“The Animal Kingdom Pirates Trample Down! The End of the Kozuki Clan!”

The way that the fight of Luffy was involved with Kaido starts circulating around more. Kaido’s certainly boisterous about it which isn’t a great look considering how much has gone wrong here and we’ve seen Queen take a serious hit in contrast as well. The Straw Hats and others have put up a really good fight here in the big picture but things are faltering at this point. That lets some of the other stories percolate up a bit more to the forefront and a heavy focus on the Animal Kingdom pirates just does not do a thing for me. The show covers a lot of varied ground before the eyecatch as it shows where things are without saying too much, but once we get to Kanjuro transforming himself into a kind of twisted version of Oden, it just left me rolling my eyes.

With Kanjuro able to mess with Momonosuke pretty well in this way, getting close to him and making what seems like a major strike on those protecting him with Kiku, it hits up the emotional stakes well for those invested in these characters. I do like how this really impacts Momonosuke and seeing what Wano should look like through Kiku’s dying eyes. It’s a rare moment of some actual stakes in this storyline, which is something that has really lessened this arc overall. It’s not that I’m looking for characters to die regularly but we have a couple hundred episodes of fighting and Kiku is the first one that seems like it has any real sense of impact. Lots of fodder have been taken down but even they never felt like they were just sliced up bodies across the Performance Floor or anything. So getting a real fight here with Kin’emon finally giving Kanjuro what they deserve resonates and it comes with a cost.

In Summary:

While the Straw Hats and their allies are all having a hard time, they are shocked by the news that Luffy lost to Kaido. At the same time, Kanjuro closes in on Momonosuke to destroy the Kozuki lineage.

Thanks for reading! Leave your comments below! See you next week! 

乂⍱‿●乂