 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. And today we have a review of episode 899, Defeat is Inevitable, the straw man's fierce attack. And that's a pretty glum and highly inaccurate title considering the events of the episode, especially when we consider how the main conflict was portrayed. Although you know what, I suppose that's really up to interpretation of the title, because getting into it, you'd think that defeat being inevitable refers to Luffy and Zoro standing little chance against Hawkins. But I guess you could and should think of it as referring to Hawkins overwhelming defeat as presented in the episode. And this conflict was very up and down. There was a lot of great stuff in this very, very extended battle between Zoro and Hawkins, even in the filler action. But there was also a lot of, you know, not so wonderfully done action as well. I'll start by highlighting the fantastic part though, which was Zoro's final attack, the Niigiri Toro Samon, which looked and felt just amazing. Better than the manga portrayed at 100% and I'm incredibly glad that we got to see another superb sequence like this because it proves that the animation displayed when Zoro performed the Tatsumaki in the earlier episode was not a fluke and that these glorious pieces of animation are here to stay. That'll just be reserved for more major moments. However, unfortunately, what wonderful action does is that it really highlights the not so great stuff through the wonderful art of juxtaposition. And I'd say that roughly 50% of this fight falls into that category. Half of the time, the movements and impact of both Zoro and Hawkins felt great, but then it would be accompanied by another piece of animation that felt slow, static or sluggish. Now what I will say is that no matter what the condition of animation we were engaged in, the large majority of the shots were very well composed. Like the shot we see of Zoro from the perspective of the straw man's club looking through the two swords and it's just stuff like that that really salvaged the overall action sequence because even if the animation didn't necessarily convince me, it was still appealing to watch. Now the thing about this did feel a little bit weird was how kind of weak Hawkins was portrayed as. And I'll start off this train of thought by saying that in the manga, things didn't exactly go his way either and Zoro defeats the straw monster near instantaneously after suffering the nail mouth attack thing. So if anything, you'd think that extending the fight in the anime might make Hawkins look stronger than he appeared in the manga, but I don't think so. And it's because of the sheer amount of lives he lost. In the manga, he only lost three lives. Once when Zoro hit him in the face initially and when he drew his bad card, both of which we saw in the previous episode and once when Zoro defeated the straw monster. However, in this episode alone, it would appear that Hawkins lost a total of six lives during this battle. At the two we saw in the previous episode and this conflict has ended up causing him a loss of eight lives according to the anime which I find a bit extreme. I don't think it presents Hawkins as the threat he truly is because if anything, according to this episode, it may have been a better idea to stay behind and just take the final lives rather than run away. I mean, yeah, we do have time to worry about, but that was never much for concern because it was Komachiya who forced Zoro and Luffy to flee to begin with. So if Hawkins is so close to defeat, why not finish the job? I don't know, it just forced that question into my head, whereas in the manga, Hawkins still had seven lives left which even though we'd already taken three seemed like a difficult ask to overcome. But just on Hawkins, we did have some great filler moments with him this week. My personal favorite of which was the shot of him looking all evil with his half human, half strawman appearance accompanied with the other worldly laugh of the straw monster. It was a really cool idea and I think it helped in amping up his initial threat which is another reason why it's a bit disappointing that he ended up appearing not so threatening after losing five extra lives. Although it was nice to see a bit of an expanded look at how he controls the straw monster. Although once again, the anime makes it seem like a very bad idea to invoke to begin with because seemingly any damage occurred by it transfers to Hawkins which then transfers to a straw doll. And that would make this technique very undesirable to use against strong opponents because the straw monster is a massive target and an easy way to lose half of your lives in a single attack. So I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't think the straw monster actually functions that way because while we didn't get to see much in the manga, it was only when the monster was destroyed that a straw doll got triggered. And if it does work in the way we see in the anime then once again, it's a pretty awful technique to use in this particular situation knowing that you're up against two members of the worst generation. So I do think that the anime have nerfed Hawkins in a big way here. But some other, how shall we say, interesting choices also happen this episode, quite a few actually. But we'll start with Komachi-O coming to a fork in the road and not knowing which way to go next. In the manga, this was not a thing. He just kept running until they arrived at the village and the suru stuff took place whilst traveling. So this whole stopping in a fork in the road is purely filler. It adds nothing to anything except I guess it does present an opportunity for a Zoro joke, which I suppose is always appreciated. I mean it is pretty funny when he suggested that they go right because even before it happens you just know that someone is going to correct him and say no, we're going to go left. Except I was expecting it to be Luffy actually. I think it would have been pretty funny if he'd taken that suggestion from Zoro and because he knows him so well he sort of used that as an anti-compass and ordered Komachi-O to go left as a result of his swordsman's awful, awful intuition. Then suru could have popped up and gone into her dialogue or something along those lines. But the next intriguing decision made in this episode was closer to the end where we caught an elongated glimpse of one Trafalgar lore. Although I feel like we spent more time lingering on that shot of his chest than anything else. So just like Hawkins in a previous episode, lore was not originally reintroduced at this point in the manga. Although I do kind of get why they did it. Lore is a huge fan favorite character and practically guaranteed to generate excitement after not having been in the story for ever so long. I have to say I do prefer how the manga handled it though, which was a chapter that just ended with seeing the heart pirates, Beppo, Penguin and Chachi. I really liked this because seeing those three built up my anticipation to see lore. You know, it was like serving you an entree before a main meal and just letting you sit with that feeling for a while. Accustomizing the audience to the heart pirates palette before going into the captain. But this is a very, very minor criticism because in Lore's case, I don't think that seeing him here does much to undermine his reintroduction as I remember it. So sure, why not use him to generate a bit of end of episode buzz? Not that I think we really needed it because the very final scene of the episode does that quite effectively on its own with a surprise shot of Onigashima and Kaido. So this was definitely not in the manga and you can tell that quite clearly because of the narrator's words, which is something like, for now, Kaido is just sitting calmly biding his time, which translated means we're going to show you this shot of Kaido, but it has no relevance. It's just a bit of flavor. And until I start thinking too deeply into it, which I have a bit of doing, I don't mind it at all. Onigashima looks brilliant, super intimidating, and the shot of Kaido is also incredibly well done. It's an aesthetic treat for sure, but that is all there is to it, which is not to imply that it actually needs anything else. Anime is a visual medium after all, so giving us great aesthetic content is always good. I just, yeah, once again, I've thought about this far too deeply because fact is that this scene, it makes no sense. Kaido is not a character who sits calmly and bides his time, not at all. He is a purely emotion-driven existence who is incredibly impatient and makes consistently impulsive decisions. Furthermore, unlike lore, I do think that this does a bit to undermine Kaido's reintroduction into the series because let's just say that Kaido's first appearance in Wano is, well, it's definitely something to remember. But I can't deny that it's always nice to see Kaido, and once again, Onigashima was quite the treat to see presented so wonderfully. All right, now I'd like to go over something spoiler-ific because essentially there was something in this episode that no anime-only fans would have really noticed, but the large majority of manga readers would have picked it up instantly, and I do need to briefly touch on it. Now, this is not an insignificant spoiler, so if you'd like to avoid it, then please do skip to this time in the video. However, for everyone else, here we go. So we saw something quite interesting during the sequence with the heart pirates, very surprisingly, right out in the open were the graves of the nine red scabbards. So I've gone back and checked in the manga, and they are certainly not visible during the sequence, but I do think that this is pretty cool because it's absolutely meaningless to anime watchers because it probably just seems like another random piece of Wano texture, and it is a good nod to manga readers. Although I do really hope that these graves stay out of focus and they don't do too many nods towards them, you know, incorporating them in the foregrounds and backgrounds of too many shots because we really do not want too much focus on them before their reveal comes up. So it was not to tip anime-only fans off to their purpose or importance. And finally, let's also briefly touch on Kiku and Urashima, and it is particularly exciting to see Kiku because for any Hunter-Hunter fans out there, Kiku's voice actor is the same as Killua's and Tama's is the same as Gon's. So even though Tama was pretty out of it, when they crossed paths, a Hunter-Hunter fan inside of me could not help but just love that reunion. And as for Urashima, he has a bold color scheme. The pink hair was very unexpected of anybody not associated with the Charlotte family, but I suspect that this is how Wano is going to continue to surprise us. This land is so, so much more colorful than I ever expected it to be. So vibrant hair and clothes are probably just the go for many of its renowned citizens, which is fun. This is one piece, so why not be colorful? But that pretty much does it for episode 899. I do feel like this review has been quite nit-picky, but I want to emphasize that I quite enjoyed the episode. There were a lot of small parts that made me go, hmm, but the overall experience was still solid. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line for your Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime manga series, then please do check out my second channel, New World Review, for all of your wider needs. 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.