Bit of a break since I watched 970. Stuff got in the way! Oh well, no time like the present. A bit of a shorter one this time.
Episode 971:
- I keep forgetting that young Gekko Moriah is just a regular, muscular goth vampire human instead of a giant onion-person with a face. We actually see them clash weapons for a bit, so at leas Moriah gave Kaido a bit of a fight instead of being one-shotted like we all assume he was.
- The Oden-the-fool scenes work so much better, I think, with the music and singing. Which, of course, makes it a lot more poignant when the song gets that reprise later on.
- Still really think that Oden could've handled things differently, but I guess he was kind of committed to at least Orochi honouring the five-year promise?
- Good lord the story really wants us to hate Orochi, doesn't it?
- Using explosions of colour that fill the screen to symbolize the gunshots that killed Hyo's wife and men are pretty tasteful.
- We do get an extended scene of Oden seeing a vision of losing his family to Orochi and Kaido, as well as him screaming to the heavens... but it's most certainly effective.
- Kaido lurking out of the shadows is pretty fucking badass, with the coiling around a mountain and the eye beam and shit.
- Also awesome? That shot of Oden's blade, showing everyone he's fighting for or avenging, before he runs down and does this amazing single-slash blitz that takes out a bunch of beast pirates at once.
- So Hiyori does dropkick Momonosuke, as he claims in present day.
Episode 972:
- One of the bigger expanded episodes; the events of this one was infamous for causing an uproar in the manga-reading community back when it was released. I understood the reasons why (the actual 'Hour of Legends' came later; plus it's a flashback of which we already know the ending of) but not gonna lie -- it's pretty fucking cool to see Oden's samurai fight against Kaido's Beasts Pirates.
- King with his red gimp suit looks cool. Queen, on the other hand, looks even more like Obelix.
- The Blast Breath this time around is a lot shorter, but no less pretty. There's one where he just unleashes a short fire breath that Oden slashes after doing a slide down Kaido's body, which is one of the prettiest shots in the entire episode.
- King fights Denjirou with some kicks and fire-explosions, while everyone just dogpiles Queen. I bet it's really dang interesting because when this episode was released, we had no idea how King fights.
- Oden totally unleashes a blast of Conqueror's Haki before jumping to face off against Kaido. The actual Oden/Kaido fight is basically what you'd expect from a samurai fighting a serpentine dragno, but it's still pretty damn badass to watch.
- Kaido can use his beard as a tentacle to grab Oden!
- Goddamn, that Togen Totsuka that made Kaido bleed is so fucking beautiful, with the kanji rapidly coming one after the other.
- Oden facing off against Kaido and yelling at each other is another pretty scene.
Episode 973:
- The Hour of Legends! I've spoken a fair amount about this part of the story and it's mostly just a badass adaptation of the same events from the manga. Pretty damn badass!
- The animation team really did a great job making the boiling oil look hot as shit.
- Bless Shinobu; none of the people in Wano would realize the amount of sacrifice Oden did for Wano if not for her huge speech. (Fukurokuju and his ninjas are complete morons for not stopping her, but the story needed that moment)
- Oden totally tanked that one Blast Breath in the flashback, holy shit, that was badass.
- They did a really damn good job showing just how much of a complete piece of shit Orochi is, don't they? The juxtaposition between his sympathetic backstory and how utterly vile the man is in the present day...
- There's the whole 'unwilling to let a single person die' thing, of course, but I have always interpreted Oden's willingness to suffer like a fool to partially be driven by his realization that the situation in Wano got so bad partially because he left it to sail the world with Roger and Whitebeard.
Episode 974:
- Part two of the Hour of Legends, and, again, still pretty damn badass. Not a whole ton to say in terms of commentary since it's just the same scenes from the manga with a little extension.
- Raizou's little moment of shutting up Denjiro and just yelling 'your dream is our dream' is pretty underrated. And to think people back in the day used this as 'proof' that good old Raizou is somehow the traitor!
- I really must commend just how versatile Orochi's voice actor is -- the voice alternates between being whiny and slimy to suddenly deep and threatening at the drop of a hat and it works so well to make him simultaneously a pussy compared to the likes of Oden and Kaido; but also still a badass villain.
- Right, ancient Wano closed itself off to protect itself from an 'ancient enemy'. Give us more of these delicious Void Century lore please and thank you.
- The flashbacks that the Scabbards have to how they first met Oden, complete with old-school film border effects, works pretty damn well.
- She's 100% dead, but it's surprising that Orochi is so civil with Kaido even after Kaido killed the old Mane-Mane lady. Although I suppose Orochi is a psychopath, so...
- As I keep mentioning, the fact that Oden's final words are the same lyrics to the song he's been singing as the 'fool lord' really has much, much more of an impact in the anime format.
- Smile on, Oden.
Episode 975:
- So the '20 year' prophecy is less about Toki's time powers, and more because Oden read the final poneglyph or whatever the hell he discovered with Roger?
- Neko and Inu's fighting is given a bit more focus here, which I feel is pretty necessary since it was pretty off-handed and tucked to the side in the manga. They were pretty pissed off at each other even 20 years later in the Zou arc, after all.
- Oh, right. The Numbers. They exist, I forgot about them.
- Toki has massive balls, holding up a sword up to fight Kaido.
- Knowing Momonosuke's character development later on, this bit actually emphasizing how Momo is just repeating what his mother tells him is actually pretty poignant. He's defiant, sure, but they do a great job showing how Momo isn't actually speaking his own words here.
- For what it's worth, Toki did say "I'll catch up with you later" to Hiyori. But the whole scene of ripping up Oden's letter really is so well done that I really wouldn't like it if Toki turned out to be alive in the present day somehow. (The anime also makes her death pretty damn obvious)
Episode 976:
- Actually, considering how Denjirou was the one that's pretty unwilling to even accept that Oden's going to die two episodes ago (Raizou had to shut him up) it actually kind of made sense why he takes Oden's death harder than the rest, so much that the rage changed his hair colour and stuff.
- The anime also makes it a bit more obvious that an entire season has passed since Denjiro locked himself up in that shrine, explaining why no one really questions it when Kyoshiro walks into town.
- Ashura gets a short scene thinking of how the dawn and 20 years are so far away, which does fit with his present-day pessimism.
- I still think Kawamatsu's story is the saddest out of all the retainers. Poor kappa, out of everyone else, I want him to survive the Wano arc the most.
- It is kind of obvious in retrospect that the traitor is one of the samurai that jumped from the past upon rewatch, huh. Plus, y'know, the messenger bird.
- The flashback to Orochi recruiting the traitor is pretty damn cool, too, visually represented as being similar to like one of those black-and-white movies with the dialogue shown on screen as cutting back and forth to hide the traitor's identity. Very great drawing of his facial expressions too, they look so creepy.
- What a great showcase of showing all the retainers with glowing eyes to make the audience get confused at which one of the Scabbards is the traitor -- it's honestly one of the scariest thing because of how resolute everyone else in that scene was.
- I really did like this episode and the manga counterpart to this episode -- really does plug in a lot of the holes and explain a lot of the setup for the things that happen earlier in the Wano arc.
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