[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Cross Epoch (manga) [REVIEW]

To close off this little retrospective, there was no other choice, given the recent passing of Akira Toriyama, the author of Doctor Slump & Arale (and nothing else), may he rest in peace.

We’re also going back in time more than with the previous spin-offs (Monsters aside), as Cross Epoch was a 20 pages one-shot manga done by both Oda and Toriyama in 2006, apparently because they wanted to… actually yeah, that’s about the extent on the “why” this came to be.

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One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory

One Piece might not be a franchise that you would immediatly associate with RPGs, but like Dragon Ball its surprising how the genre is represented in their many videogame iterations, especially if we’re talking about older systems, and even more so if we’re talking about Japan-only releases, as the first One Piece videogame was a RPG on the old black-n-white WonderSwan, and more came out for both the Wonderswan family of consoles as wells as for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and even on the original Playstation.

But sadly most western fans are not familiar with some of these quirky GBC One Piece RPGs where (among other things) the Straw Hats are turned into animals, no, most likely you’ve yearned for years for a localized One Piece RPG, only to find out that it exists, One Piece: Romance Dawn, and that it’s sadly a very shit game, even worse as it’s a port from PSP to 3DS, and a cheap one too, because knowing this it makes all sense for the game to look that much like old ass.

I reviewed that one as well, but today we’re here holding hope to finally retire this status and have a big budget mainstream RPG that can make the series some justice instead of wishing they wouldn’t have bothered to begin with, with the long anticipated One Piece Odissey, developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai (who else?) in January 2023 to celebrate the series’ 25^th anniversary.

Available pretty much on all the platforms, old gen and new…. but not the Nintendo Switch.

For the record, this review is based on the PS4 version played on a PS4 Pro.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #9: Episode Of Chopper: Bloom Into Winter, Miracle Sakura (2008)

The year after Episode Of Alabasta, Toei decided to do it again… but also not quite go full recap/abridged retelling of a canonical One Piece story arc.

I guess some complaints about the previous movie eventually made their way up to the committee, but as usual, the wrong lessons were learned.

As in, nothing was learned, but they decided to both innovate and compromise at the same time with Episode Of Chopper Plus.

Chopper was already the focus of the third movie, so i think i somehow understand why chose him again, but this time we have an even weirder gaggle of creative choices.

With Episode Of Alabasta the team was tasked to do the impossible due to the lenght of that arc, so i guess they figured it would make for a better movie if they decided to set a more realistic target to adapt in the standard feature film lenght, and the Drum Island arc was certainly a bit easier in terms of “digest recap”. Arguably, a bit too much, which i speculate led to the choice of changing a lot of stuff and adding new original material specifically for this movie.

It’s an odd pastiche of new and old that also kinda baffles and bamboozles, but for different reasons from Episode Of Alabasta, honestly kinda the opposite.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #3: Chopper Kingdom on the Land Of Strange Animals (2002)

When i set out to rewatch all One Piece movies for the newly written retrospective, there were some i wasn’t exactly…. looking forward to revisit. The third theathrical film, Chopper Kingdom on the Land Of Strange Animals, kinda falls in the “yeah whatever” category, as i don’t hate it or anything, but in hindsight it’s plenty less interesting to discuss or see than it was the first time around.

Like the two previous movies, it was a mid lenght film shown in a double bill with another mid lenght Digimon film, this time Digimon Tamers: Runaway Locomon, and came with a featurette as well, the “european football” themed “Dream Soccer King” (already reviewed last year).

The more i think about this movie, the more i feel the main motif for making it was the Toei staff wanting to draw and animate lots of weird animal hybrids, and that they came up with the actual story later, as the premise feels like a mash up of ideas from other animated movies with talking animals or something, a bit Lion King a bit Jungle Book mostly, with this island kingdom inhabited by animals that has been waiting for a new king to fall from the heavens, according to a prophecy.

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One Piece TV SP 10: Adventures In Nebulandia (2015) [REVIEW]

Director: Konosude Uda

Writer: Atsuhiro Tomioka

Runtime: 106 minutes

We’re finally taking a somewhat extended break from the recaps extravaganza (but not that extended, as we’ll find out) to have a TV special that actually features an original story, and calls back to a noticeably under-represented story arc, the Davy Back Fight, often completely eschewed from pretty much any adaptation of One Piece, and low-key hated by the fanbase, i feel.

Yeah, the premise sees Foxy and his crew send a false distress signal to the Straw Hats, seeking revenge after their Davy Back fight. The two crews begin another Davy Back, starting off with a mushroom eating contest as the first round of the challenge, but it’s a trap, as the new Foxy Pirates member, Komei, has made them eat the so called “Drousy Shrooms”, then reveals himself to be a Marine Vice Admiral and brings the four incapacited crewmembers as prisoners to Nebulandia.

The rest of both pirate crews follow them, but things get hairy as Nebulandia is an island that nullifies Devil Fruit powers due to its vegetation having adapted to live off sea water, acting as a natural prison for the many “gifted” pirates, so even more people get captured and it’s up to the few remaining to find a way to reserve the effects of the vegetation and escape the island.

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One Piece TV SP 4: One Piece Historical Drama Series – Luffy’s Detective Story (2005) [REVIEW]

Director: Unknown

Writer: Unknown

Runtime: 42 Minutes

Time for One Piece to go “jidaigeki” and rock the 19^th centhury japanese setting way before the Land Of Wa arc, but – as the opening narrator smugly and humurously remind us – this special takes place in Jipangu, which may look like some country of some time ago, but let’s not be pedantic, it’s just a cartoon after all.

You should really just relax.

In this case it’s not a chanbara styled special, but more in the vein of Ranpo Edogawa’s period detective stories, with the One Piece characters (included many old faces from the early arcs) playing the role of civilians, tax collectors, carpenters and so on, while Luffy is the purposely unfitting secret policeman-detective of the city, and mantains order with his fists and jitte, aided by ninja Usop and perpentually indebted to Nami and Sanji’s restaurant.

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One Piece: Glorious Island OVA (2012) [REVIEW]

One Piece Glorious Island OVA 2012.png

Director: unknown
Writer: Eiichiro Oda

Going really into obscure territory here, since this is the prologue to One Piece Film Z, but it wasn’t released as a limited edition disc in a specific chain of theathers or shops, that would be too easy: instead it was originally released in 2 parts (6 minutes each) on smartphones as part of collaboration with Docomo’s then new mobile TV format-service, NOTTV, and later compiled in the japanese Blu-Ray release of One Piece Film Z.

Yeah, it’s basically an “Episode 0” of sorts, but instead of setting up more clearly the events of the movie and giving more info on the villain (like the following OVA prequel/episodes 0 for Strong World and Film Gold would do), this is a direct prologue that leads into the actual beginning of Film Z. Not that it matters because this is so detatched from the movie (you don’t see any of the movie villains in any shape, for example) it might as well be a random featurette, it would make more sense that way.

Sure, with the release format and the very nature of this OVA, you would reasonably guess whatever happens in it can’t be that important to the plot of the actual movie…..and you’d be correct, let’s not dance around it. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Glorious Island OVA (2012) [REVIEW]”

One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]

One Piece Romance Dawn Story 2008 OVA.png

Director: Katsumi Tokoro
Writer: Tsuyoshi Sakurai

Here’s another quite nostalgic OVA, as in 2008, for its 40th Anniversary Shonen Jump held the Super Anime Tour, and Toei was commissioned a recreation not of One Piece, but of Romance Dawn, the one-shot story (the first version, in this specific case) Eiichiro Oda created and that eventually served as a base for One Piece, not only in premise but also character designs, and became a naming convention, so much that the first One Piece chapter is titled “Romance Dawn” as well. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]”