Might the best One Piece movie yet.
SPOILERS
Personally I really don't get the complaints people have with this movie. There are things to complain about, but the thing's I've read I cannot agree with.
The complaints I agree with are the following:
-Relatively plain story
-Too many songs
...
About "relatively plain story":
Every One Piece movie so far had a relatively plain story. That's always been the case with One Piece movies ever since STRONG WORLD.
The movie is about Uta who wants to create a peaceful world by killing everybody. All the characters work together to stop and convince her, that it was all a huge misunderstanding etc.
While I agree that this is not the most interesting synopsis a movie can have, it is definitely not worse than the other movies.
STAMPEDE's synopsis is something like: Big very strong guy who rivaled roger is angry and now wants to conquer the whole world. All the characters work together to defeat him.
That's what I mean, One Piece movies never had an overly interesting story, it's mostly just there for a quick enjoyment, since it's a non-canon movie, that has no impact on the main manga.
About "Too many songs":
There are a lot of songs in this movie and I can clearly see why this is annoying to many people. Every main conflict Uta has is solved with a song of hers. Even the end, where the "endboss" is defeated it turns out "oh this didn't work, I have to SING to save everyone". That is every cheesy and lazy, I totally agree with that. The songs are still slapping tho.
The complaints I don't agree with are the following:
-Not enough Shanks
-Not enough fighting
About "Not enough Shanks":
While I do understand that people are disappointed they didn't see Shanks have a huge fight, it just makes sense. Since we know almost nothing about the abilities, strength, attacks, etc. of Shanks, how could a movie possibly make him fight a lot? Exactly, it can't! You can't expect the movie to just give him random abilities, or focus his main style of combat on one thing. Cause that would either be untrue to his real abilities he has in the original manga, or it would be straight up spoiler for that original manga. Shanks was never gonna be a huge part of the movie, that should have been clear when he didn't even appear in the trailer. And I think that's a good thing. The sense of mystery has always been something great about Shanks and it would totally suck to have that mystery dissolved in a non-canon movie.
About "Not enough fighting":
There was a lot of fighting in this movie, like an awful lot. Way more then in STRONG WORLD, Z or even GOLD. The fighting just mostly happens during Utas songs. I really believe that's a good thing. Since I wasn't a fan of the 90 minutes of fighting against 1 single enemy in STAMPEDE, this movie was really refreshing. And they still fight a lot in RED. We even get one of the coolest One Piece moments yet with Shanks just ratio'ing Katakuri or Usopp communicating with his father through Haki or Corby commanding all the characters. It was amazing to look at and a lot of fun.
The complaints I have, but didn't hear from anyone are the following:
-Too many characters
About "Too many characters"
There were too many characters, again. This has been annoying me since STAMPEDE. It wasn't and noticeable as it was in STAMPEDE, but it stilled annoyed me very much. Why do they have to try to put EVERY character in this movie just for fanservice sake?
Characters like Law, Bartholomeo, Beppo, Bruno etc. are just there so you can say "oooh that guy's also here! Cool!"
It's okay to put characters you know in the movie, for example Kizaru, Fujitoria, Corby, Helmeppo, Katakuri etc. didn't feel out of place, cause it made sense for them to be there. But for example Beppo and Bartholomeo happening to be Uta fans so they are coincidentally at her concert is just a cheap way to insert fan-favorite characters into the movie. They don't add anything. I get that people love Trafalgar Law, I like him as well, but he added absolutely nothing to this movie.
Like I said, it wasn't as bad as it was in STAMPEDE were literally everybody was (Sabo, Lucci, Koala, Hancock, Smoker, Tashigi, Buggy, even Ace for a bit etc. etc. etc.), but it still was noticeable and annoyed me.
Now to the positive things I really liked about the movie:
The Music:
I think and don't have to explain why the soundtrack and songs of this movie are great. Ado's voice is very impressive and her songs really brought hype and emotion into the viewer while watching the movie. While I agree, that they cut have cut 1 or 2 songs, especially the second last one where she had to sing to save everyone (why was the even there), it still was amazing to listen to and it made the experience so much better.
The Visuals:
Don't need to explain much. It looked amazing, like every One Piece movie. Some CGI was meh at times, but nothing to complain about here. Looked incredibly good, especially Shanks and Luffys finishing move at the end.
Highest Stakes in a One Piece movie yet:
Yes there was Bullet who wanted to conquer the world. Yes there was Z who wanted to destroy the New World. But there never has been a threat as a high as killing more than 70% of the world population. Utas abilities make her a strong foe that has to be stopped, without being an overpowered, way too strong, overlord like Bullet was. She was a threat because of her strong devil fruit power, not just because she is strong big hit boom boom.
A thing that always annoyed me in One Piece movies are the main villains and Luffys strength. They are just weirdly power scaled dudes that are either too weak or too strong.
The old movies were:
Pre-Timeskip Luffy without Haki defeated Shiki, who managed to match Roger.
Luffy defeats Z without using a Gear and just punches through a Seastone glove of a guy, who is as strong as an admiral.
Luffy defeats Tesoro, a guy as strong as a Yonkou, with just Gear 4 Bounce Man
Luffy finishes Bullet with a KING KING KING KONG GUN (Whatever that was), who was stronger than Roger at that point in time.
This wasn't the case in RED. Luffy is not overly strong, the boss isn't overly weak. The boss still is a strong and dangerous force and they had to defeat them all together at the same time with coordinated attacks, with Shanks and Luffy dealing the finishing blow together, to defeat the boss. This was no "OH we have to support Luffy, weaken the enemy bit and then Luffy goes boom boom 1v1 with attacks he doesnt have in the manga and defeat the strongest villain the world". This was a real team effort.
I also like how they teased Gear 5 without actually showing what it does. That was a pretty neat nod to manga readers, without spoilering anime watchers.
The Main Character Uta:
It was alright, nothing too special. Since they always use characters that canonically exist in the one piece world, but are not relevant anymore, it would be nice to know if Uta's backstory with Luffy actually happened. She herself was, pretty plain, but not as annoying as Carina in GOLD for example.
All in all it was maybe the best One Piece movie so far. It had a good mix between fighting, story building and comedy.
Visuals: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Story: 6/10
Characters: 6/10
Enjoyment: 8/10
OVERALL RATING: 8/10
Oct 14, 2022
One Piece Film: Red
(Anime)
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Might the best One Piece movie yet.
SPOILERS Personally I really don't get the complaints people have with this movie. There are things to complain about, but the thing's I've read I cannot agree with. The complaints I agree with are the following: -Relatively plain story -Too many songs ... |
