One Piece So Far - DISCLAIMER: Spoiler Alert!

So, if you do watch the One Piece anime, you will know that it is currently on a whopping 712 episodes, which may seem overwhelming to the person who hasn't previously watched the anime, let alone the person who doesn't watch anime at all. 

At this point, I will assume that you are a One Piece fan, so lets drop the small talk. 

For me, the different Story Arcs in this Masterpiece by Eiichiro Oda are phenomenal. Each Arc has been executed to the standard of an independent Anime, ultimately being assembled together to forge arguably the greatest ongoing Anime ever. 

One Piece has bought us some of the most loved Arcs in Anime, such as the infamous Marineford Arc. The way it bought together it's most powerful characters at an early point in the overall progression of the storyline and having a clash of characters so strong that Luffy's efforts looked as influencial as a haystack are some of the many reasons why it amazes me. Other Arcs such as the Ennies Lobby arc, where it started off seeming like Nico Robin betrayed the crew and finished with the entire crew displaying the extent of their bonds through an epic rescue, even poor old Sogeking (aka Sniper King, aka Captain Usopp, aka Usopp, aka..) anonymously joins in the rescue, putting his friendship before his honour after his fallout with the Captain but luckily for us, he rejoins at the end. Other Arcs that come to mind which are personal favourites are Impel Down Arc, Skypiea Arc, Water 7 Arc and the wonderfully comical Long Ring Long Land Arc.

Moving onto what's currently going on. The Dressrosa Arc is one of the slightly longer Arcs in the Anime (bit of an understatement). Starting off with Lucy and the tournament in the Corrida Colosseum, the group splitting up into two parts and then sh*tloads of episodes with Rebecca screaming like a b*tch which caused me to consider therapy. The story then builds and we are introduced to Luffy's long lost brother Sabo, who turns out not to be dead, but in fact saved by Luffy's father, Monkey D. Dragon. Also, Admiral Fujitora, one of the newly emerging Admirals since Akainu's promotion to Fleet Admiral is introduced to the audience.

After the Rebecca phase, the Tontattas are on a low profile mission to save their Princess (literally low) and Trafalgar Law has his backside kicked down to the dirt by Doflamingo. Sabo eats the Mera Mera fruit, which was incredibly Awesome. Usopp manages to take down Sugar which causes her power to reverse and all the people turned to toys and trapped as slaves in the SMILE factory, regain their previous lives and start worshipping Usopp like a bunch of zombies raving in a club, giving him the title of God Usopp. Furthermore the Tontattas say Usoland about 147 times and Franky is still in his never ending battle of masculinity with Senor Pink. Kyros, with his returned body then proceeds to go and decapitate Doflamingo and the Arc ends. 

The Arc doesn't really end though as the body Kyros decapitated turns out to be a string clone. Doflamingo is enraged and traps everybody into the island with a string birdcage. He then places bounties on the head of all his enemies, uses his string powers to make civilians attack one another and basically causes the entire island to go berserk. 

This brings us to the current episodes, where Oda is building the Arc into its final stages where Luffy will eventually fight Doflamingo and needless to say, crush him.

The latest episode, namely "Episode 712: A Strong Wind and a Surge! Hakuba vs. Dellinger!", featured the return of the alter-ego of Cavendish called Hakuba. At the beginning, Gladius is launching a large scale attack against Cavendish who is ordering Bartolomeo to let him into the inside of the barrier. After a rather funny arguement, Bartolomeo helps Cavendish. Later on, after Dellinger is on a high from a ruthless kill he encounters Hakuba, who takes him out at the swing of a sword and then annihilates him with countless strikes. The episode doesn't fail to impress as in the end of the episode, Hakuba goes after Nico Robin, and Bartolomeo is unable to help her. To the surprise of the audience, Nico Robin is completely unfazed and has Hakuba at the palm of her hand.

NOTE: I do not own this image.

It appears that Nico Robin has been hiding her abilities and though I don't think that she will continue to clash with Hakuba, the possibility does remain open. Unlike other episodes, this episode focused solely on the development of this particular situation and didn't waste too much time on showing for example, glimpses of fights between Pica and Zoro, Franky and Senor etc.


 This episode was one of the more entertaining episodes and I rate it an 8/10.