Foxy is one of those “villains” in One Piece that I wish I could forget ever existed. Despite that, I was willing to give this special a chance because the synopsis caught my attention. I went into this film-length special with the understanding that it was going to be a rematch between Luffy and Foxy, the twist being that this time there would be no devil fruit powers involved due to the fact that the island they are grounded on nullifies their powers. Never has a synopsis been so misleading because this was the complete opposite of a battle between Straw Hat Pirates and the Foxy Pirates. You can throw in the word “spoiler” here because technically I'm revealing details about the special that are not specified in the synopsis or the trailer, but really these are things that should have been specified anyway.
Story: 5 (Mediocre)
This hour and 45 minutes of feces is actually about Luffy and Foxy teaming up in order to defeat a bigger badder guy so that they can save their friends. Oh, you might think that Nami or Chopper got kidnapped but no, instead, two of our strongest characters – Zoro and Sanji – spend the majority of this movie waiting around helplessly in a cage for their knight in shining armor to come rescue them because they ate some miraculously unheard of mushroom that conveniently turns them into wimps. Yeah you heard me right.
My biggest problem with the story was the lack of understanding regarding Devil Fruit powers. Much of this “story” revolves around the use of devil fruit abilities and highlighting the fact that seawater is their kryptonite. As we know, somebody who has a devil fruit ability can no longer swim, but more than that they become weak when in contact with seawater. This concept has been shown multiple times within the original One Piece story. The people in charge of this movie evidently don't understand this because there are several occurrences that just do not add up. There is a particular plant within the movie that grows via seawater, and when touched by the plant, devil fruit users are shown to become weak. The fog that comes over the island is “seawater fog” which makes our devil fruit users weak as well and we see them struggling just to stay standing (as a side note: seawater fog? Really?). However, in this same film where those sorts of events happen, we see Luffy multiple times standing knee-deep in seawater and showing no reaction to it at all. Small details like this drove me insane. If they are affected by the seawater plant and the seawater fog to the extent that they are suffering because of them, then standing in a big pond of seawater should make them weak too. But even without these inconsistencies, the story is still extremely weak.
This story was /not/ about Luffy and Foxy having a rematch. It was also not about an island that nullifies Devil Fruit Powers. It's about Luffy and Foxy teaming up to save some people and end up on an island that is essentially one big slab of anti-devil-fruit-user-material.
Art: 6 (Fair)
The art in this special was ok. Nothing spectacular. Didn't seem to have a big budget like Strong World, but since it's not actually a theater released film (thank god) I can't expect too high of quality. It would have been nice to see some variation in art style though. If this special had been cut up into 25 minute segments, it would have easily made a 4 episode filler. And everything about this screams filler even though it /wasn't in the show/.
One of the best parts of One Piece OVA's, Specials, and Films is that we usually get to see some difference in art that we wouldn't see within the show. For example, Strong World – one of if not the most popular One Piece film – had unique art because of how spectacularly detailed it was. Even something like One Piece Mugiwara Chase, which was only 30 minutes, was unique because the entire thing was done as a 3D film. That's the sort of variation I am talking about. One Piece Adventure of Nebulandia gave zero effort to be creative or interesting in comparison to the source material.
Sound: 7 (Good)
Sound and music were fine. Same One Piece music you've heard a hundred times before. Same voice actors you've heard before. Moving on.
Character: 3 (Poor)
We all know the Straw Hat crew. They have their usual roles in the story. Yadda yadda. This film did a piss-poor job of keeping the characters within their roles.
One of the reasons I hated the 5th movie of One Piece (Norowareta Seiken) was because of how ridiculously and insultingly out of character Zoro was. When you take a character that has already been developed within the show and has set rules, so to speak, regarding their personality, it's stupid and unprofessional to just change those aspects in order to conveniently fit the plot. I mention that because in this special, as I said earlier, Zoro and Sanji spend the majority of the film literally cowering in fear behind the bars of a cage. And sure, the plot might have said that these magical mushrooms make them lose the will to fight or some other BS reason, but it's not reason enough to make the two beast characters alongside Luffy act like complete and total morons for the sake of an idiotic plot. It would have made MORE sense for characters who have an obvious weakness to get kidnapped and then have the crew go after them. The whole reason these magic mushrooms were created was just to conveniently push Zoro and Sanji out of the way because they're too overpowered and would probably wrap up the entire thing within a few minutes.
Rather than create special lifeforce-sucking mushrooms, why not just create a person with a devil fruit power who can cause the same effect. At the very least that would fit better than just “hey we discovered a mushroom recently, so recently in fact that nobody knows what it is”.
Point being, Zoro and Sanji were pathetic in this special and it's something that irritated me to no end.
Besides the straw hat crew and the Foxy crew we have a few new people. Including a completely, absolutely, 100% not suspicious crew member of Foxy's who turns on him within the first 20 minutes. Whoa, who could have seen THAT coming? Every character was insultingly predictable.
The villain in this is laughably terrible. Every 5 minutes he would say something along the lines of “I knew this would happen so I prepared THIS in advance!!” He was quite literally 12 steps ahead of them at all times, so prepared for any situation that I wanted to smash my head into my desk every time he had a new trick up his sleeve.
The only reason I didn't give Character less than this score is because Nami actually had some really awesome moments in this special. It's been a long while since she had some legitimately cool fight scenes and I enjoyed seeing that.
Enjoyment: 2 (Dreadful)
Did I enjoy this even a little bit? Well, sure there were a few brief moments here and there that I thought “hey that was kinda cool” but overall no. I hated this. This is the kind of movie where I pause it every 10 minutes because I'm so bored and frustrated with it. This film-length special was an absolute chore to watch. I would rather watch every single Naruto filler back to back than watch this garbage again. I DO like seeing the Straw Hats thrown into new situations that force them to act outside the box, and I think that's what this special was attempting to do. But in the end it was a complete mess.
Overall: 3 (Poor)
As a One Piece fan I was blown away by how moronic this special was. How out of character it felt. How /boring/ it was.
It's been almost 2 years since I last wrote a review for anything on MAL. Somehow, this One Piece special made me so mad I dug myself out of my grave and wrote this just to have the satisfaction of ripping it apart.
Never in a million years will I ever recommend this special to anybody.
