One Piece TV SP 12: Episode of East Blue – Luffy and His Four Friends’ Great Adventure (2017) [REVIEW]

Director: Takashi Otsuka

Writer: Tomohiro Nakayama

Runtime: 106 minutes

Remember how i touched upon that plan Toei had about putting out One Piece TV specials in summer and winter, with abridged retellings and original stories?

Well, since we got two original stories back to back with the two previous TV specials, guessing it was yet again time for abridged remakes of older One Piece material was a safe bet to make.

Indeed it was, heck, and “safe” it’s also the perfect way to describe the choice made here.

Or stale and creatively lazy, as one would preferably talk of it, because we already had an East Blue story arcs abridged recap to be found in various bits of other “remake recap specials”, we didn’t really need to make another one of these so we could insert some previously not redone parts of the story. And even that comes off as a compromise on top of a compromise, since it’s only covers the origin or main arc of Luffy and his first four crewmember, Zoro, Sanji, Usop and Nami.

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One Piece TV SP 8: 3D2Y – Overcoming Ace’s Death! Luffy’s Pledge to his Friends (2014) [REVIEW]

Director: Naoyuki Itou

Writer: Hirohiko Kamisaka, Jin Tanaka, Tomohiro Nakayama

Runtime: 108 minutes

I’d say “SPOILER ALERT”, but it’s not like the title itself even tries to hide it, with the subtitle being “Overcoming Ace’s Death”, and since i have seen people parade this “spoiler” arounds anime cons pretty much anywhere (combined with Jump banking on his life status for later derivative works, like One Piece Novel A).

That aside, with “3D2Y” we’re finally getting started for real, finally talking about quite interesting and intriguing stuff, with some ambition and scope to it, instead of just being an abridged retelling or a cute filler-type mini-story, and utilizing the 2 year time-skip to its advantage, not only to evoke an emotional response, but to fill some of the narrative “gaps” left in the story.

In this case, the special is set during Luffy’s training on Amazon Lily, as he learns to control Haki/Ambition from Silver Rayleigh on the island of Ruskaina. Suddendly Navy ships are being attacked and destroyed by Byrinn World, an incredibly powerful pirate that was betrayed by some of its crew members and was held in Impel Down, but escaped after the Paramount War/Marine Ford events. Now reunited with his older brother and the rest of his crew, World kidnaps Boa and Marigold Sandersonia (Hancock’ sisters), so Luffy and Hancock set out to rescue them from World’s ship, while the other Warlords Of The Sea are summoned to deal with the issue at hand.

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One Piece TV SP 7: Episode Of Merry – The Tale Of One More Friend (2013) [REVIEW]

Director: Katsumi Tokoro

Writer: Hirohiko Kamisaka

Runtime: 106 Minutes

Time for another frigging special that retells with the new animation older story arcs.

In this instance, it’s…not even based on a person, but this is One Piece, so of course the ship itself ends up being a character, important enough to warrant crucial conflict over it, to say without spoiling some surprises for fans that have not yet made their way up to Enies Lobby’s conclusion.

It is the crux of some of the fondest memories for the main characters and i mean, it really speaks of how profoundly One Piece romanticize piracy from the age of conquest. Also, there’s the plain fact of the Going Merry having actually been ranking fairly high in characters popularity polls for the series, heck, even in the most recent one (held from January 3 through February 2021, on a worlwide scale) it ranked 32^th, just below Whitebeard and above Silvers Rayleigh. Amazing.

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One Piece TV SP 1: Luffy’s Adventure at the Bottom of the Ocean (2000) [REVIEW]

Director: Yukio Kaizawa

Writer: Hashimoto Hiroshi, Junki Takegami

Runtime: 50 minutes

We start your journey through the One Piece anime’s TV specials with one most fans known, and a fairly long one, even if it’s actually on the shorter side for runtime among the TV specials.

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One Piece TV Specials Retrospective

An entire retrospective on One Piece films is coming, but since i already reviewed them all (expect for Stampede, which was due in Japanese cinemas by the end of the retrospective) for the italian Wise Cafe just 2 years ago, and we already covered the OVAs & featurettes last year, i thinked about it and figured making more time pass would lead to better material, instead of me just translating and partially rewriting the old pieces. I want to, but not yet. Not yet.

This retrospective will only consider the 13 TV Specials considered as such, you could argue a lot of special episodes (like the Romance Dawn version 2 anime remake or the Chopperman episodes) also fit, but then i would have also to consider the crossovers episodes with Toriko and Dragon Ball Z, and i’ll come clean: i considered doing them as well, but i simply don’t have the time right now. Sorry.

Look forward to those and an extra One Piece videogame review as well!

Maneater PS4 [REVIEW] | Megalodon’s Revenge

As a “bonus” to this year’s Shark Month, let’s talk about Maneater, from Tripwire Interactive, of Killing Floor and Red Orchestra fame, as they basically try to make the spiritual sequel of Jaws Unleashed… i would guess, i haven’t played that one yet (strange, i know), but i really can’t think about anything else that would fit the bill for a single player, story focused console/pc release.

I wouldn’t exactly count the Hungry Shark games or Depth, you know, and it’s kinda surprising there haven’t been more attempt at an action game focused on exploration where you play as a shark, so Maneater does fill a very unexplored niche, the open world shark action rpg.

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Shark Zone (2003) [REVIEW] | Welcome To

As opposed to any other zone. We gotta be specific, it’s only the billionth shark movie to come out, but apparently the first one to have the balls to claim this zone as specifically designed for shark use only. So it’s NOT their fault you happen to walk in there and get eaten. Sharks are people too.

Or in other words “Go into the water, live there, die there, live there die”

What do you want? You wanna know the plot? You don’t. More accurately, you don’t need to, even if you just red a lot of reviews of shark movies you can fairly accurately assume what is gonna happen before even seeing it, or go pretty close.

This one of those that aside the usual fare of beach community, majoral dickery, and sharks munching people has the “lost treasure hunt by order of a mob boss”.

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Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (2015) [REVIEW] | The Auckland Haunting

As said as the end of the Ghost Shark review, 2 years after that movie we would get… another movie. Called Ghost Shark 2, for sure, but being unrelated to the 2013 Ghost Shark movie produced by SyFy, because numbers are for idiots with their logic and assumptions of sequels.

We encountered many cases of titles implying the movie are sequels when they’re not, many times, but Ghost Shark 2 is a peculiar case, as it started as a fake trailer (well before the first Ghost Shark was even a thing, odd as it sounds) and eventually became a real movie, like Hobo With A Shotgun, after production of a feature version did start in Auckland back in 2010.

Yeah, this is a New Zealand production, and the movie wants you to know it takes place there, in Auckland, specifically, because why not.

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Tintorera (1977) [REVIEW] | Sleaze Sharks

When talking about Jaws rip-offs made soon after the success of Spielberg’s movie, one that doesn’t get mentioned that often is Tintorera, also known as Tintorera – Tiger Shark, and i wonder why not, i genuinely do, because while the italian Jaws rip-offs were so brazen to the point of actual lawsuit happening, this is from mexican exploitation shlockmeister Rene Cardona Jr.

You know, the guy better known for incredibly shitty and sleazy exploitation titles like Guyana – Cult Of The Damned, the film about the Jonestown’s Guyana massacre-ritual mass suicide, actually the first film ever to be based on the events, because taste was always out of the question, and he wanted to come first in to profit off a recent tragedy. Personally, i think i will always bring with me Night Of The Thousand Cats as the perfect example of his brand of shlock, non-existent budget and random animal cruelty. And in that one he doesn’t even kill a cat, but he does kill real sharks (yes, plural) in Tintorera, and would later film a dog being killed in Cyclone (1978).

Thankfully in that movie it’s clearly staged… i think, but since it’s Rene Cardona Jr. i just had to triple check, and even if common sense suggests he couldn’t get away with killing a dog, i’m still kinda unsure because they later show something that they clearly skinned and gutted. Just a warning, since i don’t know when or if i’ll ever get around to review that, for various reasons.

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Ghost Shark (2013) [REVIEW] | Seabound Phantasm Of The Deep

When there’s no more room in shark movie hell, we’ll get a shark version of Dante’s Inferno, somehow.

Or something. Because these niche sub-subgenre of horror movies eventually would have tried to generate titles by combining “shark” with all of the Pokemon types, and then stich together a movie from just the title, no matter what the word is or how stupid it sounds. Just mash things together.

Despite it being a “niche”, there’s always space for some weird ass, stupid take on the “shark movie”, even when you think it reached total saturation stuff like “Sharks Of The Corn” will show up online. And even in 2013 we already felt like we saw every type of stupid bullshit involving sharks, so you had to really think about and put some effort in a premise that would catch the attention of a public who already saw sharks defy the rules of nature (cue music) and weather.

So this time we got a frigging ghost shark, it is indeed what it says on the tin.

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