Watched the entire Boss Luffy Arc as well which comprises of this special OVA along with Episodes 291, 291, 303, 406 & 407. And well, predictably I loved it. The Alternate Universe setting of our heroes in Edo Period Japan makes for some tremendous gags and artwork. The animation team gets to really flex their style by essentially whacking Rurouni Kenshin and One Piece together (accidentally making Gintama?), playing with the tropes of those jidaigeki films that Oda openly loves (as do I). The special itself is super fun and for something that aired years earlier, it looks and is paced a lot better than the Romance Dawn OVA I watched the other day. I would honestly watch a whole series of this and the fact that it plays as a 7 episode miniseries is great, fitting the size of other beloved filler arcs like G8, which I'll probably watch next. Of course a massive positive for me is the signifcant inclusion of Buggy the Clown, who makes for an incredible foil in this setting, and seeing as how they loosely adapt a bunch of early arcs in this more gag filled simplified form, I would love to see them revisit this to give us more fun interpretations of characters in jidaigeki form, but for the New Years Specials we got out of it, I'm more than pleased!
Watched the entire Boss Luffy Arc as well which comprises of this special OVA along with Episodes 291, 291, 303, 406 & 407. And well, predictably I loved it. The Alternate Universe setting of our heroes in Edo Period Japan makes for some tremendous gags and artwork. The animation team gets to really flex their style by essentially whacking Rurouni Kenshin and One Piece together (accidentally making Gintama?), playing with the tropes of those jidaigeki films that Oda openly loves (as do I). The special itself is super fun and for something that aired years earlier, it looks and is paced a lot better than the Romance Dawn OVA I watched the other day. I would honestly watch a whole series of this and the fact that it plays as a 7 episode miniseries is great, fitting the size of other beloved filler arcs like G8, which I'll probably watch next. Of course a massive positive for me is the signifcant inclusion of Buggy the Clown, who makes for an incredible foil in this setting, and seeing as how they loosely adapt a bunch of early arcs in this more gag filled simplified form, I would love to see them revisit this to give us more fun interpretations of characters in jidaigeki form, but for the New Years Specials we got out of it, I'm more than pleased!
