely no memory of how this fight was resolved aside from being a bit salty that it ended up being my favorite non-Law/Kid Supernova that ended up going down with the ship (Hawkins) instead of the one who deserved it more (Apoo). The solution for getting past the voodoo shield was pretty clever and simple; gotta hand it to Oda for that. And of course how that scene was depicted in the episode was great too, it looks like Masami Mori served as a stealth action animation director for that Killer/Hawkins clash just like he did for the Sanji vs. Queen and King bit in Tokuno's previous episode.

I continue to be surprised at what the anime can get away with showing in comparison to its peers, likely due to the grandfather clause; that amputation was surprisingly gruesome but I shouldn't be surprised after how the Kiku amputation scene earlier was handled (ie not censored at all).

dropper

Nice episode to return to, you can tell a lot of time went into post production. Hawkins sliced arm shot was shocking!

Perhaps the third time we've seen the same episode 739 flashback during Wano. Bad reminder of those off-model Shida Supernova faces.

The Shida shot towards the end was, as expected, jarring...

G1Ravage

@Crossword said in 1054: ''Death to Your Partner! Killer's Dangerous Gamble'':

I continue to be surprised at what the anime can get away with showing in comparison to its peers, likely due to the grandfather clause; that amputation was surprisingly gruesome but I shouldn't be surprised after how the Kiku amputation scene earlier was handled (ie not censored at all).

Agreed. I'm happy the animators are permitted to amp up the violence and blood a bit where needed for proper effect.