'One Piece's Latest Episode Has Some Truly Insane Animation

The "Whole Cake Island" arc has been a struggle for the Straw Hat Pirates. They're separated, fighting strong foes, and Sanji's wedding grows closer. But if the rest of the arc has fights as well animated as the one in the latest episode, fans are in for a good time.

The fight between Pedro and Baron Tamago may only have lasted half a chapter in the original manga, but it was translated gorgeously to the anime adaptation.

One Piece #816 was amazing. Noboru Koizumi's return to supervising animation (he was the first series character designer!) has been spectacular. He handled by himself all the fights and they were so damn good. pic.twitter.com/OtBhnIJbkn

— Ashita (@AshitanoGin) December 3, 2017

Original character designer to the series Noboru Koizumi returned to the series and it already meant a huge improvement to how the series animates. Fans didn't expect to see Baron Tamago pose an actual threat to Pedro of the Nox Pirates, but the way he's animated here implies an impressive power.

During this fight not only did we learn more about Pedro's past with Tamago, but we learned how imposing of a fighter Pedro really is. In order to distract the bulk of Big Mom's crew so that Brook could break into her treasure room and steal a rubbing of her Poneglyph, Pedro has been fighting enemies all on his own.

But with his impressive Mink abilities allowing him to channel his sword with electricity, he counted Tamago's unorthodox fighting style. Spectacularly animated dodges, swift strikes, and an impressive rotating shot zooming in on Tamago's fearsome kick made this battle far more impressive than it seemed in Oda's original work.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

What do you think of Pedro and Baron Tamago's fight? Talk to me @Valdezology.