One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
I have to be honest, until now I haven’t been entirely on board with this arc. “Guy with a big nose learns not to lie” is….well, it’s pretty far away from my usual interests as a manga reader.
Today, secret murder plans get involved. That is drama I’m here for.
No wacky misunderstandings here; Klahadore has been going deep cover for the past three years as part of a winding long con to bump his ostensible mistress off and take her vast fortune. That weird backwards-walking hypnotist guy from last chapter is, of course, also in on it. As for Klahadore; there is no Klahadore. It’s a persona. His real name? Captain Kuro.
Despite his protests, I will be calling him “Kuro” from here on out, because it is easier to spell than Klahadore. Kuro’s plan is rather elaborate. Overly so, I might even say, given that it also involves Django’s hypnotism powers.
This step seems a bit unnecessary to me. Maybe it betrays a lack of confidence on Kuro’s part in his own plan? Maybe he’s just paranoid. In any case, the predictable happens; Luffy shouts from atop the cliff that they can’t do this thing, because the Silly Putty Pirate has never met a knot of rope he wouldn’t try to slash in half with a cutlass.
Although in this case, he meets something that being made out of rubber can’t help with. As he rushes down the cliffside, Django hypnotizes him—and also himself—and the two conk out simultaneously. Leading Usopp to play the role of the boy who cried….well you know.
Predictably, nobody does believe him, other than his own three little buddies. Zolo, though, notices that Luffy’s gone missing, and I suspect that no matter what Kuro may have planned, he’s probably not accounting for a guy with three swords.
Tomorrow: A guy with three swords saves Luffy’s straw hatted hide. (Probably.)
Also this.
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I’ve changed my methodology for these a few times over the past couple seasons, but this time it’s very straightforward. After voting myself to break a tie (something I’ve not had to do in any previous community poll, things were much closer this season than they’ve been in any past season), I took a screenshot of the final vote tally at around 10PM last night (I checked again this morning just to make sure nothing had changed, don’t worry). I will be covering the top three shows, because honestly, I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what to cover this season. Putting it in the fans’ hands is a simple and practical solution.
Why don’t we make it a bit of an event? Here are the winners, starting from the third-place winner, and working up to the first.
Third Place: Call of the Night
Filling in the “exceedingly horny rom-com” gap that must have been left in all your hearts following the end of My Dress-Up Darling a season ago, Call of the Night is an interesting one. I read a very small bit of the manga for this, back when it was new. I liked it but failed to keep up with it (I am very bad at keeping up with manga), so I’m going into this just-shy-of-blind. Still, what I do know is promising. Take the Sentai blurb, for instance.
Wracked by insomnia and wanderlust, Kou Yamori is driven onto the moonlit streets every night in an aimless search for something he can’t seem to name. His nightly ritual is marked by purposeless introspection — until he meets Nazuna, who might just be a vampire! Kou’s new companion could offer him dark gifts and a vampire’s immortality. But there are conditions that must be met before Kou can sink his teeth into vampirism, and he’ll have to discover just how far he’s willing to go to satisfy his desires before he can heed the Call of the Night!
Sentai Filmworks
That’s really quite a lot to fit into your high premise. And it’s not like vampirism as a metaphor for coming of age—especially the less wholesome parts of that whole process—is anything new, but I do think this really has the potential to be something special. Whether or not it will actually deliver on that is another question, of course.
I do also want to point out the involvement of Tomoyuki Itamura in the director’s seat here. Just earlier this year, he wrapped up his work on The Case Study of Vanitas, a completely different horny vampire anime. That show is very good (if certainly not without a couple issues), so it gives me hope that Call of the Night will similarly be so. I suppose we’ll all find out together.
Coverage begins on July 8th. (If you’re reading this the day it goes up, that’s a week from today.)
Second Place: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer
Ahahaha. Oh no.
This one getting as many votes as it did quite surprised me. If nothing else, you can take its presence here as evidence that I didn’t tamper with the vote in any way, because I actually wasn’t planning to watch it at all, at this point!
I love the original Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammermanga. It’s one of my favorite action manga full stop, actually, and that’s mostly because of its deep characterization and solid thematic core. But it’s also because Satoshi Mizukami is a goddamn genius, and everything he draws is gorgeous. The only other anime he’s ever had a strong hand in, Planet With, did manage the incredibly tall ask of translating his distinct visual style to animation. Because of that, it managed to stand out in a year that was absolutely stuffed with great anime.
But that was in 2018, four years that might as well be four centuries ago, given all that’s happened since. Now, it is 2022, and the Biscuit Hammer adaption is being handed to a studio of little note (NAZ, they did Sabikui Bisco earlier this year alongside the similarly named Studio OZ), a director who is basically a total unknown (Nobuaki Nakanishi), and a series compositor best known for an utterly infamous flop (Yuuichirou Momose, of My Sister, My Writer notoriety). Combine that with the utterly hideous key visual sitting at the top of this entry, and a pair of trailers best described as “absolutely terrible” and “okay I guess”, and this one is going to be an active challenge to get through, barring some miracle. It would not be the first time that Mizukami has drawn blood from a stone, but no one should be expected to pull that sort of thing off twice.
I guess we’ll find out if it really is that bad or if all this doomsaying will look foolish twelve weeks from now soon. Coverage begins on the 9th.
First Place: Lycoris Recoil
What is Lycoris Recoil?
The interesting thing about an original series that’s yet to premiere is that it can, in our hearts and minds, be literally anything. Lycoris Recoil has had Key Visuals and trailers and all the usual accoutrements that come with being a TV anime in the modern day, but no one really seems to have a good grasp on its character. Will it be lighthearted? Dark? How big of a role does the cafe` we know is a central setting point of the story play? The chrome pistols and spider lilies in the above KV art certainly imply something sinister is going on, and “Lycoris Recoil” itself is a two-language pun combining the scientific name of the spider lily with just one inevitable consequence of firing a gun. But all of these things raise more questions than they answer, and we’re all going into this show with little to go off of but our own notions about what makes art interesting.
To me, this is fascinating. I can recall an upcoming original series capturing the public imagination in this way twice in recent times. The first time, we got Wonder Egg Priority, an anime I dearly love, but that’s an opinion that puts me firmly in small company. The second, we got Sonny Boy, which I also really like, and is also divisive (although much less so). Putting Lycoris Recoil in that company is probably attaching unrealistic expectations to it; if you want my earnest guess, I’m thinking this will be more of a piece with anime like Princess Principal or the underrated RELEASE THE SPYCE than either of the aforementioned. But honestly, who knows?
Well, we will pretty soon. Lycoris Recoil premieres tomorrow. Coverage will begin then, barring some unexpected circumstance.
See you then, anime fans. But, as a parting item of interest, here is the entire top half of the poll, if you’d like to see what else got a lot of votes. I am particularly surprised at how well Uncle From Another World did.
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I find it hard to imagine a more “oh fuck this guy”-inducing phrase that a character could use than “ruffian heritage.”
But, ah, this chapter also gives us his sympathetic backstory. So it goes. It’s a brief one, mostly boiling down to the revelation that Klahadore himself used to work on a ship, only to be marooned for making “a mistake.” The word “pirate” goes unsaid but is perhaps implied. Kaya’s father took him in, and his overprotective streak toward her—which eventually leaves Usopp, and then Luffy, to storm off in a huff—comes from a desire to not fail him. It’s not explicitly stated that Kaya’s father is deceased but, again, it’s pretty strongly implied.
Anyway, you know what’s more exciting than butler / heiress interpersonal drama? Guys who walk backwards.
Hahahahaha what the fuck.
We do not learn Django’s deal here. My guess is that he’ll end up being this arc’s antagonist? But a guess is all it is. He does pull of a pretty impressive “trick” where he hypnotizes Usopp’s three little buddies, only to also conk out himself. Still more compelling than most Penn & Teller specials, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Luffy kind of knows Usopp’s dad! Or knew, anyway. This is the sort of thing I could’ve seen coming if I were a bit more diligent with note-taking. We get a flashback to Luffy hanging out with Yasopp, who was part of Red Hair Shanks’ crew. He’s noted as an incredible shot (fair enough). And, despite Luffy and Usopp’s remarks to the contrary, he kind of comes across as a deadbeat.
My own father left my mother shortly after I was born for dubious reasons, so I will not pretend I’m free of biases here.
In any case, Usopp and Luffy happen to randomly spot “that butler” from their clifftop perch, which leads to the chapter ending on this note.
Tomorrow: Butler Betrayal! (Or perhaps just a wacky misunderstanding.)
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