Episode 1137 of One Piece is heart-wrenching, cathartic, and really darn good.
Most of this week’s episode sees Bonney in the literal clutches of Saturn. He holds her in his monstrous grip and lets despair take root in her heart while twisting the emotional knife. Saturn is poised to not only snuff out her life but her spirit, and despite her best efforts and the protestations of the Straw Hats, there’s not much that can be done.
But along comes the cavalry in the form of none other than Kuma himself. Kuma’s ceaseless approach consistently ratchets up the tension in the episode until his bombastic arrival. Kuma taking the blow meant for Bonney and then turning around to sock Saturn in the jaw is probably the Egghead Island Arc’s best moment. This is a series with many big punches with big ramifications, but this has to be one of the best, even among such a storied company.
The Toei team leaves it all on the field for 1137. The aforementioned punch is a crowd-pleaser and a roomshaker, with the gorgeous shift to black and white just before impact. But I think the real brilliance is in the despair Bonney experiences – communicated through ways subtle and not. The shot of her where her world shifts and the red outlines suddenly engulf her in a web of tangled fated threads is superb. It’s one of my favorite shots in a long time. The filter over the memory sequence, the cut to the emotional end credit song before the punch is completed, it’s all handled with the deft cinematography and pacing the Toei team has been bringing for literal years at this point.
It’s hard to think of a more effective way this episode could have been executed, and it’s a tremendous return to the present as we exit the flashback.
