One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi

It's safe to say that with how huge One Piece is, periodic recap episodes are almost a must to aid the fans to keep up with the humongous well-written world of One Piece. The primary goal from these special episodes was always that, quick standalone recaps that one can watch and save the countless hours that they would put have they went with the Anie binging route, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. However, as bad as it seems, not every recap manages to leave a nice memory about it, does this also concern this special?

Following the same trend of “Episode of X” releases, ... this special focuses on Sabo and his perspective on the event that overlapped Dressrosa, for what've seen from the canon plot, Sabo was only introduced almost midway into the arc, it turned out that he was already there before any of the chaos unraveled.

We all hate useless flashbacks, flashbacks that are told so much that it throws you in some hurtful Naruto nightmares and its endless recursive line of the same flashback repeating over and over again. We've already seen the history of the three brothers on so many occasions before that we could tell it from start to finish as if it was a contest. I mean, yes, it's crucial to the special seeing how it focuses on a character that we've only got introduced to through a flashback arc, to begin with, but still, Dressrosa was a dragged out nightmare already, so there was no need to massacre this recap in the same brutal way.

On a whole, it was really enjoyable and fun to dig through some highlights from the Dressrosa arc whilst getting new content that the canon lacked, even though most of it was Sabo monologing about how Luffy has grown from a crybaby to a strong, capable man.
I still like how the Anime did a lot of things better than this special, they even included altered dialogue and even completely different scenarios for some reason. The only thing I thought the special did better than the Anime was Sabo's flashed out fight against Diamante and Luffy's fight against Don Chinjao, although, I like the how latter was set up in the Anime more.
On these two specific fights, the animation really stood out and asserted its dominance as a higher produced piece of animation.

One Piece episode of Sabo... Overall I enjoyed it, but definitely have some complaints.

For a special called episode of Sabo, there really wasn't enough Sabo. Like, the majority of the special is the Dressrosa arc in hyper-speed or something, and most of it just feels like padding. Counting all the new material this probably wouldn't have even been 15 minutes long...

As I just mentioned, the pacing is way too fast, and full of stuff that's really irrelevant to what most of us want. Like the Law, Fuji, and Doffy bits felt so slapped in there.
Again, another issue with the pacing is some stuff felt ... really... not so impactful. Luffy's reunion with Sabo, Sabo's fight in the Colosseum, Luffy and Chinjao etc. The anime did all of those scenes much better.

The animation and art is... not as good as I'd hoped. I wouldn't say it was bad, but some parts were clearly better done than others. Some Toei art quirks are in here too.


Too much of it was recycled content. I know there's obviously not much canonical material to pull from and all but still.

Overall, and this is probably gonna be an unpopular opinion, but this really felt like a cash in on Sabo's crazy popularity right now. I didn't hate the special or anything, I love Sabo too and seeing more of him was definitely a treat. It's just I really don't feel like what Toei did here was necessary at all. If you don't care for Sabo, don't bother. If you're a diehard Sabo fan, give it a watch because the sliver of new content was definitely enjoyable.

I was really disappointed by this special. They marketed it as a special about Sabo with "content never seen before in the anime/manga." This is about as far as you can get from that, being almost entirely recap of Dressrosa with a couple new scenes from Sabo's perspective. That's it.

What I really wanted was some sort of side story featuring Sabo and some of the other revolutionaries like Koala and Hack. They could've done a continuation of Robin's separation story in Tequila Wolf and had them do some sort of mission together. I don't care if it ends up being non-canon, it's not a whole ... lot different in concept than 3D2Y was, and that was also non-canon. It doesn't even have to be something like that, just anything other than this would be good. Why would you market it as something unique and new when it's literally the furthest possible thing from that?

What they did was cash in on the hype about Sabo. A lot of Sabo fans might disagree with that, but as a Sabo fan myself I'm just being honest. We were promised something and we got the exact opposite of what we were promised. That's not cool.