It’s Bungo Stray Dogs day. I had my first day of teaching at a new job yesterday and one of my students asked about One Piece (I showed off my bookshelves in some pictures like a proper nerd) and I answered her question of “do you watch One Piece” with “Yes, and I have been watching it since before you were born.” I can use a distraction so my bones don’t continue evaporating. I also read an interview with the author about his process and there seems to be a lot more cool stuff coming up. Let’s get started on this week’s episode though.
This is definitely the face and demeanor of a sane person.
We’re starting off with a far too lengthy explanation of the prison’s defenses. I’m sure the two have some sort of weird trick to circumvent all of it. Either way, this prison sounds like the most unbelievable thing in this universe so far, and that’s a universe that had a massive flying casino. I’m staunchly opposed to the death penalty in our world, but in a world like Bungo Stray Dogs I would probably be in favor of just killing the prisoners instead of wasting the GDP of several planets on imprisoning them. Unfortunately, Dazai, Nikolai and Fyodor are all completely insane. Poor Sigma. And things don’t get better from here on out. Instead of one of the four items provided in Nikolai’s twisted escape room, he picks Sigma as his item. I suppose he was technically created through the book, so is he an item? Let’s not look at it too deeply, this isn’t a trolley problem, it’s insane detectives doing even more insane things. I love Bungo with all my heart, but I have to remember to leave my common sense at the door before I come in. Let’s roll the opening credits!
I’m sorry to hear that.
Speaking of remembering things. For some reason I thought Aya was a young woman in her late teens. Anime’s warped display of age has definitely changed the way I see characters. Turns out she’s only 10 years old. Why she was alone in an airport picking up a friend at that age in a world as dangerous as Bungo’s is beyond me, but it makes her dealings with Bram all the more impressive. She quickly gets circled by vampires. She’s also aware of how important Bra-chan is. Luckily the Armed Detective Agency is there to save the day.
It’s Ichimaru Gin!
Let’s check in on Dazai and Sigma, it turns out they’re still insane. At least Dazai is. Sigma is just trying to find his place in the world and the word home resonates with him extremely strongly. I hope he gets out of this, terrorist or not, he was abandoned and used by everyone in his life. Now that he’s in charge of his own destiny he’s finally shaping up to be a more decent person. I wonder if he will end up joining the Agency. Also, I’m much more confident now that I was right! It has to be Chuuya we saw last week. Chuuya being here would be an incredible game changer. I got what I wished for, in a sense. It’s Chuuya alright, but he’s been turned into a vampire. That’s bad. I repeat. That’s bad. I am still incredibly curious about what the timeline looks like. Is Aya meeting up with Kenji here while Dazai is breaking out of prison, or is Dazai about to show up at the airport.
I doubt this, but I also don’t think Ranpo would let her meet him without a plan, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens next week.
Uh oh. It’s one of the two remaining Hunting Dogs, or Wolves as Kenji refers to them. Atsushi joins the fray and budget Tanya Degurecheff tricks him into thinking she’s Aya. I love how Bram instantly has respect for Kenji because he’s a farmer. Real recognize real. Atsushi was trying to tell Teruko that Tachihara had uncovered Fukichi’s schemes. Teruko wants to meet up with Ranpo, which is understandable. As much as the Hunting Dogs are terribly hungry for blood, they have to start listening to reason at some point, right? They can’t just blindly follow their leader while everyone around them is telling them they’re wrong. The episode ends with Kenji getting defeated. I’m almost hesitant to predict this, since I’m more often wrong than not about this show, but I want to say this was an illusion created by Tanizaki’s powers. He’s not been seen in action for a while, after all. Either way, things are ramping up on all fronts. I wonder what Dazai’s plan is to escape prison and I wonder if the Hunting Dogs are going to be convinced soon. Either way, it’s been a great episode once again and I can’t wait to see next week’s. Thanks for reading!
I’m inserting this image after finishing the episode and the rest of the post, and I’m thinking about what the timeline is. I’m starting to wonder if this is happening at the same time as the Agency dealing with Bram. Perhaps Bram will undo his powers somehow and Chuuya will flip sides while they’re still in the prison. That or there’s some other plan going on in Dazai’s head.
I’m not going to sit here and sugarcoat things. This is definitely my least favorite volume of One Piece up until this point, and probably will be my least favorite volume by the time I’m done with all of them. This volume is straight up bad. The entire volume is dedicated to the Davy Back fight with the Foxy Pirates which feels like it’s a straight up filler. But, it’s a volume of One Piece, so I will be talking about it today. There’s a couple of things of note in this volume, despite them being few and far between, so let’s go through them.
We get the early beginnings of a new cover story. This one follows Gedatsu, the priest from Enel’s gang that was yeeted into the bottom of the white cloud sea. It turns out he kept falling and landed on solid ground. I wonder where adventure will take him, or, you know, how he didn’t die from falling. Someone should make the joke “did you fall from heaven, because you look like an angel” or something. I don’t know.
If we all remember, the Foxy Pirates shot Sherry, the horse, and this prompted Luffy into getting angry and accepting the Davy Back fight. The Davy Back fight is based on the legend of Davy Jones. It was created on pirate island. Without going too deep into spoiler territory, pirate island isn’t a one-off mention here, it’s something that we revisit later in the story. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if the two are unrelated and we never hear about the Davy Back fight again, since it wasn’t a popular arc, but who knows. Maybe this arc turns out to be an incredibly important set-up for something that happens in the final moments of this manga. Somehow I doubt it.
The Davy Back fight has two crews fight each other in a bunch of games. The three games in this particular fight are a race around the island, a strange soccer variant where two players are cosplaying as the game ball. Still makes more sense than Quidditch though. The final game is a fight. In the race, Nami, Robin and Usopp take part. Robin’s devil fruit power is very useful to mess with the enemy team and Usopp shows off the power of the impact dial by using it to send their ship flying forward. Nami does a great job reading the current, but they never really had a chance of winning with all the interference that was going on. The ball game has Zoro and Sanji participate and as much as the enemy is trying to cheese their win, these two are on a completely different level from anyone in Foxy’s crew. That ends up being Foxy’s downfall in the entire Davy Back fight, as the monster trio is just built differently. They win back Chopper, who was sent to the enemy team and then the final fight between Foxy and Luffy starts.
The good things are some of the jokes, and I quite like how casual the pirates are leading up to the event. Usopp becoming Luffy’s ringman and dressing him up in an Afro and boxing gloves to start the fight is the highlight of this volume. Usopp really steals the show throughout this volume, which is a nice change of pace as his character can definitely be hit or miss at times. I like Robin’s casual attitude and there’s a chapter cover page that shows her walking on the beach in a sundress that’s just pure perfection. I’ve always preferred Robin’s early design compared to what she looks like in the present day, and I don’t think I’m the only one. She’s simply stunning throughout a lot of this manga and then becomes more generic looking in my opinion. But if we want to talk about the way Oda draws women we can be here all day and I have other things to do.
Let’s talk about the bad things, and why I really didn’t enjoy this volume much. Putting aside the fact that this entire arc just feels like a filler from top to bottom, there’s a few character interactions throughout this volume that really irk me. For starters, the way Zoro treats Chopper when he gets taken away from the crew, almost unfairly so, is just mean. Chopper is just a kid and he is being mistreated here without any fault of his own. Zoro needs to not be a dick and have some respect for his crew mates. Secondly, the way half the crew just accepts this dumb game, no questions asked, is idiotic. Never before have they cared about fake made up senses of honor. They care about real honor, of course, but this is clearly just dumb. Lastly, that brings me to how they treat Nami for suggesting they take Foxy and win the game by default. Somehow there’s no honor in that? What do you mean, as if they’ve not been cheating at every chance they had. The referee has been biased, they’ve been interfering and plainly setting up home turf advantage from the very start, but somehow you’re still concerned with honor? It seems like Nami and Usopp are the only sane characters throughout this volume. Robin is still emotionally detached for most of this part of the manga, so I can’t really blame her, but Chopper and the three idiots should really step up their game.
Anyway, I can rant for a while longer about all the reasons why I didn’t like this volume, but that’s not good for my blood pressure. I’m putting away this volume, and in the next one we’ll leave this arc behind us and forget it ever happened. But maybe I’m bitter and maybe you really like the Davy Back fight arc. If you do, let me know why, so perhaps I can understand it. Either way, thanks for reading!
Fukichi starts off strong by assuming Ranpo might be behind the intruder or the seeming intruder he’s dealing with. It doesn’t help that he can’t seem to find her, making him more paranoid about what he saw. A lot of his plan hinges on getting a hold of both Bram and One Order successfully. Meanwhile Ranpo is embracing his inner terrorist. It really is more fun to root for those trying to demolish the standard quo than those trying to defend it. I’m learning the correct lessons from anime for sure. And just like Ranpo predicts, setting off explosions sends the Europeans back the way they came, to make sure the One Order doesn’t get stolen.
Besides this duo and Kunikida, we don’t get shown the other members. I wonder where they are right now.
In the meantime, Aya has gotten herself from a rock to a hard place. She did indeed go into the coffin as I expected, it made the most sense narratively. Unfortunately for her, the coffin is not empty and she is now face to face – depending on how she’s sitting in the coffin – with an undead sword scourge. Poor woman.
Here’s Brammy!
We go from scene to scene rapidly here as Ranpo thinks about the one person capable of outmatching his intellect, who is currently in a European prison. We jump back to the plane where both its pilots are dying from what seems to be poison. Whatever it is, it looks incredibly painful and the plane is about to go crashing into the airport. Fukichi’s remaining lackeys slice the airplane to bits while Kunikida looks on. No regards for the pilots who should still be their allies at this point. The One Order is now in Fukichi’s hands. Ranpo does seem to have a clue into why the box with One Order in it can’t be opened and it seems like Dazai is responsible for it. I’m going to be honest, if there is a character with this kind of power in the story, I have forgotten about them. I am likely buying the manga after this season ends and then I’ll see if there’s stuff I missed throughout the years. It’s been a long time since this anime originally started after all. Anyway, roll the opening credits!
Fyodor has been incredibly effective against the Agency.
Ango has become so incredibly important throughout this arc. He has now convinced the UN that giving the One Order to Fukichi before the vampire scourge starts its attack is an unnecessary risk. Ango lies for the sake of his old friend Dazai and pretends that chief Taneda is already awake again. That’s a lot of risks he’s willing to take for his friend. Good man. Despite Ango’s amazing save, the box is still in Fukichi’s hands. Speaking of Dazai though, I think we’re finally going to see him released here. Someone is breaking into the prison quite violently and if I were a betting man (which I’m not, I’m vehemently anti-gambling) I would bet all my money on it being Chuuya from the Port Mafia. It’s a good thing I’m not a better man, because it’s not Nakahara Chuuya who shows up, but instead it’s Nikolai and Sigma.
You thought Chuuya would break you out but it was me, Dio! I mean Nikolai.
Nikolai is exhausting and the anime director knows this, so after a short dose of high energy sociopaths we go back to the low energy vampire. I said this last week, but Aya really has nerves of steel. She goes from certain death to making friends with an immortal vampiric sword. This is a dangerous game to play as Fukichi is rapidly and angrily making his way back to where Bram is. The look on his face when realizes that Bram has been stolen is worth a fortune. He immediately goes to set out and retrieve his trump card again, I hope Aya has a plan.
One braincell.
Sigma is meanwhile pondering the kind of company he finds himself in. Every other person there is a sociopath and quite frankly could serve as a textbook example of pure insanity. Nikolai brings out the poison that dealt with the European soldiers transporting One Order. This means one of two things to me. One, this scene is happening after Nikolai poisoned the soldiers and fled to Europe. Two, Nikolai has already left the prison with whomever is making it out of this scene, and then used the poison on the European soldiers afterwards. There’s other options, and it could just be a case of weird timelines, but we’ll find out eventually.
Don’t waste your time or energy on them Sigma, they’re far beyond saving.
Aya is trying to figure out how to get Bram on her side. He seems to just want to sleep and have chill vibes, besides that he doesn’t really care all that much about Fukichi’s plan. Fukichi is the one who turned him into this sorry state to begin with, after all. But for him to help Aya out, he needs her to give him a legendary artifact. It’s… It’s a radio. He just wants to listen to some Backstreet Boys while he’s sleeping, that’s all. And who can really blame him for this. I love how Aya playing a song from her phone sends us into the ending theme. We finally see things shift in a more winnable scenario for the Agency. Aya has unknowingly been the hero of the story so far. But even with all of this, Fukichi still has his extremely powerful body and his time travel abilities. He’s still a force to be reckoned with. I am excited for this to finally turn around and come crashing down on the man, he’s an irredeemable evil man that deserves every bad thing that will happen to him in the second half of this season. At least I’m assuming bad things will happen to him. Thanks for reading!
Welcome back to your weekly dose of superpowered detectives outsmarting each other. After a very bumpy ride, we find ourselves back at the Armed Detective’s main office. Well, not quite. Poe has made a copy of the office inside a novel so they can hold a meeting. It turns out Ranpo got out safely and Yosano has healed Kunikida’s missing arms. This did remind me of something from last week’s episode that feels like an oversight on Fukuchi’s part. Maybe he knows more than we do, but him not killing Tachihara outright, instead only making him useless in battle, will likely result in Yosano healing him, will it not? It’s clear to him at this point that the agency and the port mafia are working together, so he should see this coming. I do hope Tachihara isn’t dead, but he’s one of several red headed young men that I confuse from time to time, so taking him out of the story might be better for my slow brain. Anyway, what’s this meeting all about then?
Fukuchi stole this as part of his plan back in the day, but this sets up the possibility of the other nine tragedies showing up later in this story. I wonder how long this story will keep going for, and when I should bite the bullet and start reading it.
Ranpo reveals that although the vampiric scourge is doing the rounds, if the Europeans were to fight back, the problem would eventually be solved. There is more to this plan though as their goal seems to be putting their hands on an artifact called The One Order. This supposedly causes soldiers to follow orders, it’s mind control. I like the conversation they had about how many bullets it takes to kill a soldier on the battlefield. I have my doubts about the accuracy of the numbers, but some mild googling didn’t help much. I just saw people get scolded for asking insensitive questions. You’re right, we should start banning knowledge and perhaps even burn it, that won’t end poorly at all. Depressing real world opinions aside, it makes sense to me that many soldiers would shoot at random spots to avoid becoming murderers. I’m sure there’s arguments to be made that fighting a war can be needed (if you’re the defending party, or when they pushed back the nazi’s in world war II, but I can also imagine there are many soldiers fighting in wars that don’t want to hurt people, they’re there to protect. It’s complicated, and I like to think there’s good people in every place. As Ranpo points out though, this is an artifact that can backfire pretty quickly. He also points out how cliche and lame the Decay of Angels’ true goal is (I don’t mind some self-awareness from an author). World Domination sounds awfully exhausting. As much as I like to think I’d be able to make the world a better place, I am not smart enough to actually do so. I think anyone who truly believes they could be the one ruler of mankind and make a good and just world is thinking too highly of themselves and that’s dangerous.
This girl has to be the dumbest person on the squad. She was present for so much of what happened on the airship and went straight back into line after going back to the ground. At least Tachihara was smart enough to learn.
We move on to the actual airport where the Hunting Dogs are gathering. They’re aware of the One Order being shipped to Fukichi. The fact that they’re not questioning the morality of such a weapon, especially after they’ve all seen strange actions from the organizations involved in this whole ordeal, is pretty damning. Something, something, one bad apple spoils the bunch and now they’re all bad apples. Except Tachihara, but he’s struggling right now. Man, these hunting dogs are such unlikeable douchebags. They make the Mafia seem like the good guys. I hope Jouno gets beaten to pulp before this season is over. Please make it so.
Stranger danger!
Okay so hear me out, we get to the next scene and I’m now thinking he’s like a double agent pretending to be evil so that Fukichi will trust him and he can betray Fukichi. With how many bad hands the Agency has been dealt, it’s time for Fukichi to experience some bad days too, right? I’m probably wrong on this, I’m often wrong on my predictions in this show, but that’s what makes it fun. Either way, he is let in on the plan and is shown where Bram Stoker is. I’m really hoping this backfires on Fukichi. I think the way for his character to lose is by being overconfident. I can’t see the man losing in any other way. Bram needing protection is a pretty obvious weakness. I think Fukichi and Fyodor shouldn’t have abandoned Nikolai and Sigma in the way they did. They probably would have ended up being liabilities either way, but this way Fukichi wouldn’t have had to bring in Jouno on the plan. Speaking of, I wonder if Nikolai is going to show up here, or perhaps at the prison where Fyodor and Dazai are locked up in. We haven’t seen those two in a while, so it could be the latter.
Who’s a good boy!
Man, Fukichi really is completely irredeemable. He even made me like Jouno only two paragraphs after wanting him to suffer. The goal of this show is making me write recaps that reveal how dumb I am at figuring out detective stories, I’m certain of it. But I’m having far too much fun with the ridiculous twists and turns this story keeps throwing at us. Let’s play a game of “where is Aya hiding.” My money is on the coffin. Man, this situation just keeps increasing in tension, I can’t wait for it all to come to a conclusion in another six or seven episodes. Thanks for reading.
The nerves of steel this woman has are impressive. Persevering when being that scared is crazy!
The random guard reporting everything to the mainland and making Akutagawa and Atsushi look worse to the general public really is a kick in the balls to Atsushi after he really didn’t want the man to be killed. Of course, it makes sense for him to be against the terrorists even if they did spare his life, but from a viewer’s perspective it feels like a bad move in hindsight. With Akutagawa bleeding out on the deck of the ship, Atsushi is at least able to get away from certain death. Things could be worse. Not much worse, but there’s still room for it. The overlapping of the guard talking to the mainland and Atsushi escaping does make it difficult for Fukichi to go back in time. The guard apologizes to the dying (or dead) Akutagawa for not being able to do more for sparing him earlier. Perhaps there’s more to it than there seems.
I don’t know if this guard knows more than he lets up, or he just feels bad about seeing Akutagawa dead after being spared, like he says.
Let’s take a proper look at the opening this week. We see a lot of silhouettes of the important cast for this season, which are a lot of people. I will always be reminded of Kuroko no Basket when I hear Granrodeo, even though they’ve done many more openings since. Seeing people reflected in Fukichi’s sword is a nice touch. The clock is also represented here, like it was on the ship, to hint at the time cutting mechanic that Fukichi has. The song is a banger, although it probably isn’t going to be amongst my favorites. It’s a bit too heavy for what I listen to on a daily basis, but it gets you amped to watch some detective mind games nonetheless.
Moving on, Atsushi makes it to shore safely and reunites with Ango. After that we finally get the final member of the Decay of Angels. Bram-kun, the undead king. This has to be Bram Stoker, famous for writing dracula. We now know every single member of the terrorist group. Fukichi is their leader with the other members being Fyodor, Nicolai (seemingly now a former member), Sigma and Bram. So theories I had – and I’ve seen from others – that there was one more Decay of Angels member amongst the hunting dogs were false. These hunting dogs are going to feel really stupid when all is said and done. Oh, and Bram is voiced by the massively talented and instantly recognizable Kenjiro Tsuda (Kento Nanami from Jujutsu Kaisen, Leroro from Tower of God, Yonji from One Piece and many more roles).
It’s Dracula TM.
Bram seems opposed to helping Fukichi which pisses the man off. This is the most emotional we’ve seen him so far. And thus, Akutagawa is turned into a vampire. I wonder if the plan is to create a vampire scourge through Akutagawa. And sure enough, all of the executives we know and love, barring Tachihara, have been turned into mindless vampires. Remember how earlier I said things could be worse. They just got worse. But knowing this show, I’m sure most of these characters will come out on the other side alive. Meanwhile the utterly incompetent hunting dogs still think the Armed Detective Agency is responsible. Fukichi not allowing Tachihara to search for an alternative villain shows that he’s getting a bit more careful. But Tachihara is annoyingly good at being in the way. This is forcing Fukichi to talk to Bram, who is kind of out in the open. I wonder if this will end up coming back to bite him somehow. And sure enough, Tachihara was on Fukichi’s trail already. Mori-san isn’t the leader of the mafia for no reason. He’s ruthless when he needs to be, but he treats his people well because he values the results they can bring him.
Mr. Blind guy knows something is up for sure. I wonder if he’ll pursue this.
And then it turns out that Mori gave Tachihara some intel on how to defeat Fukichi. He already knows about this ability and sword. Tachihara’s metal manipulation comes in clutch here. It’s a good thing for Fukichi that he still has his superhuman strength and agility, but things are lookin dire. It would be one hell of a plot twist for a double agent to be the one to take out the villain’’s leader. But I doubt that’s going to happen. Either something is about to go horribly wrong for Tachihara, or Fukichi will be presumed dead and then return later. And just as I’m typing this out, Tachihara gets stabbed by Ame no Gozen. There’s a T carved in the stone, which he left in the past to be aware of Tachihara’s appearance. This man gets more and more frightening every time we see him. He then blinds Tachihara, making him more or less useless as a fighter. Tachihara trying to kill himself to avoid becoming a vampire and a danger to the people around him is hadcore. I don’t think things have ever looked this dire on such a large scale in the history of this story. The vampiric disease is spreading worldwide at a high rate. Fukichi’s goal of eliminating the world’s rich and powerful looks all but certain now.
Ouch
I’ve been reading through the comments on this episode and although they seem to be mainly positive, people are asking how the T warning and stabbing through time makes sense. In short, I don’t think it’s a watertight thing. It’s just a cool story with cool powers that mostly make sense. I personally watch this show for the spectacle and the plot twists. Powers this wacky don’t always make perfect sense and get a bit ridiculous. I did think Bram being a weapon and thus being 100 times more powerful when Fukichi is involved was a fun moment. All in all, I can’t wait for next week’s episode.
This can’t be good. I wonder what the agency has been planning while all this is going on. They are more or less completely reunited, after all. Perhaps there is hope for Yokoyama and the rest of the world.
I received the following letter: “Oda Sensei, you’re such a weird, irresponsible person. Just to be clear, I’m always writing silly things in my comments these days, but in my youth there was a boy who was always being praised by all the adults in the neighborhood. He was a genius when it came to schoolwork and was great at every sport. … That would be my friend Tanaka. Please enjoy volume 30! ~ Eiichiro Oda, 2003
It’s easy to have faith in an author that’s consistently cheeky like this. You just know he loves what he does. Speaking of which, I just watched the new Live Action One Piece trailer yesterday. It’s crazy how it doesn’t look terrible. Live action anime has a – well-earned – terrible reputation. Could this be the one? I really shouldn’t get my hopes up. We’ll probably talk more about the live action series when it actually comes out though. Let’s reel things back a little bit and focus on today’s topic: One Piece volume 30.
Last volume we were left with only a handful of fighters facing off against Enel. This volume he makes quick work of everyone who remained. Zoro and Wyper go down with ease and Nami decides that her best chances are by accompanying Enel onto the Maxim. Meanwhile Conis is trying everything she can to inform everyone on Skypiea of the danger they’re in. She’s surprisingly successful in this endeavor. The panel where she’s not being respected initially and then aims the flame cannon right at the soldier attacking her without a shred of hesitation goes so incredibly hard. The captain of the guard reveals that he secretly knew that Enele was bad news, but he hoped that by keeping everyone peaceful that their land would be spared. Unfortunately for him that was never an outcome, and he seems to realize that now.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the island, Luffy, Aisa and Pierre make it out of the snake safely. He finds his crew completely defeated and Aisa informs him that she sentences two people down below, which are likely Nami and Enel who are on the Maxim that’s about to take off. We then get our first showdown between Luffy and Enel. This has one of the most iconic panels in all of One Piece. As shown below, Enel’s surprise when he finds out Luffy is his natural enemy is such a joy to see.
Imagine thinking you’re a god, basically invincible, and then some idiot made of rubber comes along and ruins your day.
Luffy and Enel fight and Enel quickly adapts to fighting someone who can’t be hurt directly by lightning. This is probably what makes Enel such a terrifying villain. Even without being able to just murder people outright, he’s a good fighter. He might not be at the top of the food chain in the blue sea, but he’d probably outshine a lot of pirates who are a tier below Emperors. But Luffy is still growing at this point, and he gets sent overboard with a giant golden ball stuck on his arm.
We get one of my favorite bits of this arc when Usopp and Sanji show up as stowaways on the Maxim. This fight perfectly encapsulates both of their personalities. Usopp threads the needle between being a total coward and being a brave warrior. As much as he’s scared and his urge to run away, he’s not ready to abandon his friends. Usopp is much less of a coward than he actually appears to be most of the time. He’s realistically just some guy fighting with some of the most insane figures in his world. Usopp goes to distract Enel while Sanji does his thing by destroying the inside of the ship. Sanji is always the tricky one. He was Mr. Prince in Arabasta and now he’s messing with the insides of this ship. While Enel is off to check on the ship, Usopp once again sneaks back on board to pick up the heavily wounded Sanji. At the bottom of the beanstalk, the entire crew reunites, albeit most of them unconscious.
We end the volume with Luffy running back towards Enel to fight him once more. I believe that volume 31 is the final volume of this story arc and then we move on to one of my all time favorite arcs. I think most people call the upcoming arc one of the best. To keep you updated on the cover stories as well, since it’s important that we don’t forget those, they’re still focused on Ace. He is chasing down Blackbeard and so far struggling to find the man. Not much happens except that he almost drowns after kicking a doctor in the face because he thought it might be Blackbeard. Yeah, Ace is a goofy guy. There you have it, 30 volumes done and discussed. I worried I’d get tired of doing this every week when I started on this project, but the opposite is true. I’m often wanting to start working ahead of schedule on this series, but I’m sticking to one volume every Sunday. If you’re still enjoying reading along, please leave a like on this post, it tells me I’m not writing into the void. And as always, thanks for reading!
It’s summer. The season of sunshine and being outdoors. The season of eating ice cream and reading on the nice chair. It’s the season of, you guessed it, code red weather alerts. When I woke up this morning I heard the rain – it’s the 5th of July as I’m writing this, by the way – and after I went back to sleep my phone started making a noise that will wake up even the deepest of sleepers. I suppose at least I should take solace in having my alerts for national emergencies set up correctly. But we’re not here today to talk about the dreadful weather, we’re here to talk about some of last season’s anime. And I have thought. Most thoughts are positive ones. So prepare yourself for a lot of strong recommendations. I already talked about Ousama Ranking last week, so check out that post if you’ve missed it. And without further ado, let’s look at three anime that may or may not be worth your time.
A galaxy next door
For some reason this show got the song Numbness like a gingerstuck in my head. I think it’s to do with the name of this show being Otonari no Ginga. ‘Ginga’ and the way the lead singer of Unison Square Garden pronounces “Ginger” are very similar. Sometimes it’s just that simple.
I’m no expert in biology, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone – man or woman – who has a glowing stinger sticking out of their body.Oh my bad, it’s not a stinger, it’s just a G-pen… Yeah right!
Speaking of simple, this show is a very simple show at its core and I wish it was a little bit more simple than it is. Ichiro is trying to support his two younger siblings while working as a manga artist. His parents passed away and he’s been taking care of them ever since. Then one day, Goshiki Shiori arrives at his doorstep, wanting to be his assistant. He accepts, since he needs an assistant, and the two start working together. Then, completely accidentally, he touches her stinger and they’re now bound in a contract. You see, Shiori is a princess from a strange island tribe and they have a stinger. They also can contact each other telepathically over short distances. Besides that they just seem like a bit of an odd group of people, but not that different from humans. The two develop a relationship over the course of the series and then wonder if the stinger is partially responsible for their feelings.
I see that Japan is still hard at work trying to convince a generation of otaku that children are adorable and a good idea to get.
I think the subplot of the stinger was my least favorite part of this show. I’d much rather have the same story but her parents disapproved purely because she is a princess or something. I don’t think the fantastical elements add enough value to take me out of the realism of what is at its core a very tender and fun romantic show. Ichiro is an extremely kind person and Shiori is a force of personality in her own way. And the kids are adorable. Fumio and Machi are Ichiro’s younger siblings and they’re both very thoughtful for their age, but not in a “I’m 10 but I’m written like I’m an adult kind of way.” They’re much more just very patient, which is likely due to the cards they’ve been dealt in life. Fumio is very quiet, but he’s kind and attentive. Machi is much more open about her emotions and often speaks for the two of them. To make a long story short, I really enjoyed watching this show every week. It’s fun, romantic and wholesome and I’m glad I watched it.
My love story with Yamada-kun at level 999
We’re all gamers. We understand what it’s like to be at our computer all day talking to someone’s avatar or profile picture. Then we meet them, or see their picture, and they are different from their icons. I for one like to play as female characters in MMOs a lot. That’s always been my preference. But I also like people calling me by my real name, makes it easier and more personal, and there’s nothing wrong with sharing your (first) name. I haven’t ever randomly ran into a guild member after getting broken up with and then realizing that; oh no, he’s hot.
I’ve been watching anime for almost 15 years at this point (man, I’m getting old) and I don’t think there’s been a single Kana-boon song in front of a show that hasn’t been a complete earworm. I don’t know they do it, but every song they produce is just a banger.
Well, Akane has. She meets Yamada at the perfect moment and wakes up in his room after he helped her home when she was drunk. Yamada seems more annoyed by her presence than anything else and you can’t blame the guy. Some drunk woman grabs on to you and won’t let you do what you wanted to do. They quickly find out that they are from the same guild and although Yamada was raised well and he’s a polite young man, he doesn’t want to deal with the hassle that Akane brings. But she’s a very social gal and doesn’t let him get away. The two do become friends pretty quickly as the show goes on.
‘Why won’t this annoying drunk leave me alone, I just came here for a gaming event, not to deal with this crap.’
Where this show shines is on two fronts. The first one is how funny some of the side characters are. Eita is an absolute joy to watch in every single frame he’s in and Kamota-san reminds me of some of the older people I’ve played games with throughout the years. Kind and supportive. Akane’s friend Momo is great too in how self-absorbed she can be at times. Not every person is always there for you, but that doesn’t make them bad people. We all have our own lives. The second thing is a particular scene which I won’t go into too much detail in, but if you’ve seen the show you’ll understand. There’s a little bit of a devious bait and switch in one of the early episodes that puts Akane in a dangerous position. The way the rest of the cast properly deals with this and has respect for the sort of scenario it is, without exaggerating any part of it for drama made me really happy. It just takes itself seriously in a good way.
You’ve nailed it, Yamada.
This show was not as good as some of the others that aired this season, but it was still extremely enjoyable from start to finish. Would recommend it, just like the first anime we walked about today.
Otaku Elf
There is one more anime I want to talk about today. And it’s a show I almost didn’t give a shot. I saw the premise of an elf being a god that’s been prayed to and taken care of and is also an otaku, and didn’t think it was going to be any good. But I wasn’t watching a lot of shows yet, so I figured I’d give it a watch for at least one episode. I’m glad I did because I was immediately hooked. Let’s start with talking about my favorite thing in this show, which is something I’ll be listening to for a very long time: The opening theme.
I wonder who this lovely woman who comforted Koito on the day of her mother’s funeral is. Any guesses? Are there any mature blond women in this show? There’s a blond woman, but mature…. maybe not.
The song is called Kien Romance and it’s by Nanawo Akari. It’s an absolutely fantastic track with all sorts of interesting instrumentals that I’m not knowledgeable enough about to point out. But there are flutes and what I would guess might be a shamisen? I don’t even know, but I do know that this song lives rent free in my head. Every time the episode would come up I’d be happy just to hear the opening.
No one’s allowed to enter the inner sanctum. Except Koyuzu because she’s kind. And the Amazon delivery lady because at this point it would just be silly to pretend you don’t order twelve packages a day.
But an anime is more than just its music, even though it is a vital part of it. The anime itself tells the story of Elda and Koito. Koito is a young shrine Miko who is taking care of Elda, who is housed in this temple. Elda has been around for centuries and she’s always been taken care of by the shrine Mikos here. But she’s also a big introvert and has become a bit of a slob and an otaku over the years. Despite all of this, Elda is kind and caring and when she really needs to be serious and mindful, she definitely is.
Koito is your typical young teenager. Worried about her looks, busy with school and she has a bubbling personality on top of all of this. She comes from a complicated family structure and is very mature for her age, seemingly due to necessity. We meet several other characters throughout the run of this show and by the end of it we have a solid supporting cast. The highlight of this show is definitely the relationship between Koito and Elda. In the absence of parents, Elda has almost taken on this role herself, even though at times I wonder if she has the proper maturity. But like I said earlier on in this post, Elda is very kind and caring. She consoles Koito when she needs to and she makes sure the young girl is doing okay. And whenever Elda is going through something difficult – which is generally just relative to the life of an otaku – Koito is there to repay the kindness. If I had to use one word to describe this show, it’d be pleasant.
I’m unsure what to call the animation style used in the ending song, but I can tell you I really like it. For an ending sequence, at least.I wonder if they’re sponsored by Red Bull
And there you have it. Three shows from the Spring 2023 season that I thoroughly enjoyed. I realize that these reviews are a little bit longer than some of the other ones I’ve done for this format, but these shows were all excellent and deserved a little bit more attention. I’ll try to keep the next round a bit more short and sweet, but for now I hope this will give you something to watch in the upcoming summer months. If you enjoyed these recommendations, please leave a comment down below and as always; thanks for reading!
‘When I visited my family recently, my parents expressed an opinion about One Piece for the first time. “That story about the deer was really good.” DEER?’ – Oda in 2002
The latest few chapters in One Piece have been absolutely crazy. I feel like every Sunday I’m having to brace myself for what is coming next. But looking back at some of these older chapters I’m starting to realize that Oda has always had some crazy chapters in between big arcs. To kind of prove my point, we get Hina’s power revealed. Anything that passes through her body gets tied up and Django and Fullbody are both big fans. Oda knew what he was doing. We then get the news – and I hate this plot twist – that Pell is still alive. What was the point of him flying the massive bomb away from the town if you can just survive a hit at point blank? I really don’t know what Oda was thinking here, and I think this is one of the worst written twists in the entire story. It would have been perfectly fine to never mention Pell again after he died in the sky, but he had to be alive. I wonder if this was an editor input or not. It feels very kid-friendly to not have a good guy die by a big bomb. But maybe I’m looking far too deep into it. On the Going Merry we get the reveal that Nico Robin wants to join the crew. She snuck on board the ship after she got out of the underground mess that the fight with Crocodile left behind. She took a nice shower on the ship and switched into some of Nami’s clothes before getting bored of reading and showing herself to the crew. This is the weirdest new crew member so far but I can’t say I’m opposed.
Here we get the first mention of a sky island. Robin has given us a little bit of her backstory and won over the crew pretty quickly. To be fair, none of what she’s saying sounds suspicious at first glance and she did hide the super dangerous weapon’s location from Crocodile so she can’t be all bad. It is funny that she had given up and Luffy just refused to let her. That’s so on brand for Luffy. We’re quickly changing pace as ships come falling from the sky with no real indication where they came from. The log pose pointing up means there’s at the very least some sort of magnetic field up there that it can latch on to. Whether this is a sky island as the crew says or something different we have yet to find out.
Seeing as the crew finds a map of Skypiea and this saga has the same name, I think we all know where this story is headed soon. I wasn’t a big fan of the Skypiea arc the first time I watched it. Compared to the arc after it it fell a bit flat. Now that I’m much more aware of the later arcs and the political messages in One Piece, I’m curious how much I’ll like it this time around. I hope it’ll pleasantly surprise me like most volumes have done so far. So Usopp makes some diving gear out of some barrels and the boys are sent down to look at the shipwreck. In the meantime a group of salvagers show up and they seem like simple folk so Nami asks them if they can just watch them work, which they obviously agree to, since they’re nice folk.
The ship gets hauled up by the salvagers and the crew barely escapes from a giant turtle trying to eat them. Things don’t get much better from there on out since giant shadowy monsters appear. Luckily the crew manages to escape. In this part of the story it really feels like the gang is a D&D party with Robin being the only person who put any points into intelligence. Nami is probably the smartest out of the group but even she’s not that bright when she’s panicking. Chopper is just booksmart and doesn’t have many real world skills at this point. Same with Usopp, he’s good with making things, like the pulley system and the diving suits (barrels), but he’s not particularly quick on his feet. The crew sets sail to Jaya.
Three things of importance happen in Jaya in this volume. And I’m not talking about Nico Robin getting a new outfit, but that is important as well I suppose. The first thing is the introduction of Blackbeard’s crew. I believe he only has three members besides himself at this point. They have such an interesting introduction and they’re all so weird. But Blackbeard is still a very fun character to me. His panel in which he talks about dreams is iconic as well. I’ve heard way more talented people than me talk about how good Oda’s panels are when he wants to, and there’s definitely more throughout the years that I’ll point out. But the way the page just goes empty with nothing but the characters highlighted shows off how not important everyone else in the village is.
The second thing that happens and is important is the parallel between Luffy and Zoro’s response to Bellamy’s taunts and Shanks’ response to the mountain bandits early on. I’m still not certain after all these years if I like the sentiment of what they do, but the parallel is definitely well executed. Nami’s rage afterwards is also understandable.
The third thing that happens that is important is that Robin shows the crew a map of Jaya. There’s someone else on the island and Robin is already aware of this person’s existence before they reach the island. I think it’s interesting to add her to the crew at this point because everyone else is so oblivious to the world at large. She has a ton of knowledge as she’s been an archeologist for twenty years. She’s had to join big organizations and live with them to learn quickly about how the world works. She’s probably the biggest asset to the crew they could have gotten at this point. So next volume we’ll go visit this Mont Blanc guy and see what’s really going on in the region. Hope to see you all there and thanks for reading.
Baroque is a French word and it refers to a style of architecture, music, painting, sculptures and other artforms that were around in early 17th century Europe. Now I looked through the Wikipedia article for this for a little bit and I have to admit I’m not smart enough to see a connection between the 17th century style and whatever the hell Crocodile had planned. Arabasta is supposed to be inspired by Egypt from everything I understand so I don’t think there even is a connection between the two. I figured maybe the baroque style was introduced to Egypt by the Europeans – which I thought was smart thinking of me – but that’s simply not true. So much for trying to be smarter than I actually am. Anyway, with the entire arc behind us, let’s take a step back and talk about the entire thing. And I will mainly focus on Arabasta wince that’s where all the interesting stuff starts.
All of the agents in this arc are named after holidays. The male agents just have a number. The one exception to this rule is Bon Kurei who takes on both the masculine and the feminine role. Having a character that’s very obviously queer in a comic book in the early 2000s is definitely something worthy of respect. Japan isn’t the most progressive country in the world but Oda definitely is a progressive guy. We see a lot more representation in later arcs, but Bon Kurei is a great start. He’s just all around an interesting dude and when push comes to shove he’s a pretty good guy. According to google, the reason Nico Robin is named Ms. All Sunday because every Sunday is a holiday in Oda’s eyes. I’ve seen your work schedule man, don’t lie to us, you don’t do holidays. Although he is currently taking a break for an eye surgery so maybe he is taking some time afterwards to properly rest up. I hope he does, he’s earned it.
We travel through a few islands to get here. Whiskey Peak and Laboon are an introduction to the hijinx of Baroque Works but we only get some surface level information. After taking small detours to both Little Garden and Drum Island we eventually make our way to the main stage, the sand kingdom of Arabasta. There we have an active coup happening where the people behind everything are searching for secret lore hidden in the kingdom. Arabasta is a very important country within the lore of One Piece for reasons we’re not uncovering for many more chapters, but some of the reasons is the legend that one of the three ancient weapons, Pluton might be located in this country. Or at the very least there should be information about it hidden here. So how does Crocodile plan to take over a country like Arabasta? He’s got a few ideas:
Resource deprivation
Widespread propaganda
Infiltration of every organization
Let’s start with the last one. To get two groups to fight each other can’t be easy. One way to make it easier is by having your own people infiltrate their groups to help fan the flames. Here lies an issue I have with this arc. It’s one pretty big issue, if I’m honest. The foot soldiers are called millions and billions. Early on in the arc they are bounty hunters and seem to have an active role in what is going on. But as the arc shifts into its later parts I find it harder and harder to figure out what these people’s motivation is. With marine foot soldiers or weaker pirates in a big crew there’s a common goal there. They’re fighting for justice or for the fame and fortune of their own crew. But these guys don’t know who their leader is, they don’t know what their leader is planning but they’re doing very dangerous things in the name of this unknown leader regardless. I felt like this was definitely a scenario where the plot needed someone to do something to move things along so someone was there to move things along without any real motivation to do so. But they could have also just been paid off, there’s never really too much time spent on it and it doesn’t take away from the story enough to be a big issue. So let’s move on to propaganda.
Crocodile didn’t need to become king of Arabasta. That’s not quite what his plan was about. He wanted the Poneglyph that has information on Pluton and that’s all. But to get to a position where he can move about in the kingdom as he wishes he also had to establish himself. That’s why he built the casino and pretended to be a hero. If he just one day appeared and things were starting to go wrong then people would suspect him, but he’s the hero that’s defeating pirates while the royal army is doing nothing. His use of the rain dance powder here is also brilliant and brings us to the remaining point; resource deprivation. Rain has always been somewhat scarce in Arabasta and this powder allows Crocodile to manipulate the clouds. We get a little bit of Nami doing the same on a much smaller scale which is pretty clever writing from Oda. Introducing a main character’s new power by showing off how that power would work on a larger scale. Either way, Crocodile has managed to trick a whole bunch of people into either doing his bidding or believing he was some sort of hero. And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those damn kids.
Lastly, I’d like to talk a little bit about the single most important thing that gets introduced in this saga, and it’s two-fold. First, we have Nico Robin. She’s working with Crocodile here but it’s pretty clear they have different end goals. Both of them are looking for the Poneglyph. These are the massive stones written in a script that seemingly no one except for Nico Robin can read. I wonder how that happened? Nico Robin then reads the information on the Poneglyph and talks about the history of Arabasta. Who cares about the long history of Arabasta? She mentions a few events that happened a very long time ago that don’t seem particularly relevant to the story and Crocodile decides she’s outlived her usefulness. Robin was prepared for this, but – as we’ve found out – not prepared enough.
Vivi is a very loved character and when Arabasta was happening and I saw it for the very first time I was very surprised when she didn’t join the crew. It was time for another woman to join the crew to balance things out a little bit. But unfortunately we’re not getting that quite yet. With this I’ve had to store away my first box set and put the second one on my nightstand so I can start on reading those. I put the Romance Dawn booklet elsewhere because it didn’t fit anymore. As cool as these boxes are to have, I always have the issue that the books won’t fit into the box again after reading them. The manga get a little bit thicker and they don’t account for that in the box. I’d really appreciate it if they’d release these boxes with a little bit more room, perhaps a bit of cardboard just so there’s some leeway. I now worry it’ll be hard to remove the books again if I ever want to read them again. Then again, I might just get rid of the box when we get to that point, who knows. We’ll be continuing this series next week on Wednesday with the start of the Skypiea saga, so get excited for that. There’s a bunch of cool scenes coming up in rapid fire, so don’t miss out. Thanks for reading!
The final volume of the first box set and the conclusion of the second major saga: Baroque Works. We’re speeding through this, but there’s so much more amazing content on the horizon that I don’t really mind. Besides, at this rate it’s still going to take until 2025 before we even get to the volumes that are coming out now. Reminder that I’ll talk more about this saga as a whole in a separate post, but for now let’s dive into volume 23 of One Piece.
Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Usopp, Chopper & Vivi all work together to take out the remaining Baroque Works executives that are guarding the bomb in the town square. They even manage to stop the bomb from going off. Unfortunately for them, Crocodile has put the bomb on a timer in case his two cronies failed setting it off. Within a few seconds, the entire city center is going to be blown away. Who shows up but Pell, the royal guard with the falcon power. He takes a second to reminisce over his time serving the royal family and then makes his way high up into the sky with the bomb, going out in a blaze of glory while defending the kingdom he’s been protecting all his life.
Meanwhile, Luffy and Crocodile’s underground fight is still going strong but Luffy is mostly out of power after multiple defeats and he’s really struggling against Crocodile at this point. But it’s pure tenacity that is the final decider – as it often is in this manga – and Luffy manages to kick Crocodile straight out of the underground tomb and into the center of the square. He’s not getting up anytime soon. With the help of Luffy, Cobra makes it out alive as well and helps stop the fighting.
But crucial in this moment is Vivi who’s still screaming from the tower to the people to stop fighting. Rain powder is shot into the sky and for the first time in years the Kingdom of Arabasta sees proper rain. Crocodile is arrested and Tashigi makes the decision to let the Straw Hat pirates go. Arabasta is finally saved.
We get a whole bunch of the Straw Hats winding down and recovering after their fights. There’s not much to talk about here when it comes to just substance, but these are always some of my favorite moments in the manga. Cobra bowing his head to the crew in the palace baths, Igaram’s wife making food for the entire crew, the banquet. I mean, these moments are so fun because of how deserved they are. And then we also learn a little bit more about Smoker and Tashigi. Tashigi is angry at herself for how helpless she was and Smoker is arguably even more angry at how the headquarters is planning to treat this fight. They’re giving credit to him and promoting him for work he didn’t do. Smoker seems to be a great exception to Oda’s general ACAB approach to the marines. We also see Django and Fullbody again, remember them from their cover story? Django is now fully a marine soldier.
In the dead of the night, the Straw Hats escape the palace and travel up the river to find their ship, which has been taken by Mr. 2 Bon Kurei, who claims to be helping them now. He wants to be friends again now that Baroque Works no longer exists. Vivi’s been informed of this plan and she knows that she still has one chance left to go with the crew. Here we get the now famous moment where Bon-Chan and his crew pretend to be the Straw Hats to lure Hina and her crew away so that Luffy and the gang can escape. They had to, it’s for friendship after all.
Far more memorable than the Bon Kurei moment is what happens next. The crew sails past the shore waiting for Vivi and she shows up. But she’s only there to say goodbye. She cares too much for the kingdom and wants to stay there to help and rebuild it. So instead of going with them, this is where they part ways. To avoid showing to the navy that they’re allied to a princess, the crew stays quiet but instead of saying anything they just hold up their symbols on their arms. The cross that marks their friendship. And with that we leave the desert kingdom of Arabasta behind us as we journey onward. I’ll be honest, there were a few more small details that I thought would be in this volume, but they’ll be in the next one. Because of this, I’ll probably wait another week before doing my post on the arc as a whole since there’s some key moments that change my opinion on things quite a bit.
But it shouldn’t be a secret to anyone that I enjoyed Arabasta quite a bit. Vivi is a great character, so are Cobra, Nico Robin, Crocodile, Koza, Igaram, Bon Kurei and many more. I remember this arc as being slow, but reading it back after all these years it didn’t feel too slow at all. I wonder if I’ll feel the same about some of the newer arcs when I don’t have to read them spread out over 5 years. But that’s been me, I’m gonna go back to bed since I’m still quite ill as I’m writing this. I’m getting better though, so hopefully in a day or two I’ll be back up to normal levels of exhaustion. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 