 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 874, The Last Hope, The Sun Pirates Emerge. And this week the adaptation is really competent from a storytelling perspective. They took a lot of liberties with mixing up the order of events in the manga and adding some not-so-bad filler, and they still managed to hit most of the major beats of the chapter that was covered. Although having said that there were a lot of problems with the animation in general, which is a shame because it really brought the episode down from solid to But we'll start out with some positives so that we can hold off the irrationally angry commenters for that time being. And there are at least two decent uses of filler in this episode, one of which was right at the beginning when we saw Sanji return to the sunny. This might seem odd to anime only watchers, but that was not in the manga. He just appeared back on the ship, which was fine, but it's also nice to see him physically returning with Luffy. The much better piece of filler though was with beige in the fire tank pirates when the nostra castella was burning down. The way this was played was very reminiscent of going Mary's funeral, and I really like drawing that parallel because it further emphasises the similarities of other members of the worst generation to Luffy. Each of them could have been the protagonists of their own series. And moments like this helped because as much as we have no real attachment to the nostra castella, as viewers we have been through losing a ship before, so we can empathise with the fire tank pirates here and I think that was a great idea. The general pacing of the episode was also pretty decent. My biggest fear going into it is that we were going to spend far, far too much time on those various islands that we catch up with like Nuts Island and Cutlery Island because those are the moments that Toei will generally target to elongate, to no real benefit. And they definitely were elongated, especially the Nuts Island stuff where they included some Amand action. But hey, Moramand is never a bad thing, and there was a nice shot of her while all the citizens were wallowing in despair that made her look like these events were hitting her pretty hard and that she very much failed to protect her island, which was nice because it added a bit of depth to a character that we really didn't see much of in the manga. So yeah, that's at least three filler moments that actually added something during this episode. What did not add anything, however, was when we got to Judge and he did his whole speech about Sanji. Now I'm always critical about using flashbacks because they are more or less a waste of time. And the common argument in favor of their use is that they amp up the emotion behind a scene, which is sometimes true, like last week with the Raidju moment. But this week, while they might have provided a bit of that, they mainly served as a platform to allow Judge to speak much slower than he should have been in order to pat for time in the episode. So I'm not saying don't use flashbacks because some carefully chosen snippets would have served Judge's words quite well. Just don't ruin the pacing of a scene with them. Keep everything snappy because I know it's sometimes hard to remember with the one-piece anime, but more often than not, we are embroiled in situations where every second is integral for survival. So Judge speaking this damn slowly is irrational pace killing and a clear sign that the episode was in desperate need of extending to make its runtime. And there are similar moments in this very episode, like the hugely drawn out portions in regards to Big Mom and the cake, where we were like cutting to a reaction shot of beige and chiffon and it's all static, and then we had a long panning shot of the cake and then even Big Mom's mouth. And it's all just pointless. You can say that it builds tension, but tension for what? The cake does not get eaten this episode, so it's essentially baiting the audience into believing that what they've been waiting for is about to come just to rip it right out from under them and go lol nope, maybe next week eh? Or maybe next week we'll just have her scream wedding cake some more, to build up some tension for when she finally eats the cake like the week after or the week after that. Keep watching though, we promise we're not wasting your time. Alright we have gone a bit negative here, but I do want to reaffirm that for the most part the pacing of this episode was fine. It was just a few select moments that annoyed me, as well as like I said before the animation. I think meh is a good way to define the aesthetic appeal of this episode, a great example of which is Sanji's clash with Daifuku's genie, and my problem is that it had no real impact whatsoever. It certainly did not feel like a giant genie with incredible strength taking on a beast of a human. What it felt like was more akin to a gentle breeze, brushing a thin tree branch against, I don't know, another thin tree branch. And it's such a shame because I vividly remember that panel from the manga, because you look at it and you can feel the shock waves coming from that 2D page. It was glorious. The shot in the anime is also framed very differently, so I think that might be partially responsible for it, but overall there was just a lack of visual and auditory oomph when Sanji made contact with the genie, and that carried over into a lot of the episode. Like there was a point at which the sunny was being fired up by one of the fleets, and if you watch the cannonballs hitting the water there is no satisfying impact. It's like a three-step stop motion animation signifying their landing and it removes a lot of the sense of danger that we should have when our protagonists are being bombarded with a fleet of cannonballs. But the thing that probably annoyed me most was right at the end with the reveal of the sun pirates. Actually before we get into that one more good thing, the sequence of waratsumi emerging from the water was actually pretty great in terms of animation. Like yes it was sparse, but it accomplished exactly what it needed to, and it had a good sense of scale and destruction about it. But when we got to the sun pirates, I… how did this go so wrong? The shot of them all greeting Jinbe is just so… for lack of a better word… pedestrian? Look I can't show you here because I'll get flagged, but I encourage you all to look up the last page of chapter 899 and you will see what this shot should have been. It's a fantastic giant panel with a ton of depth featuring Aladdin in the foreground and waratsumi lurking wonderfully in the background with the sun pirates scattered in between. It's like the cavalry has just arrived and it gives you the idea that wow these guys are going to be a serious game changer as well as just being a beautifully drawn panel with once again incredible depth I cannot emphasize depth enough because in any 2d medium that is a core aesthetic concept, but the anime has none of this. All of the sun pirates are more or less on one visual plane, making the shot really flat and artificially making their forces feel weaker. I don't know about you guys but when I saw this shot in the anime my reaction was like what the hell are you guys doing here? You are going to get wrecked in an instant. There's just no power represented here. It was far from the hero shot that it should have been to cap off the episode and just yeah very poorly adapted. So yeah this episode is another mixed bag for me. Less story and pacing problems but full of strange direction and mediocre animation. But that pretty much does it for episode 874. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced 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 but the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigan retakes place on a daily basis. And finally please do comment with your thoughts on the episode. 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