[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.

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: 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]”