JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E07-08 Review: Plankton

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episodes 7-8: There's Six of Us / Foo Fighters

Hell yeah Foo Fighters. 

I've always loved Foo Fighters. Conceptually, F.F. might be one of the weirdest characters in all of JoJo. Or, well, maybe not as weird as the sentient street, but they're pretty up there. This two-parter arc is also important not just because it introduces a new character, but it's also the first proper team-up between Jolyne and Ermes. Honestly, comparing Part VI to Part III, it's really stark just how compressed Part VI's arcs -- at least at this point in the story -- is. We could've very easily just had a Jolyne/Ermes team-up against an enemy, before introducing the fourth member of our little group of allies, but here we are. 

After a bit of a recap between Jolyne, Ermes and Emporio, our heroes basiaclly deduce the little observation Ermes makes in the fight against Thunder McQueen that he was seemingly brought back to life after having his Stand inserted back to him. 

Meanwhile, a bunch of guards get murdered in a warehouse near a swamp, which ends up creating a search party. Jolyne (and eventually Ermes) ends up volunteering to join the search party outside, but Jolyne has a plan -- she realizes from McQueen's discs that the Discs might be hidden outside of the prison buildings, and specifically a tractor shed. Of course, this being Green Dolphin Street Prison, the wardens set up an utterly psychotic Suicide-Squad-style explosive bombs that will detonate if the volunteers stray more than 50 meters from the guard supervising them. 

A good chunk of episode 7 is just the mystery and the tension of the situation, which I really did enjoy. It later turns into a murder mystery, with Jolyne and Ermes having to figure out who among the prisoners actually didn't 'show up' with the rest of the group when there ends up being one extra prisoner. As the audience, we're obviously not paying all that much attention to the background characters, and this batch are pretty generic enough especially by JoJo character design standards. And then the guard gets killed and his motorcycle tossed into the swamp, and suddenly it turns out to be a horror-murder-mystery. 

We do get a pretty cool sequence of Ermes and Jolyne accusing some of the other prisoners and thinking up of reasons why certain members of the group couldn't have been the culprit. Ermes ends up being attacked by some slimy goop within a bucket, seeing a bunch of planktons multiplying and being able to manipulate the murky waters around them. Jolyne uses some net-walking to save Ermes and while they manage to seemingly fight off the monstrous Stand-looking creature with a fun combination of her powers... but who among the prisoners is the controller?

While Stardust Crusaders' portion of the anime is faulted by extending some arcs into two-parters when they didn't need to be, I felt like 'Foo Fighters' really works well as a two-parter. The dread and mystery set up in episode 7 is continued in episode 8 in a typical 'where is the Sutando tsukai', and our heroes have to figure out who's lying when they said that other prisoners received a wound around the same time that the Stand-creature got injured. In one of my favourite moments from this part, Jolyne just shrugs, and ORA ORA ORA's everyone. Turns out that her solution turns out to be pretty fortuitous, since Foo Fighters isn't actually a person with a Stand, but a colony of plankton that is also a Stand. 

The majority of episode 8 ends up being just the fight against Foo Fighters, and what an utter creep of an enemy they (that's the pronoun you'd use for a colony of sentient beings, right?) are this early on! F.F. has apparently killed all the other prisoners and has been puppeteering all their bodies, and we quickly get a bit of an explanation that it was brought to life by Whitesnake, and tasked to protect the tractor from enemies. Our heroes also quickly realize that Foo Fighters' power is determined by water, since it needs to use the water of either the swamp or those from the corpses of their victims to move around. Oh, and it can kind of split itself up into smaller Stand-beings, which is pretty cool for a multi-location fight against Jolyne and Ermes. There's a neat case of multiple items in the battlefield being important as well, since everyone is fighting over the disc-tractor, but Ermes and Jolyne need to remain within 50 meters of the guard's corpse that F.F. is carrying away. 

There's a cool bit where Foo Fighters needs water to even exist, so we get pretty interesting imagery as Ermes uses Kiss to duplicate a desiccated corpse to dehydrate F.F.; or Jolyne using flour to force F.F. to solidify. Admittedly Jolyne somehow being able to remotely drive the tractor with her strings is kind of a bit of a cop-out, but she wouldn't be a main JoJo if her ability doesn't do something bullshit every now and then. F.F., in their single-mindedness to protect the tractor, ends up almost self-destructing when they lose moisture to the terrain... but then Jolyne realizes that Foo Fighters isn't even allied with Whitesnake, and is just guarding the discs for their own sake, and pours some water on the plankton-colony. 

It's... it's a bit of an oddity, since Foo Fighters actually did go around murdering the guards and the prisoners in this episode, but F.F. is such a bizarre life-form that I am inclined to follow Jolyne's lead and just shrug. I mean, if nothing else, F.F. is one of my favourite secondary characters in all of JoJo. 

The remaining parts of episode 8 is just establishing how F.F. will interact with the rest of the group -- they enter Atroe's body and takes on her form (and memory), and while they still do some stupid things like lick up spilled water on the ground, Foo Fighters ends up essentially swearing loyalty to Jolyne and Ermes. We also learn that apparently bodies will reject discs that are incompatible, and the tractor stores discs that Whitesnake's user is unable to use. Jolyne ends up finding Star Platinum (they smuggle it into the prison inside F.F.'s non-human body), but Jotaro's memory disc isn't around. A pretty exciting two-parter, I think, but I did feel like Stone Ocean has a pretty great ratio of action to plot development. 

The final scene of episode 8 also gives us the first appearance of Whitesnake's user, Father Enrico Pucci, who slowly investigates the warehouse and assumes that F.F. has been slain. An interesting way to introduce him, since Pucci isn't a character that the audience already knows of beforehand.

Random Notes:

• Foo Fighters, of course, is named after the rock band of the same name. Fittingly, one of their better-known songs is The Pretender. The prisoner that they take the identity of is Atroe, named after the Italian fashion band Etro. Enrico Pucci's name is a combination of fashion designers Enrico Coveri and Emilio Pucci. 
• Seriously, though, what a shit way of trying to ask for prisoners. I guess the wardens are honest that the prisoners will be doing this for no real pay, but still, it's a miracle anyone but Jolyne and Ermes even volunteered.
• It was definitely a surprise when I read this part of the story in the manga for the first time, but F.F. is plastered all over the opening next to Jolyne and Ermes... which would probably surprise the people discovering this story for the first time via the anime, since Atroe actually isn't important at all. 
• Loccobarrocoo, that lunatic warden, gets into a pretty fun wacky skit with his puppets in order to illustrate the crocodiles eating the guards. 
• There's a pretty long sequence in episode 7 of Jolyne preventing Ermes from falling into crocodile shit thanks to the machinations of the jackass guard. It's completely unnecessary but I did really like it. 
• We get a typical JoJo monologue from Foo Fighters about how intellect having existing before the Big Bang, and how all life has the potential to develop intellect. Google tells me this is attributed to Fred Hoyle. 
• I'm not sure why the guards would buy the "a crocodile killed everyone" explanation, but I guess F.F. could make the wounds match. 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E06 Review: Stickers

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episode 6: Ermes' Stickers

So the 'JoBro' of this part is Ermes Costello, and while we do meet her in the first episode, she actually gets separated from Jolyne. And for good reason, too -- the couple of conflicts that Jolyne's been wrapped up in after getting into the prison ends up being a starter fight that sets Jolyne herself up, before going straight into a backstory-heavy bit with Jolyne's dad. Ermes would've probably been a bit of a distraction there. 

But now that things have settled down and we've set up the new status quo and given Jolyne a major goal, her ally Emporio does end up doing a pretty logical thing here -- gather allies. We get a brief recap of Green Dolphin Street Prison from Emporio to Jolyne, but other than her knowing about how the prison was always kinda creepy, the rest of the episode is entirely carried by Ermes. After getting her money robbed from her in the infirmary, she goes off hunting for the jackass janitor who took her money. 

Of course, Ermes ends up realizing that she's got a cut on her hand, and she naturally has developed a Stand power. Throughout this episode Ermes is basically trying to figure out what the hell's happening to her -- which would admittedly be a bit repetitive if she gets another punchy-ghost ability, so it's nice that Kiss is actually a pretty unique ability -- not just duplication of objects, but causing an explosion of force when the objects are fused back together. And stickers are involved! Always found Kiss to be pretty fun, and I do like Ermes slowly learning how to use his sticker ability. 

Ermes ends up finding the janitor, but in the process accidentally grabs one of the discs that fall out of the janitor's head -- a neat way for the story to tie Ermes's little origin story to the mystery of Whitesnake that we set up in the previous episode. 

And then we get the actual encounter with the lunatic that is Thunder McQueen and... he's kind of an over-the-top caricature of someone with suicidal tendencies. I do like that our mysterious villain (and Ermes) acknowledge just how much of an utter bastard McQueen is and how easily he defaults to killing himself out of self-victimization. An interesting thought exercise, I suppose, but you're not going to really get much depth out of McQueen other than Whitesnake's brief monologues -- the voice actor and the animators clearly had a lot of fun hamming shit up. 

Of course, McQueen's Stand is an automatic one that inflicts the same kind of damage to Ermes, so Ermes has to fight McQueen while at the same time stop him from killing himself in increasingly elaborate ways.

Ultimately, it's Emporio that ends up approaching her and delivering some much-needed exposition about Stands. We get the explicit explanation that each person can either have a Stand disc or a memory disc or both, but while they're discussing that, McQueen has gone off to electrocute himself. Ermes ends up trying to talk McQueen down (he's insane, and also insanely unlucky) but McQueen is... well, he quickly goes to 'you're only pretending to care' until Ermes snaps and calls McQueen out for his selfishness. Ermes uses Kiss to duplicate and smash McQueen's head together, dislodging him from the cables and allowing Ermes to recover the Stand disc. 

And... and that's it for the episode. It's honestly kind of a neat, lighter fare that's much needed after the heaviness of Jotaro's fake death last episode and all the huge revelations, but I do really love, again, that not only does this episode introduce to us what's essentially the second most important character in the Part, but also shows off her brand-new ability, while also allowing the audience to get some exposition about Whitesnake, his abilities and the enigma of Emporio without having to deal with anything too imporant in the grand scheme of things. Pretty fun little episode, basically. 

Random Notes:

• The overly hammy mention of "Bugs Bunny's birthday" that Ermes did in his rant was originally "Mickey Mouse's birthday" in the manga, but I guess Disney is the one thing that they can't actually say the name of. 
• The hunt for money as a resource in the prison is going to be a major theme in the next couple of mini-arcs, and I actually appreciate that episode 1 sets up this fact about Green Dolphin Prison. 
• The brutal beatdown by those wrestler guards in episode 1 also explains why Ermes ends up getting stuck in the infirmary for an entire week. 
• Ermes was originally introduced to Weather and Anasui by Emporio, but that scene ends up getting cut and moved into a later episode, swapping Ermes out for Jolyne. I... I actually think it kind of works better, but I don't know if it'll cause inconsistencies later on. I guess we can just assume that Jolyne and Ermes do update each other on their weirdo allies. 
• It backfires very badly, but Ermes wanting to run the fuck away from McQueen is kind of the smart thing to do in her situation. 
• Using saline water to increase a body's electrical conductivity seems to be the exact kind of obscure detail that Araki read somewhere and decided to base a huge factor of a climax of a fight after. 
• Ew, exploding pisspots. 
• I'm immature, so I found the comedy bit with Ermes and her panties to be funny. 
• Thunder McQueen is named after fashion designer Alexander McQueen ('Xander' and 'Thunder' are read identically in katakana); his Stand Highway to Hell is named after the AC/DC song of the same name. Ermes's Stand is called Kiss, after the metal band KISS.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E05 Review: Genjutsu

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episode 5: Prisoner of Love

I wrote a version of this review that was just essentially a gigantic recap, but it wasn't particularly enteratining to read so I just kind of scrapped it. That's always been the problem with writing JJBA reviews for me -- I describe shit too much, and in any given JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fight, there's a lot of shit to describe. This fight, in particular, has a lot of things going on since we do a bit of an Inception thing with how we've got both Jotaro and Jolyne's dreams to deal with. 

The thing that I do have to say is how much better-framed and better-executed this three-parter ended up being, comparatively to the manga version. I didn't do an extensive read-through, but I did peek into the corresponding chapters in the manga and the anime flows so, so much better just by rearranging some scenes and showing some parts earlier. Again, the fact that the previous episode already set up audio and visual cues that something's not quite right with the Joestars' meeting does a great job of transitioning the dream-world Manhattan Transfer fight into the "how do we escape from the dream world" sequence here. 

There's a bunch of cool moments like Jotaro realizing that Jolyne shouldn't know the name of his Stand; or the bit with Jotaro punching Jolyne (to open the door!) and not feeling the slightest bit bad for it. A fair chunk of the focus of these scenes as Jotaro and Jolyne try to figure out the illusion and whatever, but I also do like that we also spend a decent amount of scene of Jolyne hoping -- and failing -- to receive the attention she seeks from her emotionally-stunted father. 

The two are in an emergency situation and have to cooperate to escape the prison, though, while being pursued both by the real Johngalli A, as well as the mysterious second stand Whitesnake, who's just lurking in the shadows all the while. Everything is paced very quickly but it does mirror how our heroes are feeling, so the confusion at 'wait, this thing from the dream world is actually real?' ends up feeling communicated pretty well. 

Of course, the moment that you could kind of see coming ends up happening. Jotaro uses Star Platinum: The World to stop time and do the only thing he can think of, which is to push Jolyne out of the way. But while Jotaro is busy deling with Manhattan Transfer; Whitesnake shows up and attacks -- doing the bizarre thing of punching two discs out of Jotaro's head. The mystery of the discs is something we'll explore over the next couple of episodes, but it is clear that the enemy Stand did something to Jotaro. 

And it's Jolyne's turn, and as her frazzled mind takes in everything that's going on, she gets absolutely shocked at how her seemingly inflappable and invincible dad is just lying there silent, near-death, with bullet wounds. Jotaro tells Jolyne that he's always cared for her, and while he has kind of been a shitty parent, when it comes down to giving up his life for hers, Jotaro is ready. I do like the little dichotomy that the episode does admittedly gloss over -- regardless of the reason (Stand-user hunting!) Jotaro was absent from Jolyne's life, and it does hurt her... but at the very least, everything Jotaro's doing right now is to save and help his daughter survive. 

And survive Jolyne does, because she does a pretty badass beatdown of Johngalli A. Sure, it comes down to an ORAORAORAORA barrage, but we do get to see Stone Free use its string ability to curve bullets after shoving the strings into Johngalli's gun. But honestly, Johngalli A feels more like a distraction at this point. It's a moment that doesn't hit quite as hard in the manga, but the moment when Jolyne drags Jotaro to the beach, where the escape submarine is in sight, and then Jotaro just slumps over dead with his face in the water? A great combination of the art, the music and the voice-acting really does sell this scene and while I knew it was coming, while I knew this isn't actually how Jotaro dies, the whole sequence actually ends up feeling so, so well done. 

Which leads to Jolyne's moment of heroic resolution. While the entire prison is out looking for her, she ends up walking back in with a badass pose, and surrendering -- she left Jotaro's comatose body up for the Speedwagon foundation, and that's going to serve as the 'timer' to give the part some tension. Jolyne realizes that the whole thing was done by Whitesnake's mysterious user to steal Jotaro's allmighty Star Platinum, and that she needs to remain in the prison in order to hunt down and beat the shit out of her father's "killer". She strikes up a formal alliance to Emporio, the mysterious 'ghost boy', who lost his mother to Whitesnake as well. 

Meanwhile, we get a very cool moment where the two villains meet each other. Whitesnake has succeeded in stealing Star Platinum from Jotaro, but then the overjoyed Johngalli A just gets executed in cold blood with his own gun by Whitesnake. Pretty cool setup for our main villain! Or, well, his Stand, in any case! 

Random Notes:

• 
  One of the theories I've seen is that Jotaro's actually on the autism spectrum in some way or form, considering how difficult it is to show how much he cares for people and how focused he is in his work. Admittedly Stand-user-hunting is something that's clearly going to drain a lot of your energy, but Jotaro's consistently found himself pretty hard to bond with people, and the people that he does hang out with tended to make the effort to be on his good side... something that's not going to ever happen with a teenaged daughter.  
• The whole 'the entire thing is a way to lure Jotaro into a trap' is a nice way to use a previous protagonist's reality-warping powers, to bring him back into the story, while also taking him out in a believable manner since the Part has to be about Jolyne.
• Also very convenient that this whole sequence tells us why Jolyne ends up remaining in the prison for pretty much almost the entirety of the Part -- there's a narrative reason to it, and why a Stand user like her doesn't just escape. 
• These episodes imply very heavily that Jotaro's going around hunting Stand users and former Dio minions. We kind of see this in Part IV and V (via Koichi in the latter), but god damn, I kinda do want to see those filler stories of Jotaro going around the world hunting and beating down random Stand users. 
• It is admittedly a bit of an utter convenience that the illusion-dream version of Manhattan Transfer is actually accurate to how it behaves in real life. I guess Whitesnake can only 'download' how a Stand actually works as it does in real life?
• I gloss over it in my review, but the Speedwagon Foundation shows up in the form of an escape submarine! I appreciate this cameo so much. 
• Okay, Jolyne spinning Johngalli around like a top is hilarious as shit and you can't convince me otherwise. 
• Emporio, of course, is named after the fashion brand Emporio Armani; while Whitesnake is named after a British band, with its lead singer previously associated with Deep Purple. 

One Piece 1040-1041 Review: How To Defeat A Yonko

One Piece, Chapters 1040-1041

It's been a couple of weeks. I kept putting these on hold again and again and new chapters keep releasing and then I kept delaying publishing 1040 because another chapter got released and.... well, you could probably guess what happened. It's honestly why I stopped doing weekly, timely reviews of shows and manga in general -- trying to keep up sometimes just isn't feasible due to real life. I'm trying to slowly catch up with stuff! Here's my review of One Piece chapters 1040 through 1041. 

Chapter 1040: Wasted Words on Young Ears

This chapter is a pretty hype one to read, and I feel like the community in general was super-duper excited during the chapters leading up to Big Mom's defeat at the hands of Kid and Law. And... and I still feel like the build-up to this fight could have been better, since I really don't have too much investment in Kid and Law specifically taking down Big Mom. And Big Mom as a character has been kind of... well an unwelcome distraction in this arc? Particularly the first act? Regardless, though, the fight was pretty damn neat. And I appreciate a lot that Big Mom doesn't just fall after the Damned Punk in 1039. She's defeated here, yes, but I do really like that the chapter emphasizes how much of a monster Big Mom is and how she refuses to go down. 

Big Mom uses her "Life or Slavery" attack to drag the souls of all the other nameless characters watching the fight, but of course Kid and Law aren't affected. There were a couple of pretty damn cool monster faces that Big Mom made throughout that sequence, too. Kid and Law get to say some one-liners about how Big Mom is an old woman that's about to die. Pretty cool stuff all around! Kid launches another Damned Punk just as Law slices the Misery homie in half -- that was a pretty cool double-page spread.

That's not all that Law is doing, though, because Law also uses a brand-new ability called Re-Room, a homage to Rocinante's Nagi Nagi no Mi. Man, Law's fruit is just busted as all hell, huh? I'm not big on power-scaling, but Law just straight-up copied another Devil Fruit's powers entirely. I didn't realize it on my first time reading through the chapter, but disabling sound around Big Mom means that she can't give commands to her homies... and we've been with Big Mom for multiple years IRL, and it never actually occurred to me that Big Mom needed to actually say the verbal commands to her homies to command them. 

That's not quite enough, though, because even with the two Damned Punks, the Corna Dio, Puncture Wille and whatever else Law and Kid piled on to Big Mom over the past couple dozen chapters, Big Mom flails as she falls down through Onigashima... right onto where Yamato is fighting the giant Kanjurou monster. In the process, Big Mom grabs one of the Looney Tunes bombs, it explodes on her face, and she falls down even more. 

Yamato blocks the blast from detonating the other bombs, but the Kazenbou just... fizzles out? I've always thought that the Kazenbou was a very disappointing 'final fight' for Yamato, especially if she is going to be a future Straw Hat member, but she doesn't even get to defeat it? That's kind of disappointing, to be honest. 

Big Mom's final monologue as she falls down is her cursing and bemoaning Roger for kickstarting the great pirate era, and expresses a bit of uncertainty if the One Piece even exists. The line Big Mom specifically says is that "some of it" is in Wano, so... the One Piece is not a single piece of item? What a plot twist! That monologue, I feel, does kind of fit with Big Mom's whole characterization, where she's constantly blaming other people for her failures, and her entire personality could be boiled down to 'it's never my fault'. She falls down, and there's a gigantic explosion covered by the Re-Room that eclipses the size of Onigashima.

Which... it's pretty cool, for what it is. I love that Big Mom makes sure that the audience knows that she's not out of the story yet (though most likely out of the arc), re-establishes the danger of the Looney Tunes bombs on Onigashima's basement, and also somehow, despite all odds, the flower capital is still unaware of the huge fight going on. 

Also, as Big Mom is falling, we get to see that the greatest ninja battle of all time, Raizou vs. Fukurokuju, ended in Raizou's stoic victory. I kind of find this very interesting? I've spoken about how neat I find Raizou's characterization in this fight is, where he's refusing to admit defeat to heat considering he's the one Scabbard that was unable to stand the heat in the Oden flashback... but it's probably not something that the writer felt could actually take up an entire chapter. And having a fight of endurance actually last for 15+ chapters, even if it's just one or two panel every other chapter, is a pretty neat way of doing it.

Then this chapter closes off with Yamato talking to Momonosuke. I think Yamato's dialogue implies that her role with dealing with the bombs is over? She might fight Kaido or something? But Momonosuke is about to talk to her about Zunesha and its arrival, and Momo notes that Zunesha is the companion of Joy Boy and committed a crime 800 years ago. I think the fandom collectively have pieced this information out together, and other than being specifically a 'companion', I feel like we've guessed it correctly. But it's neat to have confirmation nonetheless. 

_____________________________________________________

Chapter 1041: Komurasaki

We start off with Momonosuke and Yamato talking to each other, but... but I feel like, again, we don't learn anything too much? We do get more and more cryptic talks about what Oden wrote in his journal. We get confirmation that the pages relating to end-game spoilers like the One Piece and Laugh Tale have been ripped out, and that's to be expected. Yamato and Momonosuke also agree that the journal seems to imply that Momo will be the one who will 'guide the world to the dawn'. I do like the doubts that Momonosuke expresses in his final scene. He's just a child, and while he's far, far more mature than a child his age should be, I love that Momonosuke is having doubts on whether opening the borders of Wano is going to be the right thing since Oden wasn't a prophet. 

Actually disappointingly, the chapter titled 'Komurasaki' barely features Komurasaki at all. 

It's nice to have some progress on the front of her little scene with Orochi, though. Orochi is ranting about Fukurokuju and the rumbling of the castle, and finally the idiot realizes that Komurasaki is very calmly playing her instrument when the world's going all straight to hell. Orochi starts to rant about Komurasaki's "pretentious" mask, which is something she always wears when she plays her favourite song. 

Then Orochi gets crushed by some rubble, and finds out that he cannot transform into his Zoan mode, and turns out that while Orochi was being distracted by Komurasaki's playing, she stabbed him with seastone nails. Komurasaki then reveals that she's actually the daughter of Oden, and that she  always wears the mask because she needed to hide that expression of anger that she undoubtedly has whenever she had to play 'Moon Princess', Oden's favourite song, for Orochi. 

We don't see this confrontation anywhere else, and I'm going to assume that Denjirou, who's tied most to Hiyori/Komurasaki character-wise, would show up to help finish Orochi off... but I feel like it's particularly nice that Hiyori's the one out of all the characters to be the one to take out Orochi. It's the sort of character catharsis that I feel Big Mom's fight with the two Supernovas didn't quite have.

Meanwhile, Izo manages to score a mutual kill with one of the CP0 members, specifically the one with the Zelda Deku Scrub-looking mask. We learn that he is called Maha! I'm not sure if either of them are dead yet, but they are down and out. The main CP0 guy, the one with one white eye and black eye and a bowler hat and a scar... who still remains unnamed to this day, is all panting and being confused. But he's not having a good day, because the Gorosei gave him a direct order to eliminate Luffy right now. You can just feel that McBowlerHat is having the worst day ever, and he actually panics about the notion of getting in-between a fight between Luffy and Kaido. 

However, the Gorosei's orders apparently highlight how crucial it is that Luffy needs to die, and there's something about a 'worst-class scenario'... which probably implies that Luffy is indeed the one with the super-special Devil Fruit. Between the Gorosei's talk and the Who's Who storyline earlier in the arc... yeah, I've made my peace that this is probably the case. Drake also stands up and seems to be about to hunt down the lead CP0 guy? Okay, sure. 

Meanwhile, we get a montage of all the good guys running around and trying to avoid the crumbling castle. Franky caught Zoro with his grapple-chain Strong Right! Good cyborg man. 

The rest of the chapter is just Luffy fighting Kaido, and we get an interesting brief flashback to Kaido's first meeting with Big Mom as part of Rocks's crew. Pretty interesting insight to their dynamic even if we don't learn much -- and it does seem like Big Mom is basically showcased here to be Kaido's big sister figure or a mentor of some sort. I do really like how this plays into Kaido's own drunken mood swings, with him being a sobbing, crying mess. Luffy goes into Gear Fourth Snakeman, and unleashes a move called 'Hydra' that seems to be the Snakeman version of Gatling? Luffy notes that this is his 'final Gear Fourth', whatever that entails, and trash-talks Kaido's ambitions since it harms the people of Wano. 

Wano is wrapping up, and I'm all for it. There's realistically only Kaido and Orochi's defeats that we have to deal with, and I could see them happening simultaneously. Maybe (hopefully) we get a Kaido flashback in the way? The storyline about McBowlerHat and the World Government ships coming... I guess those could be like, the epilogue segment of the arc after the big bad is defeated, in the way that Kuma was in Thriller Bark? There's a lot of focus that seems to imply that Luffy's really going to awaken his devil fruit at the climax of this arc, which is something that I'm not super excited about, but am definitely interested to see. 

Random Notes:

• The cover story shows us that two of the Vinsmoke brothers are beaten up by Big Mom at the end of Whole Cake Island, and are now trapped on Mont D'Or's book. Having watched the anime recently, I can definitely remember that Mon D'Or went with Big Mom to Wano. Pudding also ends up punching both brothers in revenge for Sanji? I can't say I really care all that much about the Vinsmoke brothers, but hopefully it'll be more interesting than the Pound cover story. 
• I guess the Kazenbou got sucked into Big Mom's Soul Pocus attack? Or something?
• I love that in the montage of everyone running around in 1040, we just have Zoro's unconscious body just randomly sliding off the rubble. It should be dramatic, but I kind of found the panel unintentionally hilarious. 
• Raizou's fight is cool and all, but we don't get to see his overpowered scroll-scroll fruit in action. I'm disappointed. 
• There's a short scene in 1041 where Jinbe rescues Raizou and he talks about some ominous 'preparations'? Is that where Denjirou has been at all this while?
• I also find it pretty narratively accurate that for someone that has a devil fruit that's theoretically very cool, Orochi never actually gets into a single serious fight with his Yamata-no-Orochi devil fruit. 
• Scarface McBowlerHat the CP0 guy is busting his ass doing all this work, but the third CP0 member, the one with the neck frill, is just... hanging out in the waiting room? The Go board isn't even intact anymore, why couldn't he have helped Bowler Hat guy?
• 1041 gave us a scene of Kid and Law talking about how both of them are completely down and out. I don't believe them, actually, considering how many times Law has gone 'oh, I'm beat' and then proceed to pull out additional awakening attacks. 
• That panel of Luffy going Snakeman right as Kaido is crying is a badass-as-hell panel. 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E03-04 Review: Yare Yare Daze

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episodes 3-4: The Visitor, Pt. 1-2

(Mild spoilers for the next couple of episodes for Stone Ocean.)

I do have to admit that my knowledge of Stone Ocean's specific arcs aren't quite as comprehensive as some of the other parts, but I was curious at how this specific plot point with the Whitesnake illusion is going to be handled in the anime. In the manga, it had the misfortune of being the first long multi-Stand fight arc (which is handled a bit differently compared to the previous parts) and also being... well, being almost entirely an illusion. It got so bad that I think the TPB version of Stone Ocean included an entire page explaining the layers-upon-layers of 'genjutsu' happening in these chapters. And I must say that the anime actually does a great job at showcasing this and giving some foreshadowing that something's wrong withot really giving away the fact that it's all a white-goop illusion until the ending sequence of episode 4. Going back to watch (or, like me, having known the story from the manga first) the anime actually drops a fair amount of visual hints that a different ability is taking place, but the audience won't really realize it since the whole thing is set up as merely a simple fight against the next Stand-using minion, the blind sniper Johngalli A.

It's also been a while since I read the manga, but I definitely appreciate how the anime takes a bit more time to showcase Jolyne discovering what Stands are. She gives us a bit of an exposition on the limitations of her string-based powers, and I do like that little opening scene in episode 3 where Jolyne and Gwess ended up dealing with some random extortionist in order to make sure Jolyne doesn't get treated like a bitch. Always liked the bit where Jolyne gives the timid, bullied nameless prisoner an opportunity to rise back up and extort money, but doesn't hold her hand since no one can be that soft in a prison. 

Of course, the whole point of this two-parter is that Jotaro's coming to visit. That, and we get the debuts of two of the most important characters in this Part, although we don't know it just yet. Emporio the Baseball Boy shows up in random trashcans and talks to Jolyne and gives cryptic advice, but he's just... creepy and we're not sure if he's a ghost or not. 

We get the epic Jolyne/Jotaro meeting, of course, and I do really like how they handled it here. I actually took out the manga version of their initial meeting and while they don't rewrite anything too drastically, they did change enough to make the conversation flow better. Stuff like Jotaro explaining the Stand powers a bit more clearly to Jolyne, or the heavier implication that Jotaro's excuse for 'marine biology research' is just superhero codename for Stand-user hunting are already there in the manga, but here it's made a bit more obvious for the audience -- which I guess is necessary to make Jotaro feel distant but not a deadbeat parent. 

While Jolyne doesn't want anything to do with someone she views as an absent parent, Jotaro calmly explains that a Stand-user called Johngalli A. is the one that set up the whole accident with Romeo, the lawyer, and even the victim in order to get Jolyne into the prison. Johngalli is a follower of Dio, and he's trying to get revenge for the Joestar bloodline. 

In the middle of their argumentation, though, Jotaro and Jolyne realize that there are things that're not quite synchronizing -- like the brand of the cigarettes. But they don't have time to process it because Johngalli starts opening fire with his sniper rifle. Stone Free manages to protect Jolyne with a webbed hand, and we get to see Star Platinum - The World in action once more. 

And for a chunk of episodes 3 and 4, all we do is fight Manhattan Transfer -- the flying, drone-like Stand that detects air currents and allows Johngalli A. to have some Daredevil-level senses from half the prison away. It's one of the more convoluted and specific-to-user Stands I can think of, but I can't deny that it's pretty dang cool. Episode 3 ends with the cliffhanger of Jotaro getting shot, while episode 4 spends a good chunk of the fight just showing Jolyne's recklessness and resourcefulness. It's honestly typical anime protagonist stuff, if we're being honest. 

And it's pretty fun stuff -- Johngalli A rants about the factors he needs for aiming while Jolyne uses sprinklers to try and overwhelm Manhattan Transfer's ability to 'read the air'. The huge weird part of the battle is the reappearance of the Baseball Boy, who tells them to escape through a secret passage, but Jolyne instead heads off to hunt down Manhattan Transfer in order to protect the mysterious boy. 

The boiler room fight is pretty standard -- Jolyne ultimately uses a leaking gas pipe to fool Manhattan Transfer's "sight" and crush the enemy Stand. Jotaro then shows up, trusts Jolyne's instinct, and burns Johngalli up by crushing a pipe. But, of course, the whole point is the oddity of what's going on, and the story uses Baseball Boy as the red herring here. At this point in the story we're not sure if he's real or not, since only Jolyne and Manhattan Transfer interacts with him, and Jotaro doesn't seem to notice the boy at all -- explicitly being confused when Jolyne questions him about the boy. At this point we might be thinking that the baseball kid is a ghost or Jolyne's hallucination or something... and then even more inconsistencies like disappearing wounds or corpses switching places happen.  

And then, of course, the big plot twist -- everything in the past episode and a half is a hallucination! The balls on this manga for actually dragging this Manhattan Transfer not-actually-a-fight for so long; it's actually a neat subversion to how these sort of tricks in the manga tend to only last a couple of pages, and tend to be super-duper obvious. The entire fight turns out to be fake, and Jolyne wakes up to see herself, her father and the guard in the meeting room covered with white acidic goo. It's kinda neat, how this turned out to be the actual threat. 

Jolyne figures out which point of her perception is real, and realizes that she only woke up after receiving the gift of the human bone from the mysterious Baseball Cap Boy -- it cut her hand, which causes her to be able to wake up... but episode 4 ends in the cliffhange of Jolyne trying to summon Stone Free but the threads dissolving in the acid. 

Again, it's so fun to see this arc animated and executed so dang well in animation. It's one of the arcs that I feel could've used some editing to tighten up in the manga, and the anime basically fixes a lot of the problems I have which ends up making the illusion reveal something that feels like a huge 'aha, all these weird foreshadowings finally make sense' instead of 'um really'. Of course, this arc isn't quite over yet, but since the episode titles marks episode 3 and 4 as two parts...

Random Notes:

• JoJo fashion/music references! Johngalli A. is named after fashion designer John Galliano; his stand Manhattan Transfer is named after the band of the same name. 
• Using uncanny-valley 3D animation to denote Stands and their effects have been something that the JoJo anime has always done well, but it works exceptionally with the nonhumanoid Manhattan Transfer and its bizarre alien jellyfish drone appearance and how it just spazzes in place to dodge water droplets and stuff. 
• Of course there are some parts of Johngalli's story that doesn't immediately add up -- like why he doesn't just kill Jolyne at any point between the car crash and the prison. We could handwave it as typical supervillain plan overcomplexity, but knowing the main villain of this part, it's likely to be his plan all along. 
• In-between the Stand battles, I appreciate the nods to the prison setting like having Johngalli A smuggle in sniper rifle components through food.
• Speaking of Johngalli A, the long monologue about the principles of sniping, bone structure, meteorology and stuff is the typical "Araki read something very cool and bases a mini-arc around it, and wants to stuff in some of his research notes so he makes his character ramble". It's always present in every part to some degree, but I've always felt like Stone Ocean is the worst (best?) offender.
• Johngalli A's well-endowed behind ends up becoming a bit of a meme in the manga, and the anime really play it up. 
• Jotaro's yare yare daze hits extra hard as a dad having to deal with his rebellious teenage daughter.
• They do remove a fair chunk of the dialogue about Jotaro being a distant dad and husband -- including always saying something terrible to Jolyne every time they met like wanting a divorce. Since the manga itself kind of goes the typical shonen dad trope of Jotaro being a Good Dad(tm) all along, it's neat that they just exorcise these inconsistencies immediately. 
• Insert your own "Star Platinum is starving between parts" and "Jotaro is forty years old?!" jokes. 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E01-02 Review: Stone Free

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episodes 1-2:

It's been a while since the anime adaptation of Vento Aureo, huh? I looked in my blog and the last JoJo-related review I did was in 2019. Time flies, doesn't it? Part 6, Stone Ocean, finally got its own anime adaptation and it's released in batches of episodes. I didn't feel like binge-watching, so I took things relatively slow and watched the episodes bit by bit. And now I get to talk about them! I actually watched the anime throughout December and January, but didn't really have the energy to write about them. I've also been re-reading some of my older JoJo reviews and... and the urge to go back and rewrite all of them is very strong, except then I'll never be done. I wrote a lot of things in the past. One thing that I'll hopefully do with Stone Ocean is to not just describe every single thing that happens in the episode and actually just review it.

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Episode 1: Stone Ocean

I don't have much to actually say about the anime beyond 'it's competently done', though I'll also be the first to admit that I'm not the most well-qualified to commentate on that either. It feels about on par with Vento Aureo, although it's also been a couple of years since I last saw it. It's actually kind of interesting just how slowly Stone Ocean's first events occur, spending most of its first episode setting up Jolyne Cujoh as our new protagonist, explaining her backstory and the setting of Green Dolphin Street Prison. We don't even really get a proper Stand fight until the second episode!

And I do really like this. The first time Stands showed up, it took our first then-protagonist Jotaro a while to come to terms with it. So it's neat that Jolyne, who doesn't have anyone to explain what Stands are to her -- unlike Jotaro, Josuke and Giorno in their respective 'first episodes'. Again, not that she activates Stone Free in its full glory in this first episode anyway. 

I do find it interesting how... wacky our literal first impression to Jolyne was. Sure, there's that wordless showcase of her tragic origin story, but then we get to the joke about her confiding to Ermes how a guard saw her masturbating after she gets turned on by moonlight. Every time I question the title of this manga, this sort of thing reminds me why 'bizarre' is in the title. 

The primary antagonist of this first episode is basically Jolyne's unnamed Riddler-tie-wearing, elf-eared lawyer. The story itself is pretty fun and I feel to be enough content to carry the 20+ minutes of the first episode -- Jolyne and her boyfriend Romeo accidentally ran over some dude and killed him, and the lawyer ends up manipulating Jolyne into a situation where her plea deal causes her to be locked up in prison for 16 years. The twist, of course, is that the lawyer's actually working for Romeo -- it's a plotline straight out of Yakuza, I like it. 

While doing this, Jolyne meets her future buddy Ermes Costello, and also gets pricked by a piece of the Stand Arrow that her father Jotaro snuck into a golden pendant. Jolyne doesn't have the best relationship to her distant dad. She starts getting some kind of enhanced senses after being pricked, and while she's initially confident that her name would be cleared, she still spends some time talking to Ermes. Some pretty fun, if gloriously vulgar, conversation about hiding money in a woman's 'secret compartments' and how Ermes is smuggling money through silicone implants. The guards with Ermes in the prison truck is beating the shit out of Ermes and trying to get her to cough up the money... and Jolyne ends up having a blue thread trail off from her fingers and slices off the ear of one of the evil guards. 

The episode's third act goes back to the evil lawyer story, while also showing the car accident in its full glory. Jolyne gets tricked and tossed in jail by the lawyer... and Jolyne Cujoh is now Prisoner FE40536. We get the memed-to-hell-by-the-internet strip search, and then as Jolyne sees the lawyer that fucked her over drive away, she sends out a thread that strangles the lawyer when it's exposed to cold air, causing him to get into a very karma-appropriate car crash. Again, not too much really happened in this episode other than setup, but it's a pretty neat first episode. 

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Episode 2: Stone Free

Episode 2 gives us the first actual Stand fight in the series and... and Gwess and her Stand, Goo Goo Dolls, is very tame, isn't it? This whole episode feels like pretty much just more set-up for Jolyne to understand the setting of not only Green Dolphin Prison, but also the nature of the strange new ability that her dad's weird pendant has given her.

After the bizarre introduction to Green Dolphin by the warden Loccobarocco and his pink crocodile puppet Charlotte, the prison initially looks like a relatively all right location for a correctional facility... until, of course, Ermes's warnings from the first episode ends up becoming a bit true. Money is kind of a premium currency in the prison, while even basic stuff like food ends up running out if you're not ready to deal with the 'you can sleep in...' hints. 

Jolyne's cell-mate Gwess ends up being the initial antagonist, and... she's kind of a lunatic and not the most interesting character. She initially is hostile at everything Jolyne does, and has the golden locket from the first episode that Jolyne's desperate to get back in order to get some answers. But then she feigns being a nice ally to Jolyne, before it's obvious to Jolyne that Gwess is trying to screw her up. Toss in the fact that there are some creepy things that happen -- with the pretty effective imagery of Gwess's pet parrot detaching its head while tiny human hands pop out from within it. 

Gwess's Goo Goo Dolls power turns out to be able to cause her to shrink down people, which is... okay, it's a pretty decently simple power so early in the series. The real bizarre thing here is Gwess herself, who insists on dressing Jolyne and her previous victim up in... the hollowed-out bodies of dead tiny animals, and forcing them to behave like cute little animals. The voice actress had a lot of fun recording Gwess's overacting, for sure. 

Turns out that Gwess doesn't really have a good grasp on how her powers work, and the further Jolyne moves away from Gwess, the more her power wanes -- which ends up being nearly fatal for Jolyne because Gwess sends her off to sneak into the guards' room and cause a mass breakout. When Jolyne tries to run back into her cell, she gets pursued by Goo Goo Dolls, who automatically does so because it thinks Jolyne is running away. And a bit later, Gwess seems to ally with Jolyne only to betray her again.

Again, Goo Goo Dolls isn't the most interesting thing, and it's just there to be a target for Stone Free, who coalescences from strings and we get a very satisfying ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA moment from Jolyne as she gives a badass series of lines -- talking about her Stand name being Stone Free, how she's going to be free of the ocean of stones, and how she's in charge now. Any Ora Ora beatdown is always satisfying to watch, and this one is a pretty neat one. 

Overall, a pretty fun first two episodes! I don't have too much to say because by itself the Goo Goo Dolls story isn't the most exciting thing in JoJo, but these two episodes are pretty neat at setting up the main character and the prison setting. Looking forward to re-experiencing Stone Ocean in animated format for sure! 

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Random Notes:

• 
  I actually finished JoJolion around a month or two after the serialization ended. It's a part that's most certainly reads a lot better when you don't have to wait a month every chapter, although I do still think that it doesn't rank particularly highly if I were to rank all the JoJo parts. Admittedly, though, the high energy of the earlier parts is why I got into the series in the first place, so...
• Depending on my mood, I might do double-episodes in a single review. We'll see. 
• Most of the character names in Part VI are all based on fashion brands: Ermes Costello takes her name from Hermes and the fashion designer Paul Costelloe; Gwess is taken from Guess; Loccobarocco is taken from fashion designer Rocco Barocco.
• Jolyne Cujoh's name is based on the Dolly Parton song Jolene.
• Stone Free is taken from the Jimi Hendrix song Stone Free.
• Goo Goo Dolls is taken from the band of the same name. 
• The anime adaptation, as far as I understand it, still keeps a lot of the Stand names -- but some references to other real-world stuff are cut out. Among them is Jolyne's mention about how the guard that saw her masturbating looks like Tom Cruise. 
• Ermes gets a Joseph-style "oh my god", I appreciate that.
• Stone Ocean isn't a part that I actually really remember all that well. I remembered that I really enjoyed Jolyne and Foo Fighters, but it's interesting to re-experience this all over again. 
• Stone Ocean is infamous for having some rather... bizarre character designs. From the elf-lawyer to the... the whatever the fuck Loccobarocco is supposed to be, there are some characters that the fandom joked are aliens from Mikitaka's race.
• The opening title, simply called 'Stone Ocean', is... it's a neat song! It'll take a while for it to grow on me, but the return of the 3D visuals is most definitely a welcome surprise. 

One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 986-990

Another shorter batch of episodes. I guess this is just going to be a 'catch up with a couple of episodes, then type up my reactions as padding for the blog', then? Eh! These episodes breeze by a bit more quickly because the Onigashima raid's begun and things move along a whole bit faster. 

(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.