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One Piece
Episode 866

by Sam Leach,

How would you rate episode 866 of
One Piece (TV 1999) ?
Community score: 4.1

Believe it or not, we're almost reaching the end of this arc. Of course "almost" in One Piece years is still at least ten episodes, but you work with what you're given.

This episode sees Sanji's group putting the finishing touches on the wedding cake, having successfully recreated the one that Luffy destroyed during the tea party. The plan from here is to finally say goodbye to Capone and his gang, letting them use the scent of the cake to lure Big Mom away from the Straw Hats, and now our only remaining priority is waiting for Luffy to finish his fight and emerge from the mirror world victorious. The rest of the Charlottes are in dismay, because they want Mom to eat that cake and stop her rampage, but with the cake in Capone's hands, they don't trust it to not be poisoned. Either Big Mom goes hungry and everyone dies at her hand, or Mom dies and that's the end of the Big Mom pirates as a unit. Of course, we know that the cake isn't poisoned, but we're still waiting to find out what the raw power of deliciousness can even do for our heroes at this point.

Surprisingly, my favorite scene of this episode was an anime-only embellishment. Since Pudding is flying Sanji between ships to reunite him with his crew, she's also saying goodbye to her sister Chiffon. They have a conversation about finding love and happiness and never letting go of it. Chiffon has her new family, but the closest thing Pudding has to that is Sanji, and she has to let him go because he needs to return to the life of piracy with his friends. Their time together is fleeting by design. The character acting in this brief scene is really spot on, ranging from "I'm so happy for you!" to "...Oh."

It's a through-line that's easy to take for granted, so I'm happy that the anime seems to get it. The tragic loop-de-loop that Pudding's riding would still be perfectly clear without a scene like this, but considering that so much of her character arc is about falling in love with our hero, it's nice that the anime adds this connective tissue to remind us that this arc is also about how these sisters relate to each other. It's something that I think is already baked into the narrative structure of the story (everything about Pudding starts with her big sister Lola), but there was a lot in the manga that feels like it either got cut to save page space, or was deliberately left open-ended for the audience to connect the dots themselves.

This is a fairly action-heavy episode, but most of it is gradually drifting away from us as we prepare to change gears one final time. The anime even managed to sneak in that Monster Chopper vs. Big Mom clash that was teased in the current opening theme before Big Mom finally got pulled away from the Sunny in favor of that sweet, sweet cake. Luffy vs. Katakuri roars on as usual, though we've gotten a surprising amount of mileage from Luffy getting his clocked cleaned over and over. There's something endlessly amusing about thinking he's on the cusp of unlocking his secret chosen-one Haki or whatever and then WHAP!, punched again.

Now that the end is in sight, we're beginning to see the logistics of our situation, and it's very strange by One Piece standards. Normally, Luffy beats the bad guy, liberates the country, and everybody lives happily ever after, but that doesn't add up with the pieces at play this time. There isn't a clean solution to the Big Mom problem, let alone one that makes sense for a straightforward adventure story. There are so many questions left unanswered and almost no time left in the arc to address them.

Ah, well. I'm sure it will work out.

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

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