One Piece: Episode of Sorajima

Alright, I'm going to give a general overview and highlight all the stuff this special did good/bad:
- First, animation is pretty solid, but you can see they really did not want to waste their fighting animators (Good sign for Luffy VS Katakuri) because there's barely any fighting in it. The only fights they even adapted somewhat fully were:
- Luffy's Group VS Satori
- Ganfall/Wiper VS Shura
- Luffy VS Enel
The rest were just either images in a montage or the very end of the fights, like:
- Luffy VS Wiper
- Enel VS Kamakiri
- Chopper VS Gedatsu
- Zoro VS Ohm (Though this got a bit of the beginning for ... context)
So If you wanted to watch this 1 Hour 45 minute special for the fights I recommend just waiting for Youtube clips.
- Only the key elements of Jaya (Mainly the exposition) are added to I think the first 20 minutes or so, so we really only get to meet Cricket, the Saruyama Brothers barely even speak. So no, Mock ---Town, No BB (In Jaya at least), no Bounties, no South Bird, just ship falls, meet Cricket, learn about Sky Island/Knock Up Stream, and ride the current into the Sky.
- The crew is barely in the White Sea for long, and they changed it to Enel sensing them with Mantra instead of the the gate with Amazon. Because of this, we meet Ganfall relaxing on a Beach while the Waver they found in the shipwreck is just one Conis rides.
- The almighty Pagaya (Conis' Father) does not appear at all, so he doesn't die, so, I guess that's a plus?
- The Monster Trio still fight the sky fish, just the fish were chasing Conis not the Merry.
- Instead of the Trials, Enel sends Satori to fight the "invaders" on the beach, where Chopper and Suu are kidnapped by a lobster with the merry and become the sacrifice.
- Because of this, Zoro and Robin with Conis have to take a random Dial Boat (Explained by having Luffy send Zoro to protect them) while Nami takes the Waver Conis left. This is weird because Usopp just stays with Luffy and Sanji and does nothing, without the reasoning of being stuck in the forest like the original.
- Also, Ganfall never gives out a whistle, so instead of the iconic whistle scene with Chopper, Ganfall just hears our reindeer friend yell very loudly in pain.
- Instead of having the Noland Flashback in one go like the original, they split up about three times. -Also, they did NOT reanimate the Noland Flashback, they just cleaned up the original and made it fit to the new aspect ratio, so a majority of this special is stock footage from 2 episodes.
- Shandians are just there really, they only one of importance here is Wiper. Aisa is barely in this and doesn't even venture to Upper Yard since Conis is already there.
- Because of the changes, so many inconsistencies.
- Enel VS the Five Survivors is trimmed, but the important bits are there I guess.
- Enel Face is on point.
- The biggest crime of this special, No Usopp Spell.
- Sanji get's his sacrifice scene reanimated, looks pretty good.
- Though fast, the ascension of Giant Jack is good, it's nice to have that and Luffy's fireworks and golden rifle in one big scene.
- Special ends with Luffy's final blow on Enel, Cricket sees the shadow, Ganfall and the Shandian Chief say the war is over, and Luffy and Nami sitting on the cloud after Enel's defeat. I mean, you didn't even include the giant party or even the Merry falling from the sky, like come on?
- They added Ace VS BB to the end credits for some reason, looks good, just randomly there.
- They threw in the animation from Namie Amuro's tour for when she sang Hope as well in the credits, which is pretty nice.
- Soundtrack was nice, filled with the classics, but there might have been one new one for Luffy's fight with Enel.
Overall, I wouldn't say the special is bad persay, there's is just no substance whatsoever. I mean, if you were going to adapt Skypiea as a Special this isn't the worst thing they could have done, but it's not the best either. Like Episode of East Blue, this is not a substitute for the original Arc in the Anime and is more like a way to experience key moments with the modern animation. There is only one positive from this special, from the lack of fights and the heavy use of stock footage I can tell that Toei is not going to shit on the Luffy VS Katakuri fight since it seems pretty obvious they're saving their best animators for that and needed to cobble together something for the yearly requirement of an OP Special.
Final rating: Just go rewatch the Skypiea Arc because I know some of you skipped it, trust me, the Skypiea Saga is good and this special doesn't really do it justice.

One common running theme with Toei Animations is that you will never get a 100% satisfying adaptation that does the source material justice, well, there are some very few occasions where that doesn't apply, like the recent 3 movies and some of the major episodes of the show, but unfortunately One Piece: Episode of Sorajima could not level up to those exceptions. Talking about One Piece, we all have come to know that the anime adaptation gets its share of weekly beat up from the studio, the Manga and Anime are like night and day, two sides of the same coin that's one is way ... below the other in terms of quality. Not even the original adaptation of the Skypea arc from the anime from way back had managed to live up to the viewers' expectations and was infamously regarded by a great number of fans to be one of the worst arcs in term of pacing. But at least, this special does leave you appreciating how faithful the anime was to the source material when the Skypea arc was first animated.

- Story (6/10):
We all know what the arc was about, so spare the lengthy introduction.
We all know Skypea was prequel'd by the beloved mini-arc Jaya, they just had to skip through 95% of it to rush into the sky island stuff, which is understandable enough, for instance, there are no light spots on either Teach or Bellamy, and let's, of course, no forget the two Monkey brothers that were affiliated with Montblanc Cricket, they were included on some still images though, but never were given any proper introduction. Not just that, but also many rememberable things were skipped liked the classic Zoro Tarazan screen (classic), and the scene where Wiper destroyed Enel with a reject Dial to only restart his heart and come back from the dead, we never got introduced to how the Skypeans live and how things are being ruled over up in the sky. Things like Ganfall meeting the straw hat and Satori fighting Luffy, Sanji and Ussop were changed entirely.
Everything felt very out of place and in the wrong chronological order, sometimes you're put into a flashback, and then immediately skip a lot of (important) content to only find yourself following some of the major battles which almost all were only still images, that looked lazy, cheap, and more than anything else, disgraceful.
One of the greatest flashbacks of One Piece, the one that tells the story of Noland the lier, for me, it was the greatest thing and the most interesting part of Skypea, also, the most one packed with emotions, but here, it was just, why even bother. The storytelling was just a bunch of rushed conflicted nonsense being juxtaposed, if anything, it made me appreciate the older Anime adaptation more for what it was, simple of its time, but still lives up quite strong to date, if anything, better than this ordeal.

- Art (7.0/10):
You'd figure that Toei Studio would put a greater effort into high budget projects like One Piece: Episode of Sorajima, but oh boy, not this time around.
From the looks of it, they tried desperately to adopt the pre-time skip art style into an older part of the story and guess what, the results weren't pleasant at all. Everybody from the crew looks super weird for the most time, especially Robin, I wouldn't call that Robin to be fair, some kind of imperfect clone maybe? Imagine mixing Robin and Nami together, that what we got instead, looking at her “circular” face was totally uncomfortable.
I was looking forward to seeing some of the big moments animated with an up to date animation, I think I shouldn't have had any high expectations, I knew the old stuff will always have a special charm to it, but this we got wasn't even close. At best, if not being skipped like Enel vs. Wiper, we got some lazy still images and that was that.


- Sound (8.5/10):
I've always enjoyed the voice acting in One Piece, now those are people doing their jobs the way they should, no slopping and no laziness. Not only that, but the majority of the old soundtracks that we rarely ever get to hear nowadays make a return, and a strong one in fact filled with nostalgia.

- Character (7.0/10):
I'd hate to give this any lower score because everything was rushed, caught up in an incohesive mess, no character was given enough time to “shine” so to speak. I've talked how the backstories didn't make any great impact, and for that, from a new comer's perspective, not a single one of them made the cut.

- Enjoyment (5/10):
Now, I a big fan of One Piece, and I'm not being biased here, to say the least. I can shove up my face any content consisting One Piece all day, that's how big of a fan I am. Yes, the special was disappointing in a big way, they cut off a lot of my favorite parts, and changed a lot of things that were perfect before, and as the people in my profession say (I am a developer); if it works don't touch it. That quote should become universal and sacred, it can rescue franchises. I had my share of laughs here, It seems the minimal remaining of humor did endure the wounds of time. Classic One Piece.

- Overall (6.7/10):
It all comes down to what you're expecting at the end. If you're waiting for some mind-blowing thing to happen, then don't. If you're waiting for this special to change your mind about the Skypea arc as a whole (because probably you're one of the people who didn't enjoy the arc in the first place), then it would most probably disappoint even more. But more importantly, if you're a newcomer, or a first-time watcher and still not caught up, and decided to skip the Anime arc and watch this instead as some sort of compensation, then I beg of you to not do so. This is as bad as a retelling can get, way more complicated than the Anime arc.
It was not one of the best specials of the series, it would probably rank down the chest somewhere.

If you thought you could watch One Piece through this 1hr 44min long capsule. You are mistaken. It will ruin your experience. Let it be a newbie this isn't even fair for someone like me who is following this series since it's inception.

It never builds up anything, just straight up bad cuts, no character introduction, random characters pop out of nowhere and just jerk some tears up on screen.

When I first watched Skypiea arc, it was scary for the fact the main boss kicks ass and weird mantra power was a surprise. I was scared that Luffy will eat dirt this time.

This 'Episode of ... Sorajima' should have been atleast 4-5 hours long to do justice to actual story telling of the series.