 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Today we have a review of episode 873, pulling back from the brink, the formidable reinforcements, German. And it's pretty much all right there in the title. This definitely wasn't a bad episode, there was a lot of great action and despite the amount of filler thrown into it, I never really felt the pacing drop to an unbearable level. So it was quite successful in sustaining itself, which is a grand achievement for the One Piece anime in this day and age. I do have two particular filler scenes that I want to talk about though, one of which I think is absolutely horrendous and the other one of which I think was done quite well actually. We'll start with the negative one because why not, and it's a scene where Sanji launches into the air and is then targeted by the Charlotte Decouplets with bazookas or whatever they are, and in order to be saved from this, Niji, Ichiji and Yonji all team up and perform their black bug technique on the cannonballs or whatever they're firing. And right at this moment it just feels wrong. It should not take three members of the German to prevent Sanji from being hit by these shots, and as it turns out that feeling is entirely correct, because later on in the very same episode Sanji is assaulted once again by what looks like a significantly more powerful bazooka shot, and Niji then steps in all on his own and completely neutralizes it by doing literally nothing. He actually just lets the shot hit the back of his raid suit, and it's as simple as that, completely contradicting the need for three of the German sons to step in during the earlier filler scene. The weird thing is that the anime didn't even have to show this happening. In the manga Niji grabs Sanji and with his exceptional speed they are just able to avoid the explosion. So the anime made Niji get hit. I imagine just to add an extra piece of action to fill for time, but in doing so they made their initial filler sequence look stupid. But that's not even the end of it, because at the tail end of the episode we have another filler sequence where, guess what, Reiju does the exact same thing as Niji and uses her raid suit to protect Sanji from a barrage of bazooka shots. Once again making the initial scene of the three of them look ridiculous and unnecessary, which to be fair is what it was. It's just weird that the anime kind of self-owned itself here. Like it wasn't even canon material that contradicted it, not in this case anyway. But there is actually one last problem of that first filler scene of Sanji being saved by his three brothers, and that is that the anime prematurely makes Sanji use Skywalk and take off into the air. This is problematic because the very next time we see Sanji he is back on the ground, and there is no reason for him to have gone back to the ground, because firstly his entire goal was to find an opportunity to get into the air and skywalk to victory. And secondly because Charlotte Oven's entire army is on the ground waiting for him, so why did Sanji go back to the ground? Well the answer is because in the manga he never actually left the ground, but he had canon material to perform there, so after a filler sequence of him being up in the air he then had to come back. This is a sort of weird inconsistencies that filler scenes add to one piece. They can seem really harmless, but more often than not they are full of great negligence and can really tear a hole in the fabric of storytelling for the sake of having enough material to fill 48 episodes a year. On the flip side let's talk about a filler scene I quite liked, and I briefly mentioned it before but it's the one near the end where Raju saves Sanji and flies with him. In the manga this interaction absolutely does not occur, we see Raju use Pink Hornet and that's that. Sanji makes it back to the sunny all on his own. I quite like what they did in the anime though because it gave Sanji and Raju a nice sort of wrap up moment, and they also really enjoy that it parallels Raju saving Sanji as a child. I wasn't a massive fan of how heavy the flashbacks were while they were flying, but admittedly they did help convey the feeling that the anime was trying to achieve, and it was quite touching because it was true to the characters and it gave the audience a much more satisfying resolution to the Sanji-Raju relationship than I think the manga did. So well done there. Some other things I really liked, anytime Oven activated his devil fruit ability, the color and the flames just make Oven look so much cooler than he did in the manga. It's really aesthetically gratifying to see him in action. Although there was one slightly annoying moment, which was when we came back from the break and Oven was just like floating above Sanji and Luffy for what felt like an eternity. I know it wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but my god he's just there and he's not doing anything and it was just really drawn out. Oh but my criticism from the last episode about Oven's army not actually doing anything was kind of rectified during this episode. The anime felt much more active and actually somewhat threatening, which I love because you know that's that's what we need. There was also a really cool shot at one point from Sanji's perspective of him just plowing through individual members of the army. That is the kind of creative thing you cannot do on a flat page medium, and I really wish that we could have more moments like this where the series is actually adapted for television and not just a rushed product. Although there was actually one point where there was almost zero adaptation at all, which was after Brulee revealed that Kata Kuri was defeated by Luffy. We cut to a somewhat still image montage of various Charlotte siblings and a lot of these panels just look like they were ripped directly from the manga. And I don't mind that at all. I much prefer it to the usual anime strategy of taking each of those panels and using it as a one to two second reaction shot of everyone one by one, you know marine fit style. Some other miscellaneous thoughts about the episode. There was a really nice shot of Jinbei at the helm of the sunny at one stage. It really looks like he belongs there and it made me very happy to see him in that natural position. Right at the beginning of the episode where the germa were being assaulted by bullets, is it just me or were those bullets extremely slow? The movement just felt wrong and actually the whole sequence was kind of like it was in a timed dilation field, considering that the whole shooting thing was essentially a single panel in the manga. And finally at one stage there was this random dude bra who says that he'll avenge Kata Kuri and then fires at Sanji. He was in the manga. He's the guy who Niji saved Sanji from, but he never actually says anything about avenging Kata Kuri. And I just found it funny because it's like mate, if Kata Kuri is this legendary perfect being, and just what the hell do you think you're going to do? Not trying to nitpick I just found this legitimately funny. But that pretty much does it for episode 873. Honestly without that one filler scene in the beginning this would probably be quite a solid episode. It had my attention almost all the way through and it even managed to make some slight improvements on the source material. So yeah mostly good stuff. But if you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces in general then please do consider donating to the Grand Line review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. Also do check out my Teespring store if you're interested in shirts, hoodies and other miscellaneous items with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. 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