Equipped with a samurai's katana and facing down a powerful rival, Luffy knows exactly what to do: Punch! Yeah, the weapon in his hand is mostly just for show, but he still clings onto it tightly, even with Zoro begging him to let him see it for just a moment. They're just little kids bickering on the playground and making up their own rules as they go.
After a rockin' first few months in the Wano arc, the anime has momentarily simmered down and returned to its old ways. This episode is the battle against Basil Hawkins and his henchmen, and it is shockingly slow and uneventful. Every major story beat is cushioned between long pauses, and too much time is spent watching characters standing around while we wait for something to happen. Wano's been really good at using its slow trod to effectively flesh the story out and improve the source material, but now we're back to DBZ land. This Hawkins fight is not a substantial one in the grand scheme of the arc, so it would have been nice if the whole thing could have been packaged in a tidy little one-off episode, but the samurai gods have not willed it so.
Hawkins' Straw-Straw powers are among the more complicated and multi-faceted Devil Fruit abilities we've seen in quite some time. He's a magician, and his attacks range from tarot card readings to voodoo possession. On the card-reading front, he can tell fortunes as well as draw various power-ups at random. So far his premonitions haven't seemed all that useful, since he has to keep standing still and moving cards around just so he can print out a random percentage that isn't really useful to anybody. It's more of a storytelling device so we can have a character periodically telling Luffy "You're chances of survival is one percent," or whatever. He's also just as capable of pulling a card that hurts him (like one that possesses his subordinates to fight each other) as he is pulling one that helps. We're trying to have a fist fight and this guy's over here playing Yu-Gi-Oh! The voodoo angle is much more interesting, as Hawkins can store the souls of his subordinates inside of straw dolls, and then his body serves as a puppet that can transplant attacks that hit him onto somebody else. He has multiple lives, like a cat.
The climax of this episode sees Hawkins pulling out his "Straw Man," a giant voodoo ghost monster that's easily the coolest thing in the episode once the painfully long summoning sequence is over. Visually, it looks really cool, but it's the sound design that really blows the doors right off. It has a ghostly cackle that sounds like the Friday the 13th theme sped up for true nightmare fuel. It's too bad we didn't get to see more of it before the cliffhanger, because it's pretty rad.
Of the Wano episodes, this is easily the weakest one yet. This is the point where the magic spell that made the most out of the slow pace is starting to wane, and this week's installment is disappointingly ordinary on just about every front. It doesn't help that Hawkins isn't an especially compelling obstacle for our heroes—they just kind of run away from him in the end—but that's the sort of thing that would have mattered less in a tighter episode. Clearly, the anime has its work cut out for it in terms of staying behind the manga, but ideally the pacing should feel like a product of curation, not necessity.
This week, it's hot monster mommies and less hot AI-generated light novels.― I Support Falin's Crimes We've long joked on the podcast about the quality of light novel writing, but the news is out that the developers of the RyokoAI project have scraped Shosetsuka ni Narou...are fully machine-generated LNs in our future? Plus: Things get gorier in Kaiju No. 8, the world of yatagarasu politics unfolds...
Each story is like a dark portal into a realm of human sexuality that society usually sweeps under the rug, but I can't look away.― Nude Model delivers on the promise of its lurid title. This manga, consisting of three equally intense short stories, is charged with eroticism and danger, with epiphanies lurking around every corner. Created by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, Nude Model is nothing like her most wel...
Find out about the young star who set the internet aflame and walked away with two medals. Plus: Thousand-Year Door updates, a new HunterxHunter game, and Miku!― Welcome back, folks! As is my wont, I'd like to plug my El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster that went up earlier this week... but I've also got the disappointing news that Megaton Musashi W: Wired finally released in the US la...
Daisuke 'Dice' Tsutsumi shares what it was like to leave Pixar and how his studio will never shy away from honesty in their work, even when honesty isn't pretty.― Director Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi contributed to films like Toy Story 3 and Monsters University while simultaneously crafting what became his Academy Award-nominated animated short film, The Dam Keeper. His latest short film, Bottle George,...
Mimori intends to continue voice roles, singing career― Voice actress and singer Suzuko Mimori announced on her Twitter account on Thursday that she is moving to the United States this summer. She acknowledges that the move will mean that her voice work will not necessarily stay the same as before, but that she will strive to continue performing her roles to the best off her ability. She also added ...
Chris and Nick put on their headphones and dust off their vinyl records for a look at this season's guitar-strumming, mic-swinging girl groups.― Chris and Nick put on their headphones and dust off their vinyl records for a look at this season's guitar-strumming, mic-swinging girl groups. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News...
I cannot imagine how Square Enix could top themselves after this.― Final Fantasy VII Rebirth initially launched on the last day of February, and if you look at the date of this review's publication, you will immediately be able to discern one thing about this second entry of the FF7 Remake series: It is gargantuan. The first game got plenty of praise (and plenty of flak) for taking the relatively sh...
Anime's first season premiered in 2018― The official website for Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits-, the television anime of writer Midori Yūma and illustrator Laruha's Kakuriyo Yadomeshi (Afterlife Inn Cooking) light novel series, announced that the series will have a second season in fall 2025, and revealed a teaser visual on Wednesday. The novels' 2023 manga adaptation artist Tsugaru Toba als...
The Manga Guide library expands with six more series, including Trinity Seven -Revision-, Watch Dogs Tokyo, Fed Up With Being the Spoiled Queen's Genius Butler,, and more!― Welcome to Anime News Network's Spring 2024 Manga Guide! You may have seen one of our seasonal Anime Preview Guides, where a team of critics writes up each new anime television premiere as it airs at the beginning of a season. N...
With a new Nintendo Switch port available, even more gamers can experience Enoch's transcendental adventure across the world. How does it fare on Nintendo's portable device?― El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron was a curious game when it released in 2011. The world wasn't quite ready for it then, but time (and a PC port) helped people accept it. With a new Nintendo Switch port available, even more...
Manhwa is starting to find its footing in American comic book sphere, but it's not just another version of "manga." Find out what makes Korean comics unique.― The door to English-translated manga opened in the 1980s, and despite some fits and starts, essentially never looked back. Manhwa, or Korean comics, have had a much more troubled journey to popular visibility in English. Around 2006, manhwa be...
The new anime series is far more forthright about the idol and seiyū industry, from maintaining relevance on social media to subsisting on substandard wages.― The new anime series is far more forthright about the idol and seiyū industry, from maintaining relevance on social media to subsisting on substandard wages. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are...
Ultimately, my biggest problem with Shaman King Flowers is that it mostly just feels like a set-up to a much larger story that has yet to actually happen.― [Warning, this review will contain major spoilers for the ending of Shaman King (2021)] If there's one thing that can be counted on with battle shonen properties, it's that any of them that go on long enough will inevitably get some sequel series...