One Piece hasn’t even hit the climax of its on-going arc, but the anime is still wilding out. This weekend, Toei Animation pushed out the show’s 822nd episode, and it saw Sanji make a long-awaited stand against Big Mom and her crew.
The new episode followed Big Mom as the pirate delved deeper into her plans for the Vinsmoke clan. Thinking the Straw Hats were taken care of, the Yonko focuses on tracking Sanji as his wedding to Pudding draws nearer. However, the chef is not going to make things that easy for the villainess.
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Sitting in his room, Sanji comes to the realization there is little he can do against Big Mom. The chef is on the pirate’s home turf, and Sanji believes his death will help free his friends. Reiju’s knowledge of the plot against the Vinsmoke family will protect her when things sour at the nuptials, and Sanji tries to convince himself he’s okay dying if it means his crew can escape Whole Cake Island.
However, that train of thought gets derailed when Bobbin appears.
Sanji is staring at the strange bento he made for Pudding when Big Mom’s ally shows up. Bobbin eats some of the meat Sanji prepared for Pudding, but the act reminds the chef of why he made the dish. Meat is Luffy’s favorite food bar none, and the realization reminds Sanji of something important. Luffy said he would starve himself until he could eat something made by Sanji once the latter returned to his crew, and the reminder is enough to spring Sanji forward.
The chef slams Bobbin into a wall to keep him from eating the meat. As guards converge on the pair’s location, Sanji surprises himself with how violently he reacted, but he does not have long to think. The hero picks up his bento and runs away to meet Luffy at the captain’s rendezvous point.
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.
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