 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of episode 878 the world is stunned the fifth emperor of the sea emerges and I really can't tell you just how excited past tense I was for this episode. It's been a huge pain holding on to this whole fifth emperor thing for a year now and it's finally time for the anime only fans to learn and embrace it. But honestly my worst fears about the reverie arc are swiftly coming true. This episode started out very strong with another recapless opening straight into the title card followed by a very nice and surprising shot of shanks. This was undoubtedly the high point of the episode for me yes before anything had happened at all because it very quickly became apparent that we were going into a flashback. A flashback that would take us till a whopping 15 minutes into the episode to complete. Now to be fair to this segment it was animated quite nicely. I don't know if it was reused or new animation because to be honest this portion of the story has just been reanimated so many times that I've lost track of all the setting differences but whatever the case this incarnation of chapter one did look pretty great. It just had arguably no place in this episode. It is 100% filler and clearly going to become a trend throughout the entire reverie arc. And sadly we can tell this just by watching the preview for the next episode which looks like it will be retelling Luffy meeting Kobe which no doubt will take another 15 minutes or so of that episode leaving us with seven minutes or so of actual material a lot of which is filler anyway like in this episode. I mean so after the flashback concluded my immediate thought was great. At least now we can spend the rest of the episode adapting the most iconic chapter of 2018 with brilliant pacing and no filler but my god was I wrong. This episode didn't even adapt one full chapter. In terms of what was adapted it totaled six pages of manga which is abysmal and a new low even for the one piece anime. At this rate it's entirely possible that chapter 903 will take a full three episodes to adapt as we insert flashback after flashback of any major characters appearing in it and that's before we even get to the rest of the reverie arc. But you know all of a sudden it makes perfect sense given that one who is set to begin airing in July will say that again July that is potentially four months and anywhere from 12 to 16 episodes from now provided there are no breaks. Now the reverie arc is not a long piece of story it spans around six chapters I'd say one of which is chapter 903 a tiny tiny piece of which was adapted in this episode so to put one oh off until July means that a solution needs to be found with the limited amount of material at the disposal of Toei and instead of a filler arc it looks like they have elected to pad the next four months or so with Recap and if this is correct this is going to be an incredibly painful period for the anime even the staunchest of anime defenders out there cannot possibly condone this for the next 12 to 16 episodes you won't even be getting anywhere near a full episode rather you're more than like they receive seven or so minutes of new material and be subject to watching something that chances are you've already seen a billion times before because this is far from the first time the anime has done something like this and it's just really frustrating because chapter 903 is so damn good and anime only watches will never get to live the sheer amount of madness packed into a single experience I mean Luffy didn't even find out about his bounty in this episode which is like the crowning moment of the chapter and the reason why it being titled the fifth emperor makes so much sense so cutting it into unsatisfying chunks just completely screws with the flow of material as originally intended as does stuffing it with all this filler even outside of the recap sections and a good example of filler in this episode is the extent to which the whole raid suit discussion went on for in the manga it was a very simple matter but in the anime we had Luffy and Chopper trying to activate the suit and even a little scene of what they imagine their transformation would be like now I admit this is nowhere near the worst filler I've ever seen and it was kind of funny to see Luffy and Chopper in a raid suit but it is filler and it is being actively inserted to delay the story from progressing further and that is a very strong indication of what is to come the reverie arc is going to be slow in fact some episodes may seem completely uneventful thinking of what's to come and how it could be stretched out and to play devil's advocate there are a couple of arguments in favor of adopting this strategy the first of which is that it will allow Wano to progress in the manga and thus less filler will be used during that arc that argument however is bullshit and gets used with every new arc we launch into with the same results time after time for example a common argument for having the filler rock between zoe and whole cake island was that it would allow whole cake island to get a bit further and yet it was still packed with filler that slowed it down to an absolute snail's pace the same thing will happen with Wano the One Piece anime is about to be celebrating two decades of airing and I highly doubt that it's going to change its practices now the other slightly more reasonable argument is that these gigantic recap segments will benefit newer fans who may not be as familiar with the pre-time skip events of One Piece and yes that may be of potential benefit to them but do not make the mistake of thinking that that is the reason why Toei is doing this this is not a decision that involves any thought of creative integrity whatsoever this is a collective of companies Toei Shueisha and Fuji TV once again milking this product for every yen it's worth because this is One Piece and they can so my advice to all of you anime only fans more so than ever is just to switch to the manga immediately and just actually enjoy your time in the One Piece world at least until Wano starts in July otherwise the next couple of months are going to leave you incredibly dissatisfied to the point where I imagine many people will just drop the series entirely and to be completely honest if the next few months are just a series of recap episodes then I'm not sure if the anime reviews on this channel will continue primarily because they just won't be enough to talk about so we'll see maybe Toei has some surprise in store for us and if so I will be the first to praise them as per usual but after literal decades being dicked around I have no hope for such thing so I apologize if this review was a bit overly negative but there is little to nothing in this episode worthy of any kind of praise it is a near complete waste of time and really disappointing considering the strong ending of Whole Cake Island and that pretty much does it for episode 878 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 also do check out my teespring store if you're interested in shirts witties and other miscellaneous items with the proceeds going directly to support the channel as well 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