One Piece

One Piece – Egghead Arc (Episodes 1086 – 1122) Review

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Here I was waiting around for a good break to do the first batch of Egghead Arc reviews and One Piece only goes and stops entirely! … sort of. Yes, after Episode 1122 fresh One Piece anime episodes are on a break until April, a new re-edited version of the Fishman Island arc airing instead (given I just covered the original earlier in the year, I won’t be covering that on this site…) So what better way to find a break in the story than use the break in the story! Let’s take a look at the first chunk of episodes from the first arc of the “Final Saga”, shall we?

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One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 554 – 574) Review

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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…

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One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 539 – 553) Review

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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!

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One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 523 – 538) Review

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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!

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One Piece – Return to Saboady Arc (Episodes 517 – 522) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

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!

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One Piece – Post War Arc (Episodes 493 – 516) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

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.

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Monsters: 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation Review

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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!

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One Piece – Live Action Season 1 Review

David HoganLeave a comment

After failing with Death Note and creating the utter disaster that was the Cowboy Bebop live action series when I heard that Netflix was tackling One Piece I laughed at the idea given the One Piece world is weirder and wilder than either projects they previously got so wrong. So imagine my surprise when I started hearing that it was actually good, so positive was the reception that against all my instincts I gave it a go, and you know what? It is good! Not amazing, it has flaws not just related to having to condense so much story into so few episodes, but the fact I enjoyed a live action version of One Piece at all is some sort of minor miracle. So let’s take a deeper look at the show, a good few weeks after its relevant because I’m me and I do that sort of thing…

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One Piece – Wano Arc (Episodes 1045 – 1067) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

It’s time for the penultimate One Piece Wano Arc review, as I know the series likes to streeeetch things out but what’s left should fit into one single chunk of episodes, so I’m happy to proclaim this as the second to last. With one or two smaller exceptions this chunk ties up the big fights that aren’t Luffy vs. Kaidou, including some very flashy fight sequences, though as per usual watching it one episode a week made the fights feel like they went on forever… Let’s take a look!

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