We end our look at the Demon King Piccolo arc with what is nearly entirely filler, beyond a few scenes at Kami’s Lookout. Still, with the exception of the four Dragon Ball films (which I will cover at some point before I do the final DB arc) this is the last chunk of episodes with kid Goku and the general younger version of the cast. So let’s take a look!
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An extra anime review this week, due to its current relevance and me not wanting to delay the last little bit of Dragon Ball on Friday. Demon Slayer’s Ufotable-animated run gets back to a more normal TV series approach with the next arc after Mugen Train, dubbed the Entertainment District Arc. While I’m glad the series didn’t vanish into just movies I will say that looking at this arc it also would’ve worked as a film because the arc is eleven episodes long and the big fight starts four episodes in, ending with the last moments of episode 10, so there isn’t a lot of standing around and talking about plot, that’s for sure! Let’s take a look…
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The Demon King Piccolo arc comes to a close (though there is a lengthy bit of part-canon, part-filler still to come after it…) with the big rematch between Goku and the titular Demon King and once again it contains a lot of tropes that would become the norm once a Z gets added onto the anime’s title, but the first few episodes are filler-rific, so… it’s not all good (though that also rings a bell in terms of DBZ…). Let’s take a look then!
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After the shocking cliffhanger (well, shocking at the time, Krillin being dead isn’t a big surprise as a show goes on…) we move on to the Demon King Piccolo arc, a story arc that has quite a few firsts that will become extremely commonplace as the show moves forward… plus the debut of Yajirobe! Who doesn’t like Yajirobe?! … Anyway, let’s take a look at the first ten episodes, shall we?
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The second half of the 22nd Tenkaichi Tournament is full of great action and the central focus on Tenshinhan’s struggle with his morality is great, so while it still has moments of filler this is a far better experience. Plus that infamous cliffhanger ending! Let’s take a look…
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Time to kick off a run of five chunks of original Dragon Ball that take us through to the end of Goku’s screentime as a child (not including the four Dragon Ball films I’ll tackle later, anyway… or Dragon Ball GT for that matter!) The 22nd Tenkaichi Tournament is where the series really starts focusing on action over comedy and thanks to massive blasts of energy still being rare there is a greater focus on hand-to-hand combat, too… at least in the later fights, sadly this arc is also mired with lots of filler that kills a lot of a pacing, especially in this first half. How badly does that effect things? Let’s find out!
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The back half of S-CRY-ed is a far more entertaining experience than the first half, though once again I will say the show hasn’t aged well compared to my memory of it. Still as things escalate towards a finale the “enemy of the week” format is dropped entirely and it makes for a more interesting time, if nothing else. Let’s take a look!
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As a bit of a break from long-running adaptations I saw S-CRY-ed had been added to Crunchyroll here in the UK a while ago and I remembered really enjoying the series when it aired on the ill-fated Anime Central channel many years ago, so I decided to give it a re-watch! I have to say the first half here takes a while to get going and me fourteen years later is now far more familiar with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and therefore the similarity of the Alter powers seen here to the Stand powers from that are extremely apparent! Still, let’s have a look!
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I will get round of covering all of JoJo’s at some point on this blog, including Stone Ocean in far more spoilery detail, but for now my spoiler-free (unless you’ve been avoiding the trailers, I guess) review of Stone Ocean’s first twelve episodes for Anime UK News can be found by clicking HERE.
Good fun, as the series always tends to be…
In terms of the “Sinners of the System” mini-films this was the big one, not just because it’s the longest but because it focuses on Shinya Kogami, the co-protagonist of the original Psycho-Pass and fan favourite, showing us how he goes from wandering mercenary back to Japan. It’s got the longest title, with “On the Other Side of Love and Hate” being the reason I dropped putting the titles in the thumbnails for these films… also it has the biggest scope out of the three stories and some really great animation, so let’s take a look to see if the story matches up to it!
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Hogan Reviews 