One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 1056-1060

Another installation of One Piece Wano arc! We're relatively close to wrapping up! I did finally make a decision on the next anime I'll watch, and... that's to continue and finish JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's sixth part. I think I'll space those reviews out and do something similar to my old one-episode-a-review bit since I do think there's enough content in a JoJo episode to talk about in a single review. It's just that... I simply utterly forgot about JoJo. The second and third 'cours', as they call it, just came and went with minimal hype, huh?

I think after I'm done with One Piece's Wano episodes, or if I ever start to watch them, I'll do something similar to this format for... I'm undecided about doing Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon Slayer or Chainsaw Man. I do know that there's a lot of controversies around the Chainsaw Man anime, so I'm going to steer clear on that, I think. Which I guess leaves me one of the former two as shows that I've already read a bulk of (basically to the end in the case of Demon Slayer) so I don't have to be super-duper engaged. I have already watched Demon Slayer up to the Infinity Train movie, though, and I'm not the keenest to rewatch something I watched already, though it is a very pretty anime. So I guess Kaisen would be something I do later this year? 

Episode 1056:

• Right, this is the first time we've seen Yamato's full-beast Okuchi-no-Makami beast mode, huh?
• The CGI for the swarms and pillars of scrap metal Kid summons are really pretty suitable, huh? Particularly the giant Punk Rotten giant skull metal demon thing? It's noticeable, yes, but it doesn't look out of place due to the nature of what is being manipulated. 
  
• Also, there's a shot with Kid with lightning bolts coming out of his hand. You could call it just magnetism, but I know someone out there is yelling out 'Conqueror's Haki'. Kid has it according to the databooks, right?
  
• Man, Big Mom just keeps trash-talking Kid's techniques and attacks. She really doesn't need to do that! Poor Kid. I just feel bad for him. 
• I do like that there's a brief sequence of Hera and Prometheus going for the two Supernovas' weapons, with Kid just tossing off the giant metal arm and Law using Shambles to free his sword. 
• Ah, yes, the awakening discussion, with Law oh-so-casually noting that he's not quite used to that power. What bullshit, Law!
• Yeah, I really did actually feel like that Raizo/Fukurokuju fight could've been spread out across multiple episodes. You'd think this would be the fight that they capitalize on as filler, not Momonosuke repeating the same dialogue over and over again. I know Momo is a main character and all, but still...
• Also, what the hell, Fukurokuju's earlobes multiplied? In the manga I just thought they were moving quickly, but in the anime it's clear at some points that he's using multiple earlobe crackers to hold Raizou back. 
• K-ROOM! Or, well, Chrome. 
• Okay, Big Mom's head pulsating when K-Room cuts into her is kinda... disturbing. 
• The animation of Shock Wille isn't actually any more impressive than the Punk Rotten or Ikoku attacks we saw before, but it's a bit less disappointing knowing that Law has a bigger awakening moment down the line. 
• The anime gives several shots of showing how Shock Wille's shockwave blows apart Prometheus and Hera, explaining why they were in such a sorry state when Big Mom does her Soul Pocus. 
• Okay, the animation of all the purples and the whites and the flashes for Kid's Assign and Punk Clash attacks, with all the shots of Onigashima's structure being literally torn apart... that's a lot cooler than I thought would be. I mean, it's ultimately just a couple of metal i-beams whacking Big Mom, but it looks pretty  cool, particularly with the guitar solo in the background. 
• Law actually says the name of the Jiki Jiki no Mi!
• Absolutely appreciate the scariness as Big Mom rises from the fallen metal bars. Also appreciate the brief comedy moment of Law giving Kid grief for not taking Big Mom out with the opening he worked so hard to make. 
• For all the talk about how Kid and Law couldn't even manage to take down Big Mom since she's still conscious before her defeat, the anime does make it pretty apparent how beat-up her personal homies were after the combination of Shock Wille and Punk Clash, and how she explicitly says that there's no other way to make herself stronger other than eating 1 year of her lifespan. Also I don't think the manga makes it explicit that she gigantifies after eating that lifespan bubble.
• Also, damn, that final shot with the blue and green lights from either side as Big Mom and her reinvigorated homies loom over Kid and Law? Pretty badass. 

Episode 1057:

• Ah, yes, Apoo. Three of the Numbers will make a fight against Luffy or Kaidou "only last two seconds". I mean, he's right, but he's wrong about who'll be standing at the end of those two seconds. 
• For what's really a minor fight in the grand scheme of things, they did give X-Drake some really cool flash-moves when he's dodging Apoo's moves. Also really appreciate that they've got the DJ CD-scratching sound effect whenever Apoo uses his abilities. 
• I do think that the misunderstanding of Yamato immediately going right after Drake -- after he was silent throughout the conversation Yamato had with Apoo -- is pretty understandable. Yamato going straight to attack who she thinks is a Tobi Roppo is also very understandable! 
• Okay, at least we actually get a scene showing Fuga following Yamato around, foreshadowing the honestly rather random heel-face-turn that Fuga does later on. 
• Ah, those Minks that got Shigan'd by the CP-0 agents are totally dead, aren't they?
• "The masked agents are even more exceptional!" Man, I really hope we actually get to see Maha and Guernica do more against Izo. I was honsetly hoping for a Brook fight against them, but I also acknowledge that it's very unlikely. 
• Oh, that's a very good transition of Sanji looking at traumatic flashbacks and raging against his memories, into a moment where he actually does lash out, and he snaps back to see the geisha all bloodied. That's a good transition that hides what actually happens! Cutting right to the moments where he sees his jackass robot siblings beat up a woman is also very well-done. 
• The zoom-in to the eyebrows is also very neat! I'm surprised we don't get an actual transformation sequence, though. 
• Even better, though, is Sanji's very good, philosophical question that really was the crux of his character development in Wano. Which version of him -- the flawed human or the hypercompetent robot assassin -- would be more useful to the King of Pirates? This lasted like a couple of panels in the manga, and while the moment is the same, cutting right to the warm scene of Luffy asking Sanji to join in the Baratie? And then Luffy's line about how "without you, I can't be King of the Pirates" from Whole Cake Island being the backdrop for Sanji crushing the Germa raid suit?
  
• 
  It really does highlight how much Queen being all hyped up at the super-suit does mirror most of the fandom, myself included, who's excited to see Sanji get a traditional power-up... and he does get Ifrit Jambe later on, but damn, it's such a great moment where the characters are allowed to be characters and put their personal development beyond something as simple as a weapon. 
• Also love the bit between Zoro and Sanji, with Sanji basically making that 'kill me' pact with Zoro. Zoro disguises it with his usual brusqueness, but I do love that he just quickly agrees wihle admitting that he doesn't know what's truly happening. 
   

Episode 1058:

• This episode does extend Kid and Law fighting against the metal bar homies a fair bit, but it's honestly kind of a welcome action filler in my books. It does help to make the final leg of this fight against Big Mom feel a bit more impactful instead of just a barrage of awakening moves, showing our two Supernova get a couple more extra licks in. 
• Oh, Prometheus, Hera and Napoleon also get to talk a fair bit more. 
• I honestly don't remember that whole sequence where Robin and Brook fall onto Fuga's hair, and then Guernica and Maha zip down after them, and they all get caught up as the Kazenbo swoops through the floors... but it did happen in chapter 1032 in the manga. I genuinely didn't realize this was a scene that wasn't an anime addition!
• Yeah, Orochi's an insane mofo that just wants everything to die in a fire, huh?
• Man, the fillers being Momonosuke trying to poof out fire clouds is way less interesting than extending literally any other character available to us right now. 
• God, King's face when he's pulling back his crest for the Tempura-udon attack is still silly as shit.
• "This is how pteranodons hunted their prey!"
• "It's like a laser!"
• I did get irritated back when I was first reading it, but looking back at it now, it's pretty clever for Oda to disguise the Lunarian flames as something that he might just handwave as being a weird dinosaur thing like what the One Piece brachiosaurus, triceratops and pteranodons do.
• Oh, that's a very cool power-up sequence for Kokujo O-Tatsumaki. 
• It's an actually cool shot showing Zoro get knocked around and actually losing his grip on his mouth as he has an internal monologue of trying to figure out the nature of King's powers. I've always chalked up Zoro as being unnaturally injured in this fight against King thanks to all the massive injuries he got on the rooftop, but it's very nice to give the fight a bit more tension by showing how he struggles.
• Oh, that's a cool shot at the end of Komurasaki/Hiyori being slightly shadowed as she gives a very innocent-looking smile, especially considering that she's essentially planning an assassination. 

Episode 1059:

• The Kazenbo does admittedly look a lot cooler in the anime, huh? The red aura and the see-through-ness does help to give it a menace that I feel its manga counterpart really lacks. Or it might just be the music and voice-acting. 
• We actually do get to see Brook and Robin jumping off of Fuga, and the CP-0 agents calmly walking out of the flames. The anime does a fair bit at making them look a bit less like losers, I feel.
• How fucking stupid is it for Apoo to go his APAPAPAPAPA self right in front of government assassins, announcing his intent to sell photographs of their governmental treachery in front of them?
• We actually see Apoo and Drake fight against Guernica and Maha! It's just generic clashing, but I really did feel like Apoo and Drake petered out very badly in the Wano arc despite having rather interesting build-ups to their storylines. At least Hawkins got a conclusion to his character arc with Killer, as low-note as it was, y'know? I do wish that the anime gave us something a bit more with these two. 
• How bored of you of the constant cutaways to Momonosuke doing the exact same thing over and over and over again?
• We get a literal repeat of around a minute of footage of the Hell Memories kick from episode 1057 before we get Sanji and Queen's discussion about King and the Lunarians. 
• Zoro gets a lot of badass lines about death in this episode as he tries to figure out how to beat King... a sentiment that I felt rang a bit hollow because Zoro doesn't actually kill King at the end of the fight. 
• Ittoryu Iai: SHI! Shishi Sonson!
• Damn, they made that move that didn't really do anything against King look gorgeous, huh? The green aura, the iai zip, the brief explosion of green energy running down King's midline...
• Yeah, it's made a lot more explicit in the anime that Enma is specifically reacting to Hiyori playing the shamisen like halfway across the island. 
• There is a very cool shot of King's Tempura Udon attack grazing Zoro in the flank, briefly showing Zoro's skeleton and stuff. That's cool.
• ...and then we get the Looney Tunes 'boi-yoi-yoing' sound effect as King's head rubber-bands back into place. 
• Of course we get flashbacks to Zoro obtaining Sandai Kitetsu... but the anime, amazingly, adds a scene of Tenguyama Hitetsu meeting Zoro and talking about how Sandai Kitetsu has grown. Very nice! In the manga, anything about the Kitetsu blades were just left hanging. The connection between Wado Ichimonji and Enma is also given and laid out a bit more explicitly for us here in the new flashbacks. 

Episode 1060:

• King's Barizodon attack is just... uh... kind of like a wind-slice version of a machinegun, huh?
• They didn't really add too much, but the pacing really does help to sell Zoro struggling to control Enma while fighting off King's barrage of attacks, while his internal monologue tries to figure out the origin of Enma and the connection between his village and Wano, huh?
• There's a great way to do Zoro's flashback, where his foggy memory about the strange man at the coast gets drawn with watercolours and briefly lapses into very sketchy black-and-white artwork... before we get into the fully-animated flashback in the Shimotsuki Village. 
• That is an adorable kiddy remix of 'We Are' as little Zoro and Kuina fight!
• I do really like Kozaburo's speech about how 'swords are things meant to cut people' and all the talk about how it's the swordsman's job to tame these killing tools... even the cursed swords are just blades that are particularly good at killing. 
• I also do like that Zoro's piecing together how the old man, Kuina's grandfather, is a swordsmith from Wano that escaped from Wano and Zoro manages to put together his village's connected legacy with Wano through these different flashbacks. 
• We get an extended CP-0 versus Drake/Apoo fight, which is neat! Maha totally drop-kicks a dinosaur, and Guernica kicks Apoo around a bit. Inbi and Zanki also get a bit more of a pronounced entrance, even if it's... well, they're all fodder, but it's nice to see this get a bit more of an extension.
• Damn, that transition from Zoro and Kuina shaking hands to Zoro holding the Wado Ichimonji. That's very cool.
  
• CONQUEROR'S HAKI ZORO! I love the transition between the black-and-white artwork of Zoro as his Haki is being partially consumed by Enma... to him activating Conqueror's Haki, blazing green, and basically lighting up the entire room as black lightning sparks out of him. 
• "I have an ambition. To be the world's greatest swordsman. At this point, honour doesn't matter! Whether it's as a criminal or whatever else, I will spread my name throughout the world!" I love that we get a return to this old line... this episode really does highlight Zoro's motivations and origin story that we've known for a long, long time and bringing it back to the spotlight, huh?