 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece, and today we have an unusual anime review. Me not a review of an unusual episode, but unusual in that I don't really review the anime anymore, because it became a bit of a demoralizing experience. However, a lot of people contacted me about episode 909, telling me that it was fantastic and look, they weren't wrong. And yes, I know this is a quote unquote late review, but this is when I could fit it into the schedule, and the anime isn't a huge priority for me anymore, here it is now. However, with that said, 909 was a very solid piece of anime and it's so bizarre, because you know that time travel revelation aside, almost nothing of importance actually happened. It was a very classic early arc one piece episode, taking its time to set up the players and explore a new island kind of deal. And I think this is bizarre because usually the talent and the time gets put into the more major moments of an arc, but episode 909 stands out amongst almost every episode of Wano by the first two as a 100% enjoyable experience that was well paced, well drawn, well animated, well directed, and just well crafted in general in every conceivable area. And not only that, but there was a ton of filler inserted into the episode, but it's not that kind of dirty filler that we as one piece fans bathe in every week. It was actually well integrated within the story and added to the experience of Wano. It's exactly the sort of thing that we saw in the first two episodes and what the anime desperately desperately needs to continue putting thought into in order to not completely tank this arc. So one example of some great filler that immediately comes to mind is Luffy and Law at the Kozuki Graves. There's a bunch of stuff inserted with Kinamon moaning like a ghost and the red eyes glaring from within the shadows and I loved every second of that because it really amped up the comedy of the scene which I found hilarious in the manga, but the anime far surpassed that feeling here. And I think a lot of credit also needs to go to Hiroshi Kamiya, who was the voice actor of Law, for beautifully leading both Luffy and the audience on this potentially spooky journey that heavily implied that Kinamon had died. This sort of serious comedy will always be my favorite use of Law as a character and I'm so glad that the anime nailed this. Plus, more so than any other section of the episode, the anime for this portion was ridiculously beautiful and fluid, especially when you pay attention to Luffy's more subtle movements. It almost felt a bit unnatural because I'm not used to having that kind of attention to detail placed in the one piece anime, but I loved it and it makes me want much much more. But back to wonderful filler, there was some other short filler when the straw hats entered what was left of Oden Castle, where Chopper, Brooke and Carrot were all getting injured because of the poor condition of everything, which was also a lot of fun, I loved it. And the thing about stuff like this is that it has no impact on the story whatsoever, but it does add to the flavor of what's going on. And that is what bad anime filler is generally missing, because in most cases I find that the anime filler takes the scene and then milks it for all it's worth by extending the material that was already present in the manga, rather than trying to do what this episode did and expand on the situation in hand. You know actually turning on your brain and thinking about well, I wonder what happened off panel all between two events, like the little Oden Castle interlude. And stuff like that happened all over 909, with another simple example being the scene with the teacher and the kids. The old man who was outside of a classroom was not in the manga, this was just a brief scene designed to show what the children of the capital are being taught. However, the addition of the old man questioning and scoffing at what schools are teaching is very welcome because it adds an extra layer of depth to the scene. Because yes in the manga this is obviously false, but it's up to the readers to come to the old man's conclusions and in the anime I think it's nice to have someone on screen who shares your thoughts in a situation like this. And furthermore can actually state it within the context of the world itself. And to anime only watchers I also imagine that this would have granted a hint of intrigue at the politics at play in Wano, rather than just viewing it as a straight up propaganda scene. While we're here though I actually very much enjoyed Rokoro, the snake smile teacher as well. I thought her voice acted did a wonderful job of being simultaneously delightful yet sinister and the kids were great as well. I mean for a portion of the story that's just a whole lot of nothing in the manga the anime adapted it about as well as I think it possibly could have been done. And another low-key scene that I think was adapted close to perfectly was everything with Kyoshiro. First off I'll say that his voice definitely wasn't quite what I was expecting but then again I'm also never quite sure what to expect of the Japanese voice cast. I mean it's a good fit though and it should be fun going forward. But my favorite part of the segment was Kyoshiro going through the toki prophecy because of the nice stylistic storytelling visuals that the anime chose to employ. It gave everything this glorious magical almost legendary vibe which is actually a difficult thing to achieve in one piece because the world is so grounded in its own form of science and modern day knowledge. So to have a successful moment like this is really cool and an intriguing thing to see. I mean I personally was pretty captivated and I very much want to Kyoshiro to continue telling the story. And I'm also really starting to warm to Kyoshiro's general color scheme. I was a bit unsure about it at first although I have to admit that every new character introduced in Wano is a bit of an assault to the eyes. At first anyway, just because of the focus on the vibrant colors but I really am starting to dig the blue and purple dominance at play with Kyoshiro which is also reflective in his blade as well. Then again I am heavily biased because when I use color in my own design work I often default to blue. It's just such an easy way to make things look good. Moving on the one thing in this episode I will question is the decision to have Zora randomly fight the tiger version of himself. On the one hand I love it because it is a perfect representation of Zora with the scar on the eye and the sword in its mouth and also because the animal that Zora always gets identified with is a tiger but I'm just… I don't know. This is the one scene that looks like it has the potential to drag on into some dangerous filler territory. And I think that's because this episode has made pretty clear to me that anime filler is at its strongest when it's dealing with world building or subtle character moments. However when it comes to action the filler often becomes incredibly uninspired so that does leave me with some concerns over whether or not Zora vs random anime tiger is going to be a good idea. To be fair to the anime though they are at least offering an explanation as to how Zora split up from the group because in the manga he just up and disappears. The group get to word and castle and Luffy has a brief line about how Zora went off on his own and how it was incredible that he could even get lost while rioting in big old doggo. I always personally found that a bit weird and quite frankly unsatisfying. And every now and then a moment like that will happen in the manga where Oda makes a very sudden shift with no decent explanation and it's not that things like that necessarily need an explanation even if they are a bit jarring but these situations do present great potential for the anime to expand on the material and properly fill some of the storytelling gaps. So I guess we'll see where this tiger business goes. Although I'm not sure it's off to the greatest of starts though because there is some reused animation at play already which happened when Zoro drew his thoughts. That was the exact same animation as the Zoro eyecatcher which I only recognize because they show that eyecatcher in every single episode. But you know it is cool and all but I'm really really hoping that in the near future we're going to see some eyecatchers that aren't Luffy or Zoro. And with the arrival of the whole cake island straw hearts you'd think that should probably start pretty soon. By the way it was really good to catch up with that segment of the straw heart because they felt painfully absent in the anime in my opinion just because of how long we've had to go before actually reaching them. In the manga we got to this point much quicker so their absence was kind of covered up by how good it was to see Zoro again. But I can't help but love seeing and more importantly hearing their iconic voices interact here. Also the anime did something interesting in that they had Sanji react to Kiku with his typical love eyes and such. Now this did not happen in the manga and at the time it always struck me as weird that Oda didn't insert that here because he's usually very diligent in regards to Sanji's predictable reactions even if it's just shown in the background of a panel or something. So that's something else that the anime took full advantage of which will become somewhat interesting to look back on in the future. By the way did anybody here at one point ever think that they would see Beppo shitting? I for one certainly did not. And I have on multiple occasions made the statement on this channel that any time Beppo appears on screen is a good appearance so I suppose I do have to stick to those words here. I mean it was pretty funny but I would have loved to have been in the room when someone made that suggestion. You know I'm picturing a meeting of writers and their brainstorming ways to lengthen the anime by expanding the world and then someone proudly puts up their hand and goes guys I've got it. So you know in the manga how they say that Beppo has the runs? What the hell? I think we should take advantage of the visual medium of anime to show our audience the story rather than simply tell them. And then I imagine that he received a standing ovation for having the idea of the century. So yeah that happened. Although I have to say that probably the most surprising part of the episode yes even more surprising than Beppo defecating on screen was the fact that the recap was like less than a minute long. That gave me a real shock because I fall into a bit of a habit with One Piece because when you start an episode you know you don't actually start an episode. You have the intro song, the recap, the title card and in some cases all of that can go on for like five to six minutes. So I'll start the episode and have over the top playing in the background while I do something else. Whether that's writing, editing, feeding the dog or even house cleaning you can get a lot done during a One Piece intro and recap. And I usually think that I have a bit of time before I need to actually pay attention. But I heard the title screen appearing what seemed like instantly and I was like eh damn and I rush back to my computer to actually start watching the episode. So that was a nice surprise because recap is one of the many knives that can kill the One Piece anime with the death by a thousand cuts methodology. It's also a bit hard to tell at this stage but it looks like the anime is looking to keep up this effort next week with an extended flashback of Kozuki Oden which was definitely a surprise to see given current manga events. And I mean I'm entirely up for that feel free to expand on Oden as much as you'd like. Although I do find it a bit odd that they're still trying to silhouette him despite the fact that they are also pretty much showing his entire face. It's just a strange blending of stuff going on. But to sum it all up this episode is rather shockingly one of the best of the entire One-O-Ark so far. And I say shockingly because if you would ask me to predict what the best episodes of One-O would have been simply from my market knowledge this would not have been anywhere near the top. This was a section of story that focused on low-key world building events with one big but verbal revelation at the end. So you know if an episode like this can be as good as it is then there is no reason why the rest of the One-O-Ark can't be adapted in the same vein. But then again if the last couple of months or anything to go by the anime will undoubtedly fall back into mediocrity. I have no real hope at this point other than to see the very occasional episode be produced by a competent director and animation team. That is what episode 909 was and I am very grateful for the experience. But that pretty much does it for episode 909. 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