The New Era of One Piece Sound Design and Animation! One Piece Episode 1156 Review!
The seasonal One Piece anime is here and even without any big fights, we are already seeing massive upgrades to the sound design that could not have come any sooner.
In the previous One Piece episode, after 1155 episodes, Season 1 ends with the Straw Hats heading for Elbaph, Jaygarcia Saturn killed by Imu and replaced by Shanks’ father and the preview of a lurking legend
One Piece Episode 1156 is titled, “The Long-Sought Elbaph! The Big Reunion Banquet”
This episode adapts Chapter 1126: “Settling the Score”, with only 15 pages adapted and animating the cover stories related to Bartolomeo from Chapters 869 to 875, for a total of 20 pages.
For a review of the chapter, read here.
For the staff list, see here.
Pre-Timeskip in the Modern Look
The episode begins strong with a flashback to the pre-timeskip, in Little Garden, where the dream of Elbaph began, made by Usopp and Luffy on the Merry after Dorry and Brogy smashed their aging weapons with Hakoku Sovereignity to kill the giant Goldfish.
As they dance in the pre-timeskip, we see the present day, where this time, they dance in joy in front of the Giants that they dreamed of meeting as they near Elbaph.
We also see more Little Garden flashbacks, with modern looks and animation.
Masumi is a Top 5 Episode Director
Wataru Matsumi begins seasonal One Piece quite strong.
As usual, there is emphasis on his unique perspectives, treating the TV anime like a quirky movie with all the camera angles and storyboards a film student could write many essays on.
The best example for this episode is Yasopp heading to shoot down Bartolomeo’s ship.
First, it cuts to Yasopp’s eyes at the top and nothing at the bottom, then to his lips, facing the opposite way to the eyes that were left-facing.
Both sides then converge to one frame and Yasopp begins to take his shot.
There is a lot of diverse camera angles that capture a wide range of expressions, particularly for Barto’s fakeout execution.
The scene is quite dark and even when restrained, Barto is so animated as he expresses his frustration over his stupidity in desecrating an Emperor’s territory and endangeirng Luffy with said stupidity.
We usually see Shanks as a lighthearted figure but here, the whole scene is taken seriously, as Shanks is covered in shadow, looking solemn.
The emphasis on his left side is super subtle implied foreshadowing, given who we will meet in the latter half of Season 2’s first cour.
One Piece’s Modern Sound Design
The very first and most noticeable thing about One Piece: Elbaph or Season 2 in general is that the sound design and sound effects have mostly be replaced and updated.
This is because of the retirement of Hidenori Arai, the sound effects guy for One Piece since Day 1.
The gunshots, explosions and flames are less “intense” or “cartoonish”
However, the real test will be in combat as we await how the laser beams, speed movements, teleportations will sound since these are the ones most tied to the Dragon Ball legacy and Arai’s sound library.
Eyecatches
We got some episode-exclusive eyecatches that have already exceeded Egghead’s brilliant ones.
The coolest one is from Blackbeard.
The first eyecatch is Shanks’, which is simple as we hear his more noble leitmotif, the one played when he stopped the Paramount War, and he walks to his ship and crew and turns around, with the same solemn gaze as his bounty poster.
Second is with Blackbeard in the spotlight sitting on his seat while everywhere else is dark but then he is obscured by Jesus Burgess standing up and it leads to a showing of all the Blackbeard Pirates while Blackbeard flexes his Yami Yami no Mi abilities as a flash ruptures, leading to two impact frames, one with purple hues and more darkness, another that only adds more light and detail to the shot.
All the ties to darkness and his solitude are so good for this eyecatch.
The Nami Situation
We go into the final scene of the episode and there are interesting comments regarding Nami’s design here.
Animator Lonionjon worked on Nami’s scene and confessed that he did not make Nami’s breasts so big.
See the full tweet here:
In his own words: “I didn’t want Nami to have such big breasts, but during the corrections they enlarged them and didn’t even tell me.”
He added: “I see Nami as a great navigator, not as something sexual.”
This seems to indicate that Toei wanted to enlarge Nami’s breasts…for some reason, an agenda that could prove certain allegations about Toei giving Sanji a worse rap than in the manga.
Preview
We start with where we ended this episode off, with Nami waking up and then we get cuts of the Straw Hats exploring their Lego world full of larger animals and eventually to Luffy, Sanji and Zoro ending the episode off with their attack on the giant cat Iscat.
Again, this is where we begin the test for modern One Piece sound design.
This episode will also feature the opening and ending themes for the first time.
One Piece Episode 1157 is titled, “Nami’s Confusion! The Adventure in the Land of Mystery”
This will adapt Chapter 1127: “Adventure in the Land of Mystery”.and it looks like One Piece will be making their titles more connected to the chapter title.
The last time this was done was for Episode 1153: “The Upheaval of an Era! The Color of the Supreme King That Leads Luffy”
Episode 1136: “Kuma’s Life” was the only one since Episode 1088: “Luffy’s Dream” (the end of the Wano era of the anime in 2023) that is the actual chapter title.
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