Yeah, bringing back the One Piece retrospective…. kinda, more like continuing it, with a full, detailed review of the last released One Piece movie, Film Red, that hit theathers in 2022, after the EXPRESSO review done at the time it released in theathers here.
For context, that year i was able to see the tie-in episodes of the series during the yearly Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy, sadly i missed the early projection of the movie itself, but i did see the aforementioned episodes meant to tie-in to Film Red that detailed a young Rufy meeting a young Uta in Fusha Town when Shanks and his crew set anchor there.
Which are cute but as you would expect they’re not mandatory viewing in order to understand the plot of Film Red, it’s a big popular franchise, they’re not gonna risk alienating people who don’t watch or follow the TV series but do follow the manga, for example.
Who’s Uta, you might ask? But she’s the new character and protagonist of Film Red, a world famous livestreamer and renowed singer that is finally having a concert on the island of Elegia, ammassing a huge amounts of fans coming from all walks of life, be it Goverment soldiers, Navy officers or pirate ships, and of course the Straw Hats come too, as Luffy arrives there and reveals he and Uta were childhood friends.
And then he drops the bombshell that Uta is Shanks’ daughter.
The show though goes south quickly, as Uta is really keen on fulfilling the promise of a “neverending happy show”, to the point of going full yandere and with her Devil Fruit power manages to capture and put to sleep not only almost all the Straw Hats, but also many prominent pirates and Navy bigshots that were there either to keep watch, cheer Uta on with the glow sticks and headbands, or a mixture of the two.
Which eventually forces Shanks himself to intervene, and thankfully this time he does more than just appear, immediatly resolve the situation and then leaving just as fast, which is good since he’s also involved in the plot of the movie to a bigger degree, kinda to be expected really when the title of the movie refers to his character, you know?
I mean, there’s no Ron Howard lookalike in the world of One Piece…. not yet anyway.
One of my favourite things for each One Piece movie is seeing what new costumes they give the Straw Hats, and i’m sorry, but for me this one is the best, with Usop as a member of KISS and Jinbe as Elvis. It doesn’t get better than that.
Yep, to some the premise might sound strange, but honestly it makes sense, i mean, we gotta somehow keep up with the times with these theatherical releases, even if they are from series set in fantasy world where people can gain the ability to change sex from cursed fruits, there’s talking furries allied with non-Japan, elephant swords which are both sword AND elephant, entire races defined as such by having super long limbs or extra eyes, fish people and chinese elder warriors with a literal pinhead that’s also the key to their treasure horde, heck, there’s technically even aliens.
So what it means as of now is that we gotta put the live-streaming and the idol biz into the One Piece world, sure, whatever, there are snails that serve as screens and communication devices, this new stuff just shy of a V-Tuber worlwide concert with face reveal, yeah, that can surely exist in there as well. Who cares, it’s One Piece and anything can pretty much happen in the series’ world.
Plus it’s also kind of a musical, and i welcome that because this is the 15th damn One Piece film, so yeah, you should try to vary things up a bit, even if it’s mostly made so in order to cross promote a popular J-pop singer Ado, as her single New Genesis is the title track for Film Red, and the movie features some of her songs as diegetical musical numbers, and the music itself it’s fairly catchy, the tracks are decent, with the stand out being the jazzy one, might be a personal bias but overall the musical numbers/segments are well put together (in terms of coreography and editing of the dance-action sequences) and very enjoyable.
It’s definitely a lot better in terms of presentation, composition and technical quality compared – for example – to the Las Vegas-style song at the beginning of Film Gold, leaving aside how here music is not just a motif or used for a snazzy sequence but a key component of the plot.
This is not to say the musical motif does give Film Red a strong visual identity, with some peculiar things to witness, and honestly the animation is incredible, Toei just bringing their A+ game ever better than in previous One Piece movies and with more consistent quality, just impeccable work, which peaks – as expected – during the final act big decisive battle with lots of characters involved.
Aside from the collaboration with Ado and the plot revolving (if indirectly) about the fan beloved character of Shanks, this movie was also kind of a big deal because it marked the return of Goro Taniguchi to the franchise, decades after he first directed the One Piece Attack The Pirate Ganzack! OVA back in 1998, way before he was famous for directing the Code Geass anime, Planetes, or his work on Gundam G at Sunrise.
Speaking of the OVA, among the usual Pandamen to find scattered among the crowd shots, there’s a brief scene where we see Ganzack at a bar being affected by Uta’s Devil Fruit power, and this lead me to discussing how the movie does better in terms of teasing the involvement of popular characters that ultimately arrive on the scene to do a brief fight, for example the Cipher Pol characters are more involved in the plot and not just Rob Lucci looking cool but then actually doing a 1 minute cameo (which he actually does anyway, i guess it’s a tradition by this point).
Still, we have the Marine characters involved that are the usual ones for One Piece movies (Fujitora, Borsalino, Akainu, the 5 Elders) that are mostly on the background as they usually do, and this time we have the many children of Big Mom in the cameos & brief appearances section, but even so the script does a conscious effort to give a reason why these character are involved more than usual in this specific fight/issue, and it succeeds.
The plot it’s fairly good, honestly, though – without giving away huge spoilers – i’m not too fond of the secondary villain that shows up in the last act, it’s not bad but looks kinda like an evil Muppet, kinda detracts from Uta’s characterization, which is a shame because she’s a good original character and it’s kinda of a novelty for One Piece to have a yandere/yandere-sque main antagonist.
But on the flipside it’s a good excuse to have the crew of the Red Hair Pirates team up with the Straw Hats, leading to a pretty fuckin cool multidimensional co-op battle, so to speak, and the ending its quite good, definitely more than enough for me to forgive this issue, let’s leave it at that.
Honestly my opinion of the movie hasn’t really changed since i did the EXPRESSO review of the film, heck, it just confirmed that One Piece Film Red is arguably one of the better films of the series in years, as fun as it was the all-stars rumble of Stampede, this one simply aims higher in every aspect and it doesn’t just use Shanks as bait, or how Taniguchi was involved with the series well before it blew up, since the movie delivers on pretty much all fronts.
Honestly this is the best One Piece film since Film Z, no joke, one that also manages to bring some variety compared to previous feature lenght adventures of the Straw Hats, and live up to the hype.
Wise Cafe (International) 