One Piece: Mamore! Saigo no Dai Butai

This special was what most of the One Piece fans were looking for. A laid back special with tons of hilarious moments. This special is about an old man and how he hates pirates. His actors left before the last performance, and now he has to replace them and the Straw Hats come to the rescue. In this special you see awesome moments of the Straw Hats trying to act and other sides of people. It was amazing with tons of comedy.

The story itself is very nice, it reveals the indecency of the Marines and it relates to how the world is today. Definitely ... a must see for any One Piece fan!

Probably the selling point of One Piece is its amazing ability to blend and adapt easily with whatever genre you try to turn it in. The characters have always been diverse, appealing, and interactive with their rolls, you know the usual drill, a bunch of pirates sailing for wining the Pirate King's crown, fair enough, but another day, they might undertake Marine clothing, and be well integrated with the very opposing force they have, get abducted by a ghost ship and in return act like mindless zombies, no one will question them. If that it's how easy it is, have them part-take into a theater, ... the play doesn't even need a proper script to be interesting, just have them there, pushing off the common trap of mocking their 3 walled reality. That was the drill in this special episode.

Taking advantage of this easy integration gift, The Straw Hats take different roles in a theater, each fighting for the spotlight on the stage, making for some very oddly cursed scenes, like Robin hyper-energetically pulling off a ballerina dance in front of everyone with unmatched agility, shocking even her crew members, while Luffy under-takes a roll of an acrobatic monkey, how fitting. That is, for the first half until they were taken as pirates, and then it pulls back to the average drill. Label them as scummy pirates, trashed them out of the theater and stand there while (mostlyà Luffy singlehandedly changes their view of “All pirates are bad”.

This is my favorite one piece special so far. I wish they make five hour long one piece specials, because to me the longer one piece is, the less I'll be checking on the clock.
Compared to other one piece specials, this is simply funnier and more well told. Under 50 minutes, it felt like a complete movie. During the first part, you get to see luffy and his nakama on stage acting and toward the end you see them fighting the marines. One piece usually don't have light hearted stories where you can just sit back and enjoy the show without knowing something bad is ... going to happen soon or some annoying villain would pop up. Remember the rainbow arc on the spa island? That's what I mean. Even though this too has a pretty annoying villain, the atmosphere remained "friendly". I mean the kind where you don't want to throw a hack at the clamoring crowd or at the villain. The story has a good beginning and a good wrap up too, and nothing felt rushed or extraneous. It's not too boring either.
If you've watched other one piece specials and aren't a big fan of them, I suggest give this one a try. At least I liked it a lot better than the other ones.