Review

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Gintama - Episode 360 [Review]

After several seasons of buildup, the Odd Jobs crew and their strongest allies kick off the final battle against the seemingly unkillable Utsuro. Having been gifted Ane and Mone's remaining Zen energy, a beleaguered Sadaharu is grievously injured by Hitsugi upon arriving at the Gate. An enraged Gintoki then lops off one of the emotionless killing machine's arms before promptly being beaten back by Utsuro. As more ley lines go berserk, a massive hole in the Earth forms right outside of the Terminal, and before Shinpachi and Kagura can get to him, Sadaharu is consumed by it. However, being an Altana mutant, the trusty pup is able to cocoon himself in planetary energy as he attempts to bring the ley lines back under control. In the continuing battle against Utsuro, Gintoki breaks out his new crystallite sword and stabs his enemy in the eye, but the all-powerful immortal is able to shatter Gin's new weapon with little effort. With his last ounce of strength, Gintoki manages to drive one of the crystallite shards through Utsuro's remaining eye.

Things continue to heat up when Umibozu, Kamui, Abuto, the Seventh Division, and the Shinsengumi arrive on the scene to throw their hats in the ring. Not at all fazed by his temporary blindness, Utsuro effortlessly kills scores of Kamui's crew and nameless Shinsengumi members. (At one point, he even appears to slit Yamazaki's throat, but whether this wound proves to be fatal is currently unclear.) With the series' strongest fighters out of commission, Shinpachi and Kagura attempt to prevent Utsuro from reaching the vulnerable Sadaharu. Much to Utsuro's surprise, he's unable to immediately recover from the damage the kids manage to inflict. Gintoki then appears and reveals that his aim in taking out the villain's second eye had been to get the crystallite shards into his bloodstream, effectively impairing his superhuman healing abilities. With Utsuro finally at a disadvantage, Odd Jobs Gin-chan prepares to take this epic battle into the homestretch.

Even though Silver Soul has put nearly every major character through the wringer, seeing Sadaharu repeatedly stabbed and nearly impaled is particularly hard to watch. Despite being left out of many of the show's later stories, Gintama's adorable anti-mascot remains as easy to love as ever, and given the track record dogs have in fiction, it's hard to definitively place him in the “safe” camp. Still, it's touching to see how far the Odd Jobs crew goes to protect him—and how he repays the favor by saving Gintoki (his least favorite member of the team) without a second thought. In spite of all his bellyaching about the tribulations of owning a comically large, destruction-prone dog, Gin becomes downright bloodthirsty when he sees what Hitsugi did to his pet. Even Shinpachi, who's physically the weakest of the main trio, is able to overcome his (justifiable) fear of Utsuro and will himself to take action when Sadaharu's life is on the line. Coupled with Kagura's subsequent assist and Gintoki's long-game shard attack, this is the perfect Odd Jobs Gin-chan combo attack.

Although the animation is fairly choppy for an action-heavy episode, the latest installment does an excellent job of showcasing Utsuro's seemingly limitless strength. Sure, we've seen him in a few fights prior to this, but watching him topple the Gintama-verse's most seasoned warriors while barely lifting a finger truly drives home how powerful a threat the gang is now facing. Portions of the episode even feel downright horror movie-ish, especially when Utsuro takes out an entire Shinsengumi battalion with a well-choreographed leap and a single sword swing.

An emotional, action-packed rollercoaster ride from start to finish, episode 360 feels like it's over before it's barely begun. Utsuro is no longer a Big Bad whose comeuppance is dozens of episodes away; he's now an immediate threat who can't be defeated through anything resembling normal means. Earth's destruction is no longer a far-off scheme that's still in the planning phase; it's happening as we speak. If our heroes don't act quick and exhaust every possible trump card, everything will come to an end.

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Attack on Titan - Episode 42 [Review]

Leave it to Attack on Titan to make a military coup d'état feel relatively subdued and low-key. The past four episodes have been all about building up the political unrest that threatens to tear human society apart, and while most of this episode is about watching Erwin and Pyxis make their final play against the corrupt cabal of nobles that hide behind their sleepy regal puppet, there is very little bombast or catharsis to be found when everything is said and done.

This makes sense though, and I don't mean to criticize the episode for playing with a more muted tone than usual. The actual sequence of the coup is well done – Erwin and Pyxis' ploy is to expose the nobles' cowardice and selfishness by faking a breach in Wall Rose, and it works perfectly. Erwin uses his final words to sow images of discord and chaos in the minds of the nobles, explaining that without the Scouts, another Titan attack could lead to rampant riots and an influx of refugees that would spell the end of the status quo. This is initially framed as Erwin trying to argue for his own benefit, but the minute it's announced that a breach in the wall has conveniently occurred just before Erwin is to be executed, it's obvious what he and Pyxis have really been sowing in the nobles' minds. They panic and ordered the city doors to be shut against any refugees, and that's all the other soldiers need to justify tearing down this regime for good.

It's a solid play on behalf of our heroes, and the sequence of quiet revolution is handled smartly. I wouldn't have minded getting to see more of the process of rounding up the MPs and getting the pieces in place to fool the aristocracy, but it might be for the best that the show didn't extend this plotline any further. Given how crucial the coup is to everything else happening in the plot right now, it was never in much question that the plan would go through, so I can see why AoT opted not to play up the twist of Erwin's scheme more than necessary.

Besides, I think it speaks to Attack on Titan's growing thematic complexity that this coup is only treated as another step in a much more complicated path to victory. Nobody putting this plan into action was under the delusion that it would solve all of their problems; Erwin still has to dig up the truth that caused his father to be silenced so many years ago, and Eren and Historia are still missing, so it isn't like they can move forward immediately after the king is deposed. One of Erwin's co-conspirators, Premier Dhalis Zachary, even admits that the coup was more of a personal vendetta than anything, done purely for the sake of shaking up the system. That it was successful at all is a minor miracle, but the times ahead are more uncertain than they've ever been.

Outside of that critical plot development, there isn't much more to this episode that isn't just necessary setup. Eren, who has been chained up in a cavern of crystal, seems to be having visions of Rod Reiss' eldest daughter Frieda, who was supposed to have perished with the other Reisses in a bandit raid from years earlier. Hange and the others find the exact nature of the Reiss clan's slaughter to be suspicious, so they are investigating the chapel where it happened to see if there are any clues to Eren and Historia's whereabouts. Eren's visions are odd in and of themselves, and the episode isn't at all subtle in the way it frames the vision of Frieda directly against Levi Squad's investigation, with Armin wondering just who Eren must have eaten to gain the ability to shift back to human form.

Since I'm not caught up on the manga, I can only speculate, but my guess is that Eren and Historia's pasts are more intertwined than they might have guessed. Given that the preview implicates Eren's father in the titular “Sin” of next week's episode, we might even be approaching an answer to what's going on with that damned basement. Now wouldn't that be something?

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One Piece - Episode 850 [Review]

As glowing as I was toward last week's episode, I was kind of conceding to its choice to frame Pedro's sacrifice as entirely heroic. I figured that either the anime wasn't interested in committing to the darker atmosphere and opted instead to play things completely straight, or that the murkier flavor was just me reading too much into things. So I'm elated to come back this week and see the show indulging in as much of that darkness as I could have reasonably asked for.

It's noteworthy that these days we have a show like My Hero Academia, which puts so much emphasis on asking its heroes to take care of themselves. It's a notorious struggle against overwork for manga artists and animators, which can so easily cast themes of self-sacrifice and tenacity in shonen manga in a new light. Eiichiro Oda is pretty infamous for an unhealthy commitment to his work. A series like MHA says don't get yourself killed. Think about how much pain you're putting your loved ones through by romanticizing that kind of overwork. Whole Cake Island feels like the most that Oda has ever empathized with that kind of message (appropriately at a time when the manga is taking more frequent breaks for this very reason), but in doing so, he seems to also acknowledge that his characters might be incapable of ever learning that lesson.

"I have to live up to the expectations that made you sacrifice yourself," is what Carrot says to herself in the wake of Pedro's death. The smoke from Pedro's dynamite blocks the daylight. The sound design is straight out of a horror movie. There's a jaguar-shaped hole in our crew now, and sympathy for the dead is just twisting the knife. I love how the Straw Hats are still glancing at the shoreline, expecting Pedro to have survived just as much as the audience, but instead it's that damned Perospero walking the explosion off with only a missing limb. The sickening mixture of emotions is so potent.

For how slow the anime adaptation can be, this is one of those episodes that feels like it's over within five minutes. On top of the Pedro fallout, the problems continue to stack up with Katakuri's counter attack, the Coup de Burst's warm-up time, and Big Mom already chewing on the back of the Thousand Sunny, looking even more like an actual monster. Luffy doesn't miss a beat in securing his role as captain of the ship. When the Sunny finally does blast off, he yanks Katakuri into Brulee's mirror world with him and smashes the mirror so neither of them can escape back to the Sunny. He's leaving the naval battle to his crew, the cake-baking to Sanji, and the fight with the one billion man to himself. The whole situation is so thrilling and badass.

The One Piece anime is firing on all cylinders this week. This is an alarmingly good episode, a cut above what I've gotten used to expecting. It's atmospheric, visually detailed, and rich with a plethora of emotions vying for the audience's attention. I know the show can't stay at this level of quality for long, but I desperately wish it could. Carrot gets a lot of focus this week, to my delight, and we see a version of Luffy that's been absent for a while—the underdog with balls of steel. The crew is willfully throwing themselves into those big one-in-a-million chance scenarios and my blood is on fire with excitement as a result.

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