With the Reverie being such a major world event, there were bound to be people not affiliated with the World Government who wanted a piece of the action as well. The Revolutionary Army—led by Luffy's father, Monkey D. Dragon—has been in the series for a while, but they've been biding their time in the background. Now they're finally making their move and gathering their most powerful forces together in the Grand Line to wage war against the world nobles who sit on top of the government. We're introduced to four new captains of the Revolutionaries this week as they show up in a port town being ransacked by pirates. Here's the rundown:
Belo Betty—immediately one of the loudest (and frankly somewhat half-baked) character designs in all of One Piece, looking like a steampunk porn parody version of Liberty Leading the People. Betty is a gruff woman who insults the townspeople while also inspiring them to stand up for themselves. Her Devil Fruit is the Pump-Pump Fruit, which allows her to bring out the inner strength of people around her with a gust of air. She's also the only Revolutionary captain from East Blue, where Luffy and Dragon are from, so she feels like the most important of these four.
Morley—a giant man wearing little more than a miniskirt. He has an affect where he talks like a teenage girl and accuses his enemies of hitting on him. "Crossdresser adjacent," let's call him. This is the same episode where we learn the Revolutionaries have moved their headquarters to Ivankov's Kamabakka QUEENDOM after the Blackbeard pirates trashed their old place, so Morley's character quirks feel like they must be semi-related to this series' underground world of drag queens. (One Piece's depiction of gender non-conforming characters is "anarchic", to put it charitably.) Supplementary materials in the manga also suggest that his Push-Push powers were responsible for creating Level 5.5 of Impel Down, which makes the connection more apparent.
Lindbergh—a cat mink who flies around with a jetpack, always looking for opportunities to try out the new weapons he develops. He's definitely the least interesting of the four.
Karasu—a man in a plague doctor's mask whose body is made of crows. He would have been the person who picked Sabo up at the end of Dressrosa, and his quirk is that he forgets to turn up the loudspeaker on his mask, so the other characters spend the whole episode unable to hear him. It's something a little silly to offset his very serious design.
Oddly enough, I find myself endeared to these characters much more in the anime than I did in the manga, where their introduction feels far more mechanical: "Yup. Those are definitely some Eiichiro Oda designs." This is an exceptionally well-drawn episode that adds just enough character animation to breathe added life into the scene. They're not my favorite designs in the series, but I do like the free-spirited weirdness that they embody. Who better to take down The Man than a bunch of tacky-dressed rebels?
Their relationship with the townspeople is also interesting, as ready to help the weak as they are to condescend to them. Civilians are always caught between a rock and a hard place—between an oppressive government and the pirates eager to attack anyone who's vulnerable. The Revolutionaries are here to break that dynamic, and all they ask in return is that innocent people stand up for themselves. Luffy and the Straw Hats aren't adventuring to make the world a better place—they prefer to solve problems as they come—but the battle for a true universal justice is always happening around the corner. Let's just hope the world doesn't blow up before then.
Japanese studio to handle production slated for broadcast, streaming globally― Kadokawa and Singaporean game developer and publisher Garena announced on Monday that they are co-producing an anime adaptation of Garena's Garena Free Fire battle royale shooting game, with a Japanese studio handling the animation. Kadokawa's Kadokawa Qingyu subsidiary is the production manager. The anime is planned to b...
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Train to the End of the World and Voice Actor Radio are getting a lot of love these last few weeks! Discover which other series stand out in our weekly user rankings!― Let's have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season,
based on the polls you can find in our Daily Streaming Reviews
and on the Your Score page with the latest simulcasts. Keep in mind that these rankings...
Crystal Kay previously sang themes for 2004's Fullmetal Alchemist and Nodame Cantabile― Recently, Anime News Network was able to sit down with singer-songwriter Crystal Kay and talk about not only her involvement with anime over the years but also what it was like to grow up in Japan as the child of a Korean-Japanese mother and an African-American father. Anime fans likely know of Crystal Kay throug...
The plot is excellent in the romance camp. Everything that happens is to get Eui-joon and Gunwoo together, and it works pretty well.― You can read The Dangerous Convenience Store in English two ways. The first is to read it on the manhwa site/app Manta, which has all seventy-five chapters and four bonus stories available. The second is to read Seven Seas' print (or ebook) edition, which, as of this ...
Some older mysteries inch closer to resolution as the true nature of the Abyss slowly comes into view, and long-posed questions start to be answered.― Sometimes, being a fan of Akihito Tsukushi's acclaimed Made in Abyss series means acclimating to suffering. Like many Western devotees, I was introduced to this bizarre, squishy, disturbing world via the 2017 first season of Kinema Citrus' fantastic a...
60th, final episode of previous anime streamed on YouTube on Friday― The official Twitter account for the anime of Penguin Box's Odekake Kozame (Little Shark's Outings) manga announced on Friday that the manga will get a new anime series. Update: The staff revealed a visual for the new series in a press release on Saturday. The previous anime series debuted on YouTube last August, and its 60th and f...
As Slam Dunk reached its final stretch, I can see why this series is considered the sports classic that it is today.― This is the largest batch of Slam Dunk episodes that I've reviewed thus far. Originally, I wanted to review the show in more even seasons, but given its overall pacing and release, it wasn't easy to find a moment where it felt right to stop and start again. However, as we approached ...