[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 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 TV SP 3: Save! The Last Big Stage (2003) [REVIEW]

Director: Junji Shimizu

Writer: Junki Takegami

Runtime: 46 Minutes

While it’s not One Piece’s doing a community theather version of Rigoletto…. yeah, it’s not that, years and years later Toei they eventually tried to do some musical style episodes, but of course the most the Straw Hats could actually do is the circus, with or without amish clowns.

And before you ask, no, they didn’t stoop as low as having Buggy/Bagy involved.

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