I feel pretty conflicted about this movie. First of all, the good is that it feels more authentically like one piece than any of the other movies, and it makes sense that allegedly oda had a big part in this, as he even wrote the core story and made a bunch of story boards, designs, etc.
the ideas are great, the characters are perfectly authentic to the text, while also having tons of little moments together.
The world is fun, Shiki is an intimidating (though kind of bland) villain. Etc
Where it all falls apart is that whoever was responsible for taking Oda’s outline/story and making it into a movie really dropped the ball.
For fans of the abysmal anime adaptation, they might not even notice the core problem, as it mostly boils down to pacing and editing, which Toei has always struggled with.
There are so many scenes in the second half where people just have pointless , repetitive, stretched out conversations about stuff that we already know or that could have been shown instead of discussed. There is a lot of standing around. Everything takes longer than it should (and this is only a two hour movie. It should not feel 4 hours long)
It’s as if everyone at Toei was so used to stretching out single chapters into 3 half an hour episodes , that even when they no longer had to do that, they did it anyway. Alternatively, and more generously, maybe they simply followed oda’s story structure too closely, when he is an expert at the medium of manga storytelling, and what works in a manga does not necessarily translate effectively to a self contained film format.
All that being said,
The core story elements are all quite strong, and the animation is good. I could imagine someone really liking this, but it ultimately just does not land for me.
I feel pretty conflicted about this movie. First of all, the good is that it feels more authentically like one piece than any of the other movies, and it makes sense that allegedly oda had a big part in this, as he even wrote the core story and made a bunch of story boards, designs, etc.
the ideas are great, the characters are perfectly authentic to the text, while also having tons of little moments together.
The world is fun, Shiki is an intimidating (though kind of bland) villain. Etc
Where it all falls apart is that whoever was responsible for taking Oda’s outline/story and making it into a movie really dropped the ball.
For fans of the abysmal anime adaptation, they might not even notice the core problem, as it mostly boils down to pacing and editing, which Toei has always struggled with.
There are so many scenes in the second half where people just have pointless , repetitive, stretched out conversations about stuff that we already know or that could have been shown instead of discussed. There is a lot of standing around. Everything takes longer than it should (and this is only a two hour movie. It should not feel 4 hours long)
It’s as if everyone at Toei was so used to stretching out single chapters into 3 half an hour episodes , that even when they no longer had to do that, they did it anyway. Alternatively, and more generously, maybe they simply followed oda’s story structure too closely, when he is an expert at the medium of manga storytelling, and what works in a manga does not necessarily translate effectively to a self contained film format.
All that being said,
The core story elements are all quite strong, and the animation is good. I could imagine someone really liking this, but it ultimately just does not land for me.
