The Navy broadcasts to the world the news that they have come out victorious in the battle against the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies. The ships of the remaining Supernovas are seen floating near Marineford, observing the proceedings. Dies Drake says that now the Navy will never be the same. Capone "Gang" Bege says that now Whitebeard's former territory will fall into chaos. Urouge believes that Blackbeard and his crew will be at the center of this great storm. Jewelry Bonney declares that they'll go to the New World and hunt down the one responsible for all of this. Scratchmen Apoo wonders what Law's motives for saving Luffy were. Basil Hawkins finds it peculiar that Luffy's survival changes are about zero. On Eustass Kid's ship, the crewmembers express relief that the war is over. Kid laughs and tells them that it's far from over. The New World was ruled by the Four Emperors Whitebeard, "Red-Haired" Shanks, Kaido, and Big Mom. Now that one of them has fallen, a new era will begin, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.
Sure enough, while many islands around the world celebrate Whitebeard's death, his final words have inspired even more people to go out to sea, and the land previously under his protection are now vulnerable to attack. Victory does not always bring peace.
Sengoku is sitting alone amongst the now-quiet Marineford battlefield. The officer Brandnew hurries up to him, armed with a report of what happened at Impel Down. Magellan was severely beaten, but still alive, though he deeply blames himself for all that had happened. Blackbeard had apparently instructed the Level 6 prisoners to fight each other, and he took the last ones standing as crewmembers. However, more Level 6 prisoners managed to escape the prison. Sengoku worries about the kind of havoc they can cause, and tells Brandnew to get a list ready. Brandnew hesitates, and then reveals that the government is ordering this to be covered up. Sengoku has some rather angry words for that.
In another part of Marineford, a group of Pacifistas under the command of Doflamingo move in on a wounded Moria. Doflamingo says that he's too weak to remain one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea and says that him being reported as kill in action sounds much better than being eliminated. Moria demands to know if Sengoku put him up to this, and the other man points upward and tells him to "try someone higher."
Eyecatches: Luffy and Chopper
Law's submarine surfaces, much to the relief of Bepo the anthropomorphic polar bear. Once he gets out on deck he finds himself face-to-face with Hancock's snake and a Navy battleship. Luckily for them it's the one Hancock commandeered and since petrified its crew. Law comes out on deck and reports to those gathered that he's finished working on Luffy. Hancock asks if he's safe and Law says that there are no guarantees considering the amount of damage he took.
A voice yells out that that's to be expected, and Ivankov and the New Kamas appear on the deck of the battleship. Ivankov jumps down to the submarine and says that he's impressed at how hard Luffy fought since Impel Down, and laments that it's all come to naught. At that point, against the other crewmembers' wishes, an bandaged Jimbei comes out on deck and thanks Law for saving him. Law tells him to go back down, but Jimbei persists, saying that the losses have been too heavy this time, even heavier for Luffy. and that he's worried about what's going to happen when he wakes up.
Hancock addresses Bepo and asks for a telesnail. She says that they'll call the Kuja's ship and cross the Calm Belt to Amazon Lily, where they can regroup and recover safe from the World Government's eyes.
The main attraction's over, now it's time for the fun part, the fallout.
For what this episode was, a talking-heads one, it turned out fine. Some scenes were changed around a bit, most notably the exclusion of Brownbeard, an obnoxious blowhard trying to cash in on things and take over an island previously under Whitebeard's control. His appearance was still hinted at, so I'm not really sure what the point of cutting him out was. Well, he's not really important in the scheme of things.
We finally got an update as to what happened at Impel Down. I can't help but feel bad for Magellan. He was deeply committed to what he was doing and didn't have any kind of real malice, he was just doing his job, keeping legitimately dangerous criminals locked away. You know, I wonder if Blackbeard encountered Auger, Lafitte, Burgess, and Doc Q in a similar manner to the battle royale he initiated. Come to think of it, the battle royale just raises more Fridge Logic regarding Wolf... And what was up with Sengoku being bandaged up? No one managed to land a hit on him!
Let's see, we also learned the name, or at least nickname, of the last of the Four Emperors (I guess they're the Three Emperors now?), Big Mom. I guess that means we can narrow down her to the big sillhouette and Kaido to the sneering one.
I'm looking forward to the next episode. There looks to be a fair bit of Adaptation Expansion, and I always welcome that.
Arc Retrospective
Without a doubt, this arc will have more impact on the overall storyline than the others. One of the great forces of the world died, and Luffy completely failed his objective. We got some more hype for Doflamingo, and a lot of hype for Akainu and Blackbeard, and we even had some hints as to what would happen in the series's endgame. Lack of progression or relevancy is certainly not something this arc failed at.
What it didn't deliver in, I thought, was structure and coherency. Things were all over the place during Marineford. People were popping in and out all over the place at the plot's discretion, lots of encounters were cut off, ignored, or ultimately inconclusive, while a lot of other developments seemingly came out of nowhere. While it is true that this was a giant battle, and it was supposed to be chaotic and there's no time to linger on the details, it just feels off to me. It didn't help that it felt rather repetitive. Luffy's running in circles for hours and hours, apparently, while other characters just stand around doing nothing when they could be helping speed things up.
This arc was not very anime-friendly. Most of the chapters were shorter than normal, and full of double page spreads, making them even shorter. This is where the 1:1 pacing that Toei's adopted since Thriller Bark bit them in the ass, hard. You can only drag things out so much. So if they insisted on sticking ot that, they would have to add in a lot of brand new content to lengthen the running time. Okay, that's good, I don't mind such expansion usually, and this arc had penty of stuff to build off of. Unfortunately Toei took the cheap and easy way out, focusing instead largely on unfunny, pace-breaking filler with Buggy or Hancock, or going in the opposite direction and stretching things out to the breaking point without adding in anything actually interesting. Now, that's not to say that it was all bad, there were plenty of good moments interspersed amongst the bad, but unfortunately the bad is what we're going to remember. The animation overall was a bit less than impressive. Just like with the directing, there were some really good moments, but there were also plenty of lackluster ones right alongside them. It's a shame that the largest animation studio in Japan can't seem to be able to effectively coordinate their resources and produce something that is pleasing to most, especially for an arc as ambitious as this.
My hope is, now that we're returning to a more straight-forward method of storytelling, things will pick up for the anime. Marineford was an arc that certainly left its mark, but it is far from one of my favorites.
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