 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 871, finally it's over, the climax of the intense fight against Kartakuri. And just before I jump into this I want to say that I don't know if I'm gonna make anime reviews a regular thing. I did one for the very first time last week because I thought the episode really deserves some recognition and here I am again this week just sort of because. If this is something you enjoy and would like to see more of in the future then please do let me know and we'll see where it takes us. But I guess the main thing to be aware of is if I review an episode I'd be looking at it from more of the perspective of how it was adapted. I'm not so much going to be commenting on stuff like oh my god Kartakuri has been defeated because that is very old news having happened a year ago in the manga and I've got chapter reviews that already go into all of that kind of stuff. But yeah just something to think about. But as for an overall impression of episode 871 I have to say, yeah not bad. There were some parts of it I really liked and some parts that annoyed me a fair bit so expect a mixed review coming up here. As with most episodes it covered roughly one manga chapter in fact I think exactly one chapter in this case. So as a result I did feel quite slow at certain points but apart from a couple of sections it was mainly fine. One of those sections I'm referring to though was the Sanji putting flashback which surprisingly is not complete filler because there was a literal flashback in the manga. However it was significantly shorter lasting only two panels and did not include any of the wedding or cake baking stuff both of which took a huge chunk of time. I suppose you could argue that adding those two scenes gives a more rounded summary of whatever relationship Sanji and Pudding have. And while I think it's a bit weird from a character's perspective to be flashing back to things that happened literally a few hours ago to the audience these things happened months and months ago so that reminder may be necessary I guess. But stuff like that appeared all over the episode just small amounts of padding like when Brooke offered to quote-unquote negotiate with Smoothie or I'm sorry negotiate with the big woman. The joke after that was very predictable but I did enjoy him saying that the negotiations had failed after being hit by an army that was quite nice. And that's kind of a common theme in regards to this episode everything was padded and took much longer than it should as per usual but most of those padded sections had enjoyable moments. Another example would be closer to the beginning during the whole segment with the Charlotte siblings waiting in ambush for Luffy. I don't generally subscribe to the argument that anime filler exists to flesh out the world and its characters more so than the manga but it certainly is applicable here particularly in the case of the Charlotte decouplets. After having done a couple of videos focusing on all of the Charlotte kids I did very much appreciate seeing all of the decouplets have a bit of individual time because in the manga they're very much just a giant clump of people who are also there and of course I very much enjoyed the joke of nobody knowing which decouplet was who in the case of the boys. It was good fun and I really didn't feel a lot of moments during this episode where I desperately wanted things to move along. That may be because I know what happens next and I'm pretty chilled about the journey we take together but thinking about this from the perspective of an anime only watcher I feel like I might have been a bit annoyed and very keen to get back to the outcome of Luffy vs Karakuri. I don't think it helped that the beginning of the episode really teased an immediate outcome with the recap focusing on the final clash as well as the opening of the episode with the two of them still hitting each other with the dramatic tension filled music and everything. As a result it's a real cocktail moment when we just cut to brulee and realize uh well this probably won't be resolved in this half of the episode and as for when it did come up there was some pretty disappointing animation to deal with. What specifically sticks out to me is the janky way that Luffy and Karakuri's arms began retracting from their strax. It was just really jagged not at all fluid and a far cry from the quality of the previous episode. Well when there was a similar situation in the shot where Luffy returned to his base form from Snake Man it was legit just a crossfade of three still images against a moving background. It felt really cheap even for Toei but moving to something I quite liked the moment we've all been waiting for well apart from Snake Man the fall of Karakuri and for this I give a ton of credit to the music and the sound design. From the moment Karakuri asked whether or not Luffy was going to return to take down Big Mom one day it felt epic. That music track is just so damn good and when Luffy shouted that he was going to be the pirate king it felt heavy and really effectively conveyed just how massive the meaning of those words are in a way that I haven't seen in the series for quite some time. Oh and the episode also had a nice touch where they cut to a ton of the mirrors while Luffy was shouting. It gave the illusion that Luffy's words were it gave the illusion that Luffy's words were filling the entire space confronting Karakuri from every conceivable angle and leaving him with no option but to be converted and believe him. So huge props to whichever Toei employee came up with that idea because it was just great. And then Karakuri falling in complete silence was also very well done. It made the eventual thought of his gigantic body all the more impactful. From there Karakuri flat on his back was pretty much everything I was expecting a great visual and to be perfectly honest that is the one screen cap I've been waiting on to finally make a Karakuri 101 video so expect that somewhat soon. The final thing to mention is probably the return appearance of Pekoms or should I say Nazoms. No I guess it should be Pekoms because even Luffy was able to see through this disguise. Very interestingly I did not expect his color scheme to be entirely pink. I mean it does make sense because the regular color scheme of Pekoms is pink but in the manga his Nazoms disguise was jet black and generally if Oda has a particular color in mind he'll make something a shade of gray to depict it as such. Not that there's anything wrong with the outfit Pekoms still looks amazing it was just unexpected. And from the look of the preview it would seem that too long Pekoms is happening next week which I won't say too much about but I am very keen to see it. But all in all episode 871 was a fairly enjoyable watch. Plenty of filler but most of it was kind of alright. It's a huge shame about the animation and I think this episode suffers quite a bit because it is being directly compared to the last one but it had its moments so well done. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces 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 or other miscellaneous items with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well. 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