An interesting episode to say the least. A lot of your enjoyment is going to come down to how much you like seeing Queen goof about and make monsters. Both the manga and the anime have spent a lot of time on Queen's oni-creating bullets, but I've never been quite sure how to feel about it. I mean, textually it all adds up: Kaido is evil, and so are his lieutenants, with Queen being perhaps the most gleefully merciless of them all. Queen's willingness to experiment on others calls to mind prior arcs like Punk Hazard, and Wano has been chock full of examples of torture.
But these scenes in Onigashima somehow feel not as engaging as they should be. I can't put my finger on why exactly. I think in part it's because, in the midst of all this fighting, this feels like Yet Another Thing™ but not necessarily one of much consequence. To me, Queen's villainy has already been pretty well-established, and this doesn't add as much to his character as it does fill time. I'd much rather they get to them scrapping with Queen than watch another few dozen random mooks get turned into ice monsters. Furthermore, it's pretty clear that these ice monsters are not going to be major threats by themselves; they're just slightly beefier mooks. It does give more time for Queen to dance around and be silly, so that's a plus, I guess,
The final scene with Yamato is terrific, though. Having little Yamato looking up at flashbacks of Oden's demise play out on the big screen really hammers home how he became so iconic to the young warrior. Furthermore, Yamato tanking an entire battleship's worth of cannon fire was amazing and the rendering of those looks of defiance afterwards is scrumptious. Yamato keeps getting all the shine and I couldn't be happier.
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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