Anime 459 One Piece Movie 01 Reviews Filter Check 2

(This review contains spoilers!!!)
A film without any ideas of its own

The first movie of One Piece has no fresh story. It sort of takes the prologue story of One Piece ("Wealth, Power and Glory...." We all know it) and just rewrites it a little. There was once a pirate named Woonan who was called - surprise - Gold Pirate. He stole stolen gold from pirates together and eventually had a huge treasure. Then he hid it on an island. To find this treasure, there is a treasure map, which coincidentally reminds us of the Road Porneglyphs. There is also a little boy named Tobio whose ... biggest dream is to find the treasure (comparable to Luffy), and his grandfather Ganzo knew Woonan (comparable to Garp). This story has many parallels to the real One Piece story, even more so from today's perspective.

The film is now by and large a simple treasure hunt story. With an island, treasure map, riddle and an antagonist who is also looking for the treasure. The riddle is on the treasure map and is super trivial. Apparently, not even minimal effort has been made here. By the way, the main antagonist is El Drago. He has eaten from a Devil Fruit (the name of this is never mentioned). The power of this Devil Fruit seems very One Piece untypical and fits more to Dragon Ball (he can shoot such a Kamehameha out of his mouth). Of course, so that Zoro also has an opponent, El Drago has a swordsman named Golass as a sidekick. Both the fight against El Drago and Golass are pretty boring.

At least the comedy aspect of the film is convincing. The comedy gives the movie a bit of that old One Piece feel. Ruffy is stupid, Nami yells around, Usopp lies for his life, and Zoro is typically cool on it. However, I feel like the writers of the movie simplified the consistency of One Piece to just comedy and stretched it to the max. There are some very over-the-top jokes that don't fit even for the old One Piece. For example when Ruffy asks Ganzo if he died and even repeats that. Yes Ruffy is the typical stupid Shonen protagonist, but he's also not that stupid. The old One Piece, besides the comedy, also makes up for a sense of adventure with, or rather through, an unknown island. The island here, however, remains uninteresting. No inhabitants, no special animals, nothing.

In the end, the film should have been made longer and embellished more. So even for huge One Piece fans (like me) there is no real reason to watch this movie and even less for basic viewers. At the same time, the film is not really bad, but simply sinks into insignificance without bringing its own ideas to the franchise. Too bad

I've only recently started One Piece and decided to watch all the movies along with the anime-- as best to the place where they fit in as I can.

This first one was okay. Like, there was nothing about it that was really bad... But there was nothing impressive about it either. I wouldn't say the whole "personal connections/ambitions/whatever else is more valuable than material things" lesson was a bad moral to go with, necessarily. Interesting choice for an anime centered around pirates. But even that isn't super worth analyzing, because 20 episodes is still deep enough in for me to know by now that ... Luffy isn't your average pirate.

I guess my point is, I went through all the Naruto movies as well, and there were certainly some rough patches there. But sometimes, the rest of the movie being extra fun or lighthearted can make up for a weak story, and I'm not sure I'd even describe this one as that sort of standalone anime movie. It probably would have been better off if it was just shortened into a filler episode. I kind of would have expected the very first movie to have some weight behind it, but this really didn't. Makes it a little easier to understand why I had to go wading through pirate sites to even find a place to watch it. (I couldn't believe something One Piece related had never been officially licensed. Like, if One Piece hasn't been successful enough to get the whole sweep, what is?!)

You know what? There was one moment that sticks out in a positive way. I really liked seeing the final fight, where Luffy showcases every single one of his Gum-Gum moves that the anime's shown so far. He's got a bit more fighting versatility than I give him credit for sometimes. So that was neat.