“Overwhelming Strength! The Straw Hats Come Together!”

The early part of this sets things up well with what Kin’emon and the rest are facing with their opponents, which visually makes for a great time with the moonlit night sky and the size of the opponents adds a kind of power to it all. The fight with the Minks involved definitely has the right kind of “uniqueness” for this arc in their designs and the feel of it. The show also has some fun early on with Luffy and Zoro showing up at Queen’s place when he’s on a smoke break of all things and the two kind of work things in their own way to keep moving up to go after Kaido. It felt like a long-lost classic moment for these two as they head up to try and help Kin’emon and his fight. Which, of course, is going to meet with some challenges as they’re not going to get there easily.

As the show is an anniversary episode overall, the journey up does start to bring together more of the characters and we get a kind of extended sidetrack to highlight each of the main Straw Hats a bit and showcase their journeys throughout the series so far with quick key scenes done to music. It really does remind just how much so many of them have truly changed and that they are high-end highly-wanted individuals and pirates now. This makes up a good chunk of the back half of the episode and it definitely works for fans because it reaffirms the awesomeness of these characters over the thousand episodes that we’ve had. It doesn’t help much in the current storyline, but this is an episode about affirming the big picture overall and getting the Straw Hats ever closer to Kaido, and helping Kin’emon.

In Summary:

As the Minks struggle with a poor hand against the Gifters, Kin’emon tries to assist them, but Dogstorm and Cat Viper stop him and start fighting for the other Minks! Meanwhile, Luffy and Zoro try to get to the rooftop to help Kin’emon and the others, but Queen and King get in their way.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

乂⍱‿●乂