We shift focus from the passing of Oden's father to further back in time. For most of the episode we follow the rise of Orochi from simple outcast to a position of power. As a youth, he was chased away and nearly killed as one of the last surviving members of the disgraced Kurozumi family. Two distant relatives found him and through a combination of skill, planning, cunning, and shapeshifting abilities, they managed to help him worm his way into the good graces of the Kozuki family – who he had sworn revenge on. Eventually, this scheme resulted in the conveyance of Oden's father's dying wish that Orochi be made shogun in Oden's absence, which was ultimately a ruse they had put together.
Across the seas, Oden continues to live an exciting and tumultuous life. He continued to travel with the Whitebeard pirates as his children grew older. Whitebeard and Gol D Roger encounter one another again after many years, and Oden rushes quickly to shore, runs across the waves, and barrels through Roger's crew to face the legendary pirate. He is promptly blown away by Roger's powerful strike through a dozen or so trees, and Whitebeard comes soaring out of the air behind Oden's crash and strikes towards Roger. Roger and Whitebeard are so powerful and evenly matched that the entire earth shatters around them, and yet their potent haki makes it such that their blades are not even touching. As they both grin with excitement, the episode cuts to the To Be Continued card.
We're really In It Now™ folks.
All One Piece flashbacks are potent and powerful, but few can elicit the raw excitement that this moment has.
It goes without saying that the Toei team knocks it out of the park once again. Wano is basically a long-running showcase for 'amazing things that can happen within the constraints of weekly television production.' The sequences with Roger and Whitebeard going toe to toe with one another are exactly as momentous as they should be. As the screen shakes, the world trembles under the might of these two men both in-text and meta-textually. Hats off to the Toei crew once again.
I think this is also one of those uniquely powerful One Piece moments. Few serialized works have run for this long and this consistently. When you have legendary figures meeting in a work that spans over 23 years, it truly is a ground-breaking event. There are a lot of interesting ways a creator can endow characters with a sense of great purpose or mythos-defining gravitas, and Oda uses these quite deftly in One Piece. But there is also something to be said for the sheer enormity of One Piece, the raw amount of material and time spent in this setting, that these characters coming into conflict feels like a grand culmination of the work. It truly is a powerful moment.
Orochi's backstory occupies the majority of the run time of course, and I think it is also very engaging. Sometimes detailing a villain's rise to power is less about making them sympathetic and more about establishing their perspective. I don't think the narrative is really trying to make the reader feel bad for Orochi per se – though obviously what happened to him as a giant is horrific and is precisely the kind of thing from which lifelong vendettas are born. Rather, I think the aim here is to establish the depths to which Orochi will go in order to achieve what he wanted. He didn't just oopsie-doopsie fall into this position while Oden was away. In fact, he worked just as hard to complete his takeover as Oden did to travel the world. It's a slow, unsympathetic burn, but it burns bright nonetheless.
I can't recommend the series, nor think that any hypothetical viewer would enjoy it, but it is the kind of trash TV that's rewarding to dissect.― Have you ever wondered what Baki would be like if it had a conservative bent instead of queer undertones? Well, look no further because the answer is Kengan Ashura! While Kengan is trying to convey the same spectacle and white-knuckle action of the long-ru...
Film also available to rent, purchase digitally on several major outlets in N. America― The official X/Twitter account for TOHO's Godzilla franchise announced on Saturday that Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One film is streaming worldwide on Netflix. The film is available worldwide, but is currently not available in Japan. Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, the black-and-white version of the film, w...
One Piece: Heroines novel also licensed― Viz Media revealed its new licenses and new print releases planned for spring 2025 on Friday. Kazuyoshi Seto's Minecraft: The Manga: Announcement: Add this book to your enchantment room! Join Nico on his chance to escape the blocky confines of his home and prove how strong he's become when zombies attack! Minecraft: The Manga, by Kazuyoshi Seto, releases Spri...
Series starring Miku Martineau, Ayo Solanke, more starts production in Toronto― The Hollywood Reporter entertainment news site reported on Thursday that showrunner Simon Barry (Warrior Nun creator) and Boat Rocker Media are producing a live-action series for Netflix titled BET that "is based in part" on writer Homura Kawamoto and artist Tōru Naomura's Kakegurui - Compulsive Gambler manga. The show h...
Jean-Karlo attempts to condense two big video game showcases into a coherent column, from the revamped Silent Hill 2 to the grazing pastures of Story of Seasons.― Welcome back, folks. This is related to a big story for this week, but this past weekend, I listened to Utada Hikaru's re-recording of "Simple And Clean". It's very emotional. Utada Hikaru is a good twenty-plus years older than when she or...
In the Eisner-nominated work, Maki Fujiwara chronicles her daily life with her husband, lionized mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge. Though deceptively simple at first glance, a foundation of abuse is slowly revealed.― At first blush, Maki Fujiwara's My Picture Diary does what it says on the tin. It tells the story of her daily life as a housewife and mother, spending time with her daily activities, noting the...
Now streaming on Netflix, Tomotaka Shibayama's first feature animation mixes the magical with reality to share a simple but important message.―
Director Tomotaka Shibayama's latest film, My Oni Girl, is an action-adventure drama with elements of a buddy comedy and a relatable coming-of-age story. The film, produced by Studio Colorido, was released in theaters in Japan and on Netflix on May 24, foll...
Miyano, Nukumi play original characters for August 2 film― The official website for My Hero Academia the Movie: You're Next (My Hero Academia: You're Next), the fourth anime film in the My Hero Academia franchise, announced on Friday that the film has cast Mamoru Miyano and Meru Nukumi as original characters. Mamori Miyano as Giulio Gandini, a butler who serves the Scervino family Meru Nukumi as Ann...
Kaiju No. 8 takes the top spot this week while Tonari no Yōkai-san pushes to #3 in the cmulative! Check out our weekly user rankings!― Let's have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season,
based on the polls you can find in our Daily Streaming Reviews
and on the Your Score page with the latest simulcasts. Keep in mind that these rankings are based on how people rated in...
Mospeada is a work very much of its time, riffing on ideas and tropes that were all the rage when it was made, and doesn't do anything exceptional with them.― It can be easy for even longtime fans to forget that alongside Macross, there were two other 80's sci-fi anime that got Frankenstein-ed into what we'd eventually call Robotech. While this isn't the first time one of those series has made it to...
Following the upcoming retro programming block Toonami Rewind, Chris and Lucas look back fondly on the afternoons spent watching Naruto and Sailor Moon.― Following the upcoming retro programming block Toonami Rewind, Chris and Lucas look back fondly on the afternoons spent watching Naruto and Sailor Moon. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the v...
Yeah, yeah, Kaiju No. 8 has all the great action scenes, but Yatagarasu is chewing up the scenery as the royal ladies absolutely lose their minds!?― Why Aren't You Watching This Anime Yet? Yeah, yeah, Kaiju No. 8 has all the great action scenes, but Yatagarasu is chewing up the scenery as the royal ladies absolutely lose their minds!? The ANN After Show streams live on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitte...
Here we have a from-the-ground-up remake, but does this beloved classic still hold up in a modern sense, or is that praise just nostalgia talking?― It's nice when Nintendo surprises us with a remaster or re-release of one of their more difficult-to-obtain games. The original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the Nintendo GameCube is a classic for many. However, since the game was never re-rele...
Miles Atherton crunched Netflix's latest numbers for some surprising anime discoveries, from the popularity of My Happy Marriage to the One Piece juggernaut.― Since the advent of streaming, it's been notoriously difficult to gauge how popular a specific anime is with international audiences, both for publishers looking to make informed decisions for a market that generates most of its revenue outsi...