One Piece
Episode 812

by Sam Leach,

How would you rate episode 812 of
One Piece (TV 1999) ?
Community score: 3.7

With Luffy and Nami locked up in Big Mom's magical book prison, it's up to the rest of the crew to pick up the slack. Carrot and Chopper are doing their best in Brulee's mirror world, but for the first time in a while, we get to set our sights on Brook and Pedro.

We're reminded in this episode that the Straw Hats' secondary mission on Whole Cake Island is to get a copy of Big Mom's Road Poneglyph, one of the giant stone tablets that makes reaching the One Piece treasure possible. It's almost a shock to the system to remember that we're in the proper final stretch of the series (however long that may take), and the way that this subplot weaves in and out of the Sanji stuff gives me goosebumps. It's Brook and Pedro's job to infiltrate and do what they can, all while we get to learn more about how the Big Mom pirates operate, as well as their storied and hostile past with Pedro specifically.

There's a real freshness to the tone of this episode, as everything reminds us how big a deal this arc is in the grand scheme of things. We get to meet Charlotte Smoothie, the long-legged giantess who belongs to Big Mom's Sweet Three and has a bounty even bigger than Cracker's at 932 million (the final member of the Sweet Three is still a mystery), and the finale of the episode pits Luffy and Big Mom against each other over the phone, like when they first argued back on Fishman Island. Luffy's the loser in this scenario, but he's being tougher than ever as he tells Big Mom to bring her smack talk to him face-to-face.

Numerous moving pieces are a big part of what makes One Piece exciting, especially when you trust that there's a reason for everything in the story. Everything is building and building, and all it takes is one really great payoff in a subplot for the entire story to change. Brook and Pedro haven't known each other for very long, but the trust they put in each other to pull off this near-suicide mission is commendable. They're very level headed and figure, "Well, if Luffy's going to be Pirate King one day, we're gonna have to go for it." It's great.

It also feels appropriate that the Luffy vs. Big Mom beef began back on Fishman Island, because the further we get into Whole Cake, the more this arc starts to reveal itself as the Act Two to Oda's race relation themes. So many new species of people have become apparent in the story by this point, and right upfront Big Mom's governing country of Totto Land is meant to be a utopia where people of all shapes and sizes can live in harmony, let alone Mom's army of multi-racial children. However, as Judge mentions to Big Mom while she's showing the Vinsmokes around, there seems to be a certain race missing. Now Big Mom is a big woman, but she's still technically just a tall human. She's not what we classify as a literal giant in this series, and there are no giants in Totto Land. The disgusted glare that Big Mom tries to hide when this is pointed out indicates that it might be a sore spot, and we start to realize that maybe this woman who keeps a living collection of rare animals pinned inside a book may not be sincerely benevolent. That kindness of hers disappears when her ego is wounded.

This episode is jam-packed with so much more content than the episodes proceeding it. We get major developments in all the subplots, even the repetitive Carrot and Chopper stuff, and it ties the Whole Cake Island arc into the big picture much more than we had been seeing prior. Episodes like this make me sad that the rest of the arc has been so sluggish, because it becomes so easy to forget what else is going on in the story. There's a lot of plot machinery in play here, and that's the kind of complexity that a good One Piece arc thrives on.

Rating: A

One Piece is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.com.

Sam Leach records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.
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