ONE PIECE #612 - - Special Review

| Thursday, September 19, 2013



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ONE PIECE #612 - - Special Review



As much as I love a good fight scene, I’ve gotten some serious battle
fatigue after this fifth successive duel. They really are just eating screen
time while the plot itself stays pretty stagnate and, after a month of that, it’s
honestly getting tiresome.

Lobbing this exact criticism at DBZ should be familiar enough to anybody
with even the slightest familiarity with shonen. However, even though ONE PIECE isn’t featuring
any episodes devoted entirely to characters grunting, powering up or grunting
while they’re powering up,
I’d say it’s about as culpable for beating round the
bush. The qualification is that, yes, the individual fights don’t go on for as
long as they do in DBZ. What we get instead is an endless number of individual fights feeding out
of the show’s other, more unique, type of filibuster - - that is, its endlessly-rolling,
character-creation assembly belt.

== TEASER ==

Seriously, if you break down what happens, episode-by-episode, then we saw what should’ve been the climatic showdown between Luffy and Caesar a few
episodes back. In ideal conditions, “Punk Hazard” would’ve centered on their
conflict. However, it was only a fake-out and, since then, we’ve seen a
half-dozen ancillary characters either introduced or re-introduced and, more often, their
introductions precede duels with each other.

(I went from being mildly disinterested in Zoro’s
fight with Monet, to surprisingly impressed when she started showing off her
more monstrous powers, to rolling my eyes when Tashigi joined the fight with
her. As if the fight needed any newcomers to prolong it
).

Look, I understand that this chain reaction of creativity is exactly
the charm that makes ONE PIECE so diverting every week. However, there’s a
difference between just watching that happen every episode and commenting critically about it. And when I have to use that part of my
brain, it’s hard not to see this as Oda repeatedly pulling rabbits out of the
hat when he probably should be getting to the point.

Watch this
episode,
"A Deadly Fight in a Blizzard! The Straw
Hats vs. The Snow Woman!” here and decide for yourself,
then read my comments about the previous episode here.

About the Author

Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk







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