Q: Who Is Nami Speaking To In This Screenshot?

1) Someone off screen, standing in front of her?
2) Brook?

The One Piece anime in the last year or so has changed it’s visual style a lot. It’s simplified the character design and loosened itself up, seemingly influenced by the look of the 6th and 9th Movies.

For the most part it’s worked wonders, we’ve got a lot more movement in the show and the recent short filler looked far better than it had any right too. However the downside is you occasionally get duds like this week’s episode which contained poorly thought out scene after poorly thought out scene, of which the one above is but one example.

What’s worse is that scene is in the manga, where it’s posed correctly with Nami addressing Brook while she delivers her lines (and slaps). And it’s doubly annoying when they mess up some perfectly fine animation later on by framing it in the most obtuse way possible.

I’d still take it all over pretty much everything we got in the Skypeia episodes though.

A: She’s speaking to Brook!