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First Thoughts
This week's episode felt a bit weak compared to the episode from last week. You may have noticed that there was a lot of filler material in the episode. Filler material isn't a bad thing but it can be bad because it can slow the pace of the episode. If you didn’t notice a slow pace then please let me know.
It is unfortunate because this episode has some good moments in it.Summary
Hancock is shown dropping Luffy off near Sabaody.
Luffy has a brief confrontation with the Fake Straw Hats.
Chopper mistakes the Fake Straw Hats for his real companions.
Sanji runs off to gather rations but instead he finds Zoro.
Thoughts 
Boring Filler Material is Boring
Filler material in One Piece can be good or bad. Sometimes it can provide exposition that the manga couldn't. Other times it can just put the viewer off. This episode had a lot of the latter.
The filler material in this episode slowed the rest of the episode. Everything involving Luffy and the Fake Straw Hats happens quickly. In the episode, you can see it was slowed. I am guessing this was done because they wanted to keep people watching to see how Luffy would deal with the impostures. 
More Filler.....
Fake Zoro and Sanji’s later discussion about the real Chopper grew in the animation. This only slowed the episode down. I would have preferred the scenes kept as is.
Fake Straw Hats Shenanigans
Did you notice that the Fake Straw Hats sounded familiar? That is because they were voiced by the Straw Hats’ voice actors excepting Robin's voice actor. This made watching the new episodes a bit of a game because you can try to match which Straw Hat voice actor voiced which Fake Straw Hat. Below is a description of who voiced who:
Fake Luffy- Hiroaki Hirata (Sanji)
Fake Zoro- Kappei Yamaguchi (Usopp)
Fake Nami- Ikue Otani (Chopper)
Fake Sogeking- Kazuki Yao (Franky)
Fake Sanji- Kazuya Nakai (Zoro)
Fake Chopper- Mayumi Tanaka (Luffy)
Fake Robin- Akemi Okamura (Nami)
Fake Franky- Yūichi Nagashima/Cho (Brook)
You can hear Sanji’s voice when Fake Luffy yells. The creepiest voice has to be Fake Nami’s as voiced by Chopper's voice actress. She sounds like an 'evil Chopper'.
If, and when, Funimation dubs this part of the series, I hope they would do the same with their Straw Hat voice actors. It will be funny to hear Eric Vale and Colleen Clinkenbeard’s rendition of Fake Luffy and Fake Chopper’s voices.
The Fake Straw Hats are proving to be complete opposites of their counterparts. The Straw Hats never took advantage of their fame (or infamy). Some of them such as Nami, found it a curse.
Fake Luffy is an intolerable jerk. He feels confident that everybody will believe he is Luffy. The guy doesn't even know that he is jabbing his gun into the real Luffy. I wonder if Luffy realizes what is going on here. It seems like he wanted to get away from them as fast as possible.
The only good thing that the Fake Straw Hats do is make people aware of the Straw Hats. They paint them as vicious criminals though. The reason I say this is because the Straw Hats have been missing for two years and everybody seemed to have forgotten about them. If it wasn’t for this situation then the Straw Hats would have most likely rejoined quietly. Where is the fun in that?
H. E. Double Haki Sticks
Speaking of the Fake Straw Hats, Luffy decided to display his new found Haki powers to them. It is impressive to see how much control Luffy has over his Conqueror's Haki because this one can be quite troublesome. Luffy was able to make his Conqueror's Haki affect only the Fake Straw Hats. This is different from Marineford where everybody felt it and Luffy was unable to activate it willingly.
The One Piece: Reloaded
Another thing to consider is that Luffy decided to handle the situation quietly. Usually Luffy would whine when somebody does something similar to what Fake Luffy did. Instead he kept quiet and let Fake Luffy gloat. He used Observation Haki to avoid the bullets and knocked the Fake Straw Hats out with Conqueror's Haki. Luffy didn't raise a fist. Luffy has matured during the last two years.
Sprinkle of Information
A lot of things have changed in the last two years. In the last episode we learned that the Marines moved the location of Marine HQ. In this episode we get some information about the pirate world.
A pirate in this episode mentioned Blackbeard, Kid and Drake's name in his speech. You can guess that these three pirates are doing well. Why else would he even mention their names?"Blackbeard, Kid, and Drake are doing whatever they want in the New World."
-Random Pirate Captain
It was clear that Blackbeard would be successful in the New World because he has the most experience. Kid and Drake were both rookies prior to the time skip. Kid seemed eager while Drake's future looked a bit uncertain. Both seem to be successful enough in the New World to make other pirates talk.
YEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH~
CSI: Sabaody
We finally get to see Zoro out of silhouette after being taunted in the last episode. The most important feature to note on Zoro is that he has a scar over his left eye. That must have been a result of his training with Mihawk. Speculation you could make is that Zoro has something hidden under that eye.
It is kind of funny, we finally learn what was hidden under Sanji's hair and now we have another source of speculation with Zoro's new scar.
The scene above looks similar to a scene from earlier in the series. Mihawk did the very same thing back in the Baratie Arc. It would look like Zoro has grown strong enough to cut ships in half with similar ease.
Always expect Zoro to do something cool like cutting a large vessel in half. Even after getting on the wrong ship.
Final Thoughts
I had to include this image....
The episode would have been much more enjoyable if the filler didn’t mess up the pacing. The best part of this episode had to be the Luffy-Hancock moment because it was smooth and kept intact.
Also note that not everything from the comic version was depicted. It seems like things are being rearranged. Hopefully we will not see that in the next episode but I expect some great things to come.
PreviewNo Preview today.
Things are beginning to pick up. Can you feel it?
Wasn't there also a scene where Sanji met up with Rayleigh and Shaky at their bar, and saw a very beat-up and battle-ridden Duval. I only bring it up because there's just one thing about him that baffles me. It's like this.
ReplyDeleteIn two years...
Usopp loses 500 pounds,
Sanji conquers his innermost deamons,
Luffy and Zoro get kickass scars,
Brook becomes a rockstar,
Franky becomes a freaking War Machine,
AND DUVAL STILL CANT WINK!
You'd think he could learn that one simple task in two years. Maybe he's the one who should have trained with Ivan and not Sanji.
I do agree the show from this point onward does seem to lag a bit. I think it's especially annoying, because we already had our fair share of filler with the Post War Arc preceding this. We were patient then, but now it's just getting annoying. If Toei tried hard enough, they could have all the Straw Hats meet up and set sail while keeping all the moments from the manga in tact in three episodes easily. But no, they're realizing how close they're getting to catching up with the manga, so they're stalling for time.
Until the DBZ Kai equivalent of the series inevitably comes out, we'll just have to deal with the leisurely pacing.
By the way Mike, thanks for having a look at my article on the new straw hats. If you were still interested in reading the second half, here's a link to it.
http://www.toy-tma.com/hot-toys/anime-cartoons/new-straw-hats-review-2/