One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 931-940

Yet another batch of episodes of my watch-through of the Wano arc of One Piece! Extremely enjoying this a lot, and, as I keep saying, I really do feel like the anime does actually feel like it adds so much to the very rapid pacing of the manga!

Again, it's less of a review of episodes, but more of me commenting on the differences of the manga and the anime and my reactions to the scenes that are extended and stuff. 

Episode 931:

• Knowing that we'll get the whole gladiatorial combat thing later on, it does admittedly make Babanuki and Daifugo stopping Luffy and Hyo's escape feel like extra-padding. It's the natural part of the story to extend, though, admittedly. 
• Also, because this is the One Piece anime, of course the other scene that got a fair chunk of screentime is the bath house scene... though they also use it to extend the backstories of Shinobu, Hyogoro and Fukurokuju, so it's not entirely for the benefit of fanservice.  
• Having actual scenes to flesh it out instead of one-off panels does make scenes like Law, Usopp and Franky hanging out with Tonoyasu; or Raizou's little side-plot, feel like they actually matter. 
• Zoro getting his sword stolen still felt tacked-on, though! You'd think that they would at least give us a short scene foreshadowing this. 

Episode 932:

• 
  Conqueror's Haki! It's already cool in the manga, but the anime definitely makes great use of bright red colours to really emphasize the impact of the ability. 
• Robin sprouting an eye in Shinobu's hair is such a cool little usage of her ability. 
• Oh, right, Drake has a weakness for naked people. We all do, Drake, we all do. He didn't even see Nami naked, unlike Hawkins and Sanji!
• Drake and Hawkins also fanboy over Germa 66's Stealth Black. They added little blush effects on their cheeks! It's fucking adorable is what it is. SASUGA STEALTH BLACK!
• Bepo, Shachi and Penguin being captured is also a scene that I felt like the anime could've actually shown. 
• It's thematic and the animation is pretty, but I felt like Luffy having a flashback to his fight with Kaidou went on for t a bit too long. 

Episode 933:

• The voice actors for Big Mom and Tama, and the animation team, really try their best to make their scene work, but honestly, compared to the Luffy-in-the-prison or Zoro-vs-Gyukimaru story, the episode felt so much less interesting when they are exploring this side of the story. Still not a huge fan of how the amnesiac Big Mom bit played out, for sure. 
• That frog's eyeball animation did crack me up. 
• The anime brings back Batman and Gazelleman from earlier in the arc as participants in the Sumo Inferno, and we get another reminder of the Gifters subgroup. Pretty cool addition, for sure! It's exactly this sort of filler action scene where our heroes get to show off a bit more against named but ultimately inconsequential characters. 
• The fight against the two Gifters also shows Luffy more explicitly trying to mimic Rayleigh's scene from Ruskaina where he knocks down an elephant-beast with Armament Haki. 
• You really have to feel sorry for Zoro! He won Shusui fair and square, but how do you even explain the whole concept of Gekko Moria's Kage Kage no Mi to people in Wano?
• God damn Ryuma one-shotting that dragon in that flashback is a very pretty shot. 
• We get an extra bit of emphasis when Gyukimaru talks about how Shusui is forged as a black blade, and Zoro flashes back to Dressrosa when he used Armament Haki on his swords to cut down Mountain Pica. 
• Kamazou vs Zoro, part one! Yeah, the animators really loved this scene. The dynamic and manic expressions for Kamazou in particular are nice, but they really got a bunch of extra budget for the flying sword-slashes. 

Episode 934:

• 
  Zoro vs. Kamazou! This was the fight a lot of my friends showed me to get me to basically sit down and decide to properly watch the Wano arc of the anime. Such a beautiful fight.
• So Kamazou can create tornadoes with his scythes! That's not something he did in the manga!
• Some really nice black-and-white effects with only red blood when Kamazou stabs Zoro in the shoulder. Very old-school samurai movie!
• Also, the colour turning red when we zoom into Zoro's grin? Beautiful. 
• Zoro exploding with purple aura when he bites down on the scythe for a 'three sword style'? With the glowing eye? Marvelous. And then when everything just explodes when Zoro says "RENGOKU!"
• There is admittedly a lot of explosions that turn the terrain into giant cubes, but god damn if it didn't make the impact of Zoro's finishing slice look so badass.
• There's a slight usage of brief black-and-white-ing that the Wano team like a lot in action scenes, and it looks pretty cool, too.
• Why, yes, I am fanboying over this fight.
• It's a lot more obvious in the anime that Kamazou is giggling like a lunatic. I'm not sure if back in 2019 or whatever I pieced together that Kamazou has some sort of connection to Toko, Yasu and the rest of the laughing people in Ebisu. But I guess thanks to the pacing of the manga these side-characters really didn't have time to really settle in my head in their first appearances. 
• Luffy gets to fight a giant green bear Gifter with the face of a cute plush-toy bear called Bearman. He's original to the anime, I believe! His human face is within the plush-like bear mouth. 
• The music in this episode to play as the background for the Zoro and Luffy fights back-to-back is also quite a banger!
• Presumably to save budget on the fight scene, this episode did noticeably have a lot of flashbacks that play out a bit longer than they should -- showing Hawkins and Drake fanboying over Germa 66; Sanji peeking on the girls; as well as Kyoshiro slicing Komurasaki. It's thematic to the scenes, sure, but it's also kind of noticeable. 

Episode 935:

• Luffy fights Alpacaman and Armadilloman here! It's something that happens in the manga, too, but here it's extended and the two even get a little combination technique. 
• I genuinely forgot that this Sumo Inferno thing actually foreshadows Queen being a horrible boss who doesn't care about his subordinates. I kept remembering it as Queen just being a melodramatic villain who just likes sadistic entertainment, but this episode makes it absolutely clear that Queen knows damn well that people like Alpacaman and Madilloman stand no chance against Luffy. 
• Alpacaman is given Armament Haki spit in the anime. Okay, sure, I guess all the Gifters can use rudimentary Armament Haki in the anime? I don't know. It's kind of different when they're giving it to random Gifters compared to, say, Big Mom's children or whoever...
• Madilloman has a cute little armadillo that sprouts out of the back of his head and protects his skull. That's so adorable.
• The return of Usopp's Toad Oil! Even Zoro is amused. 
• New opening! This is the infamously spoiler-heavy one. Like... good lord, I think the opening spoiled some stuff that isn't even out in the manga at the time of airing, didn't it? 

Episode 936:

• Don't really have much to say about this episode, it's mostly just a relatively faithful adaptation of the events as they take place in the manga. I guess they added more blatant foreshadowing to the 'Oden in a pot' thing, and actually showed scenes of what would eventually be the Oden flashback, but otherwise... 
• God damn Kawamatsu's backstory is depressing. Like, I get that everything turned out okay in the end, but god damn, how terrible must he have felt when Hiyori disappeared?

Episode 937:

• Some neat (I think) anime-exclusive Gifters briefly show up to get beaten up by Luffy after he defeats Madillo-man. 
• They really didn't give Yasu too many additional scenes, but I really do feel like he has so much more of a presence in the anime. Maybe it's because I know what's going to happen so I know he's important? Or maybe it's just the anime expanding his scenes. Either way. 
• I still really find Shinobu and Kanjurou's "um, we don't actually know who he is." moment very funny. 
• That is an unreasonably epic animation of Conqueror's Haki that Luffy just used to knock out the guards. 
• Luffy blindly trusting Caribou and Caribou being super-paranoid that "it's too easy, wtf is this a trap" is also pretty fun.
• Ah yes, Caribou gives Luffy food with his swamp-swamp fruit powers. Sound familiar? 

Episode 938:

• We briefly get a scene of Yasu being interrogated by Fukurokuju, who realizes his true identity when his hair spills out. Not too important, but I felt like it makes the sequence of events flow so much better. 
• I never noticed it when I read the manga, but, yeah, Orochi realizing that Tonoyasu is alive would definitely cause him to freak out, huh? If Tonoyasu's alive, the chances that all the Scabbards are alive too would cause him to really piss his pants. 
• The anime makes it a bit more clear that Kyoshiro going along with Orochi's plan with a smile is actually not something that he does happily, and that he's actually seething inside. It does make his allegiance a bit more transparent this early on, but it also makes him retroactively more sympathetic. 
• Holdem's group fighting against Ashura Doji's bandits and the Minks witnessing this does, again, add a bit more of an oomph to this side-plot of the Minks causing these two factions to fight each other. Didn't expect Holdem to actually get an action scene, too, using his chainsword thing to burn Atamayama to the ground. Kind of a good usage of an earlier fodder villain by the anime staff, actually!

Episode 939:

• We get some early-bird cameo of Oden in Yasu's flashbacks, and... it's definitely a lot more clear what he looks like and what his colour scheme is. On the other hand, though, it's not like revealing most of Oden's appearance a bit earlier realistically changes too much. 
• They obviously don't do anything significant, but we get to see Usopp, Nami and Robin help out the Ebisu Town villagers in taking down a bunch of the guards so they can get to the town square. Neat that they're being heroic!
  

Episode 940:

• The plotline actually went a bit too quickly in the manga, but giving more time for the other sub-plots (like the Ashura Doji one, Komurasaki's reveal and Luffy's prison training) to breathe makes the Yasu story actually hit so much more just how smart of a move Yasu basically making a fool out of Orochi is throughout his entire speech -- really makes for a good excuse as to why he could discredit Orochi as being a paranoid. 
• I never realized that the people carrying Orochi's palanquins are all satyr-style Gifters. 
• Yeah, that shot of Oden when Yasuie recites the poem is pretty much just a full-on reveal of what he looks like. 
• God damn Yasu's death was very well-animated. It's censored, obviously, since it's modern One Piece, but I feel like the red background that constantly glitches in and out as Yasu fades in and out of consciousness, plus how limp Yasu's hands slowly become, pack more of a punch compared to the alternative, which would be some half-assed censorship. The petals are a clever way of actually showing Yasu being shot without actually visually showing it.
• Considering how blatant they were in showing past Oden, it's a bit weird that Denjiro's just a Detective Conan style black silhouette, and Kawamatsu's a hilarious doodle. 
• (Oh, hey, Izo! You're in the flashback!)
• Yeah, Yasu's death is a lot more emotional here. More than any other death in this arc, I really, really hope that Yasu's is permanent. 
• As expected, all the people from Ebisu Town laughing at Yasu's execution while being actually sad and terrified is so much more unsettling in the anime. They didn't go particularly over-the-top with it, but the effect's definitely there. 

This is a nice place to stop off, I think! I think I'll do 10-15 episodes at a time for these One Piece watch-throughs, so that it's a bit tidier in the titles.