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One Piece
Episode 814

by Sam Leach,

How would you rate episode 814 of
One Piece (TV 1999) ?
Community score: 3.8

You ready for a live concert, baby?! It's time for the Soul King to rock your socks off and lift your spirits!

The past few episodes of One Piece have done a good job filling the runtime with interesting plot progression, though the show still isn't quite ready to pick the pace back up to normal, and slowing back down does hurt after everything was just getting interesting. That said, Brook and Pedro getting an explosive espionage subplot as they complicate the villains' plans is the most inspired thing going on right now. If there's anybody in the story who has a chance to turn things around for our heroes, it's them.

For manga readers, we've had the dawning realization that the heavily marketed Year of Sanji could just as satisfyingly be titled the Year of Brook, because throughout this middle portion of the arc, he's the one earning the most wins for the Straw Hats as he puts his undead life on the line to secure that Poneglyph rubbing from Big Mom. His big attack in this episode, where the embodiment of the Soul King erupts in the form of a big electric ghost, is one of the most memorable looking techniques of the arc.

Sadly, it arrives by way of one of the flattest directed episodes in recent memory. This is the rare example of an episode that stays perfectly on-model and looks pretty decent, but there's no pulse to be found at all. It's incredibly matter-of-fact compared to the usual chaos that the show's production values offer. This would have been an ideal time to continue to push the arc's musical theme, taking a break from the Disney-lite stuff for some good old rock n' roll. Alas, this episode plays it painfully safe.

Elsewhere on Whole Cake Island is the conclusion of the never-ending mirror-world subplot with Carrot and Chopper, meaning the show's going to have to find some other interminable plotline to cut back to whenever it needs to buy a few minutes. The mirror-world stuff, where Carrot and Chopper finally finish off Charlotte Brulee and her crazy animal friends, was getting to be so unbelievably repetitive and boring that I would be more relieved that the subplot has finally ended if I wasn't completely bemused by the fact that it lasted this long to begin with.

It's frustrating to be so happy about where the story is going, with one major subplot ending and another taking the reigns, but get bummed out by the pacing once again. It can't be helped, but this is an arc that I'm falling more in love with as it wraps up in the manga, and the anime version is giving itself way too much room to breathe. The final scene of the episode, where Pudding meets with the imprisoned Luffy and Nami, is a perfect example of how inelegantly the molasses pacing captures the structure of the arc, since it doesn't even get to the part that makes this an important moment of set-up. The manga's pacing, however frustrating you might find it week-to-week, at least does a good job making sure each chapter is a solid beat that moves the story forward. In the anime version, we're not just setting the pins up to knock them down, we're taking a leisurely stroll to the bowling alley first and calling it drama.

Rating: B-

One Piece is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.com.

Sam Leach records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.
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