Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Before I say anything else, I do want to be clear that yes, “Dreams Come Rued” is this episode’s title. That’s not a typo; it’s “rued” as in the past tense of that word you only ever see in the phrase “rue the day.”
In any case, I think I have maybe not done the best job of conveying how goddamn weird this show is. RWBY: Ice Queendom is an anime that, by now, has taken place mostly within a dream world by volume. And inarguably, one of its strengths is that that world does in fact run on a convincing facsimile of dream logic. Things change on a whim according to the dreamer’s mood and, indeed, changing the dream itself is part of Team RWBY’s plan as they once again venture into the depths of Weiss’ mind, with Team JNPR’s Jaune in tow.
We open with The Funky Four + 1 More here trying a different tack; they defend one of the ice trains that continuously attempts to enter the city from the recurring White Fang attacks. In doing so, they allow one of the trains to enter the fortresslike Winter City for the first time, perhaps, ever. Weiss, notably, has to actually give the order to open the city’s gates and hesitates until the very last moment to do so, a pretty straightforward metaphor for how much difficulty she has in letting other people into her life. She actually visibly is panicking a bit as she has to make the call. Indicative of authoritarian people freaking out when they no longer have pet issues to fearmonger over or just reflective of the fact that Weiss is, like, super tightly-wound? We at Magic Planet Anime ask, is there no reason it cannot be both?
Regardless, the results are pretty magnificent. The city literally transforms around the train as it enters, and despite Weiss’ protestations that the city “will not change” and how she has to make Blake “understand” this, for a while it looks like things might resolve themselves peacefully. Team RWBY hide out of the way while Jaune enters one of the “Silly Prisons.” That’d be the literal cages where the dreamscape versions of Team JNPR are kept, as we first saw several episodes back. Unfortunately—and, call me crazy, I’m getting the impression that whoever wrote this episode is not super fond of Jaune—Jaune ends up unleashing a horde of tiny, chibi Weisses—Miniweissen, we’ll say—who promptly start babbling one-liners like this.
Now he does get ahold of one of those relics—this one yellow—too, but this turns out to be a pretty big fuckup. Frankly, the entire thing has to truly be seen to be believed; it’s nuts. If Ice Queendom was just uncut weirdness like this all the time, it’d probably be my favorite thing airing this season.
Ruby of course interprets the Miniweissen being free to run about as a good thing. And it does initially seem like it might be, because they disable the menacing robot guards from attacking by…infecting them with childishness?
But then they start making a mess of the city, and it rapidly becomes clear that whatever the solution might be to Weiss’ horrible combination of a self-loathing complex, deeply-ingrained bigoted attitudes, and a generally authoritarian attitude towards not just others but herself as well, it was not letting these things out. Before too long, they combine into larger forms—Magnaweissen?—and start levelling buildings and such.
And then, of course, Weiss calls toward the heavens….
“By the power of Studio Shaft, THIS WILL LOOK BETTER ON BLU-RAYYYYYYYYYYY!”
….and promptly unleashes her giant bronze spider mecha. What, you don’t remember that from the original show? (Honestly, I shouldn’t say things like that given that I haven’t seen it. Maybe it is in the original series.)
If I seem to have a lack of things to say here, I think it’s more because this is a transitional episode than anything else. Team RWBY have tried a different approach and it’s gone awry, and we end on a pretty intense cliffhanger as Weiss summons the aforementioned spider mecha. I have no idea where this is going, but I’m excited to find out.
Yeah, okay, maybe she’s a bad person, but the style though. Sheesh.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Well folks, I hope you like reading my opinions on Girls with Guns anime, because we have a full double-writeup this week.
Episode 6 is a weird one, although in the greater context of Lycoris Recoil it’s actually fairly typical, dealing as it does with a mix of action and wacky hijinks. Takina moves in with Chisato as an extra defense against the recent rash of Lycoris killings (we saw one of those in episode 5), mostly to comedic effect, despite the deadly serious situation, and there’s a running gag throughout the episode about Chisato’s preternatural skill at rock-paper-scissors, as well as plenty more gay subtext for those who are watching the series just for that.
But you wouldn’t assume such silliness from how the episode opens; it begins with the DA in crisis. The targeted killings have thrown the agency into disarray, and there’s not much indication that the commander really knows what to do. That’s actually all we see of her in this episode, but it sets the tone for that part of the episode pretty well.
Let’s briefly talk about Majima (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka). Majima is the weird terrorist who’s been behind these Lycoris killings. We learn in this episode that he’s probably working for Mr. Alan (whether he knows that is an open question at this point), and that he has a pretty short fuse, threatening his cohort, the hacker Roboto, if he can’t get him what he wants soon enough. What does he want? To smash the DA. To be honest, if that motive were welded to a more developed character, you could very easily make the case that Majima is actually the good guy. But Majima is not much more than a cartoonish killer with a grudge at this point, and frankly, he’s not a terribly interesting antagonist. (At least not in this episode, but we’ll get to that.) His being the bad guy is easy to chalk up to the show’s rather simple political principles. He is a functional counterforce for Chisato, though, which is enough for this episode specifically. He becomes interested in our hero when Roboto inadvertently shows him some footage of her roughing up some would-be assailants, and from then on it’s mostly ravings about “balance.” Although there is one interesting reveal snuck in here; that Chisato is, or at least Majima thinks she is, an “Alan Lycoris.” It really doesn’t seem like our protagonist is actually working for Alan, so what that means, beyond Alan’s brief allusion to her being a “genius of killing” back in episode 4, is fairly up in the air.
The actual section of the episode where Majima and Chisato fight is strongly done, and LycoReco makes a much-needed comeback on the production front after the visually iffy episode 5, here. The fact that Majima’s favored method of attacking Lycorii starts with “run them over with a Lambo” is still deeply silly, but it at least looks suitably dramatic and menacing this time around. Most notably with this shot, where it does actually look like Chisato might be seriously injured or worse. (She is, of course, fine. No one can stop an anime high school girl with a firearm.)
Things do get dicey enough though that Takina has to intervene, although not before we get a pretty great “hero and villain fistfight while surrounded by chanting goons” scene. I’ve always loved that particular trope, it’s an easy way to inject some grit into a story. (And the between frames of a full-on slugfest are inevitably hilarious.)
There are some other interesting bits in here. For one, we get yet another piece of the puzzle as to the question of what exactly happened back in episode 1. Today we learn that the person who hacked the Radiata system—and thus, indirectly lead to Majima’s people getting their hands on the names and faces of the Lycorii he’s been hunting down—was in fact Walnut, AKA our very own Kurumi. This is basically treated like a serious but ultimately goofy mistake on her part by most of the cast, which is as odd as it sounds. The only resulting consequence being her offering Takina a tearful apology and promising to help them see the case through to the end. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse whenever I bring this up, but this show’s oddly undercooked ideological framework really just lends a weird air to developments like this, and a few other “gags” throughout the episode. It’s the show’s most serious writing-side weakness, but admittedly, Kurumi committing a serious crime being treated as an Uh-Oh Whoopsie is actually kind of funny.
This is also the presumable inspiration for episode 6’s midcards, which I will not otherwise get a chance to include here, and which really remind me of that “girl being homoerotically bullied” meme that used to go around tumblr.
Do you think someone on the staff just made this as fanart, originally? I do wonder.
We close with Takina finally beating Chisato at roshambo, with her residence at Chisato’s place on the line, although not before the latter gets her hopes up.
….And, elsewhere, with Majima swearing vengeance against this “interesting” Lycoris he’s met, thrilled that he’s found someone who can “strike a balance with him.”
Which brings us to episode 7.
Episode 7 is not only much stronger than the comparatively weak 5 and 6, it’s probably the best episode of Lycoris Recoil so far, despite forgoing one of the series’ usual strengths. (That is to say; there aren’t really any cool extended action scenes in it.)
Part of this is down to a simple shift in focus; I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’m a bit down on Lycoris Recoil‘s worldbuilding and the assumptions that it uses as foundations. That’s still true, but this episode foregrounds a more interesting and more directly interpersonal series of conflicts that makes that a fair bit less relevant. You can think of this as the show “zooming in”, if you’d like.
Our plots here are twofold; one follows Majima and manages to make him a fair shake more interesting than he’s been since his introduction, and the other follows Chisato, who, via an unintentionally sneaked look at a phone, manages to learn more about herself and the operation that saved her life than she probably wanted to.
Majima’s plot is the more straightforward of the two, so we’ll knock that out first; he spends much of this episode running around on Roboto’s orders. All to advance some grandiose plan he has to encounter Chisato again, who he has quickly developed a dangerous obsession with. We also learn, somewhat surprisingly, that Majima was present at the much-discussed Radio Tower Incident, and in fact claims credit for “breaking” the tower in the first place. What this might mean is still unclear, but he did meet a certain deadly, familiar-looking Lycoris back then, which immediately adds a layer of the engagingly personal to his fixation on Chisato.
On the other hand, maybe this is just The Flatwoods Monster wearing a schoolgirl uniform.
His half of the episode ends with him and his band of thugs shooting up a police station, and attaching a bugged USB stick from Roboto to one of their computers. (Which is presumably somehow connected to the Radiata, to be honest this is the episode’s only plot point that I’m still a little unclear on.)
Chisato, meanwhile, happens to glance at her boss Mika’s phone one day at the cafe’. One can see why the message would catch her interest.
As much as what follows is about Chisato, it’s also about Mika. I haven’t really talked a lot about Mika in these columns, but he’s actually probably my favorite member of the adult cast. For one thing, cast diversity has badly backslid in anime over the past 20 years, so it is just nice to have a Black character who is a normal part of the narrative instead of some weird stereotype. But more than that, he’s an interesting mentor figure in his own right, past episodes have alluded to a checked past with the DA, gesturing toward the notion that Mika is not entirely the kindly man he seems.
This episode does not pull any kind of secret villain reveal, but it does confirm that, yeah, the guy used to work in the truly unpleasant part of the already-unpleasant secret government agency. Namely, because one of his buddies was Shinji Yoshimatsu. The mysterious head of the Alan Institute who I’ve accidentally previously only been referring to by his pseudonyms, I think. Anyway! That is the guy that he meets up with at Bar Forbidden, the amusingly named members-only lounge mentioned in the text message.
Initially, some of the cast (especially Takina) think that it’s possible that he might be meeting up with the commander, assuming it’s a strictly business affair. They find out the actual truth of things once they infiltrate Forbidden in, I’ll say, a very Chisato way.
Where in the world is Chisato Sandiego?
As they find out, Yoshimatsu and Mika go way back. On the one hand, we get pretty explicit confirmation that they used to be more than just friends. (Quoth Chisato, who sounds like she’s speaking from experience; “love comes in many forms.”) And Yoshimatsu attempts to psych-out Mika in an elevator on his way out. Both by acting all domineering and then by pulling back and explaining the reasons for his actions.
He, as we already more or less knew, was the one who funded her operation after the Radio Tower Incident, and did so because of Chisato’s natural talents. Those talents go unnamed here, but it doesn’t take a genius to infer that he’s referring to her skill as an assassin. Skill she hasn’t really put to use since returning to work as a Lycoris and switching only to non-lethal arms.
Here again we do kind of run smack into LycoReco’s fundamental writing issues. Lycoris Recoil seems to think switching to non-lethal ammo is a much bigger deal than it actually is. Yes, it’s great that the child soldier isn’t wantonly killing people (anymore), but she’s still a child soldier. An unsolved problem remains.
Or does it?
The series has not been shy about portraying Yoshimatsu as a villain. This is the first episode we get that really humanizes him at all, and what we learn is hardly flattering. Chisato confronts Mika and Yoshimatsu, although unfailingly politely. She learns about why she was saved, and even though she does not show it in any way but the most subtle, it’s very clear that this bothers her on a deep level. And I imagine that with Majima setting plans in motion to cause full-on disasters to attract the attention of his favorite Lycoris, her commitment to the bare minimum baseline even of just not killing will be tested in the episodes to come.
While that is not the comprehensive breakdown of the toxic structures that put all this in place that many were hoping for from Lycoris, it is meaningful. In the episode’s closing moments, she hangs up her Alan Institute pendant inside her closet, implicitly locking that part of her identity away. She is clearly bothered by what she’s been told here, even if it’s not in her nature to make that obvious. Hopefully, the next time we see the pendant, she throws it out for good. (And Mika, certainly, feels like he’s failed Chisato in some way by letting her find out about this. I really do think the two have an endearing surrogate father / daughter sort of thing going on, and you really feel for him here.)
Making things worse is that Yoshimatsu tosses this comment toward Takina, possibly hinting at a future wedge between the two. (Even if not, Yoshimatsu is clearly trying to make one.)
The episode ends on a brilliant little match cut; Chisato hanging up her pendant with Majima idly dangling his in the air as he plots his next move. This is the most alive Lycoris Recoil has felt for a few weeks, and whatever happens next, it’s sure to be explosive.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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!
The Cover Issue: It seems like Buggy’s former crew are still slugging things out. I’m still rooting for the acrobat.
In middle and high school English classes, they sometimes teach you to try to search for the “main idea” of a story. Usually, they use purpose-built short stories for this, or a carefully-curated selection of classics that you can more or less fit into that mold if you squint. But this practice neglects the multitudes that even very brief bits of fiction can contain. Chapter 58 of One Piece is, of course, just one tiny part of a much larger whole. But on its own, it’s also a riveting 18 pages of oceanic desperation. Sure, this is Sanji and Zeff’s backstory, but it’s also just a damn compelling piece of life-at-its-limits storytelling. In this chapter we learn how Sanji and Zeff survived for 80 days—nearly three whole months—with nothing but a single sack of food on a deserted sea stack.
Initially, Sanji is optimistic about their situation, dividing his rations into 20 portions so he can stretch out nearly a month’s worth of food, even if he’s only getting the bare minimum. That initial optimism turns to grim, do-anything-to-survive desperation as the weeks wear on. We get to see it happen, mostly within the span of a single page, in what is probably One Piece‘s greatest feat of storytelling economy up ’til this point.
Eventually, he gets desperate enough to try attacking Zeff, to steal his food. Only to learn that the old pirate doesn’t actually have any food with him; he’s been sitting there, slowly starving, for months. The only bag he had was filled with gold and jewels, not a morsel of actual food. When he cut his leg off last issue? That was because it was hurt, sure, but he was also preparing to eat it. All that to keep Sanji alive.
That all leads up to this page, a genuinely poetic lament from the very much dying Zeff, as he confides in Sanji that he too seeks the All Blue, and also shares with him his new dream; to open an ocean-going restaurant.
Thankfully, for both Zeff and for us, a ship comes by not many days later, and the starving pirate and equally-starving Sanji are saved.
We then, of course, cut back to present.
Tomorrow: Sanji vs. Pearl.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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!
The Cover Issue: It would seem that some of Buggy’s crew are figuring out who’s going to take up the captain’s hat the old-fashioned way. I don’t remember these twos’ names, but I do remember that Lion Tamer Boy here was a dick to that dog, so I’m rooting for the acrobat guy.
Today, we learn how Sanji and Zeff went from being on opposite ends of a pirate raid to having the complicated relationship they do now. Spoiler alert; Zeff’s pirates’ raid on the Orbit does not go as planned.
Most of the Orbit’s crew are willing to roll over for Zeff, but not Sanji himself. Convinced his life is in danger, he attacks not just the pirate crew in general but Zeff himself with a pair of kitchen knives, wounding the captain notably badly.
Despite this, when the cook-to-be goes overboard, Zeff is the one who kicks down the ship’s mast in order to give him something to hold on to.
When the storm clears, Sanji finds himself washed up on a deserted island with no one but Zeff himself for company, the splintered wood of the Zeff’s own ship filling the water as the two try to survive for as long as possible.
More than most, there’s a real sense of the nautical to this chapter; sheets of at-sea rain, thrashing, wild waves, a gorgeous, fading island sunset, and so on. It’s definitely one of the best-lookingOne Piece chapters so far. If more of this is in store for us, I really can’t wait.
In any case, the chapter ends with Zeff taking a sharp rock to his leg. (Presumably it was infected.) Thus providing some context to Sanji’s earlier statement. Irony is a real jerk, isn’t she?
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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!
The Cover Issue: A context-free but pleasant scene of Sanji and Luffy wrangling some buffaloes. One of whom is smoking!
This is quite an information-dense issue, but we can basically break down what happens into three main parts.
One: Gin threatens to kill Zeff, offering to spare his life if and only if Sanji and the rest of the cooks get off the ship ASAP. Sanji refuses, cryptically stating that he’s already taken so much from Zeff that he can’t allow him to lose anything else.
(In general, this is a rather intense chapter, and the art is more dynamic and impressive than normal, which is saying something, because One Piece already looks pretty good most of the time.)
Two: Uh-oh, Pearl is not actually dead. He kicks the shit out of Sanji, threatening his life by clapping the cook’s head between two of his shields. He also lights the ship on fire again (or maybe it just never went out from last issue), threatening the lives of everyone on board, including his own. Again.
Three: Sanji’s being knocked out is used as a transitional into a flashback, where we meet him at the young age of just 9, when he was an apprentice aboard a ship called the Orbit. He learns—and for the first time, we learn—about the legend of the ocean “All Blue”, a place where all the world’s oceans meet. It’s of keen interest to the other cooks aboard the Orbit, since anywhere where all the seas meet would have all of the world’s fish in it as well—at least, that’s their logic—and thus be a veritable seafood buffet. Of course, they don’t really believe in the thing, unlike Sanji, who very much does.
But that’s interrupted by the Orbit’s peaceful voyage being disrupted by a pirate raid, led by a very familiar captain.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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!
The Cover Issue: We catch up with some of Buggy’s other crew here, who are apparently under the impression that he’s dead. I love the little funeral portrait they’ve made out of the ship’s timber, that’s a cute touch.
Here’s a fact to ponder; fire is actually super dangerous at sea. It was even moreso during the era of wooden ships. It would spread quickly, and it was difficult to get under control partly because there just isn’t really anywhere else to go, so it’s hard to manage on top of that.
This fact is relevant in today’s One Piece. Can you guess why?
Honestly, I got nothin’. This is a manga where we’ve already seen a guy destroy an entire ship with a single sword stroke, and somehow this is the first thing that just leaves me totally speechless. It just feels really random? Like sure, he can somehow make fire with his shield and he does it just as a reflex because he has jungle PTSD. It’s not even a bad development really, it’s just perplexing.
Out-of-nowhere-ness aside, his outburst does result in the predictable.
Although not for long. Pearl is actually defeated in this chapter, too, in a pretty solid battle mostly between him and Sanji but also featuring an assist from Luffy, who deflects one of Krieg’s huge spike ball things as a crucial moment when Krieg decides that Pearl’s causing more trouble than he’s worth. (Also in here; Zeff deflecting some of Pearl’s fireballs with nothing but the wind force generated by his kicks. Have I said “because manga is the only valid form of art” enough times in this column for it to count as a catchphrase yet?)
In any case, Krieg doesn’t seem to have the highest opinion of his second-in-command.
But there is at least one pirate who can pull his weight in Krieg’s crew.
Random question; do you remember Gin?
Tomorrow: Chef Zeff at gunpoint!
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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!
The Cover Issue: In today’s Chapter cover (not the volume cover! Those are outside the scope of this, uh, sub-column?) Buggy and his lady-friend confirm their mutual hatred of Luffy and have dinner and wine while they’re at it. “PIRATE ALLIANCE”, the chapter text helpfully tells us.
The image of Buggy just going absolutely beast mode on an entire fish is going to haunt me for a long time.
So this chapter is mainly about two things. One; holy shit, Sanji is really good at kicking. (The unspoken implication being of course that Sanji studied under Zeff not just as a cook but as a fighter as well.) He also gets off a pretty great samurai vibes line about how knives are the soul of a chef.
Two; we meet a person named Pearl. (Also in the background of much of this issue, Luffy and Krieg are fighting elsewhere. Keep that in mind, it’s important.)
When I saw this chapter was called “Pearl”, I did indeed assume it’d introduce a character named that. But in my experience, Pearl is usually a girl’s name (think Steven Universe, Splatoon 2, I think that whale from Spongebob, etc.), and given one of the things One Piece is—ahem—known for, I sort of assumed Don Krieg would turn out to have a femme fatale pirate woman in his ranks.
Well, Pearl does work for Krieg, but he is….not that.
Yes, this is Don Krieg’s second-in-command, a walking dartboard made out of garbage can lids with a ponder-worthy orb for a hat. He is obsessed with his own handsomeness and also with not getting hurt in combat; he brags that he’s never lost “even one drop” of his own blood while fighting. He brags that he wouldn’t even get hurt if he were shot with a cannonball; you know how it goes.
Unfortunately, he’s also great at tempting fate, and you can probably guess that I wouldn’t be mentioning this if it weren’t relevant. Yes, as Luffy and Krieg are fighting on the next deck over, Krieg accidentally hurls Luffy in Pearl’s general direction, and this happens.
The reactions that follow are, shall we say, interesting, and imply some crazy shit is about to go down. That’s for tomorrow’s chapter, of course, because that’s where today’s ends.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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 hope you’re paying attention to the chapters’ cover art, because increasingly, they feel like foreshadowing, as much as telling a story all their own. But if you’re not, that’s okay, because from now on, we’re going to have a little additional segment to kick off each, or at least most, columns. Sometimes a whole paragraph, just a few sentences, it’s –
The Cover Issue: Here we’ve got the still-stranded Buggy being recruited by the woman we first saw back in issue 51. She seems to be a pirate-hunter of some sort, based on her wanted poster of—who else?—Luffy. This also lets us know that Luffy is getting a bit of a reputation. A well-earned one, I’d say.
“All right, ye sea wolves. Let’s capture that fish!”
The Baratie. The restaurant? It transforms.
There’s other stuff that happens in this chapter, sure. Krieg explains his master plan for returning to the Grand Line, for example.
But as another “20 pages of action” sort of deal, I’m just awestruck by how wonderfully ridiculous the transforming restaurant boat is. Krieg and his pirates raid the ship, hoping to capture it, and the mackerel head on the restaurant pops off, revealing that it’s an autonomous submersible with a cannon mounted in its mouth. Just truly top-of-the-line absurdity, here. I marvel at it.
Also; the ship has a second deck that rises up so that way the cooks can fight on it instead of damaging the restaurant. Again, just absolutely peak Anime Engineering going on here.
If you think that this is going to make Krieg’s crew pushovers though, think again. Krieg might be in over his head when it comes to Hawkeye, but he’s no lightweight, and he proves it by simply picking the Mackerel Head up and tossing it back at the restaurant.
Where it is promptly deflected.
With a single kick.
By Sanji.
Manga is the only valid form of art.
Tomorrow: who the hell knows?! But in a good way.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Does anyone else feel like this storyline is dragging just a bit?
Far be it from me to say that the show is spending too much time on the titular Ice Queendom arc, it’s just that it’s taken a bit of an odd direction, and I’m not sure what to think.
“En garde, I’ll let you try my Wu Tang style.”
Before we get into the writing side of things though, an administrative note and some production observations. For the former; your girl is really sick with something that is hopefully not COVID-19. So if my commentary is a little harder to follow even than usual, I apologize.
As for the production; Ice Queendom has never been a particularly consistent-looking show. Even in the case of the premiere, one of the episodes (the third) looked much better than the other two. Given the spellbinding episode 4 I held out some hope that things might even out a bit, but two episodes later and we’re kind of back to where we started on this front. Some cuts look really good, but there’s a general sense that no one is really steering the ship. It’s not just things like very obvious CGI rigs being used for mid-distance shots (and even the occasional closer-to-the-camera cut), it’s a general lack of consistency. Some cuts look like they haven’t really been entirely finished, and this episode’s directing wanders down the weird cul-de-sac of manga-style panel cut-ins, a quirk that’s appeared throughout the series but is used to the point of abuse here, sometimes to disguise the fact that not much is really going on in a given scene.
Why do I feel like I’m watching an episode of The Pink Panther all the sudden.
There are also a few bizarre cases of directorial wonkiness straight out of Bakemonogatari, such as a scene where Yang and Blake talk over the phone while the latter evades monsters, but the latter’s side of the conversation is rendered entirely by cutting to a still image of her phone and replacing whatever dialogue might’ve been said with a bitcrushed electronic shriek. This really seems like it’s foreshadowing something, but nothing comes of it this episode. Interesting visually? Absolutely, but baffling in-context.
All this said, I still wouldn’t actually say the show looks bad. Occasional parts of it do, certainly, but that’s really the overall thing; it’s super uneven. (Maybe I’m just being nice because compared to the show that this one replaced in my weeklies, Ice Queendom might as well be Night on The Galactic Railroad.)
The writing, similarly, falls back into a much choppier mode after a few episodes of mostly holding it together. The episode’s actual plot is solid enough; Team RWBY attempt to defeat the Night Grimm lurking within Weiss’ subconscious and fail, getting expelled from her head yet again in the process. We see some good stuff along the way; like the very ship bait-y way that Weiss refers to Ruby as being “precious” to her, a couple solid (if, again, inconsistent) fights, some cool locales (including a floating snake statue wrapped into an infinity symbol that is only on-screen for a criminally short few minutes), and the return of the chibi doll gadgets from episode 4.
But there’s a strange thing here where the character interactions seem to imply a much greater depth to these relationships than what we’ve actually been shown. How long have Team RWBY actually known each other in this continuity? A few days at most? Interesting tidbits like Weiss possibly resenting / respecting / something? Blake for her dream-self’s habit of sneaking into the inner castle of Winter City only to escape again really seem like they’re playing off of some long-simmering tension….but we saw these characters meet, and it seemed fairly obvious to me that Weiss doesn’t like Blake because she has some bigoted attitudes that she’s not dealing with very well. (The series offers a not-entirely-convincing alternative explanation. We’ll get to that.) So, this entire notion just comes across as strange. Much like the odder visual moments, these scenes are interesting in isolation but lack any apparent further meaning in their actual context. It’s a little hard to buy that Weiss’ problems with Blake are somehow solely personal when she’s dressed like that.
More promising are the relationships centered around Ruby, who is by this point seriously doubting her capabilities as a leader and questioning if she’s really a good fit for the position at all. An interesting dynamic is brought to the fore here where Yang actively tries to flatter Ruby’s leadership in order to improve her mood, but it doesn’t really seem to be working and I suspect that Ruby is cognizant of her older sister’s obvious ulterior motive in, you know, seeing her baby sister happy.
The episode’s first half caps with a fight against “Negative” Weiss (that’s the Weiss within the dream, you see), who is actually defending the Nightmare Grimm hidden within the center of her own mind, either very much corrupted by it or acting on her own impulses in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. (Possibly her desire to appease her father and live up to the family name, or the watchful eye of her “brother,” who has continued to fly around as a bat throughout these episodes.)
In any case, Ruby gets a rather nasty cut from some of the Grimm’s thorned vines shortly after being explicitly warned about that exact thing. That will probably come back around later, if I had to guess. So, you know, keep an eye on it.
Team RWBY lose the fight, and are again expelled back to the real world. Exorcist-witch-coolest character in this entire franchise-sage Shion tells the girls that they’ll need to make their third try count; if they fail again, Weiss probably won’t make it. But, there’s some time before Shion can send them back in, so they should formulate a plan. Instead, they each split off on their own and talk with other characters. The second half of the episode thus centers around Team RWBY’s respective conversations with a bunch of minor characters who are mostly not worth caring much about.
The exception here is Yang’s chat with the robotic Penny (I don’t think we’ve been explicitly told that she’s an android or something, but it’s pretty obvious), whose talk about dreams as “maintenance” gives Yang the bright idea to perhaps try actually changing Weiss’ dream itself.
I like Penny. She’s very round.
Later, we learn this is actually a viable plan, although Weiss herself will have to perceive the changes as an improvement.
Ruby gets the short end of the stick in terms of talking to actually interesting characters, since she ends up sitting with Team JNPR from episode 3, whose leader (I think?) Jaune is the guy who was first infected by the Nightmare Grimm in the first place. The entire team is there, including Nora, who has a hammer, and Whoever This Guy Is.
No, seriously, who is this? Was he even in any prior episodes? I don’t remember him.
But! Ruby tells them that they—or at least, their dream counterparts—are present in Weiss’ dream as well, which gives Team JNPR the idea of perhaps tagging along. Again, this turns out to be viable. So hey, Team RWBY is two for two.
And then there’s Blake.
Blake meets up with her friend Sun (Tomoaki Maeno), the blonde Faunus first introduced in episode 3. Their little talk…rubs me the wrong way. Throughout their back and forth, Blake confesses that she wants to help Weiss change for the better (admirable enough), and then compares Weiss’ own dislike of her to the motives of the still-active section of White Fang, which makes no sense whatsoever. Even setting aside the borderline-repulsive implications there about what that may be trying to say (or inadvertantly be saying) about real-world political situations, on just a very basic level, one person’s prejudice is not comparable to the goals of a liberationist organization, which is what White Fang seems to be. Like, I almost feel like I’m way off in the weeds by even saying this, only because it’s so obvious; those fundamentally aren’t the same thing! They’re not even similar! It makes no sense to compare them! Ice Queendom of course just carries on like this is all a given, and Blake’s part of the episode’s back half ends with her redoubling her efforts to try to “change” Weiss. Sure, whatever. I like Blake as a character on a basic nuts-and-bolts level; she’s a stoic “cool girl” with raven hair and a pair of kitty ears, that’s hard to fuck up, but I really wish Ice Queendom would hand her a plot that’s not this.
I feel a little bad harping on this point so hard, especially because I know secondhand that this is a writing weakness inherited from the original RWBY rather than something that this series’ writers came up with. But still! It’s kind of a wild thing to do, right? There’s “having an inherited problematic background element in your show” and there’s “actively drawing attention to it.” This is the latter, and I really hope that the show either finds some way out of this little fox’s den it’s written itself into or it just stops trying to deal with this entirely. Obviously, the former would be better, but the latter would be decent compensation. To be fair; there is a glimmer of hope for the Blake situation specifically; Sun points out that Blake might be thinking about this the wrong way. The fact that Dream-Blake (who we don’t see directly, since our Blake is taking her place within the dream) seems to be such a thorn in Dream-Weiss’ side implies that Weiss thinks about Blake a fair bit. He puts forward that perhaps she’s just frustrated that she can’t understand Blake very well, implying that it may be because Blake isn’t someone Weiss understands—or even thinks she understands—and is thus beyond Weiss’ “control.” This has some weird implications all on its own, but simply as a relationship between two characters it makes way more sense than the stab at a political angle.
His name is Sun as in Sun Wukong, by the way. Get it, because he’s got a monkey’s tail? Ahaha. Worldbuilding!
In fact, it rather makes me wish that said angle weren’t present at all, because if it weren’t, Blake and Weiss’ cat-and-mouse relationship would actually be quite strongly written. As it stands; it’s iffy, but perhaps it’ll pick up, the series is only half over, after all.
As for the episode itself; it ends with Team RWBY headed back into the dream. Most likely with Team JNPR shortly following, but we don’t actually see them enter it here, as the credits roll before that can happen.
I worry I’m giving off the impression that I dislike this show. There’s a trap you can pretty easily fall into as a critic where you end up just listing everything you dislike about something, even the things you genuinely quite enjoy. I wouldn’t call Ice Queendom an anime-of-the-year contender or anything, but it’s a solid series on a moment-to-moment level, and it’s consistently entertaining. You can get away with a lot if you manage to just work as a fun piece of cheesy action, and Ice Queendom is pretty good at that.
To six more weeks thereof, or perhaps even more.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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!
Zolo isn’t really dead. You’re probably not shocked! I know I’m not, because he’s one of the franchise’s main characters. How is he still alive? Well, Hawkeye just….uh, cut him in a way so he won’t die. Look, just roll with it.
More than that, most of this chapter is about Zolo redoubling his oath to become the world’s greatest swordsman (it’s even called “The Oath”). Hawkeye—who gives us his improbably cool real name here—finds Zolo too strong in spirit to kill, and that’s why he’s spared him. He gives Zolo a pretty awesome speech here, actually. I really like this guy!
Zolo vows not just to eventually defeat Hawkeye, but to never lose again. Not just for himself, or for his late friend, but for Luffy’s sake, too.
All told, this is a pretty excellent scene, and Hawkeye caps it off by leaving as dramatically and mysteriously as he came. Or at least, he goes to do that, but there’s one person who still has other ideas.
Yes, Krieg makes the astounding decision to try to kill Hawkeye, despite the man single-handedly wrecking his entire fleet before, and despite what he just did to Zolo. It goes about as well as you’d expect, and our story here splinters in to as Hawkeye once again unleashes his sword techniques to completely mulch a boat Krieg is on.
And Luffy, in the final piece of this particular puzzle of timber and saltwater, vows to drive off Krieg’s pirates, who are now swarming the oceanbound restaurant en masse, in exchange for being able to ditch his choreboy obligations.
Tomorrow: one sea, two ships.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
The Magic Planet 