[One Piece Film Retrospective] #2: Clockwork Island Adventure (2001)

Remember when Luffy had to fight the Trumps before facing off against Gruntilda?

It was a weird crossover, almost as weird as having a Shintaro Katsu look-alike character, but it is One Piece, it’s hard to say what doesn’t exist or did happen.

Oh wait, this film is from 2001, so scratch that. Aside from the “Trump” part.

Like “One Piece The Movie: Adventure In Search Of A Proper Title Card”, it was released during 2001’s Toei Spring Fair as a double bill with another Toei produced Digimon anime, Digimon Adventure 02: Diaboromon Strikes Back, a trend that will continue in future releases.

It was also shown alongside a featurette, Jango’s Dance Carnival, which we already discussed a couple years before, and this too would turn out to be a trend for future One Piece movies.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #1: One Piece The Movie

Using the cover of the Japanese Blu-Ray release because the movie itself doesn’t even have a title card or a proper title. Just the default “One Piece” title card the TV series used at the times.

After the One Piece TV series started airing and proved to be successful, a movie was bound to be made sooner or later.

And this is… sure it’s called a movie, and i’m willing to call it as such, but it was clearly early in the series’ history, as Toei’s anime adaptation only started airing in 1999 (an year after Production IG’s One Piece OVA: Defeat The Pirate Ganzack), so i guess they figured out it was better to not go all the way immediatly, and made this medium-lenght, so it could be released alongside the even shorter Digimon film “Digimon Adventure: Our War Game” during the 2000’s Toei Anime fair.

Those are a lot of words to say that Toei kinda cheaped out and compromised, and honestly i can’t really say that’s unfair, as this movie feels less like a movie and more like two episodes of the TV series superglued together.

And not interesting episodes either, but first, the plot.

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One Piece Film Retrospective begins!

As promised, at long last we’re reviewing all One Piece films here on Wise Cafe International, to celebrate the new One Piece film releasing in japanese theathers the 6th of August 2022, One Piece Film: Red, which also it’s the first film One Piece movie about or involving Shanks outside of the usual flashbacks with Luffy as a kid.

Before some one points this out, yes i did review all these movies (aside from Stampede, which also had just launched in japanese theathers) years ago on one of my older italian blogs, but this are all new reviews, completely rewrote from the ground up (so to speak) of all 14 already released One Piece films, and will be posted daily from tomorrow until the 15th of august.

After that i will be taking a break from full lenght reviews and stuff until for a month, maybe 3 weeks at best, but until further notice we’re starting again at full gear from 15th of September.

In the meantime only the EXPRESSO rubric will remain active.

I won’t be doing a ranking since Film Red’s release would immediatly make the ranking outdated halfway through the retrospective, maybe next year, since One Piece movies now seem to come every 3 years or so.

Oujia Shark (2020) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

2020 was one hell of a year, and homegrown filmakers pumping out shark movies like these didn’t help the situation. Especially if this one was actually finished in 2017 (to ride on the gravy train of Oujia: Origin Of Evil, released in 2016 as the prequel to the 2014’s film Oujia), but wasn’t released for 2/3 years, that’s the mark of quality if i’ve ever saw one. I mean, this isn’t an exception to the rule like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, which undeservedly sat unreleased for 3 decades.

Yeah, let’s end the month on something extra tacky and cheap, but let’s give Mark Polonia a deserved rest, since we have Brett Kelly directing this one, using the age old trick of using a pseudonym, “Scott Patrick”, and it’s not the only time he used this specific one.

Why bother in the internet age i don’t know, but i guess it’s tradition, after all.

Yep, the director of fan-unfavourites like Jurassic Shark and its quasi-sequel Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which we previously covered before. And a bunch of mockbusters of the 1^st MCU cycle, alongside something called She-Rex. Hmmm! takes note

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Giant Crocodile (2020) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

One more recent chinese monster movie, why not? As i’ve said before, there’s plenty of these to be found online, and there’s a good number of killer crocodiles one too, i choose this because it’s the first i stumbled through on Youtube, and it’s web movie, dunno what it means exactly, aside from being another declination of “direct to video” in this age of streaming content.

Regardless, we all speak giant crocodile movie, especially if it’s a giant mutant crocodile.

After a rich guy’s daughter disappears while on a island that’s become an internet sensation for its “Purple Lake”, he assembles a group of mercs (lead by his other daughter) to search for her, only to find that there’s a lot of people around what’s supposedly an inhabited island, all conventiently there for their own reasons, from an enviromental scientist losing contact with her squad, a war reporter searching for his missing father, etc.

Sadly for the rich guy, he finds out that her daughter was eaten by a crocodile, so he wovs revenge against the beast, which turns out it’s a mutant crocodile that can turns invisible on the fly, and can also sling his tongue like a chameleon. At least this will give the leader of the mercs/second daughter of the rich man something to do aside pulling people by the hair in order to do anything.

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Horror Shark 3D AKA Blood Shark 3D (2020) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Shark attack movies are an appealing worldwide phenomen, so it’s not surprising even mainland China would eventually invest more and more in these, as they can serve a fairly new domestic cinema industry and are easy to export since the genre is pretty popular everywhere. Shark never get old for audiences, after all.

Obviously this isn’t the first chinese shark movie ever, or even the first one we featured here, but it’s China very first 3D big budget shark attack film. It has received a fairly easy to find DVD release on online marketplaces, but i watched it on Youtube, as it was uploaded in full on YOUKU’s Youtube Channel, with english subs available.

The plot of Horror Shark 3D (also known as Blood Shark 3D) concerns “a swimmer and a marine paradise trainer (trainer for what?) who accidentally fall into a huge conspiracy about blood sharks.”

At least this is the plot synopsis you’ll find around the web, but i’d say it’s badly translated and partially incorrect.

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Lake Placid Legacy (2018) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

While Lake Placid VS Anaconda ended by sequelbaiting “Crococonda VS Sheriffs”, they didn’t actually followed that up, at least not yet, as for the next (and at the time of writing, the last) Lake Placid installment we have a prequel.

A prequel, kinda. Sorta. We’ll get to that, but it’s not a prequel for the character of Jimmy Bickerman played by Robert Englund, nor any of the Bickermans, it’s a prequel for the original saltwater crocodile, explaining how the fuck a crocodile came to inhabit the lake in the first place.

Actually, not quite, but yep, every excuse is good to pump anything out with the franchise name. It always is.

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Lake Placid VS Anaconda (2015) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Has your series completely run of ideas or it’s just not willing to get out of the genre comfort zones, but you still want to continue the franchise? Cross it over with a similar series, versus style.

Oddly enough, this is both the obvious (as it’s in the title) crossover between the Anaconda and Lake Placid franchises, but also the fifth movie in each respective series.

Elaborating on what i said at the end of the review for Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, the two series are quite the good fit for a cheap TV movie crossover, not only for the obvious reptilian killer animals involved, but as they both had a successful film first that was deemed good enough to be shown in theathers, and hence being more easily remembered by audiences.

Btw, the official DVD tagline for the film it’s quite fun and to the point “Crocks on the docks, snakes on the lakes”. Love these.

Shame they set the bar too high, but of course they do.

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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers PS4 [REVIEW] | BROTHERS EVERYWHERE-

While we wait for EDF 6 to come out this august in Japan, the previous spin-off finally went on proper sale on the PSN some time ago, so i finally got to play (bought the Deluxe Edition on sale, so complete of all Season Pass content, FIY) and review Earth Defense Force: World Brothers, another spin-off of D3 Publisher’s beloved cult series about space ants and giant robots, handled by Yuke’s, which did previously develop another EDF spin-off the year before, the quite solid EDF: Iron Rain.

The story it’s actually a more comedical take, with the aliens invaders from all previous EDF game scoming back (with a mothership each) under the guise of the new villain, just called Dark Tyrant, destroying “voxel earth” into many pieces in a single shot, so what’s left of the EDF has to find a way to put it back the pieces together and repel the invaders, one mothership at the time.

Instead of going for the serious faced ridiculousness played totally straight seen in the mainline titles and even the previous EDF Iron Rain, World Brothers just revels in the sea of clichès, deliberately having a voice acting that’s so ridiculous or “old fashioned cringe” for the also ridiculous as hell dialogues, here more on the zany side, which is further reinforced by the stylistical choice of going “voxel” in terms of graphics.

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Noah’s Shark (2021) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Since i couldn’t find the 2017’s Land Shark (not the chinese one we reviewed last year), let’s pick something a bit more recent from the output of Mark Polonia that also almost makes want to revisit and review Shark Exorcist… again. I still don’t want to.

So let us bask in the nourishing homemade waters of Noah’s Shark.

It was either that or “Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse”, also by Mark Polonia and released in 2021.

Banger of a title, perfect bait for both the naive and the connosseur of “no budget homegrown cinema” that dares challenge audiences with crappy stopmotion dinosaurs and papermaciè sharks.

But still, even in this tier of poverty filmaking we’ve seen worse.

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