The first One Piece episode of 2023 — One Piece Episode 1046, titled “Taking a Chance! The Two Arms Go Into Battle!,” aired on January 8, 2022.
We finally have a new One Piece episode after waiting for 3 weeks and what an amazing episode it is.
Zoro’s entry as he rips his bandages and flies toward Queen’s attack, cutting it in half, was really epic. Sanji joins him and together they attack King and Queen with “Three-Sword Style: Purgatory Onigiri!” and “Diable: Mutton Mallet.” The animation quality of this scene was especially top-tier.
Zoro and Sanji’s conversation about getting a glimpse of Luffy becoming the Pirate King is an obvious sign that Oda is getting into the endgame now.
Though I have to say I don’t like this magical Zou medicine stuff. Let’s see what kind of after-effects Zoro will have to face for using it.
The land of Gods
After fighting King, Marco implies that King’s race used to live on top of the Red Line. We see a flashback where Whitebeard says that long ago before there was Marijoa, there was the land of Gods.
Later in the episode, Queen mentions the Lunarians in reference to King.
Does this mean that King belongs to the Lunarian race, who were believed to be gods?
It has been 25 years and Oda still gives us more questions than answers. What were the Lunarians? Why were they called gods? What happened to this race? Did the Celestial Dragons wipe them out to become the new gods?
Germa powers
It seems like Sanji is about to awaken his Germa powers. He says in the episode that after putting on his raid suit for the third time, his body feels a bit strange. Maybe wearing the Germa raid suit did something to bring forth his dormant Germa powers.
His ability to produce fire also seems like a Germa product so maybe not we’ll see Sanji awaken different powers like his brothers. We know his brothers have exoskeletons and powers like electricity and energy beams.
At the end of the episode, we see a cloud of dust, and it looks like Momonosuke has transformed into an adult Dragon. I’m excited to see what he looks like now.
While the animation quality of the episodes has been good, I feel the pace of the episodes just isn’t it. In this episode, the anime adapted only three pages of the corresponding manga chapter till half-time.
You can watch the latest One Piece episodes every week on Crunchyroll.