 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 881, Going Into Action, the Implaceable New Admiral of the Fleet, Sakazuki. And while this episode happened, I mean it was another 15 minutes at least of solid shoehorned Toei filler, but people have a tendency to think I'm overly negative when reviewing episodes like this, so we're going to start with the like 5 minutes of actual new material that was in the episode and there are actually some nice positives. For example, I really enjoyed the opening shot of the camera panning over the waves as we approached New Marineford. I love the look of the water and the whole thing is just a very nice and simple piece of animation, simple but ever so effective and a really strong way to start out the episode. And then things continue pretty positively as well as I really like the establishing shots of New Marineford. They very much conveyed the scale of the facility quite well and definitely made me feel like it was a huge upgrade from the original Marineford, which is an impression I did not quite get from the manga, like it was an impressive two page spread, but it left me with the overall impression that the facility was equal to or even smaller in scale than the original. So well done to the anime for that. Then we get into the Sakazuki shouting stuff though and I've mentioned this in a prior review, but it really is as if the anime is paying no attention whatsoever to the emotional intention behind a scene or a performance. Most of the time Sakazuki is just shouting with only the most minimal of mouth flaps and zero expression to be found anywhere else on him, but it's actually even worse than that because a lot of the time the animation actively takes away from the emotional intent by giving us crap like this. So just in case anyone has forgotten, this is Fleet Admiral Sakazuki. He murdered Luffy's brother, Port Gasty Ace, and is the figurehead of absolute justice, but you would be forgiven for thinking that this image here is of a special needs patient who has somehow escaped his carer at a cosplay convention. Like just what are his eyes even doing? Nobody's eyes do that. I mean unless you're dragging from the last episode, there's one exception, and I mean somebody very correctly pointed out in the comments of a previous episode review that this is not technically a criticism of the animation, but it should be directed as a criticism to the art. So yeah, fair point, and look, this art is abysmal. This man is supposed to be one of the most feared characters in the entire series, and he is consistently being turned into a bit of a joke. Speaking of jokes though, and we'll have some more negativity here, but it will be followed by something nice and positive, so just stay with me. But the part where Sengoku appears from behind the wall didn't really land for me, and I believe that's entirely to do with the way that it was presented. You see in the manga there is a small panel at the bottom of a page featuring Sakazuki looking really angry in the foreground, with T-Bone looking shocked in the mid-ground, and then way in the background we have this tiny drawing of Sengoku and his goat just popping in to say, you know, it's not so easy being the fleet admiral, is it? And this was quite hilarious because it's amazing to see a character of his renown just popping in for a quick quip at Sakazuki, along with his goat friend, too, and then we just don't see any more of him. I'm not saying it was the most hilarious thing that's ever happened in the series, but it was a cute little moment, and now what this episode did was turn that cute little moment into an elongated and heavily focused on part of the scene. And sadly, that cute little joking moment just isn't quite able to hold its weight when it is the sole focus of a shot. Although I will say that what salvages the moment is when Sengoku puts on his sly look and just retreats back into wherever the hell he came from. That was pretty funny, so I guess it's just the nature of adaptation. We lost the joke in one way, but gained the joke in another, so I suppose that's balanced. But this brings us to my favorite part of the episode, really, which is the filler scene featuring Sengoku, and the reason why I love it so much is simply because of the fact that he is feeding Luffy's wanted poster to his goat. It's hard to explain why, but this moment it just works for me. I mean, if we're going to make Sengoku all introspective and set him up for a flashback, this is a wonderful vehicle to do so, because it gives you that excuse to bring up Luffy with something visually interesting happening on screen at the time and not have everything happen in a completely unnatural way. Although that whole unnatural thing did also happen during this episode when it was Sakazuki's turn for a flashback. It just felt weird and out of character for someone with his fiery disposition to take the time out of his busy day to stare out into the sea and essentially begin lamenting his failures. Like, are we really talking about the same character who reprimanded Kobe for wasting valuable seconds on the battlefield? Sakazuki is the kind of guy who moves on and takes action constantly, striving to implement his ideal justice. He isn't the kind of dude who just stands there and says brooding things like, on that day two years ago, it was supposed to end. We of the Navy thought we ended it. This poor antagonist just gets so watered down, quite literally in this shot actually, see the water effect everywhere. And to be frank, that's kind of the episode. Talking in an office for five minutes and then everything else is a rehash of Impel Down and some of Marineford. In fact, I think the biggest slap in the face of this episode was that it ended mid-recap. Like, the to be continued screen is generally meant to come after some sort of dramatic episode ending, but instead here it comes as Luffy is falling onto the battlefield that we saw 10 years ago or so I think. There's no excitement here and I mean even if you're a newer viewer, which is actually very fun and quite difficult to say, newer viewer, newer viewer, newer viewer, there's no tension in this because earlier on in the episode, we had a flashback of how Ace died. So it's not as if you'll be sitting there going, oh, I wonder if Luffy will be able to save Ace in this flashback. It's more like, oh, I wonder how much of this flashback I'm going to need to watch before I get to the bit that they already showed in the beginning. It just shows a complete and utter disregard for creating a solid product because even if you subscribe to the argument that Toei Shueisha and Fuji TV are doing this to inform newer fans that might not have been following the series for so long, rather than using this past animation to extend this series into all eternity and suck every yen that they can out of the children's companies advertising to their audience, they're still doing it horribly. And then there's the other argument of no, we need filler because it allows the manga to get further ahead of the anime. And no, we don't. We just need a business model that isn't from the middle ages. Make One Piece Seasonal. It works for every other modern property of Weekly Shonen Jump and the increased episode quality might even allow One Piece to get a primetime TV slot again, which means significantly more money from much higher paying advertisers, rather than airing on Sunday mornings and relying on whatever crap is being sold to children. In any case, my feelings are more or less summed up with the following comment. Next time on One Piece, we recap the recap, so you can recap while you recap. And that pretty much does it for episode 881. 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 for your instant shirts, witties, and other miscellaneous items, with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. 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