(I have been keeping up with the manga, but I haven't had the opportunity to actually sit down and write down the reviews. Things have been a bit hectic on my part, which is why my writing schedule is a bit all over the place right now.)
Episode 986:
- Heat and Wire are just so bamboozled why the Straw Hats get triggered by oshiruko being spilled, and that's always kinda funny.
- The beat that accompanies Apoo is pretty neat, not going to lie. It's a bit understated, but the music team's been pretty on-point for the Wano arc.
- Apoo and Queen rapping as the former reports about the Straw Hats being in the festival hall is just absolutely amazingly delivered.
- The random Gifters that react to Queen's announcement get a fair bit more of a focus, huh? There's an archer girl, a wolf-belly guy, a creepy ghost lady... Luffy totally beats a bear-man, too.
- Kid summoning his giant arm while the episode gives him the adequate pacing to show off his anger... that's pretty well done. Also col is the visual effect of a TV screen going staticky as Kid uses his powers, because magnets, get it? Pretty badass sequence of the Punk Gibson attack all around.
Episode 987:
- Apoo loses his rap-themed BGM in this episode :(
- Heat and Wire do stuff, attacking random goons that tried to get the jump on Kid. Wire uses a trident, Heat breathes fire! They attack Hacha together at one point! They're irrelevant in the long run, but by god they're trying.
- Pandaman is among the group that reacts to Queen's "you can kill them" line.
- Hacha looks even more like a gigantic dork in coloured, animated format. I have 0 respect for the Numbers, other than the fact that they look like cool opponents for our heroes to one-shot.
- Random turtle-centaur Gifter really thinks an exploding arrow's enough to kill Kid.
- Killer giving exposition about Apoo's powers while the three idiot Supernovas just go "eh" because they forgot to uncover their ears is pretty fun.
- I actually wonder what happened to the rest of Big Mom's crew over on their cake-ship. Are they just hanging out there? There are so many characters that I'm happy that they are sidelined, but still...
- I love that Who's Who's crew is just a bunch of random cat-themed character designs. None of them have names, but they look so vibrant and different. One of my favourite parts about this raid is that each batch of sub-minions actually look different. Like, you could imagine a movie or pre-timeskip version of One Piece with the Straw Hats fighting Who's Who's crew, for example.
- We get a random comedy sequence with Nami, Carrot and Shinobu getting past a bunch of guards. They do so exactly how you expect them to. There's also a recap of the plan, but honestly? That's the kind of filler that I can appreciate in a pretty long-running arc like this.
Episode 988:
- The anime is a bit more obvious at showing how Sanji got separated from the main group in his search for brothel women. Also makes it a bit more obvious how Kin'emon and his samurai hid while Usopp and Chopper's brachio-tank is exposed. These are sort of the thing that isn't really necessary, but was kind of 'wait, what happened' when I read the manga the first time.
- I do find it interesting that the anime gives some of the other Big Mom children like Daifuku, Gallette and Mont D'or lines about how they don't like the alliance and they want to do their original plan of killing Luffy.
- Marco just casually phoenix-kicking the Big Mom ship is kind of one of the jokes that I'm not sure if I adore or find annoying.
- Kanjuro being a loon and going 'you are wannabe actors' towards the Beast Pirate goons actually really makes sense since he's, well, kind of a lunatic.
- We get another short filler scene of Luffy and Zoro getting lost and Zoro using Enma to cut a path -- again, it's another repeat of a scene we've seen in manga canon of Zoro struggling with Enma stealing his Haki, but it's short moments like these that make his mastery of Enma later on all the more sweet.
- Ditto for Luffy using Ryu'o against all the random goons before he meets Ulti.
Episode 989:
- The opening catcher for this episode is a pretty cute model kit artwork of the Brachio-tank.
- They play up Big Mom and Chopper's :o face in an over-the-top way, as expected. Although I'm pretty sure the comedy moment of Chopper and Usopp pretending to be members of the Beast Pirates crew that's just patrolling the location isn't in the manga. Big Mom manages to actually figure out with her own brain!
- Okay, that Kanjurou-report scene was a bit too recap-heavy for my tastes.
- Fukurokuju's report with the cartoonish caricatures of Luffy and company with monster mouths is hilarious!
- Denjiro tying Sasaki to a tree is still very random, but since the anime version is showing these other groups making their way slowly through the island, it feels a bit less random, I guess?
- A good... oh, five to eight minutes of the episode is pretty new filler. It's a bizarre little filler of Chopper and Usopp imagining themselves in a mecha anime. A lot less funny IMO compared to the opening scene (and a whole lot longer), but understandable that they chose this to extend.
- It's not as obnoxious as some of the shots in the Dressrosa arc, but the anime does like Ulti's hips and legs a lot. (Also, chibi Ulti pestering Page One is pretty adorable.)
Episode 990:
- I was worried that Yamato's voice was going to immediately spoil her gender in the anime, but they did go for a relatively ambiguous sounding voice -- basically that 'young boy voiced by a girl' voice that's pretty common in anime.
- No, the spoiler ends up being the goddamn opening instead, but I guess if you don't know, you wouldn't get spoiled about it specifically?
- Kid totally manhandles a random lion Gifter. He also later fights a wolf gifter with a sword -- again, I appreciate the anime team for filling out their, er, filler fight scenes with random gifters.
- "You're the one who slid down the stairs using him as skis." God, Ulti's so dumb. I like her.
- Okay, holy shit, that Ulti-headbutt scene of her just blazing all over the motion lines is pretty fucking badass. We even get a very, very cool split-second black-and-white scene of the two colliding and this huge, beautiful flashing of explosions.
- I'm pretty sure the back end of the episode is heavily extended, but you know what? Seeing Luffy fight two dinosaur people is my idea of good filler.
- Ulti can just casually summon lightning to her horns. Okay. Presumably in the One Piece world, pachycephalosaurus-es do fight like that.
- Neon green isn't what I expected Ulti's dinosaur form to look like. I guess I expected her dinosaur form to also have the bubblegum colours of her hair? Eh.
- Oh, Yamato's Raimei Hakkei is shown by a bunch of lightning forming into the kanji of the attack name. That's actually badass.
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