“Destructive! One Shot, One Kill – Thunder Bagua!”

With the last episode and this one essentially being one chapter from the manga from what I can tell, it’s pretty stretched out. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pacing in manga doesn’t translate to the same 1:1 pacing in anime. And when you have the advantage of anime to take it up a few notches with the sound, level of power, and just the intensity of it all combined with the acting, you can take advantage of it to make for a really good fight scene. I don’t watch One Piece for the fights but I can definitely appreciate watching this unfold, especially as those that serve Kaido are watching this in awe, not just at what Kaido is doing but at what Luffy and Law are throwing back at him and surviving as well. Luffy’s generally no slouch and while it’s rare we truly see him at the top of his game, he’s incredibly competent when he’s in serious mode as he is here.

That he takes down Kaido here and into human form does for a moment or two feel anti-climactic, but such is the case in that it was just the quiet before the real storm as a re-energized Kaido is back in the game. This at least keeps the fight alive a little bit more but you know that it’s going to serve to extend things in the greater sense as Luffy can’t win this early in the arc, and especially now that Kaido seems like he’s past his drunken stage and fully serious and in the moment. The scale of power is definitely well done when the two connect, enough so that you cringe for Luffy with the hit he takes, and it provides a nice rebalance of the power scales here so that we do have something bigger to go on with.

In Summary:
The story is getting ready to move to its next part with Luffy sentenced to working in a mine now that he lost the fight against Kaido. Which is… eh, okay, whatever. It’s not an unexpected thing in a way since at least they didn’t sentence him to become Kaido’s butler or something. This and the previous episode is basically one decent-sized fight and I actually enjoyed it a good bit since both players cut loose with a lot of power and the back and forth was solid with some strong animation at times. It definitely made for a big experience on a larger screen to take in as the power levels were well shown.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

乂⍱‿●乂