After spending an extra review’s worth of time with the Fishman Island arc it’s time to bring it to a close, thankfully. Okay, the finale has some classic One Piece “satisfying villain beatdown” about it, but really thanks to not really caring about either the villains or the new good guys it doesn’t have the same impact as it has done in previous, or indeed future arcs. Either way, let’s take a look and get this arc out of the way for good…
Continue reading
The Fisman Island Arc continues to chug along with an extended flashback in order to set up a lot of the characters and conflict that have already been of central focus so far and completely failed to gain my interest… In fairness, the flashback does hit heavy with the theme of illogical racism that is the core focus of the Fishmen, but once we get back to the present day I still can’t say I particularly care about any of them… Which makes me sound like a Fishman racist (whatever that means in real life) but I’m just talking about the lead villains and the stuff… Anyway, Let’s take a look!
Continue reading
Okay so the plan was to split this arc in half but upon writing the first review (523 – 553) it was far, far too long. Despite not really liking this arc at all there were enough subplots, flashbacks and new characters that there’s just too much for one review if I want to keep it to a reasonable word count, so I’ve split THAT review in half and I’ll now review it in three. With that, here’s the original opening paragraph:
So we have finally reached it, the point where a lot of more casual One Piece fans often tap out of the show. Hell, I was really enjoying watching it back then but these episodes once a week? Nope, I ended up dropping it and it took a few years for me to get back into the show, and even then I just skipped to the final few episodes of this arc and then continued from there, so this is actually my first time watching a lot of these episodes, and boy do I understand why. At least I could get a few out of the way in one week, but that didn’t help much. Is it completely irredeemable? Well, no, but what’s good about the arc is mostly contained in the next half (um, two thirds…) of the story, these episodes are pretty poor all round… Let’s take a look anyway!
Continue reading
Sometimes films can be great ways to tell stories but other times you’re left wanting a bit more behind the characters and story, and in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’s case… I wasn’t really left with that feeling. Hey-ho, I also wasn’t going to say no to this Manga version adding a larger focus on Trunks and Goten as teenagers as a prologue, and the extra couple of chapters worth of epilogue was good fun too, but the actual adaptation in the middle was nearly entirely just that: a straight adaptation. Obviously now that Akira Toriyama has passed the manga has gone on hiatus with no idea whether Toyotarou will continue the series without his idol’s story guidance it might be the end of the series entirely, and in that sense it does end on a very pleasant note. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading
At just six episodes long the “Return to Sabaody Arc” is pretty much just a reintroduction to the Straw Hat crew, revealing their post two-year time skip looks before moving on to the first proper story arc in the New World, which um… yeah, I’ll get to that next time. That doesn’t mean the arc doesn’t have some merits though, and certainly some future arcs could’ve learned a lesson about being more concise, but there you go. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading
In a sentence I never thought I’d ever type, I wrote an obituary for Akira Toriyama for Anime UK News, which can be viewed by clicking HERE.
Heartbroken doesn’t even cover it… My reviews of Dragon Ball Z later in the year will have a slightly more impactful feel now. RIP.
It’s finally time to do another little run of older One Piece episodes, following on from my review of the all-time classic Marineford arc a while ago (okay, a good while ago… there was a lot of Wano in that time though!) I’ve actually had this and the next review on my PC for a good while now, it was just the soul-sapping Fishman Island arc that slowed the older reviews to a halt, but I’m happy to say I’m over that hurdle so let’s look at the next three One Piece arcs (because the first two are really short). The Post War Arc is less about the direct fallout from Marineford and more about Luffy coming to terms with Ace’s death by remembering his childhood with Ace and a young boy named Sabo, followed by preparing for the next era of the series. Let’s take a look.
Continue reading
I’m reviewing Psycho-Pass all out of order on this website, but to be fair they’re also released quite a bit out of order as well as “Providence” takes place after the Sinners of the System OVAs but before Psycho-Pass 3, finally filling in the last few gaps in the story so maybe we might be able to move forward should a Psycho-Pass 4 arrive? Maybe? Well, anyway, Providence itself is a fun ride throughout its runtime, so let’s take a deeper look!
Continue reading
MONSTERS was one of Eiichiro Oda’s One Shot manga chapters he penned before creating that little known series called “One Piece” and due to his much… MUCH more famous work it has been adapted into a 20-ish minute special episode on Netflix (with the subtitle “103 Mercies Dragon Damnation”, one of Zoro’s moves from One Piece for that extra bit of connectivity) How does it fair? It’s fine, for a short story. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading
Thanks to a production delay meaning the Gundam Seed movie wasn’t released until literally now as I type this in 2024 (blimey…) Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer became the first non-UC Gundam movie released in cinemas and with it a lot of controversy. You see, as teased at the end of Season 2 the main threat of the movie is an alien race known as the ELS (“Extraterrestrial Living-metal Shape-shifters”) making this the also the first Gundam… anything to have aliens in it, something more associated with Super Robot shows than the “Real Robot” ones that Gundam pioneered. Does it work? Well, sort of. It matches what 00 has been going for from the start narrative-wise but sadly regardless of the aliens I find the film a bit of a slog… Let’s take a deeper look!
Continue reading
Hogan Reviews 