One Piece

Episode 874

One Piece arcs are immense and long-winded, but even if large stretches start to become a grind, they've always had reliably strong endings. The way things eventually come together really gets you reflecting on the adventure that brought you to that point, and the sum of the story's parts begin to feel more like a cohesive whole. Superficially, Whole Cake Island shouldn't evoke that spirit, since most of its big picture meta-narrative threads are being left suspended in midair so our heroes can simply book it and leave, but I'll go deeper into why I think it succeeds in spite of itself when we finally get to the proper last episode of the arc.

In the meantime, I'm absolutely awash with emotion just seeing the Straw Hats—minus those who are still waiting for us in Wano—all back together on the Thousand Sunny after this long battle. The atmosphere for this stretch of episodes is pitch perfect. The smoke has set a chilling overcast, and the blazing inferno of Cacao Island is our primary light source as our heroes hug it out and talk about how happy they are to be safe and sound together. Everybody's limping a bit, but the consistent feeling being conveyed as we cut back and forth between the different groups of characters, good guys and bad, is that there's nothing left to be done. Cities have been destroyed, ships are sinking, and we still don't know what's going to happen when Big Mom eats that mystery box of a wedding cake, but we've made our bets. Fate is completely out of our hands from this point forward.

Speaking of Big Mom, she's been rampaging herself into a withered husk for a while now, and she's become an emaciated cosmic horror witch lady as a result. Her feet are firmly planted on Fluffy island, and her gradual approach to the wedding cake is being talked up like it's going to be the pay-per-view event of the season. Her kids are gracious enough to lay out for the audience what they think the three possible outcomes are, assuming that it must have been poisoned by Capone and the Straw Hats: 1.) She eats the poisoned cake and dies. 2.) She toughs out the poison but doesn't like the cake, ensuring she kills everybody in Totto Land. 3.) She loves the cake and everybody is saved. We've already established that the cake isn't poisoned, so our means of success and failure are purely on the cooking efforts of Sanji, Chiffon, and Pudding. But even if she does like the cake, what would that even mean for our heroes? Is Big Mom destined to become another grateful ally? The only outcome Sanji was ever banking on was that it would "knock her lights out."

Next it's time for our final encounter with Vinsmoke Judge, whose ship is clearing the path for the Sunny as Big Mom's fleet tries to surround them. Surprisingly, this isn't a goodbye between him and Sanji, as Judge immediately calls out to Luffy instead and berates him for sticking his neck out for his failure of a son. By asking Luffy, "What do you see in him?" he's revealing a sincere curiosity, as if today's events have forced him to consider that maybe, possibly, he made a mistake casting Sanji off as a child, but he isn't man enough to phrase it that way. He can't help but to talk to Luffy like he's the idiot for caring, and Luffy just 'sayonara's him without even realizing he was being insulting.

"That was weird. Why did he just start listing off all your best qualities?" Luffy asks after Judge rattled off a bunch of bullet points about Sanji not being a perfect soldier and having no royal pride. This is where I think the balancing act regarding the Vinsmokes pays off the most. Even when they're doing "good" things, they're still showing their true character. Judge tried initiating a dialogue between captains, man-on-man, but instead he just made himself look even more insecure. Luffy has nothing to prove, and in the end Judge hasn't actually learned anything. Our parting message to him is basically, "Hey, bro. You get to live with yourself now. Peace."

And there's still more to talk about! This episode is unusually packed. Another batch of surprise saviors arrive in the form of the Sun pirates, Jimbei's old crew. They've been helping us from a distance but they don't mind getting caught in the battle if it means saying goodbye to their old captain one last time. One of the big 'rewards' that the story has been dangling in front of us for a while is that we're going to sail away from Totto Land with Crew Member #10 officially christened in. It's always a beautiful sight when a characters' friends and family see them off to follow their dreams. This arc is determined to give us as many things to be happy about as it gives us things to be sad about.

This is a really great episode that I didn't expect to affect me as much as it did. I figured we'd be staying adrift a bit longer as we wait for the coveted cake-eating episode next week, but the anime has delivered another strong episode to help send this arc off right. The tone is where it should be, and the art is filled with just enough polish and detail to keep it interesting to look at, even when the show isn't being animation intensive. It's funny how directly these concluding episodes are about death, destruction, and failure, and yet none of that can stop the warm fuzzies from governing the whole shebang. I loved it.

Rating: A

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