User blog comment:Roranoa Drake II/Episode 725 Review: Road to Gear Fourth/@comment-24850639-20160111190801

My interest in the anime waned big time during the Dressrosa Arc, because thats when I became a manga reader. I still watch it and enjoy the touch they add from time to time, but now there's weeks, sometimes month before I watch again. I still follow it, but I only watch now when I'm excited about something big: things that the moment I read it in the manga, I COULDN'T WAIT to see it animated. They have an OK track record up until now, but not to the point that my eyes are peeled for every episode. Before Gear 4th happened, the biggest thing I was excited for was Zoro and Pica's battle. They did it justice even with the filler they added, but words cannot explain my disappointment when they took out Zoro telling Pica that he was never in his league. The repetitive scene of Pica's footstomp during the episode Zoro did Tactics No. 5 got to be pretty annoying, and I HATE the way they translated Zoro's monologue before the Ichidai Sanzen: Daisen Sekai. I'm no translator by any means, by how does "Over 8 seas, 9 mountains, and throughout the world itself, there is nothing I cannot cut" turn into all that shit he said about cubing trilochosms and what not? Seriously what the fuck was that? It wasn't like he said anything inappropriate.....but I'll digress on that, because I do think by and large the anime has been doing a good job. I don't mind them adding their own filler scenes and quotes because USUALLY they make sense, but a lot of times its the things they leave out they really grind my gears.

Actually let me rephrase, I tend to not mind when they add their own filler to FIGHT SCENES. I'm all for them extending Luffy vs. Mingo, because I honestly thought it was pretty underwhelming in the manga. For someone as powerful as Doffy is, I expected him to do waaayyy more damage to Luffy. We did get to see just how strong he was and how good he was with his fruit this fight, but after Gear 4th got activated he never stood a chance. Luffy got protected and was running away when it wore off the first time, and before it happened, none of the blows they landed on each other did any serious damage. They were BOTH fatigued, so lets not use that to justify any of this. If the anime's filler means we get to see a more brutal fight with more than the usual amount of bumps and bruises, I can dig it.