Blog Assignment #2

 For this assignment, I'm choosing to review episodes 944 and 945 of the popular anime, One Piece. I usually watch this show in dub, due to the large number of episodes, but I am no stranger to watching tv shows or movies in Japanese. In these two episodes, the paths of Monkey D. Luffy, the protagonist, and Big Mom, a powerful foe converge on the island of Wano after following their respective journies individually for some time. I thought the payoff was decent, as the moment of surprise at their first encounter was pretty funny and the chaos that ensued was entertaining. Getting into the Japanese aspect of this review, I noticed that certain characters (mostly villains) sounded different, in a general sense, which I assumed was matching certain voices to character archetypes (coward, hot-tempered, etc...). It was neat to start to pick up on words and pieces just from the Japanese audio alone, instead of being 100 percent reliant on subtitles. I still have quite a ways to go before I'd be able to listen without subtitles, but it's a cool goal for me to have and one that I will approach with enthusiasm!