Finally, the worst-kept secret of One Piece comes to screens as Episode 1071 brings about the return of Joyboy! The end of episode 1070 saw Luffy melting with a smile on his face as his heartbeat came back. Now the drums of liberation were declared to beat once more by the great elephant Zunesha off the shores of Wano. So, does the most hyped episode of One Piece ever live up to expectations?
What Happened in One Piece Episode 1071?
The episode kicks off strong where 1070 left off, as Luffy’s heartbeat pounds back to life. Zunesha remarks that the Drums of Liberation finally beat again after eight hundred years, and Luffy begins his transformation. The Straw Hat Captain begins to pulse and beat along with the rhythm, hair turning white as he rises to his feet, laughing. Luffy exclaims how happy he feels and how much fun he’s having as the Gorosei in Mary Geoise speaks about the Gum-Gum Fruit’s true identity. Not truly a Pramythia as believed, the Gum-Gum Fruit is instead a Legendary Zoan type, the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Sun God Nika.
Of course, while that’s going on other events are happening below. Kozuki Hiyori is in the midst of her confrontation with Orochi, her father’s murderer. As she plays her instrument along to Oden’s favorite song, Hiyori stabs the traitorous Orochi with a sea prism nail to stop his Zoan abilities. When Kanjuro’s last remaining flames come back for him though, they try to seek solace in Orochi and instead end up burning him alive.
As Luffy springs back to life up top, he inflates his hand to a level never seen before and reaches through the hole in the Skull Dome. His hand grabs onto Kaido, yanks him out, and Luffy starts to throw him around like a toy. The animation is joyfully over the top.
Gear Five
Just like Luffy says, Gear Five is his peak. He transforms in a wreath of smoke much like Gear Four, now with his hair all white. His newly Awakened Zoan Fruit allows him to change his body even more than already allowed, without having to inflate his bones. Luffy can now enlarge his limbs, change his size, stretch ridiculously long, and even more at will. He’s always had the boundless imagination to make up new Gum-Gum abilities. Now Gear Five truly lets him realize those visions.
The animation for these sequences is off-the-charts amazing. It leans heavily into the Looney Tunes art and effects that inspired the form in the first place. When Luffy spins Kaido around in dragon form, his eyes popping out every time he passes the camera, you really can’t help but find it funny because of the ridiculous sight. Luffy slings Kaido around for a while before finally making him into every rock around. Don’t even get going on the sound effects throughout the entire thing, which only added to the classic cartoon vibe.
Sun God Nika
The Sun God Nika, whom Luffy’s Fruit embodies, is known as Joyboy. He was a being that brought laughter and happiness wherever he went, and the World Government has tried to cover his existence up. Luffy is the first to attain this power in eight hundred years. The fear of the World Government is at an all-time high. The embodiment of joy and liberation, Nika frees slaves and liberates prisoners. All while bringing happiness, showing everyone feel true joy at their freedom. Sounds a lot like Luffy already, so it’s no wonder the Zoan Fruit chose the young Straw Hat captain.
One Piece Manga to Anime
There’s always a nice layer of detail and context when something is animated instead of drawn. The manga gave fantastic views of how amazing Luffy’s new power was, but without the animation, it’s hard to grasp how he changes everything around him. The ground bounces like rubber under him, his limbs waving like an inflatable tube man. It’s all so much more apparent in the animation. There’s a lot of love put into these Gear Five sequences. Even better, the love shown in episode 1071 is only a tease of what’s to come in the next one.
The voice acting is the other bright spot in this episode. Luffy’s voice actress especially deserves a round of applause. She brought the infectious joy and laughter of Luffy’s transformation to life, and deserves huge praise for the emotion in her performance. Also big shout out to the sound team for the episode. The old-school cartoon sound effects perfectly accompanied the top-notch animation.
One Piece’s Pacing Problems
Now to get into the bad of the episode, namely the pacing issues. Understandably, there are going to be pacing issues since the anime is so damn close to the manga story-wise. The Wano arc has been an absolute mess for the pace of One Piece, often barely adapting half of a chapter per episode. It feels like, for a moment as big as this, more time was spent focusing on the transformation itself.
Don’t misunderstand, the manga told the story this same way and there are totally unavoidable pacing changes. That said, the ridiculously drawn-out flashback and repeating Gear Five animations were not good. The scene of Luffy walking in Gear Five repeats three times! The constant switching closeup between Luffy and Kaido? Excruciatingly, comically long. It looks like as hyped as this episode was for animation, it’s going to be episode 1072 that’s the star of the show.
Eventually, after the manga is done it would be nice to get a totally remade One Piece anime with good pacing/no filler. In an ideal world, Oda would oversee it like Kubo is overseeing Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War. Only time will tell, but hold on to hope.
What’s Next?
The next episode promises to be the big fight between Luffy and Kaido. Even then it’s not entirely sure if that will be the entire focus. Hopefully, the studio will take this entire episode to be an all-out example of Gear Five’s insanity. Fingers crossed, as any scenes not involving Luffy in this episode were… minimally animated at best. The Gorosei scene in particular looked like someone colored a manga panel and moved the mouths with a mouse pad. The budget has to be priority though, so if it works it works.
Either way, One Piece Episode 1072 will drop at this same time next week on Crunchyroll. Luffy is going to show off the full power of Gear Five, and Kaido is about to feel the pain of Joyboy’s wrath. One Piece’s Wano arc is coming to an end soon!
One Piece is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Netflix in the United States.
