"One Piece: Episode of Merry" tries to sum up the final days of the Going Merry. This means having to condense both Water Seven and Enies Lobby in just one episode, which is, in my opinion, an almost impossible feat. There's much to say about the story. Regular One Piece followers know how important the Going Merry was for the first part of the anime/manga. I feel like this special episode doesn't do justice to it. It might be a good way to get a quick reminder of the events in Water Seven and Enies Lobby - mostly Enies Lobby -, but it doesn't work toowell as an individual work. What I mean is that the story feels "chopped". It's like someone just cut up some parts of the source material and glued them together. The transitions from one scene to another sometimes feel too forced, and they leave the viewers wondering what happened. This is especially noticeable in the Enies Lobby recap. The main problem with this is that it fails to deliver the original brilliance of both arcs. Enies Lobby is one of my all-time favorite arcs in One Piece, and here it lacks its brilliance. Everything is too condensed to really appreciate it.

Furthermore, the characters from those two arcs are not even properly introduced sometimes. Again, it doesn't matter too much if you're familiar with the One Piece universe. Since the story is told from Ussop's point of view, it's only natural that we know almost nothing about what was happening inside the tower, for example. However, there's a lot of lore that is missing. I feel like they could have taken a different approach for this episode so that they could have included those pieces of lore.

The animation is overall good, there's not much to say about it. Same thing with the soundtrack.

The "Episode of Merry" is meant to be watched as a complement to the original series, that much is clear. As a recap, it's decent enough, although there are many important parts missing from it and it lacks some of its original deepness. I'd suggest giving it a chance anyway.