“Rampage! The Prisoners – Luffy and Kid!”

In today's episode Shinobu ends up connecting with Nami and the two work together for a bit, but Shinobu’s not the best to deal with as she has a real fear of sharp objects that makes the whole thing problematic. It leans into the comedy nicely at the end but you feel for Nami in having to deal with this. While that unfolds, we catch up a bit with Sanji and see him enjoying the company of some women and providing some food, which frustrates Nami as she sees him running a food stand. It is fun to see Sanji being all flirtatious again since we haven’t had this aspect for a long time and that combined with what we get with Nami and Shinobu hearkens back to some much earlier arcs in the series when there was just a bit more fun about things and not quite so serious.

Luffy’s time at the mine labor camp has its amusing moments as well since he’s largely in competition with Kid over just about everything, which means they’re getting a lot of labor done while everyone else is just plodding along. It’s that kind of weird thing that ignores their reality but it’s amusing to watch simply because it drills down to the core of who they are. Naturally, we get to expand a bit on this area and what’s going on with some of the other characters but it also takes the usual awful turns that One Piece does with Luffy, such as him and Kid trying to outdo each other in all areas – including eating, which is why they become massive quickly after consuming a likely literal ton of food. While the humor earlier in the episode worked for me and the early part of their competitive nature, a lot of that goodwill was slipping away in the last few minutes with a particular pink hippo character and all of this.

In Summary:
With a comic fight toward the end that in its own way bonds Luffy and Kid, One Piece does pretty much what you expect it to. We’re in the early stages of the new arc so that means new placement settings, expansions and explorations, and the usual kind of back and forth pieces to it. It’s not bad and there’s a good bit of fun about a lot of it that we haven’t had in a bit. But some of those pieces don’t click for me – such as a pink hippo – and the easy overused gags with Luffy stuffing himself. I definitely liked seeing his competitive self dealing with working the camp and trying to be the best because it’s just as weird as Luffy would be.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

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