[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Dream 9: One Piece X Toriko X Dragon Ball Z Super Collaboration Special (2013) [REVIEW]

Oh yes, this one, i held back on tackling it while i covered the One Piece TV Specials also because i never read nor did know much about Toriko as a series… that has changed, as i’m almost halfway through and quite liking it, and yes, i’m aware of Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro “canon event” that happened in 2002, but unlike Oda’s other acquaitance, Watsuki, an actual pedophile that had terabytes of child pornography (and suffered for it just a hiatus for its Rurouni Kenshin follow-up series, after the charges in 2018, which is even more insulting since recently the author of The Apothecary Diaries got punished far worse for tax evasion), it seems to have been a mistake he owned up to, he really paid for it in terms of being ostracized by the industry, actual consequences of his actions, plus it been 22 years, so i feel it’s pointless to still hold it over the man.

Had to get this over with because i didn’t want to talk about, you didn’t want to learn about that for a review of a special crossover about 3 popular Jump anime series (which already appared together in some of the Jump crossover videogames but not in anime form) colliding in a TV special, many couldn’t care less either way, but some might not have known or still held some incorrect info on the matter (like i did myself), so i had to make things clear(er) and to address the question.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Sanji’s Food Wars manga [REVIEW]

Unlike some of the collaboration works with other Jump authors (Boichi one not-withstanding), Sanji’s Food Wars get an entire tankobon/volume worth of material, and conceptually it’s a no brainer, makes perfect sense in terms of people involved and the crossover itself.

And unlike most of the spin-offs/one shots/collaboration treated in this retrospective, i have no real first hand knowledge of the main series it borrows/uses for the One Piece crossover, i’ve heard some opinions on it,seen some pages out-of-context, but i’ve never read or seen Food Wars, honestly never cared too much to begin with… so keep this in mind.

Ironically i’m a lot more familiar with Yakitate!! Japan, an older Jump series about the culinary arts.

Sanji’s Food Wars also feature the collaboration of chef Yuki Morisaki, with both Shun Saeki and Yuto Tsukuda (respectively artist and writer for Food Wars itself, as it would make sene) returning to make a series of small episodic stories about Sanji’s prowess as a cook and gentleman, all inserted as a “side story” inside the established One Piece canon, going from Alabasta to the 2 years timeski, with the Baratie ones being fittingly as the opening and closing acts.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] One Piece Episode A: Roronoa Zoro Falls Into The Sea & Nami VS Kalifa [REVIEW]

Yes, i’ve decide to review these two separately despite being included as bonus material in the volumes of Episode A’s manga… because they’re not part of the spin-off story, they are separate one-shot recreations of two specific fights in One Piece, but they’re also drawn by Boichi, so it makes sense to include them in there.

Imagine this as as addendum to the previous review, as a “Part 2”.

Roronoa Zoro Falls Into The Sea is indeed what you think it is, as it refers to the first (and so far last) time Zoro crossed blades with legendary swordman Dracule Mihawk during the early East Blue arcs (the Baratie one, in this case), which ended up with Dracule winning easily but deciding to ultimately spare Zoro’s life as he wanted to see his potential fulfilled and then eventually fight again as equals, as rivals.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] One Piece Episode A (Manga) [REVIEW]

FIY, I’m aware this is based on a light novel called One Piece: Episode Ace, which i own, but having still to get around to that, i’ll judge the manga adaptation as is.

In a way, this is one of the most OBVIOUS choices anyone could make for an One Piece spin-off, as Portgas/guese D. Ace is one of the most beloved character of the series outside of the main Straw Hat crew, had been for decades and then became even more popular by being allowed the non-insignificant feat of dying outside of a flashback.

Yeah, there’s no getting around that, nor there’s any point trying to cover it up, i distinctly remember people going around cons (even here in Italy) spoiling his final fate the very same year it happened, and his martyrdom raised its popularity to the very stars itself, as expected, and his very presence in the manga leaves many holes to fill in, so yeah, an Ace spin-off about his yet untold adventures is a fan pleaser ripe to make so much berries was just bound to be made eventually.

And since Oda liked Boichi’s take on the Zoro VS Mihawk (and then later the Nami VS Kalifa battle) we’ll get to that next, he asked Boichi to illustrate the whole manga adaptation.

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Introducing the One Piece: Side Pieces retrospective

It’s August again, so time for a little One Piece themed small retrospective, this year with a review every 3 days till the 15th (after that i’m going into the usual August hiatus to resume on September), curating some of the spin-off One Piece material i have yet to cover, after a One Piece film retrospective (and one curating the various featurettes), a TV Specials retrospective, and having other various reviews about One Piece related material.

This year we’ll basically picking out manga spin-off, one shots, collaborations, mostly focusing on the manga side of things, for a change, starting off later today with a “blast from the past” for Eiichiro Oda fans.

The Summer Of EDF will resume tomorrow

the new review for Summer Of EDF should’have been published today, but due what i can only described as “scholar fatigue of cramming too many exams and barely sleeping”, the review will come out tomorrow instead.

Sorry.

Touken Ranbu Warriors NSWITCH [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As i previously said while discussing the demo for it, i eventually did get the pricey ass retail North American version, since i wasn’t paying full price for digital, or 100 bucks for the game and one of the most desperate and worthless example of season pass content ever devised by a publisher.

Due to import taxes i paid the same anyway, but we’ll talk about that later in the review.

FIY the game is also available worlwide digitally on Steam.

Touken Ranbu Warriors story is set in 2205, about a group of Touken Danshi sent back in the Sengoku period in order to avoid timeline alterations by the History Retrograde Army.

What are Touken Danshi? But beatiful boys with the souls of legendary japanese swords (often as iconic and famed as their possessors/wielders) bestowed upon them, because nothing else aside “bishounen sword boys” would strike fear in those dastardly time travelling history revisionists.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #24: The Last Dinosaur (1977)

What, no japanese rubber monstersaurus this time? Of course no, you silly billys.

I left this one for last, because it’s not just a japanese giant monster movie.

It’s a Japanese AND American coproduction, and it’s actually just one of the many movies to come out of the Rankin Bass and Tsuburaya Productions collaboration, including The Ivory Ape and The Bermuda Depths, just to cite the adventure/monster movie stuff or adiacent ones.

But this time you might already had an inkling of familiarity with the giant t-rex body suit shown in the poster, especially if you were already familiar with another piece of Tsuburaya Productions’ prolific output, as boy it does look like the evil t-rex mastermind from Attack Of The Super Monsters, and hence from the anime-live action series Dinosaur War Izenborg.

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Bleach: Soul Resurreccion/Ignition PS3 [REVIEW] | Hollow Warriors

Yep, going to try and get that “SEO synch energy” going… or so i planned, only to forget, but regardless, it’s still worth pointing out that somehow Bleach is back, with the anime getting new episodes to continue where they stopped years ago, the manga resurrected itself on its 20^th anniversay with an one-shot chapter to set up either a new arc or a “Boruto” style follow-up series about Ichigo’s kid, so i guess it’s time to talk about this forgotten Bleach game.

You might argue that this isn’t a “proper” musou but i feel it deserves to be called at least a “musou-like”, and one that nowadays it’s hard to own in any legal sense, as it was released exclusively on PS3 in 2011 and there still remains, most likely due to being an anime licensed videogame, or being co-developed by Racjin and Sony’s Japan Studio.

One that nowadays it’s hard to find and commands some “interesting prices”, FIY.

So yeah, Soul Resurreccion (or Soul Ignition, if you wanna use its japanese title) is the closest thing we have to a “Bleach musou”, and as most avid Shonen Jump readers could guess, it’s mostly based on the Hueco Mundo section in the Arrancar story arc of the Bleach manga-anime, which makes sense since there’s nothing but sand, monsters and bigger monsters in this desert world, so let’s mostly adapt that part of the arc, since it’s very videogamey anyway, with the various encounters against the Espada and then the final confrontation again the big bad Aizen.

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The (New) Super Mario Animated Movie Trailer Reaction Post For Blogs

I was about to just don’t bother, but since Nintendo decided this warranted a specific 15 minutes Direct to show the first actual teaser trailer for its Illumination produced animated Super Mario movie… whatever, have another pointless hot take, since this thing it’s gonna make gagagorillions of money either way.

I’ll be brief and start with some actual criticism.

As in, the movie looks pretty okay overall judging from what the trailer showed, Illumination isn’t the choice of animation studio i would have preferred, at all, but i get why a company like Nintendo would, especially as they already had ties with other french companies like Ubisoft in terms of collaborations between various IPs.

But honestly it’s look alright, could be fun.

In terms of the english voice acting, i don’t have the same amount of vitriol to spout, mostly because i live in Italy, and like in most european contries, we’re gonna get a localized dub that’s often better than the original, because… it will involve actual voice actors, and not just random ass Hollywood actors that are popular but are some voice actors in the sense that i am one because i can speaketh da english.

Heck, the french dub already sounds better, quite good.

So no real surprise to hear Chris Pratt not even bothering to do a “naw yark” accent, but as expected Jack Black is great as Bowser, and Keegan Micheal Key sounds good as Toad, so yeah, Mario doesn’t sound like Mario as it’s just Chris Pratt talking, but who knows, this dog’s breakfast of a voice cast could work.

We’ll see next year, as it’s slated for a worlwide release April 7 2023.

In the meantime, you could actually watch the original Mario anime movie, 1986’s Super Mario: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach!, as it received a 4K HD fan restoration that you can find online, even on Youtube.

Just sayin’.