 Hello and welcome to the groundline review your source for everything one piece and today we have a review of episode 898 the headliner Hawkins the magician appears and this week we have a very very almost surprisingly action-filled episode and I say that given the roughly 10 or so pages of manga that were actually adapted but a lot of it was quite solid I do think that there are definitely some parts generally the bits where Luffy and Zoro fight against the other fodder that may not have looked so great but to counter that and begin on a high I have to say that everything involving Hawkins was simply captivating and this is very much the sort of thing I had my hopes set on after seeing how his abilities were handled in the previous episode and I have to say that watching Hawkins in action this week was actually much more satisfying than reading this scene in the manga and it's because of the extra mile or kilometer depending on your country the anime goes to expand on his powers aesthetically at the very least and my favorite example of this are the moments where Hawkins fans out the entire deck rather than a handful of cards that we're used to seeing seemingly hovering in mid-air as you can probably gather this does not happen in the manga Hawkins just does what he always does and draws a single card maybe has a couple of cards hovering in front of him at the same time however seeing the whole deck presented in this way in my opinion added a whole new level of fierceness and mystery to this character because not only does this action of invoking the entire deck make it seem like he's actually getting somewhat serious about this conflict but it shows us the extensive web of options available to him even if I guess he is at the mercy of the cards themselves also superficially it was just a cool effect to see in action and a very nice addition from the anime there but I think the anime excelled in a few other more subtle areas as well regarding Hawkins and the example I'd like to bring up here is Hawkins voodoo puppet straw doll thing being removed from his arm and how that was portrayed for the first time in the episode now in the manga it's a very casual affair Zoro slashes him in the face and one of the very next shots is the straw doll emerging from his arm it was fine it worked well enough but there was something really special here about taking the time to focus on the process of the straw doll and I especially loved the close-up of it it was another very well done moment although having gone into this I do have to say that Zoro slashing Hawkins was slightly disappointing it really didn't have the sense of force that was portrayed in the manga and having gone back on it I think it's entirely to do with the moment of impact Zoro slash itself was wonderful there was some nice power there but there was little to no sense of impact upon the result like it hit Hawkins and then we immediately cut to a slow-mo version of it that made it super clear that this was more of a vague annoyance to Hawkins rather than something that he should be taking seriously and I do understand that yes that's kind of the point despite these sorts of attacks will not work on Hawkins at least not until you do it another 10 times anyway but for me it really was missing the um from the manga the whole scene was also quite elongated definitely beyond what was necessary ah and speaking of elongated let's talk about the big old straw monster now first of all watching this thing come into being was just glorious it was well animated appropriately spooky-ish and just a nice different sort of tone than we usually see in one piece however while I was watching it happen I did begin to feel that the summoning of the straw dude was taking a long time and that is definitely justified because going back on it from the moment Hawkins began the summoning to the moment of completion was a whopping two minutes and 17 seconds and out of context no that may not seem like such a long time but it really is like after you remove the opening the recap the preview and the ad for stampede it accounts for about a ninth of the episode which is pretty wow for a moment that took exactly three panels to happen in the manga and don't get me wrong I'm not necessarily complaining here I understand the situation of needing to keep the adaptation rate low and if you're going to choose to elongate something then this is a good idea because as much as it did feel like it was getting a bit too long at least it looked good and it did manage to hold my attention as a result now something I thought that worked far less well was what I mentioned in the beginning of the video the part where Luffy and Zoro were fighting all the other lackeys now there was a brief moment of this actually happening in the manga which was the part where Luffy punched a dude whilst holding the sword the comedy of which was handled very very nicely in this episode in fact the whole sequence of Luffy and Zoro talking about the sword was great I love everything about Luffy role playing as a traditional samurai and adding far too many and almost always an appropriate Degosurus to the end of his speech but the ensuing action sequence left a fair bit to be desired it was not awful I'll say that but it did feel a bit janky especially Luffy's parts for some reason very few of his hits felt like they had any kind of decent impact and a lot of them were very slow and drawn out and I'd like to add that there was a moment of cool creativity with Luffy where he used the neck of one of the lizards to swing around and kick some of the dude bros and yes like everything else it felt slow and clanky but I appreciated the nice creative move and especially just how much the lizard did not care about anything happening around him at the time that guy was just so chill oh and speaking of lizards something this episode did very well was Hawkins killing that unfortunate lizard now this was graphic in the manga but the anime took this to a whole new level through the sound effects the wonderful silhouette style thing and the painful close-up of the lizard's face after being struck Hawkins you are a horrible horrible man thing but it did also highlight the straw sword nicely something I've been very interested in ever since it was introduced because I love the idea of some sort of organic blade and seeing it animated was a nice treat going back a bit though in contrast to Luffy Zoro's action felt much better I think there was a solid grasp on what it takes to make a sword strike satisfying in terms of speed and sound once again not as good as what we have previously seen of Zoro in Wano thus far which is a bit of a shame but it's still higher quality than the previous incarnation of the anime and now finally one little thing I did want to bring up was the very beginning of the episode where Hawkins is predicting the survival rate of Luffy and Zoro one month from now there was a very small but interesting change to Hawkins dialogue here which was that a line was added after he stated 19% that line being if you're here for sightseeing then get lost and the effect this has on the scene overall is that it makes Hawkins seem very dismissive of this judgment as if it was an expected result of the cards but in the manga this is much more vague because he states their chances of survival one month from now are 19% and it's left up in the air about how Hawkins personally feels about that in fact given his slightly more expressive look in the manga after seeing the result it can almost be implied that he is shocked by how high the number is because when you think about it a one in five chance in this situation on Wano the home of Kaido is actually pretty massive so that was an interesting choice made for the anime there it may have been done to clarify some of the vagarty generated by the manga or it may have been done for the practical reason of giving Hawkins another line in order to make sure that this 10 pages becomes 20 minutes of new content I suppose we'll never know but I thought it would be interesting to point out nonetheless but that pretty much does it for episode 898 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 and if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime manga series then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs 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 this has been the Grand Line review and I'll see you next time