“His Dream Broken?! The Trap That Lures Sanji!”

The early part of the episode gives us some decent time with Eustass Kid as he deals with one of the slightly weird giant Wano villains. It’s a decent fight sequence overall and takes up much of the first half but it’s pushed to the side with Zoro and Luffy show up and draw him to their part of the fight, which includes Killer as well. It’s amusing to watch since Eustass Kid and Luffy just fall into arguing quickly while Zoro is so intent on stopping Kaido that he’s not even waiting for them at this point. It does, naturally, allow them to run into a trap since they’re sticking close even with all of this silliness, and it puts them in some short-term danger so that a few other story points can be hit for a bit. Honestly, the fight material with Apoo just kind of rubs me the wrong way.

The back half in moving through things covers a fair bit of ground, giving us that map overview that is truly Classic One Piece, and we get some that are stills, such as showing where Law and his group are and others. Kin’emon’s group gets most of the focus in this half as they’ve figured out how to distract a light of the warriors along the way, such as sending Carrot and Nami at the forefront to do a lot of bouncing while those that follow get far more into the violent side of things. It’s good to showcase what Kin’emon’s up to at this point and the size of the group that’s following him, but they end up at a part of the castle that’s going to make Sanji worthless as it’s a pleasure hall. Between that and a few other brief moments, it sets things up for what’s to come next.

In Summary:

Haccha, a supergiant Number, joins in and the pursuit of Luffy and the others becomes even more intense. Meanwhile, Kin’emon changes his strategy and his group tries to infiltrate the castle from its side, but there is an unexpected change of the floor plan which coincidentally makes Sanji excited.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

乂⍱‿●乂