One Piece: The Movie

This is the first One Piece movie, theoretically taking place after Usopp joins the crew and before Sanji is introduced. Just like all movies, it is a filler mission with a good budget and a simplistic plot. And indeed, the story is just about the Strawhat Pirates trying to find a great treasure before an evil pirate crew does. Why? Well, the adventure sounds like fun and there is a kid asking for their help, so how can their shounen hearts say no? As simple as it all sounds though, I must say the premise is quite far fetched for the point in the storyline itwas thrown in. The treasure is supposed to be around 1/3rd of the world’s riches and the main villain has weird Dragonball super powers. It just doesn’t feel like that sort of grand-scale premise fits into the weakest and calmest of the world’s seas. This is something one would normally expect after the CP9 are introduced. Hell, why is there even a character called El Drago, when the main series already has Dragon? But hey, since when do filler movies try to be consistent? Anyways, a notice must be given to how the real form of the pirate treasure may as well be the real One Piece of the main series. Since Oda takes ideas even from these movies into the canon story later on, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is so. In a way the first movie may be spoiling one of the greatest mysteries of the show. As epic as it sounds though, the overall plot is as I said quite simple and unimpressive, and has the usual kid asking the heroes to help out fuss. So you will just watch this for the action scenes, which are not bad at all. They are definitely longer and more elaborate than those of the earlier Ganzack OVA and there is even a mini-boss for Zoro to fight and show off his powers properly. If there is something I didn’t like is how final boss El Drago was being defeated constantly with his own power turned against him and he didn’t just stick to using cutting attacks. I also didn’t understand how Luffy could block or deflect energy beams but then again I am overthinking in a shounen filler movie. Let’s just say I didn’t like how Luffy didn’t really use any actual strategy in battle other than having infinite stamina and using the attacks against the bad guy. Cheap! In all, it is quite the passable movie. The story is too simple and even out of sync with the point it’s supposed to take place, while the action, as flashy as it may be, lacks any real excitement once you realize the protagonist has plot armour. And now for some excused scorings. ART SECTION: 8/10 Analysis: General Artwork 2/2, Character Figures 2/2, Backgrounds 1/2, Animation 2/2, Visual Effects 1/2 SOUND SECTION: 6/10 Analysis: Voice Acting 2/3, Music Themes 2/4, Sound Effects 2/3 STORY SECTION: 4/10 Analysis: Premise 1/2, Pacing 1/2, Complexity 1/2, Plausibility 0/2, Conclusion 1/2 CHARACTER SECTION: 6/10 Analysis: Presence 2/2, Personality 2/2, Backdrop 1/2, Development 0/2, Catharsis 1/2 VALUE SECTION: 1/10 Analysis: Historical Value 0/3, Rewatchability 0/3, Memorability 1/4 ENJOYMENT SECTION: 2/10 Analysis: Art 1/1, Sound 0/2, Story 0/3, Characters 1/4 VERDICT: 4.5/10

The first One Piece movie was a bit of a surprise. I went into it, expecting a basic, unremarkable side-story featuring the cast of the show. What I got instead was an entertaining pirate tale which stands on it's own as a movie and manages to be well written on top of that. Characters: 8/10 The characters from the show are in top-form here, all bringing along their trademark personality quirks, and being written just as well as they are in the main series. The new characters that get introduced aren't quite as well written or well designed as the main cast, but they're no slouches, either.I thought they did a lot with the character of Ganzo, despite not having much time to develop him. Ganzo's son is a bit of a standard "Little kid wanting to get into fights" archetype, and the villains they introduce are also pretty standard antagonists. However, all of the characters fit into the story, and it makes things interesting for the duration of the film. Story: 7/10 The story itself is a pretty simple tale about finding a pirate's lost treasure, and fighting a separate pirate menace along the way, but the way it's presented is very nice, with a decent pace, well written dialogue, and a nice flow between the scenes. There's a few scenes from the film that are pretty iconic and I think will stick in viewers minds long after the movie has ended. There's also a pretty nice message about greed in there at the end, and I think the movie handles it appropriately, only alluding to the message and leaving it up to the viewer to decide their own opinion on it, instead of shoving it down the viewer's throat. Art: 9/10 The art is really well done. I've been a fan of the art style in One Piece since I started watching it, but it's a real treat to be able to see that art style done using hand-drawn cel animation, with a movie level budget on top of that. The motion has a very nice flow to it, the colors are nice and vibrant, and there seems to be more detail put into the backdrops than there is in (at least the early episodes of) the TV series. Sound: 8/10 Audio is done nicely. With quality voice acting, and a fitting soundtrack for the scenes. The overall audio mix works well, but nothing in it really stood out as super impressive to me. The audio is just an acceptable sound mix, nothing more, nothing less. Enjoyment: 7/10 Overall, while it has it's faults, and there's some parts that make it less enjoyable than the series, I enjoyed this film much more than I thought I would going into it. It's great for both fans of the series and for those who have never seen One Piece before. If you like adventure, action, pirates, or all three, This movie is easy to recommend.

One Piece Movie 1: (2000) Review Story (6/10) Fair The story is fine and simple for an anime movie is was fine and entertaining nothing more to be said he. Art and Animation (9/10) GreatSeeing that this movie came out about 16 years ago, I say that the art style and animation is definitely great not even the first couple hundreds of episodes of the actually anime look this nice and that's usually the case when you make a movie. This one movie even had a classical 90s feel and animation to it which I liked alot. Sound (9/10) Great The sound is great and I've been watching the Funimation Dub of the anime this whole time so this is technically the first thing I've watch from One Piece that is in JP and the JP voice actors for everyone sound great. Characters (9/10) Great Your default straw hat crew before they got Sanji is all here and doing their thing and they are just as entertaining as they always are. The movie characters were ok which is why I can't give this section a 10 because they weren't that interesting but nonetheless nobody was bad in my opinion Enjoyment (7/10) Good Now these days I can't sit down and finish a movie in one sitting so my enjoyment reached at least a 7 because of the straw hat crew acting like how they always do and making it and enjoyable and entertaining ride through the entire movie. Overall (8/10) Very Good I think for an anime movie this is a really good first movie and usually when it comes to anime, their first movies are usually like this it's the ones after it that usually are not that good we'll see how that turns out because I'll try to review all of them this one I have to give an 8 because I enjoyed the 90s art style presentation more than anything when it came to this movie.