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One Piece
Episode 1143

by Grant Jones,

How would you rate episode 1143 of
One Piece (TV 1999) ?
Community score: 4.4

op1143.png
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Toei Animation

Episode 1143 of One Piece is the starting gun for the next major phase of the battle for Egghead Island - and the wider One Piece world.

Vegapunk's message has begun to play. This more or less sums up the initial portion of this week's episode. This is another case where the momentous nature of the event slows the pace to a crawl. In most other shows, I would consider this painfully slow, as Vegapunk's message this week is basically “I have a message for the world,” and then we get a bunch of reactions from the rest of the cast. And to be perfectly honest… it is a little slow. But that's the nature of One Piece at this point. There are so many characters spread across such a wide space that when anything major happens, you need a couple of dozen reaction check-ins to get the temperature of the room. We normally see this kind of thing with bounty updates or when news of the Straw Hats toppling one villain or another hits the wider world. But this is one of the few times we get a real-time update from the principal party beamed to the wider world, and from Vegapunk himself. In this instance, it's warranted to slow down and smell the proverbial roses.

After the carousel of characters, we focus back in on the fight between Luffy, Saturn, and Borsalino. This is the highlight of the week's events in my humble opinion. I think Gear 5 is one of - if not the - best power-ups Luffy has ever gotten, and definitely ranks up there with all-time coolest super forms. It's not even so much the power on display or the thematic elements that work for me, but rather what we see a lot of in this episode: it gives the creative team infinite license for cartoonish goofery. All these ridiculous golden-age-cartoon sound effects combined with absurd visual flourishes just make for such a good time. I can't help but smile as Luffy turns Saturn and Borsalino into giant frisbees and tosses them across the island. He's giggling and kicking his feet, I'm giggling and kicking my feet - we're all having a great time. Also, Saturn has to be the scariest-looking UFO I have ever seen. I hope whatever aliens are out there in the universe never realize they can put giant monster faces on their ships and become ten times more frightening.

Rating:

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