One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 1061-1062 (Sanji vs. Queen; Zoro vs. King)

As the Wano country arc really starts to reach its climax, we're going to wrap up some of the major fights! Some pretty great animation is going on in some of these episodes for sure!

This was originally meant to be '1061-1065', but I realized that I rambled on for so much and fanboyed so much for these two episodes that... you know what? Screw it, I'll make these two stand on their own. 

And... I've seen apparently a lot of people complain about the 'Dragon Ball auras' in these series of episodes, but... I don't... I didn't even really find them distracting at all, honestly. They only really ever show up when the characters are like preparing for a clash, and you could really handwave them as a representation of the Haki. As long as the animation looks good, it looks good. 

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Episode 1061:

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• Oh yeah. This episode kind of made the rounds when it was released. Sanji vs. Queen!
• 
  Even the opening, with the digital 66 across the screen, the clones in the tanks, and the DNA strands, leading to Germa soldiers shooting up enemies and spreading war... it looks like something out of a much higher-budget sci-fi anime. Seeing the Germa transformation can overlaid in front of it really does highlight the sheer impact of Sanji rejecting his entire destiny, Judge and his bloodline. It's less about stubbornly refusing to use a power-up item like some fans frame this decision to be. Great addition by the anime!
• Also, yeah. We only see him as a jackass dad, but Vinsmoke Judge is a full-blown overlord. Let's not forget that!
• SPARKING QUEEN! Oh yeah, the rapid-fire laser beams look pretty. 
• Oh yeah, Henry Queen looks cool. Them rapid-fire punching each other while blue lightning blasts fill the screen? Pretty badass!
• Winch Queen looks a lot better now! The dynamic shots of Queen spinning Sanji around and bashing him bodily into the paper doors and walls are pretty great. 
• Yeah, the anime team did a really great job animating Sanji's flames when he blows up Queen's cyborg arm!
• "Are you trying to take away my freedom of speech?" Oh, Queen.
• FLANCHET STRIKE! Oh shit, the flames wrapping around Sanji's legs, the zoom-in to his eye, the speedy fiery zip through the screen... pretty cool!
  
• That is a pretty great delivery of Sanji's lines about how maybe without Vinsmoke's technology he might die like a dog, maybe he'll become a soulless machine on his own... but that day is not today, because today he's going to beat the shit out of Queen. 
• Some really great animation for Queen's invisibility! It's not just his outline, but the superimposition of his invisible self does look pretty cool. 
• Yeah, I really don't care for the Osome/Chuuji side-plot, but it does give a very convenient representation of how Sanji hasn't actually thrown away his humanity, yeah?
• We get a flashback of Queen actually asking Osome out and getting rejected. We also get to see more explicitly that Queen stealthed and slapped Osome in the midst of her conversation with Sanji...
• It does beggar the question why Queen doesn't slap Sanji while he's doing it. But I guess the whole 'I want to see the Vinsmoke technology' excuse works here. 
• And then Sanji realizing that some of the Vinsmoke abilities like his exoskeleton can be reduced to just tools in his arsenal? There's a neat message of rejecting your past, but not rejecting everything that comes with it here. 
  
• "IFRIT JAMBE! Faster acceleration! Heavier weight!"
• "Men should never hit women! That has been common sense since the age of the dinosaurs!"
• The jazz music that plays when Sanji first kicks Queen with Ifrit Jambe is pretty damn funky!
• And then the animation becomes super stylized as Queen rises up and Sanji Ifrits Jambe's him to shit with the anatomy-lesson-in-French!
• I wasn't sure about this stylizing when Queen does his initial flexing, but damn, that multi-organ beat-up is pretty damn smooth. 
• Queen gets to mock Sanji a bit, causing this amazing imagery of Sanji imagining himself in a wasteland, with a broken statue of Judge's head looming before him. And then we get Sanji declaring that "I am who I am!", and we get a great flashback to the Baratie arc and the sunlight pouring down on him as the 'iron mask' of his past breaks alongside the giant Judge statue head, before Zeff and the Straw Hats show up in the vision. Amazing!
  
• "I am Black Leg Sanji of the Straw-Hat Pirates!"
• And then we get the epic Wano fight music rising up as Queen unleashes laser barrages, Sanji blitzes forwards and we get a badass kick-down that briefly lights the whole area in black and blue. 
  
• BOUEF BURST!
• We get a scream-off before Queen gets sent off into the distance and out of Onigashima. But not before a very tokusatsu-esque laser explosion! 
• Of course we get a flashback to Sanji taking care of his own rat friends when he rescues Chuuji. 

Episode 1062:

• And we follow it up with Zoro vs. King! Man, this string of episodes are going to get replayed many times, huh. 
• Oh yeah, we just open up with King creating a giant wall of flames, and then Zoro causing the flames to disappear with a slash of his sword. That's like, three or four seconds at most, but damn, what a cool, slick sequence!
• The following clash of blades is also noticeably a lot more fancier-looking than the previous Zoro vs King sequences, and even the pteranodon-cannon fight that follows right afterwards. They really did save up a chunk of their budget for this batch of episodes, huh?
  
• I do really like the flashes of insight as Zoro tries to think on the previous times he's able to cut King, and that the camera just focuses ever so slightly on the fact that the flames are out. 
• Still a very stupid gimmick IMHO, but at least the anime does its best to highlight this as a showcase of Zoro's intelligence in the midst of a battle. 
• I guess it's supposed to be a counterpart to Zoro losing his right arm to Enma's Haki-draining properties every now and then? That's another thing that I felt was a bit more prominent in the anime, too. 
  
  
• Okay, King spinning around as a Looney Tunes tornado before stopping and slashing Zoro in a clash is pretty cool. 
• Santoryu: Ul-Tora Gari! Man, the zoom-in to the Haki lightning there is cool. 
  
• And then Zoro cuts King! With the blood and the red Haki lightning and the green aura around his swords and shit. Man, while I don't really care for the video game weakness factor of King's defeat, from a coolness factor standpoint, that was pretty neat!
• Yeah, that random Beast Pirate that gets Karyudon'd by King really is an idiot for having the bounty about Lunarian information be literally the second thing out of his mouth. 
• Great shot of King being framed in flames as he rips off his mask! And I didn't realize until he transforms into his pteranodon mode that his skin would also be gray in beast mode, considering the pteranodon mode we've seen so far have all been King wrapped up in his gimp suit. 
• King setting himself on fire and spinning around like a UFO is hilarious as shit, though. 
• 
  Yeah, Zoro, saying "you guys have reigned long enough" is unintentionally very offensive to King's Lunarian heritage, huh?
• EN'OU! SANTORYU! RENGOKU! ONI GIRI!
• Oh god, the power-up shot. 
• The charge with the purple aura, then Zoro blasting the aura apart.
• And then like several dozen rapid-fire slashes cutting the screen.
• Then the terrain exploding into cubes.
  
• And then the area between King and Zoro just gets turned into a crater by the sheer shockwave of the attack. 
• And then we have the King flashback, which I do find interesting that the anime adds the little bit of 'flashback to five seconds ago while Zoro is powering up' to see just when King is having this moment of self-introspection. 
• Always gotta love a good 'test subject breaks out from a secure lab' scene. I don't think I've ever gotten tired of one of these. 
• Man, young Kaido kinda looks like a punk. 
• I do really find that these bits of Kaido's backstory to be interesting, and not a day goes by that I don't find it a huge shame that we don't get a full, proper Kaido flashback. Rocks-era spoilers, yeah, I don't really care. But I really do want to get more hints on just why Kaido thinks he wants to change the world, and why. Some vague talk about 'survival of the fittest' really doesn't work here since we barely get to see Kaido's side of things, just King's. 
• Oh, little King blocking bullets with his skin and then rage-charging them is cool!
• 
  I do really like, too, that Kaido basically gave King hope. The same way, say, Luffy gave hope to some of his comrades like Robin or Kin'emon or Kyros or Vivi or whoever. And then we cut this to King roaring that "the world only needs one king!" 
• Oh, King unleashing his fire sword into the sky, the zoom in to his face, before he unleashes that Karyudon attack...
  
• And then the flames charge forwards like a serpent, past the flying rocks, and Zoro has to kick against a rock to dodge the flames... such smooth animation!
• And then King and Zoro clash, as the fiery debris of King's attack fall down around them, one of which cause a giant explosion that engulfs the giant background in red-hot fiery magma, and then they fly through the flames... honestly, this is going to be one hell of a hard episode to decide which shots to screencap because everything's so pretty!
• And then we get King just blitzing across the battlefield so hard that we're just seeing fire slashes all over the place. 
• YAKKODORI! Yeah, that was a very cool clash between the two. Man, this is an episode I'll rewatch for sure.
• UL-TORA GARI! The spinning beyblade Zoro is a bit too ridiculous, but I absolutely love that the clash sends out so much shockwaves that the area behind King got cratered. Holy shit. 
• Okay, some of the blurring effects in the Ul-Tora Gari sequence didn't work out the best, I feel, compared to the rest of this episode. 
• "Why are you blocking? I thought this attack won't harm you!"
• HOLY SHIT KING'S POWER UP. There's just several fast frames of him looking absolutely demonic and engulfed with flames, before we cut away to him spreading his wings wide and swooping in. 
• And then King spins around in the sky, creating several orbiting wheels of flame. This looks so fucking cool! The whirling flames, King being a red star in the midst of it all as we zoom into his face, and then we pan back out to see the sheer scale of destruction he's causing with the winds caused by his wings...
  
• And then King unleashes his Karyudon, and it's like a goddamn orbital laser as the rings just focus together and unleash a beam, which then spread out into goopy string of fiery magma dragons. 
• Does it make sense? King doesn't even have a Devil Fruit. But I don't care, it's fucking cool, his sword is an orbital laser that shoots fire dragons, why the fuck not!
• And then Zoro cuts his way through one of these magma dragons, and then just makes his way and cuts his way through it all just tearing his way into the heart of the storm... it's like a superhero movie, y'know?
  
• And then King unleashes the mother of all Karyudons, pulsing like a Kamehameha beam, and Zoro responds with EN-OU: SANTORYU!'
• The 'ryu' in Zoro's 'Santoryu' is normally written with the kanji for 'flow', which English translators elect to translate as 'style', but for En'ou Santoryu, it's written with the kanji for dragon. 
• Oh boy, the way that Zoro's acceleration just really causes the rubble and his body to stretch out into the background...
• IPPYAKUSANJO!
• And then he just blows up the magma dragon! The other magma dragons dissipate, and King activates a gigantic fiery blade of his own. 
  
• HIRYU JIGOKU!
• Also, yeah, the anime and Nakai Kazuya's intense voice acting is going to forever burn these Zoro techniques and their long names into my head. Previously it had been Ichidai Sanzen Daisansekai and Asura Bakkei: Moja no Tawamure. Now it's En'ou Santoryu: Ippyakusanjo Hiryu Jigoku!
• ...yeah, okay, King's voice actor is making it work, but "Extra Large Karyudon" just isn't quite as badass as "103 Mercies: Dragon Damnation".
• Oh yeah, the Joyboy reference and how King really wants to make Kaido the King of Pirates. That's a thing that happens at the end! I really do like the end of this fight, where there's a melancholic tinge because King has a goal that's... that's so admirable. It's literally the same goal that Zoro and Ace had. It's just that he has to go down because the world with Kaido as the King of Pirates is an apocalypse. Good fight, good fight. I have such a bigger appreciation for King as a character after this episode's equivalent of the manga chapter. 
• Oh yeah. Zoro stating his dreams of not being defeated right after King was a great showcase of their parallel.
• "...I shall become the King of Hell." God fucking damn, Zoro, you cool. 
• Oh shit, Zoro just casually hitting the air, and then zipping back to Onigashima to land in a crater as the shamishen plays in the background and the narrator talks... and the Zorro-style Z slash before the 'to be continued'! Classy.

Anyway, that was my several-hundred-word fanboying over these two episodes. I hope it's coherent. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll rewatch the final fights of the two episodes again!