Pirate Warriors 4 and The DLC-enening, Part 3 [The Endurance] (UPDATED)

Yesterday was One Piece Day, so as expected and announced, they revealed the winners for that poll/survey for characters fans would like to see as future DLCs for Pirate Warriors 4…. well, indirectly revealed some of the winners.

As in, they announced the third Character Pass, which this time is gonna be made of 2 character packs instead of 3, with the second (technically DLC Pack 8) being a “Legends” sort of deal, since it has fan favourite Enel back into the fray (being one of the characters culled from the roster despite being in Pirate Warriors 3), King, which was basically a given due its popularity, and Zephyr, from One Piece Film Z, this not a given at all, i was kinda expecting Shiki to make the cut, but i’m glad because Film Z is one of my favourites of the OP films, and my boy “Z” deserve some more representation.

As for the other DLC pack that is slated to released first this fall (with DLC Pack 8 instead having a “Early 2026” release date as of now), DLC Pack 7, they just revealed that the first of the batch will be Rob Lucci in its CP0-Egghead version, as in with the Awakening form and all of that.

The other two characters will be revealed later as the release window for the DLC pack approaches, and i would love to see Kaku (damn he loves giraffes) but i doubt it, same for Vivi, playing as her with Karoo as the built-in mount would be funny, but i think Baby 5 could be more interesting to play as given her literal “weapons morphing” Devil Fruit.

Honestly a bit miffed this is just 6 characters instead of 9, you can pre-order the Season Pass itself and the bonuses are 3 bonus costumes (not sure for whom) and a new special ability/move for Shanks, that both his base and Film Red versions can use.

No word on that next-gen versions they announced on upcoming, not here anyway, but i would be surprised if it’s not out by October.

(also, damn, that new trailer for the second season of the Netflix live action One Piece show looks good)

So see you for the eventual reviews of both DLC packs, bye!

UPDATE: the PSN store page for the Character Pass 3 is up in my region…. and it’s still 30 euros, like the other Character Passes, which had 9 characters.

This has 6. And i’m NOT ruling out the other two undisclosed characters of DLC Pack 7 being more new/slighty revised updated version of already playable ones, like Egghead versions of Zoro and Sanji, especially since i assume that’s the theme they’re gonna go with.

Jesus Christ, Namco Bandai, wanna make the next character pass even more famished of content? Fuck’ sake.

[One Piece Film Retrospective] #12: Film Z (2012)

After the very brief and very odd interlude of Straw Hat Chase, Toei “came to their senses” and the next year released another proper One Piece film, surely having learned that these movies are at their most successful when you have extra side-corn to market them, as in OVA and small filler arcs for the TV series, alongside the eventual promotion with retailers and shit.

So yeah, this had a tie-in filler arc in the TV anime, and an OVA set slightly before the events of the movie, Glorious Island Z, aka Nami and her big floaties taking more screentime (and “choice angles”) than Luffy eats meat during any meal of the day.

Fitting title, though.

Even if viewership can be spotty as some people got bored or tired of the TV series’ pacing (especially if they already know what’s gonna happen from reading the manga), you can bet chances of these people taking a look at the trailer for a new shiny One Piece film, even more if you market it by saying that this will pit the Straw Hats against one of their most powerful enemies ever.

Continua a leggere

One Piece TV SP 11: Heart Of Gold (2016) [REVIEW]

Director: Tatsuya Nagamine

Writer: Tsutomu Kuroiwa

Runtime: 105 minutes

It’s not not a recap, it’s not an entirely original story, this time we have a TV special made for tie-in purposes. Like the title gives away, this is a special made to advertise the movie One Piece Gold, and it’s not even the first one, as there was also One Piece Gold: Episode 0 (which we discussed during last year’s retrospective), a featurette taking place before the movie that amounted to a sumo version of the Kintarou story and plenty of Nami bikini fanservice. And the Silver Mine filler arc.

This actually takes place before Episode 0 and can be seen without it (especially since the featurette predictably didn’t further any plot or set up anything relevant for the actual One Piece Gold film than this special already does), and it’s intriguing they actually got Tatsuya Nagamine to direct him, after his work on One Piece Film Z and before the pretty good Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

And indeed, we’re in pretty good hands. We are.

Continua a leggere

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.

Continua a leggere

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]”