One Piece: Dream Soccer King (2002) [REVIEW] | King Of Table Soccer

Director: unknown

Writer: unknown

The second featurette, another theatrical short, was shown before (and on the japanese DVD release was bundled with) the third One Piece movie, Chopper’s Kingdom in the Strange Animal Island.

And again, it was never officialy released outside of Japan, which is true for pretty much all the featurettes and theathrical shorts.

If you are wondering “why soccer of all things”, it’s because Japan co-hosted the 2002 World Cup, basically, but it also notable because it features Eiichiro Oda himself, voicing the obvious self-insert character Odacchi (sporting a soccer ball footprint on its bald head and soccer ball twintails), acting as the soccer tournament announcer, and then intervening in the game only to fluke a shot big time and be kicked in the arse.

Kudos, Mr. Oda. 🙂

Yeah, there’s really not much to say about this one, it’s basically One Piece characters (in particular the Straw Hats crew vs Buggy and others) having an absurd game of soccer, with people using their Devil Fruit powers and absurd strenght, Koby (a pre-timeskip Koby, mind you) test-tasting the ball with his face, and Sanji throwing a kick so hard he makes the ball go around the whole One Piece world and back like Superman wanted to reverse time.

But psyche! It was all just a dream Luffy had, and to conclude the short, he mistakens Usop’s butt for a ball, guess they crafted him a new coccyx after that.

Animation is well done as usual, this is what you expect from Toei Animation, my only gripe in this regard is that the 3D elements in the football stadium look very dated, but the short never lingers on those, so it’s not really a problem.

I don’t really care for soccer, but it was fun hearing Oda himself and that he’s willing to take a joke.