 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 879, To the Reverie. The Straw Hat Sworn Allies come together. And look, I'm going to be a lot more positive than I was last week because we have taken something of a step up. Last week we had an almost record low adaptation rate of six pages, so thankfully episode 879 does conclude chapter 903, and even though there is a flashback recap, whatever you want to call it, it's only half as long and much better within the episode itself. And I really cannot overstate the importance of placing the flashback in the middle of the episode, because by doing that it actually gives the audience a reason to really watch the episode, unlike last week where we got the flashback immediately and I lost all interest for 15 minutes or so. So the episode had a strong beginning and a strong ending, sandwiched with fairly well adapted material, which is really the way to go if you need to pull this sort of filerish junk. Place it in the middle so that people aren't annoyed as hell when the episode begins, and so that they've already forgotten about it after the episode ends. And once again I have to say that the recap material was very nicely animated, and it just makes me want to see the entire series completely reanimated. But even with that said, it did still drag down the episode considerably, and once again impacted the overall pacing of the story presented in chapter 903. And it's quite sad because after having seen the entirety of its contents animated, it would have made a fantastic episode on its own, one that was just non-stop intrigue and ending on a huge high with the bounty reveal, rather than dragging things out over two weeks. But look it is what it is, so let's move on properly to the new material and for the most part, it's pretty solid. I actually really enjoyed the new opening segment they have going on where they do the whole great age of piracy thing and include shots of the Yonko, the warlords, the revolutionaries, and even the worst generation. It's a great little summary of all the enemies in the world, and the incredible potential for chaos that they represent. But then there's also two absolutely fantastic still shots, one is of Luffy himself, and the other is of the entirety of the straw hats, and I just love the art style that was adopted here. It looks like a screenshot ripped straight out of Guren Lagan or Kill a Kill. Everyone just looks so amazing, and I know that this style was probably chosen in order to make everyone look more antagonistic and scary, I mean just look at this evil, evil chopper. Because we're hearing of these characters through the perspective of someone in the world who just reads the newspaper, but I mean I would kill for one piece to have this art style permanently. Because once we actually get into the episode, the disappointment of what we're stuck with really hit me just that little bit harder than usual. I mean as much as the material adapted this week was really well-paced and very well performed by the voice actors, the animation was incredibly lacking. Not in any major episode destroying ways, but there were just a hell of a lot of minor moments of crap that ended up causing a death by 1000 cuts effect. For example throughout the episode Nami and Chopper are consistently off-model. I'm honestly not sure if there was a single shot of them this week that actually looks like it wasn't drawn by an intoxicated animator, just recreating them from memory on a barnapkin. And it's a problem that occurred with most auxiliary characters this week. Thankfully characters who appeared in primary shots were handled well for the most part. Like whenever Rebecca appeared you could tell that the animators put some special attention into those shots to make sure that she was looking all pretty and perfect. But I do say for the most part because there are sections here like Kobe's ginormous and surprisingly curved hand that's just like the hell. Especially since during the flashback in the very same episode there is a shot where a ton of people including Kobe performing the exact same salute and yeah these hands aren't great either but they aren't the complete mess that this is. But then there's more moments of underwhelming animation like Sakazuki section where he's yelling about the princess being kidnapped and his vocal performance just does not match the animation or lack thereof at all. Like the voice actor is doing a great job in portraying some pretty decent anger but all the episode gives us to work with is a completely static close-up of Sakazuki's face with absolutely no movement except for a couple of very tiny token mouth flaps. And this sort of crap is also painfully evident during the scene with the submarine pirate dudes and the captured princess. Specifically this guy and his tongue. This minor minor close-up is quite possibly one of the poorest pieces of animation I've ever seen just period. They legit just have his tongue moving jarringly over like three frames and this is apparently what passes for animation at one of Japan's largest and in theory most prestigious production studios. It's just garbage and so damn obvious as well because that animation is juxtaposed against the pretty great animation of the flashback. And yes it is just a bit sad that the seven-minute section we've already seen is the absolute highlight of the episode from an animation perspective. Also more complaining I was going to mention this last week but I felt the review was already overly negative but I'm not a huge fan of what they've done with the superpower's opening. Specifically in regards to putting the events of the episode in the section of the final chorus where the germa action used to go. And my problem is that the portions they pick out simply do not match the music. It's quite possibly the worst place in the entire opening to introduce such scenes you know right at the exciting climax of the song. I think that the reverie scenes would be much better placed in the preceding section instead of seeing Sanji and pudding as well as the beige and sulong carrot stuff. The music there is much more relaxed and would allow for these shots which comprise mostly of people just straight up talking to feel a bit more organically placed in the opening. But I do really like some of the new static shots introduced at the end of superpowers which contain some pretty mind-blowing spoilers actually. I mean if you're an anime only watcher I highly recommend not looking too closely at the shot immediately following Robin's portion because you will put two and two together and you will be spoiled big time. But look once again we've ended up with a fairly negative review so I do just want to highlight some other things that I actually did like and one of those was the continuation of the color schemes used whenever the Yonko are menacingly on screen. It's not something new to episode 879 but I really like using the dark magenta for Kaido and Big Mom as well as the Kongo blue for Blackbeard because to me it is far more effective than the black silhouettes of the manga. It just adds a nice bit of flavor whilst maintaining the idea that we should probably be scared shitless of these people. And there was also some alright filler stuff thrown in. The part I'm thinking of in particular is where we see Holmeppo jump into the water and deal with the submarine. It was a short segment but it's kind of nice to see him in action right after Kobe had a moment because in the manga we just cut to him in the submarine like a boss which was fine. But Helmeppo is one of those characters who's experienced tremendous off-screen growth over the course of the series and as a result I'm always keen to see what he's capable of. But that said the most promising aspect of this episode very much comes in the form of the preview for next week because there doesn't appear to be any sign of another lengthy flashback. Although there certainly is the potential to make it happen with characters like Sabo and Evenkov being present but what I'm hoping for is that we just get a solid revolutionary army focused episode giving a bit of love to the four mysterious figures whose designs we've already had spoiled because they're in the opening. But yeah it's hard not to be excited to hear their vocals for the first time at the very least. But that pretty much does it for episode 879. 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. 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