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Hello Madonis,

Let me thank you as I haven't noticed that I indeed made a spelling mistake and wrote "objective" instead of "subjective." I'll come back to my review to correct that.

First of all, let's address the elephant in the room. When the OP team decided to make a musical, they did it to make this some kind of promotion of Ado's music. No additional brain cells were used in creating something interesting around that. As a fan, I even feel cheated. They heavily based their promotional campaign on the anticipated and supposed involvement of such an important and mysterious character as Shanks when, in reality, he was used as bait and you get stuck with listening to Uta's pop songs every 5 minutes.

Other than that yes, I still believe there is no structure in this movie. Generally, in anime they use the three-act structure meaning you must have the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution. The set-up and the confrontation were kinda mixed together in RED making the rhythm completely unstructured. For example, flashbacks were constantly bothering us and giving us excuses for some actions and at other times we had to skip the action because the protagonist had to sing a song. The resolution part was even messier. Let me address some general things that bothered me:

- Despite attempts to somehow shove the events of the film into the anime's canon, they still remain a useless filler that does not affect anything. Even the sole revelation that Uta is such an important person for both Luffy & Shanks, leaves the viewer apathetic. How can she be so important (as a daughter of Shanks no less) to them when we haven't even heard about her in more that 1000 chapters? Not to mention that if Uta was such a good friend to Luffy then she should have remembered how meaningful it was for Luffy to achieve his dream of becoming Pirate King. Why she didn't release him and his crew? Was she so confused, consumed with revenge or generally didn't care for anyone as long as her plan was in motion?

- Huge mountain of characters. Like in the previous two OP movies, Red is overloaded with characters who devour precious screen time. In addition, more than half of them can be thrown out of the story without any loss to the plot. After all, they are only there for the fan-service. Not to mention that it's ridiculous to add a forgotten character such as Blueno into the plot only because he makes transportation much more convenient and not so time-consuming for the characters.

- The fight scenes seemed like I was watching Sailor Moon all over again. A constant rainbow of random stuff came at us with rage and we maybe got 2-5 seconds of every character doing a move. Not to mentioned that the different style of animation in the fight scenes (ex. the floating notes) was annoying and stood out too much for me.

- Weak plot. Perhaps, in terms of plot, this is one of the weakest One Piece films. The pirates work to take down Uta and then a lot more happens as several dozen new characters and new subplots sputter and zigzag with little concern for cohesion. At some point we are shown that even if you listen AND watch the concert from the comfort of your home, you will still fall asleep. Why then the Marines, the CP0 and the 5 Elders are still watching as if nothing happened? Did they wear earplugs and if yes then how did they communicated with one another? How could they still WATCH without being trapped? The pirates that attacked Uta first, were trapped on the floating-sheet-music thing way before the Straw Hats, giving Brook enough time to see how they were arranged. Thus how could Cody, with 0% musical education in relation to Brook, figure out how can the characters escape from the sheets? Why Tot Musica was not destroyed and why would Gordon keep the only person that could activate it so close to it? Why would he ask for help from Luffy when he was the one that kept her secluded on the island? Why would Shanks leave Uta alone with an unknown individual on an island that was destroyed and literally full of dead bodies? Wouldn't it be better if he saved them from that place and moved them to another place? How come Shanks was there at the end to save the day, like Deus ex machina? Did he teleport to Elegia? Was he watching the concert from a nearby location and if he did why wasn't he also trapped in the virtual world? Even if he did not destroy Elegia, he still abandoned the poor girl which unfortunately makes such a popular character like Shanks look like a huge jerk. Also, why did he barely made a sound? Did we give all our budget to Ado leaving him with just a few lines at the end? I understand that One Piece has to sell merch but why do the Straw Hats have to change outfits so randomly (This also happened in the previous movies)? Why did Sunny change it's form? Is the ships "cute" also gonna be part of the movie's merch? Why Blueno was acting alone when we know that the mission was extremely important to the Government and that CP always work in teams? Why the only pirates that helped Luffy were Law, Bepo and Bartolomeo? Where was the rest of crew of the aforementioned captains? How can Uta control her fruit so well that she doesn't even have to stay put in one place in order to keep controlling her self in the virtual world? Does the fruit give you a split personality disorder? The Uta Uta no Mi has a major weakness even inside the virtual world and that is sea water. All they had to do is make Law create a Room around her and throw her in the sea a couple of times. And what strong bond between Luffy & Uta are we talking about? He did not even try to talk her out. He was ready to punch her lights out while he did not lift his finger to hit Sanji in the Big Mon arc.
Consequently, narrative discipline is thrown out the window, with the core story about Uta and her motivations being an emotional nothingness. And don't even remind me of Uta's dreary motivation that spawned the film's even duller antagonist in the form of a poorly designed Digimon. Seriously, that Digimon was the last straw for me. When will somebody tell the OP team that battles against huge full-screen bullshit, that have close to zero backstory behind them, are not going to be a spectacular show, especially when the whole fight comes down to the fact that all the characters take turns throwing attacks on it. Oh, and even if Uta was manipulated by the demon and did all those things she did, sorry, but that's just lazy writing.

- Finally, Uta is a mentally unstable person that develops a martyr complex for no reason. To be exact she is either mentally unstable or has the emotional intelligence of a 5 years old. She needs a psychiatrist not a live concert! She is 21 for God's sake but she acts like a cult leader or something. "Come my fellow fans! I will save you from your dreadful reality and give you a magical place to live! However if you refuse to stay there forever, or if you want to be an adult and face reality, you will be incapacitated, forced into submission anf generally have no free will. Have fun!"
Elegia was burned to the ground... As Uta, would you rather stay in that secluded island alone with an old man as your only company and source of education or would you take that old man Gordon, as soon as you come of age, and travel the world to develop your talent? If anything, Gordon should have been the antagonist for not destroying the demonic music sheets and for basically holding Uta captive for no reason knowing quite well that she was a ticking bomb being so close to the Tot Musica music sheets.

Of course, there's a lot of things in OP that you won't normally find in a "pirate-themed" anime. That doesn't mean though that they have to screw up the lore so much whenever they have the excuse of a filler story. Why should we all think that One Piece is its own beast thus everything is permitted for it? Yes, for the benefit of the franchise they of course can and should experiment, however they should also take into consideration their audience. Unless they were just aiming for all the 12 year olds that like princess Dinsey movies and a couple of Pokemon-level fights.

As for the general consensus, I tend to ignore it completely. When I see, for example, at the top of the Top Anime list on MAL, brainless anime like Gintama, or when I see that Demon Slayer's movie surpassed Spirited Away as the highest-grossing Japanese film, I cannot take people's opinion seriously. Ultimately, we perceive an anime/manga as beautiful, bad, enjoyable or ridiculous based on our own preferences. We define the meaning of these words ourselves and express our opinion accordingly. At the end of the day, even if we liked the movie or not, the joke is on us as the OP team still made millions.

Agreed.

Thank you for the correction