×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

One Piece
Episode 960

by Grant Jones,

How would you rate episode 960 of
One Piece (TV 1999) ?
Community score: 4.5

Orochi continues to cackle at his own devious work at stopping the revolution. We are shown scenes of his henchman blowing up the bridges of Wano one by one, as well as the Thousand Sunny cutting off any access route the revolutionary forces can use to link up with the Akazaya Nine. Meanwhile, on the rainswept shores, Kinemon and the others decide that – army or no army – they are setting off to battle Kaido. Momnosuke pleads with them to stay but they insist that they must honor Oden by remaining his samurai to the very end.

That is when we enter One Piece Flashback Time™ *cue wailing sirens*

We (quantum) leap decades into the past to see Kozuki Oden in his prime. He is eighteen years old, fit and strong and a beast of a man. Wano is different too, a pristine verdant beauty free of industrial smokestacks and ash-choked wastelands. We learn of Oden's (in)famous deeds, from wrestling his nanny to visiting pleasure houses to starting harem wars (as one does, naturally). Oden is a man of great excess, womanizing and cooking food over the bones of the dead; yet he is also capable of great kindness, shaping the land of Wano to help its people or solemnly honoring the very dead he has his meal over. We also see young Kinemon and Denjiro as wayward criminals, the former almost being on the receiving end of Tsuru's (his future wife) blade for stealing. Eventually he takes a small white boar and, wouldn't you know it, that summons a terrasque enormous boar.

Oden shows up with an eager gleam in his eyes and, clearly getting ready to face down the giant boar, tells Kinemon to hand him the small boar just as the To Be Continued card flashes.

Another excellent, excellent episode for this season.

Wano has been strong material in the manga, but the anime has done such a tremendous job realizing the material that it's a delight. The direction was once again on point. I loved the use of stark foreground and background contrasts such as in scenes with the lit bomb fuses on the Sunny's deck, or how Orochi is literally painting inky X's onto the camera as he crosses off targets on his map of Wano. Another excellent sequence was him tearing up the map and throwing the pieces into the air only for that to be a match cut to the falling cherry blossom of Wano. Perhaps most evocative was the scene where the Akazaya Nine set out and are entirely cast in black and white, but Momo's tears and the rain are realized in a haunting cold blue. It's all yet more excellent work for a weekly television production that has continued for so long.

Oden's flashback is going to be a real treat to see in motion too. It's certainly full of big moments that leap right off the page of the manga, and already these early bits make them that much larger feeling. Oden's status as less a character and more a folk hero is an important one to keep in mind I think; whether by his actual feats or the aggrandizement of his followers, he has become a legend more than a man. He reroutes the mighty river and challenges beasts the size of entire cities! Even in the world of One Piece these are considerable feats that seem to stretch the bounds of what is possible. Keeping that folk hero identity in mind is a key component to understanding the flashback overall, in my opinion. I can't wait to see more.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

One Piece is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.com. Save on Anime Streaming Subscriptions with Funimation.

discuss this in the forum (721 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history

back to One Piece
Episode Review homepage / archives