I hate to repeat myself for two weeks in a row but I don't know what else I can say about One Piece episode 1030 that I did not already say when I reviewed 1029.
More Uta and Luffy content and it's fine I guess. Nothing terribly exceptional, nothing all that revelatory, nothing that deepens our understanding of Luffy as a character. In fact I prefer the relative simplicity of what we had before compared to the increasingly dense picture we have of Luffy's early years. Part of what made Luffy endearing to me was his directness as a protagonist, his child-like directness in how he viewed the world. As time has gone on and we have added more and more flashbacks, more new characters, it all starts to feel a bit overburdened. Uta doesn't help in this regard in my opinion.
Furthermore, while I loved all the sequences in these early sections they brought an unexpected pang of regret. It was great seeing the simpler world of pirates and islands, Beck fighting a few swordsman goons on the beach, Nojiko and crew talking and laughing. As much as I continue to love One Piece in all its wonderful weirdness and expanding grandeur, this episode brings into vivid clarity just how much has changed since that silly Monkey set sail over two decades ago. While I will never argue that much has been gained by One Piece's growing world and cast, it's also impossible to argue that something hasn't been lost as well. This view into what used to be gives me a kind of nostalgia for the shorter arcs and lower stakes of those bygone years. Compared to larger arcs with world-shattering stakes - like, I don't know, Wano let's say - this almost feels like a story from another planet.
So ironically this (now extended) commercial for One Piece Film Red only underscores my issues with packing more people into Luffy's past, while also making me long for a One Piece that doesn't exist any more. Kind of a bummer.
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