 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Today what we have is something I would say resembles more of a rant than anything else and it has to do with every One Piece fan's favorite topic, the Toei anime adaptation. Now I want to make it clear that I am not here to bash the anime. Hating on the anime is a very very easy thing to do and it's quite a popular practice amongst the One Piece fan base. But my goal here today is very simple and it's to make you think critically about the One Piece anime through one very basic rule of storytelling. A lot of people will pan the anime for a wide variety of reasons from pacing to filler to just plain horrible aesthetic quality. I'm not interested in any of that here today. My criteria is much more basic. Here is the one rule of storytelling that we are going to examine. Do not tell your audience something they already know. Every shot of every scene should tell the viewer something new about the story, a character, a location, a concept, anything so long as it is new information to the viewer. And that consistent intake of new information is what makes watching film and television so compelling. It's a journey and a lot of the time when people complain about poor pacing and stuff like that, it's because they're not taking in new information at every available opportunity. And to examine how the One Piece anime fell so spectacularly in regards to this rule, I am going to analyze episode 868, a feature that was so widely praised by the fan base. And I'm taking the time to analyze this recent episode recent as in at the time of this recording because I've gotten a lot of comments on various videos of mine saying that the anime has improved significantly since the days of Dress Rosa. And while that may be true, it's still a failure of storytelling. And to show you why, let's get into episode 868 with the mantra in mind of never telling your audience something they already know. Every time this rule is broken, I will be adding time to this here filler clock, according to how much of our time was wasted by conveying information we already knew. So let's begin. First up, we have the Toei logo. It goes on for about 10 seconds and yeah, whatever. I'm not going to fault them for putting their logo at the beginning of a show, even if it is a bit long. Next up is the Super Powers opening, a song that I've grown to greatly enjoy. However, the opening is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. That is far, far too long. Considering most anime intros it at about 90 seconds. If you don't like Super Powers, this is torturous. And even if you do, look, it's taking a whole minute of content away from your episode, which is exactly what it's designed to do, so it's going on the clock. Moving on, we then launch into about 50 seconds of recap. And now that's not too bad at all compared to what we've seen in the series in the past. There are legitimately episodes out there with anywhere between 5 to 7 minutes of recap. So 868 is looking all right in comparison. That is until you remember that recap is not needed at all, and the prime offender of the one rule we're looking at. It gives us information that we already know. At this point, on top of the Toei slide card and the Super Powers opening, this episode has now run for a whole 3 minutes and 30 seconds, none of which has conveyed any new information to the viewer and has essentially wasted their time. Finally starting the actual episode, we have 1 minute and 16 seconds, cutting back and forth between Luffy struggling to get up after being hit by Katakuri Strike and Flampe laughing maniacally with her gaggle of troops. This cut happens 5 times over this minute and 16 seconds. We watch Luffy struggle, then we cut to Flampe mocking him. Then we cut back to Luffy struggling and back to Flampe mocking. 5 times in a row, the bit of Katakuri inserted for flavour. That is 4 more times than we needed to convey the necessary information, and in fact in the manga this entire sequence was dealt with in 3 panels, one of which was just Katakuri staring quizzically. So given that the anime told us the exact same information 4 times more than we needed, that's almost 61 seconds of wasted time during the sequence. We then begin a sequence of Katakuri putting these events together and realizing that Flampe is behind everything. And this portion here takes 14 seconds of our lives away to convey something that we as the audience already know. We do not need to see these inner workings of Katakuri's mind, flashing back to an event that we saw twice in the previous episode, especially when he is quite literally about to state everything anyway. But before we get to that, Katakuri then begins a very slow walk to Flampe. As we proceed to waste a further 30 seconds dwelling on Flampe's infatuation with her big brother, something that has been made exceptionally clear at this point. Katakuri then says word for word what is in the manga in regards to what happened with the blowgun, which is accompanied by what I would describe as technical filler. As we continue to see flashback sequences of Luffy being hit, and while in the manga there was no such flashbacks, I think this is a rare example of the anime filling time in a constructive manner, because it is a nice sequence to watch Katakuri going through these things, but at the same time we are now flashing back to a sequence that we have seen a total of four times in the past two episodes, so it certainly counts as information we already know, which takes up half the sequence, so half of the total 59 seconds will be added to the clock. Next up there's some Katakuri walking in some more teasing from all the dude bras, but most of this is in the manga and the only reason why it seems redundant is because of all of the similar bullshit we've already had this episode. The reason why this portion stands apart though is because it actively escalates Flampe's infatuation with Katakuri, so it does present new information, it just doesn't seem like it because by this point in the episode the audience is Flampe fatigued. Katakuri then stabs himself pretty good, but it takes a whole 9 seconds from him grasping his Trident to actually committing the action, and you might think I'm being really petty by pointing that out, but it is just filled with information we already know. There are several shots of the Trident being pointed at his body, as well as a cut to the exact same shot of Flampe and her cronies just prior to this, and I mean this could have been a beautiful and fluid 5 second motion at most, but instead we had to add roughly 4 seconds of nothing to benefit the sequence. And a lot of people might make the argument know it's to build tension, but it actually does the exact opposite. The whole point of this scene in the manga was a shocking reveal that Katakuri would stab himself. And this effect just doesn't happen in the anime because everything happens so slowly that the audience puts together what's happening before they actually see it and you do not want that in a visual medium. After inflicting his own wound we actually have a nicely paced portion conveying the sheer amount of pain that Katakuri is in and the subsequent reveal of his face to Flampe. I think this could have been a tiny bit faster, but overall very well done. The only criticism here is a section where Katakuri spends 3 seconds on screen just breathing heavily, like so… before speaking. Now this is a Toei trademark, they absolutely love a nice breathing shot whether it be panning or still, and 3 seconds might sound like I'm being extremely nitpicky, but let me ask you, what exactly is the point of showing us these 3 seconds? Is it to convey that Katakuri is now in an extreme amount of pain? Well, we already knew that. Because we just had a brilliant sequence that gave us that information and now we're wasting 3 more seconds of an episode dwelling on it rather than just moving on with Katakuri's line. Not only that, but Toei would go on to show us a still shot of Katakuri breathing 2 more times shortly after. No dialogue over the top, no information of any kind, just a combined 5 seconds of nothing new. And Toei does this a lot. Over the course of hundreds of episodes I can't even begin to imagine how much of our time has been wasted watching characters breathe. So Flampe berates Katakuri for not being her ideal, says he looks like a pelican eels, bits in his face etc and we get a brief Katakuri flashback, all of which is fine. It could be done a little faster once again, but hey, at least every shot is continuing to tell the story rather than dwelling on it. But Katakuri then walks away and we probably have the billionth shot of the episode of Luffy struggling to stay upright and oh yes, breathing heavily. 13 whole seconds of it, nothing new to the audience, so when the clock goes. Katakuri then walks towards Luffy while Flampe's dude bras swamp him like paparazzi. Great, except that we keep cutting back and forth between Katakuri and the paparazzi for a whole 11 seconds after the audience has well and truly got the idea of what's happening. And that does keep happening for a while afterwards, but luckily Flampe's monologue over the top does start providing new information, so I'm happy with that. Katakuri finishes walking over to Luffy, an endeavour that saw several still shots of them looking at one another, but I'll give the anime the benefit of the doubt here and say that we could interpret this as the two of them continuing to size each other up. However once Katakuri stops, this stare down just continues for 13 more seconds, nothing new happening whatsoever, just padding. And now finally we get to the moment that everyone went mad for when Katakuri and Luffy both released their conquerous Haki proceeding to completely wreck the mirror world as well as Flampe's forces. I personally think that it does go on for a bit too long, but hey we can take some time to indulge in this moment because it's taken an awfully long time to get here, but before it seems like it's done we have a break. 14 seconds of break and we're going to count it because it provides nothing new to us, just bounty posters of two straw hats who aren't even in the whole Cake Island arc. Back from the break and we are now elsewhere, Bage and the firetank pirates are transporting the cake, talking plants etc, all as well until we get to a painfully lingering shot of Big Mom who eventually starts spouting her catchphrase, Weddingoo Cakey, and tells of how desperately she wants to eat it several times. And now if there's anybody out there who believes a Big Mom wanting to eat the wedding cake as new information at this point, then just get out. In any case this little pit stop devoid of content takes 40 seconds to complete. Bage and Chiffon strategize a bit more and they have a lovely moment where Bage just shows how much he cares for her, more good stuff loving it. Cutting to the straw hats bought the sunny and this scene didn't actually happen in the manga, but it is giving us something new at least by showing us that Sanji is leaving the sunny with pudding. But there is a total of 14 seconds spent on puddings infatuation with Sanji which is nothing new at all. And granted this sort of thing happened a lot in the manga as well and I very much criticized it there too, but when it's happening and what is already for all intents and purposes filler content, it's getting added to the clock because it adds nothing new. Then Carrots awake again, we discuss the soolong stuff a bit, and then Smoothie attacks the sunny. And here is probably the most frustrating sequence of the entire episode purely in terms of conveying new information. So we initially see Smoothie strike and then Jinbei steers the ship to dodge. That one is fine. But we go on to see her strike in exactly the same way three more times. And we see Jinbei dodge in the exact same way three more times. 22 seconds of utterly pointless action. Smoothie then powers up a super strike and fires it. That's fine. What's not fine is wasting eight seconds on showing how Smoothie powers up her attacks once again. And then another 10 seconds with Jinbei telling the straw hats that he's counting on them for their directions. After that's exactly what he's already been doing for those previous three unnecessary strikes. The sunny makes a dramatic escape and we are now back in the mirror world in the aftermath of the conqueror's hockey clash. From here there are a total of four slowly panning shots that go over knocked out enemies. Beyond the first shot do you know how many of them give us new information? One actually, which shows us that Flampe is also knocked out. But we did waste eight seconds on those other two shots which provided us with nothing. Luffy and Katakuri have a chat. Katakuri slowly and seductively removes his jacket and things are about to get serious. We then engage in another trademark towing staring battle for a should you not 36 seconds. There's a bunch of cuts from close up Katakuri to close up Luffy to full body Katakuri to full body Luffy and so on and so forth. None of it provides us with anything. After those 36 awkward seconds Luffy and Katakuri finally put their fists up to fight and they begin running towards each other. But it's not enough to show us two separate shots of them each beginning to run because after Katakuri's shot we need another four seconds of Luffy running followed by quick cuts of them both running at each other for three seconds until we finally come to something. Which is a nice punch and once again while I really hate how slowly everything happens here that isn't the point of the video and at least you know something's happening. Sadly after Luffy gets punched we have what feels like being frozen in time as we cut to a still of Katakuri then we get Luffy continuing to be punched exactly as we knew it and look at this Katakuri again. We know Luffy got punched and we know Katakuri did it. However for some reason we spend the next 22 seconds re-showing us these two ideas before we reach the next point of substance which is Luffy punching Katakuri and then we get the old to be continued so stop the clock we've landed on 7 minutes and 54 seconds of content that we simply did not need. To put this into full perspective the runtime of episode 868 is 23 minutes and 50 seconds. Onto that 7 minutes and 54 seconds we are going to add the standard 90 seconds of anime opening that I didn't count earlier the 10 second to a credit sequence and the 40 seconds of to be continued and previews for a total of 10 minutes and 14 seconds. That is roughly 43% of the episode spent not really doing anything. Some episodes have more of this dead time some have less not many though I actually do feel like episode 868 was quite good in comparison to a lot of them but even if we take this as the best case scenario in the last 100 episodes of One Piece you will have spent just over 17 hours of your life in anime purgatory not actually engaging in the show itself but waiting for the show to parcel out some more information to you and that's just a mere 100 episodes I mean we were like halfway through zoe 100 episodes ago just trying to quantify that into the entirety of the series is mind boggling the amount of days of their lives that loyal viewers have spent giving to this series the makers of which want nothing but to generate as much money from it as possible no matter what the cost is disheartening to say the least and an absolute disgrace at worst and once again I just want to remind you that I haven't even taken into consideration shots that present new information and just take far too long to do it if I did then this number would grow exponentially One Piece is in a terrible terrible place right now it's not the fault of the animators or the writers or the staff in general it's the fault of the decision makers who mandate that a new episode of One Piece has to be produced every week for the sake of their sponsors viewer enjoyment does not come into the equation toei animation is a leech sucking everything it can from the One Piece IP so please just stop defending them 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 with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well and if you'd like to join the fun then do head over to my discord server where a wide array of shenanigans takes place on a daily basis and finally please do comment with your thoughts on the One Piece anime adaptation this has been the grand line review and i'll see you next time