438: The Paradise in Hell - Impel Down Level 5.5
Having been surrounded by the wolves on Level 5, Buggy and Mr. 3 decide that they should take shelter inside one of the empty jail cells. However, this doesn’t work out for them, so they instead come up with the rather clever plan of a creating a mobile shelter out of wax. With this, they are able to move without the wolves being able to touch them. Until they decide to burrow through the snow underneath, that it.
In front of Luffy’s cell, the battered Mr. 2 apologizes for running away earlier, and says that he’s not going to let him die. He hauls Luffy off in a makeshift sled, leaving the keys behind in the cell, leading the other prisoners to wonder whether they should try and escape or not. From there, Mr. 2 goes around to each of the cells asking the prisoners if they know where Ivankov is. Many of them think he’s dead, as he apparently vanished quite some time ago. One certain prisoner, however, points Mr. 2 towards a forest of evergreens, saying that he’s seen an odd person come out of it every now and again. What he doesn’t tell him, though, is that that forest is a wolves’ den. Soon, Mr. 2 is surrounded and is forced into a losing battle against the ferocious beasts. His painful struggles though, actually bring Luffy to his feet. Despite being half frozen and covered in poison, Luffy manages to get one of the wolves off of Mr. 2 by biting it, and angrily demands to know what they think that they’re doing to him. His angry aura is too much for the beasts, and they collapse in fright. Mr. 2 wonders what that mysterious power was, but the both of them fall unconscious in the snow as well. Silence reigns, until the two are discovered by a man wearing an orange and white fur coat, sunglasses, and holding a wine glass.
There are now twenty-six hours left until the execution.
Eyecatches: Brook and Chopper
Flashback to the conclusion of Hannyabal and Mr. 2’s fight. After Mr. 2 dodged his last strike, Hannyabal turned to see not Mr. 2, but rather Nami in a prisoner’s jail stripes. Perhaps due to the dearth of female Impel Down staff, Hannyabal cannot resist the sight of this young, sweaty redhead, and is easily lured into a storage room where he is left bound and gagged in nothing but his strawberry-print boxers by the transformed-back-to-normal Mr. 2. Elsewhere around the prison, Magellan is in the middle of an epic struggle on the crapper (complete with graphic sound effects), Sadie has been unable to find Mr. 2 on Level 3 and is angry, and Saldeath has fully quelled the riot on Level 2 but has noticed that there are several missing keys.
Meanwhile Mr. 2 awakens and finds himself bandaged up in a dark room. Hearing the distant sounds of people talking and music, he staggers around in the dark until he finds a door and passes through, finding himself in, against all odds, a brightly-lit party hall full of people eating, drinking, and generally having a good time. They greet Mr. 2 like a hero once they realize that he’s awake, and assure him that he’s still within Impel Down. Understandably, Mr. 2 doesn’t believe them and instead thinks that he froze to death on Level 5 and is now in Heaven. He is then greeted by a woman wearing the same clothes as the mysterious man from before who introduces herself as Inazuma, and says that she (she?) was the one who found both Mr. 2 and Luffy ten whole hours ago.
Before Mr. 2 can inquire about anything else, the lights dim and one of the crowd remarks that the show’s about to start. Curtains roll back and stage lights illuminate a pretty odd-looking man up on stage (imagine Dr. Frank-N-Furter with the proportions of a bobble head) who asks if ‘’Bon-boy’’ is doing well. At this, Mr. 2 realizes that this is the man that he's been searching for, Emporio Ivankov! Ivankov then begins to put into song the answer to Mr. 2’s questions: this is a secret prisoner paradise, dubbed Level 5.5 – New Kama Land. Yee-haw!
As I said last time, this episode was handled by the weakest animation team currently on the show. The art wasn't terribly great and noticeably simpler than past episodes, but generally wasn't eye-scarring, though things dipped a bit towards the end with the crow scenes, which seems to be the bane of this particular animation director. Animation wasn't terribly outstanding either, thanks to the outsourcing that went on. However, I did like the painted backgrounds for Level 5. Really pretty.
Content-wise, we're getting into a group of chapters that have elements that aren't looked on fondly by a portion of the fanbase, or at least my corner of it, thanks to the Fridge Logic surrounding New Kama Land and how it completely destroys Impel Down's rep. A giant party hall that's been undiscovered for twenty years or so despite being right underneath the staff's feet. It's like they've never done any investigating or anything. Either that, or they're incredibly incompetent without Magellan in command, which I guess is possible.
But enough of that. Ivankov was voiced by Norio Imamura, whose only other credited role seems to be Gaskunk in the 2000 Transformers cartoon. I was expecting something rather raspy, so I was a bit surprised ot hear his voice being a lot softer than I had imagined. But by the end of the episode, when he let out that "Yee-Haw!" I knew that everything would turn out all right.
Anyway, next week looks like we'll be in for a treat, since not only are we apparently getting a bit of the flashback that was originally in chapter 549 (sort of darkly humorous considering the recent manga developments), but that episode is being handled by Naoki Tate, a personal favorite of mine.
