Great episode. Didn't cover a whole chapter but it sure felt like it, the fight animation was pretty good, and we got that epic manga cliffhanger.
Already saw Shutenmaru's color scheme in the mini-Oden flashback and liked it. It looks like the Nine Red Scabbards will have a very colorful palette, Oda said his Wano would be colorful. Kinemon - black hair, red/white clothes. Kanjuro - red hair, green clothes. Raizou - black hair - light blue clothes. Kiku - black hair, yellow clothes. Kyoshiro has blue hair and dresses in dark blue/violet. Zoro has green hair and in white. Kamawatsu has orange hair and dresses red and light green. Inu has brown fur, Neko has blonde fur. Really, pink and bright purple and are the only unexplored palettes here and Shutemaru combined them both, like a yakuza making a flashy statement.
Kaido's azure dragon is beautiful and I love the scaling texture. Personally I like this more way than Shenron's dull dark green color that people wanted. Having Kaido transform beforehand and travel to Kuri in like a minute was a bizarre decision to spoil his reveal, but it still works as it makes it seem Kaido's so damn pissed off he has to get off his ass and take care of the job himself.
I love the dark clouds and lightning emanating from the sky, Jack clearly intimidated that a giant dragon hand bigger than him reaches down from the sky. BTW if you see the panel above, Kaido's hand reaches down to drop Speed's body along the road. He doesn't just stick his hand down from the clouds clutching for no reason. But it was a good decision for the anime to ignore that as Speed's falling body might have taken the attention away from Kaido's menacing atmosphere.
#Mammothboy review, read at your own peril. Obviously all the talent is working on Kaido's fight so the episode or two before are bound to suffer, but I still loved this on the same level as the filler of Jack vs Inu and Neko. Aside from Ashura's first attack, which should have had the animation of his last attack, a back and forth struggle was more or less what I got from the manga.
Ashura with two hands stopping one of Jack's blades, bearing his teeth like he's struggling.
Jack swings down, splotches of blood come down from Ashura's side and he's rattling from the damage.
You actually see a cut wound running into his tatooed section, even more blood splotches in the air as he's recoiling from a clash here. The problem is that blood and the tatoo are the same exact color so the damage, while minor, cannot be truly examined.
All in all it was a back and forth, just like the anime displayed. But even in the anime Ashura clearly has the edge as he stands there to monologue and tanks like a dozen slices from Jack and he lands the final blow. Extra disrespect to Jack but fine, I like seeing him perform flying slashes. I would have liked to have seen more fodder blown away like when Inu and Neko clashed. It would give the sense that this merely slummy village really is getting wiped out by a high level battle, Ace and Blackbeard forced an island to evacuate way before their final attacks and we shouldn't be too far away from them at this point.
Another hype episode next week, a good coping mechanism for dealing with the manga break.