Anime Action: Week Two

Anime Action is the Neek’s anime focused segment. Every Friday I, Kweku, will review a selection of Anime that I have watched in the past week. Be warned these reviews are full of spoilers.

Hello all. Hope you’ve all had a good week even if the weather for us Londoners has been awful. Still plenty to look forward to and thank god it’s Friday, time for the weekly anime update.

Covered this week are: Naruto Shippuuden (116), One Piece (245-285) and Hajime No Ippo: New Challenger (25-26)

Naruto Shippuuden
(Episode 116)

Episode 116: Keeper of the Iron Prison was a slow one that introduced a new character but never really went anywhere beyond that. We see Sasuke continuing to assemble his squad by brining the radar-like Karin into the fold. Her power appears to allow her to pin point sources chakra effectively making her a superb tracker but I suspect there might be more to her than that. She has a hilariously gruff aggressive attitude which sadly isn’t very distinctive by Naruto’s standards as most women in the show seem to be taking regular injections of testosterone and just like most women in Naruto Karin has a pining for Sasuke. Her affection is pretty deep however, more like Sakura’s rather than a crush but (unfortunately) we’ll see where that goes.

More after the break...

Not too much else happened though; we see some hostility between Karin and Suigetsu bracketing a flashback from a mission Karin and Sasuke performed in the past putting down some of Orochimaru’s fleeing test subjects. Wasn’t the most interesting episode and it ended with a strange introduction to the next addition to Sauke’s team Juugo, muttering to himself in a prison cell about a guy or a woman being better. Better at what? We can only speculate, but keep it clean. We’ll have to wait till next week to see where they’re going with that one.

One Piece
(Episode 245-285)

Well, I’ve reached the end of the Water 7 story arc, and so far as I suggested last week it’s been my favourite. The sense that the Straw Hats were not as strong as their previous conquests would suggest has been building since ice master Ao Kiji very comfortably decimated Luffy. However I was not expecting their next opponents or the various twists and turns leading up to them being revealed. CP9 and their powerful Rokushiki has produced an awesome increase in power levels but never to be deterred Luffy seems to have matched them. As of writing this I am on Episode 285: Retrive the 5 keys! The Straw Hat Crew VS CP9, which hopefully will produce welcome change as the previous 6 episodes were all, recaps on each of the members of Luffy’s crew showing the crucial moments when they truly became his nakama. A lot of the nostalgic effect of this was lost on me, either because I’m soulless or the fact that I had only seen all the recapped episodes a few months ago but I suspect for those who have been watching One Piece for much longer might have forgotten those moments. From when episode 285 was released, it had already been 7 years since episode 1 of One Piece premiered. Nonetheless it was nice to see some of those moments again. Like when a crying Nami begs for Luffy’s help to defeat Arlong and he simply plonks his precious straw hat on her head and roars “Of course I will”. Or, well, anything involving Chopper’s back story. Love that lil’ guy.

I definitely enjoyed the episodes preceding them, featuring Nico Robin’s story which was incredibly sad. She’s clearly a much stronger woman than you might think, to have survived all that she had been through and come out of it as she has. Her story also made me go from mildly disliking the World Government to straight up despising it. There was also a very interesting bit of information given from the giant Sagwarl D. Saulo claiming the “D” in his name is something everyone in his family line has... Monkey D. Luffy... Portgas D. Ace...Gold D. Roger... very interesting indeed.

It looks like the Straw Hat’s vs. CP9 will be kicking off in the next bunch of episode, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how truly powerful these super-assassins are and how far Luffy and co. have improved. We’ve already seen a glimpse of this after poor Blueno was dismantled by Luffy’s “2nd Gear”. I’m thinking the 3rd Gear will be revving up soon.

Hajime No Ippo
(Episodes 25-26)

Sadly this series came to an end last week. The penultimate Episode 25: Please Accept This Bronze Statue was very funny as we come to expect from Hajime and followed on directly from the end of the Takamura Vs Hawk match. I particularly loved the way Takamura went from hero to villain in a matter of seconds after declaring, to the still buzzing auditorium, that the woman of Japan come to him so he can give them his seed so that “In twenty years, Japan will be crawling with me!” An awkward silence ensues followed by a rain of drinks, food and insults. Classic Takamura.

Cut to a week later at the gym where a bronze statue of Takamura (and later several dozen mini-statues) celebrating his victory arrive all ordered by the Champion himself to sell as merchandise. Aoki manages to break the large bronze statues arm and cue his hilarious attempts to hide the broken arm from Takamura. By far the funniest part of this episode though was Ippo’s agonising dinner with Itagaki’s family where Ippo (and us) are subjected to a brutal volley of horrifically terrible jokes mostly coming from Itagaki’s father. I truly felt Ippo’s pain and loved the way, after hearing Ippo re-tell the story to Aoki and Kimura, Takamura decides Itagaki’s dad is a threat to him, presumably as the king of bad jokes and a shadowy late night duel takes place between the two. Very good episode.

Following it up is the much darker more serious Episode 26: New Challenger. It opens with Miyata shadow boxing when his dad enters the room. We learn that apparently he has been asking for a match against Ippo for sometime but Coach Kamogawa had been refusing partly because of the unspoken fear that Ippo has gone soft and lost his drive. The other reason is Ippo’s reliance on the Dempsey Roll, as awesome as it is, is also his weakness and even Ippo’s attempts during the episode to improve the technique only strengthen it in some areas while weakening it fatally in others. Everyone also knows it’s his coup de grâce and as we find out later on his next opponent claims to be able to neutralise the Roll completely. More interestingly is the coach’s belief that Miyata has not only overtaken Ippo in ability but has leapt over and created a new gap. Ippo is furious and disheartened but rather than wither away he insists he’ll meet this new challenge.

Aoki proved to be the centre of the hilarity again as a string of freak accidents disable the 4 boxers ranked above him leaving him as number one in his weight division and with a clear shot at the title to everyone’s shock.

The episode ends with a montage showing Ippo training for his “New Challenge” with the full version of the theme song playing over it which is cool but marred by the brief appearance of Mashiba’s sister, Kumi, setting up the (less than) exiting prospect of seeing her weird awkward relationship-thing with Ippo continuing in the new series. On that note however, its unclear what going on with Hajime No Ippo part 3. There is plenty of content as the manga is far ahead in the story but other than the Japanese voice actor for Takamura, Rikiya Koyama, claiming that the next part was being planned, there has been little news. I’m sure that the large audiences and critical acclaim will be enough to justify its continuation but I’ll keep you informed on any more developments.

Remember you can see all the shows reviewed the week and many more at www.animeseason.com. Check it out and I’ll see you for some more Anime Action reviews this time next week.