One Piece

One Piece: Season Five, Voyage Four is the exciting conclusion to the Enies Lobby story arc in which The Straw Hats battle the CP9 in order to catch up and free Robin from being delivered beyond The Gates of Justice. Meanwhile, the Marines are narrowing down on Enies Lobby with a command for the Buster Call, a devastating barrage of firepower that will leave nothing in its wake. An atrocity Robin is all too familiar with. 

 

As usual, I was glued to my seat. Luffy and his crew battle the CP9, who have strange animal abilities that make them more then formidable, especially the leader of The CP9, Rob Lucci. 

 

Lucci’s back story is pretty dark and opens the door for darker revelations later on down the line. Death on the show is pretty thematic; usually unpronounced at the end of a battle (you could even presume the villains are tired out and unconscious) or distanced with shadows, but obviously death has occurred. I was pretty disturbed at the end of this arc. It’s pretty powerful stuff, but I don’t think it could have ended any other way, what with the magnitude of things that take place. 

 

The fights are pretty amazing. As usual you have a lot of humor mixed in with some great fantasy action sequences. The writing in this arc is especially powerful. A lot of the story rides on camaraderie that tops most of the stuff I’ve seen on the show before. With a plethora of characters- two whole other crews, agreeable but accessible villains, Kokoro and her tag-alongs, plus a few filler episodes, make for great immersion into the emotional aspect of the set. Truly a fantastic end game for a pretty fantastic story arc. If you see any one chapter of One Piece, this would be the one to see.