 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 875, a captivating flavour, Sanji's Cake of Happiness. And right from the beginning I'm happy to report that this episode was pretty damn fantastic actually. When this chapter came out in the manga I loved it, but I was quite fearful that the anime may not do it justice, but I am more than happy to be proven wrong. It was a really great climax to Whole Cake Island and nailing the musical segment at the end was so integral because it really effectively captures the bittersweet events of this arc. You know, Whole Cake Island isn't like most major arcs in one piece. There was no triumph and victory here. Yes, there was some victory, but mainly just chaos and loss. And having the main antagonist sing a euphoric Disney number is a great way of conveying that and the anime went pretty all out to make sure that it was every bit as magical as it should be. In fact, most of the musical sequence was very much anime original material and there were some great additions like Mother Caramel moving in the picture frame and the end of the number in which Big Mom chomped down on the sunny. And it just had this wonderful air of Broadway quality about it, but in a very appropriately dark and twisted context. Kind of like a song from Sweeney Todd, you know? Managing to be simultaneously triumphant and yet grotesque. But yeah, the song was just brilliant as was the direction of the entire sequence and you can also tell that the animation stepped up significantly as soon as it began. So I'm really glad that Toei didn't completely blow their load on the Snake Man episode. I will say, however, that the intent of the ending is probably lost in the episode. That being the final shot of the Tattered Straw had Jolly Roger in the water. In the manga, that was the final panel of the chapter and it was a huge, oh shit, like, dark moment. However, in the anime, any feeling that conjures is immediately dispelled because the preview begins and shows that everyone is perfectly alright. And look, yeah, I know it's a Shonen series and there's no way that anything truly horrible was ever going to happen to our main cast, but it was still a really powerful ending on paper. For this episode, I would have been really tempted not to include a preview for the next episode at all because it just lessens the impact of that beautifully crafted musical sequence. But another great thing about this episode though, and it has to do with me complaining quite a bit last week about the ending with the final shots of the Sun Pirates and how it was really, really poorly constructed compared to the hero panel of the manga. Well, just to go that extra mile, this episode goes way out of its way to make up for that mistake by featuring that exact shot as it was intended to look and it is fantastic. I don't see what was so hard about doing it in the last episode and it really redeemed the Sun Pirates as a force to be reckoned with, which is a very important task considering how much this episode decided to use them as filler. And it wasn't bad filler either. Seeing the Sun Pirates in action was pretty cool, especially when Aladdin decided to take on Daifuku's genie. I mean, yeah, there were some shots of random fishmen that were clearly given less attention than others, but overall there was some nice chaos generated by filler this week. Another really fun thing was watching the Charlotte decouplets merge together and become that giant hulking mass of a being. For some context in the manga that thing just appeared, and the only clue we really had to its origin was the scythe, which were held by the decouplets. So you know, it was more than likely one of them, but of course in recent times we've come to learn that it was the result of a devil fruit ability possessed by Charlotte Nushi, Nushi being the bulky male decouplet. Quite specifically, he has a fruit called the gotcha-gotchanomi, which is a Japanese onomatopoeia for mixing things up and such, and it essentially allows him to merge with other living beings to create something entirely new. Think of it as kind of like Kelly Funk's jacket power, just you know, not useless. And in this case the gotcha-gotchanomi actually seems to have a compound effect on physical abilities. Furthermore it seems to allow Nushi to merge with at least nine other people which is pure insanity. This devil fruit has buttloads of potential and it was a pleasure to see it in action, and watching the germa face off against it was really cool as well. There was some very schmick animation at play while they were combating the decouplets in their combined form. The only real negatives I have in regards to the episode was the beginning. I still feel like it took entirely too long for Big Mom to start eating the cake. There were a lot of painfully lingering shots and it's just not really in character for Big Mom to take her time when the thing she desires most in the world is right there in front of her. I mean in the manga the very first panel we saw of her was a ravenous shot of her stuffing her face with cake. Like she'd begun before we even started the chapter, which is much more reflective of her childlike impatience. Also one more weird negative was it just me or whether sound effects of Big Mom stuffing her face with cake kind of really squishy and unappealing. Like it didn't sound at all delicious, but more like shoveling a pile of mud onto another pile of mud. It's definitely a minor complaint, but I bring it up because the entire point of this sequence is to convey to the audience just how out of this world delicious the cake is because nobody except Big Mom is going to taste it, so she's very much our vessel into understanding Sanji's incredible masterpiece. So the sound effects of eating didn't help that for me, but meh. Overall this episode was great though. Once again it only adapted to single chapter, but with material like this the potential to construct a fulfilling and well-paced episode is there. There is a lot of talent on display in this episode and just as I said with whatever the Snake Man episode was, it really gives us a glimpse of what Toei could be capable of if they, Shueisha and Fuji TV were able to change business models into something that focuses more on creative integrity rather than endlessly pumping out weekly episodes. But that pretty much does it for episode 875. 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