One Piece Episodes 1016 Review

Another strong episode of One Piece. Obviously, it’s nowhere near the same level as 1015 was, but it would be unfair to ding it on that account. 1015 was a celebratory milestone and likely one of the best pieces of animation we’ll see all year, so 1016 being “just” the normal top-quality Wano we’re used to seeing is fine.

The episode is largely split into two halves: the roof battle and Sanji in Black Maria’s lair. The roof battle with the three captains of the Worst Generation facing off against Kaido and Big Mom has a lot of heavy, weight-of-destiny buildup behind it, but ends up mostly being a comedy shtick. We get the now-iconic silly reaction faces of Luffy, Law, and Kid reacting to Big Mom’s impending fireball. Like the legendary Enel Face, Perona Face, and Robin/Usopp/Franky-reacting-to-wanted-posters faces before them, these are just great gag faces that gave me a big belly laugh even though I knew they were coming.

The actual fight itself is mostly a small set of giant hits. There’s not much nuance to the fight – Zoro and Killer hit Kaido with a big attack and he laughs it off. Whether this is a feature or a bug is up to you, but get ready for many weeks of titanic beings slugging each other with world-ending attacks because there’s a lot of that in Onigashima. We’re in for a long fight, folks.

The second half of the episode focuses on Sanji in Black Maria’s clutches. He keeps trying to escape, but he suffers from The Thirst and is battling to try and getaway. Your mileage may vary on this – personally I’m not the biggest fan of the “Sanji is horny” gags, but here I actually did find the juxtaposition with his inner-thirst funny. Though it’s still the same joke repeated a dozen times in one scene, so it wore thin pretty fast.

But overall a solid episode in what will undoubtedly be a long run of Kaido-punching.

Rating: 4/5 Stars.