One Piece Movie 05: Norowareta Seiken

2/10 - thank god the original isnt like this.

1. the story is cliche - and not just a bit but way way way too lame. the thing about one piece is that it manage to give ordinary cliche settings a big twist, which is why i love the anime - but this totally failed to happen here. most lines are expected; plot extremely predictable. i was hoping they might turn the whole demon-sword concept into something interesting, but that's so not happening here.

2. characterization was off - personal opinion here, but sanji and zoro's characters are wrong (what did you do to my ... favourite character!!!). it doesnt mean if the right line is said the correct feeling for the character can be achieved. this one felt totally off, plus some lines are actually quite awkward. seems more like a doujin work rather than being the original. on closer look, nami's characterization is not up to standard too. the entire team dynamics seemed to lacking in fact. the only people i felt were satisfactorily portrayed were usopp and luffy.

3. pacing is bad - most of the first parts seemed rushed. like everyone's trying to speak as fast as they can so that it's within the timing or sth. then a few scenes at the end were long drawn and a complete waste of time. - there wasnt enough time to create suspense, or feel the story develop.

4. voice acting/ voice actors - which obaaaasan has a voice so obviously young (and speaks so fast no less)??? then there were also part where i dont know if it's just that the voice acting sucked or that the pace was just too fast such that lines carried no emotions at all.

one piece story aims to tell people to dare to dream and gives people hope - this story has just left me in despair. o.o

This is the fifth One Piece movie, theoretically taking place after the Navarone arc and before they go to Water 7. Yes, exactly, it takes place around the same time as the previous movie because the anime started to slow down considerably. The formula so far was to make one movie taking place after a new crew member joins (the first after Usopp, the second after Sanji, the third after Chopper, and the fourth after Robin) In this case, the anime took hundreds of episodes until the next member (Franky) was added, so they went for a tiny gimmick. They though “hey you guys, we ... started the movies after Usopp but we had no movie dedicated to the earlier ones. So why not make one about Zoro?” And thus we get this movie. This was perceived very positively by most fans, who consider Zoro to be the coolest, most serious, and second stronger next to Luffy, yet had no movie.

Beyond all that, just like all the OP movies, it is a filler mission with a good budget and a simplistic plot. And it definitely has a weak plot. The story is just about the Strawhat Pirates going to an island where a cursed sword is said to be able to awaken its demonic powers in a few nights. Zoro meets an old friend turned rival there, who plans to awaken the sword for vengeance and possible world domination plans. In order to do that, he needs to activate it by finding seven spheres that contain its powers. And no, they are not the Dragonballs.

The whole thing plays out slowly and mostly anti-climactically. There is very little going on in it up until the last part where Zoro and Luffy start to kick ass. The problem is that there aren’t any interesting mini-bosses around to keep the rest of the crew occupied with doing something and outside of a few simple internal disputes, the entire crew besides the main two are completely worthless to the plot. I felt like the movie would fit better to be taking place chronologically even before the first one, where at least there weren’t so many in the crew to be in need to be doing something. And there would’n be a plot hole considering how his rival drifted from East Blue several years ago, all the way inside the Grand Line and to that island without being killed by the hundreds of perils that await in every corner.

Of course most of the fans of Zoro didn’t care about that and were pleased to see him doing his cool three sword fighting techniques. The whole film was made just for him; hell, he is the one to deal with the big boss in the end instead of Luffy. But seriously, outside some fancy visual effects the action wasn’t than exciting since it was mostly magic than actual swordsmanship. Plus there was no interesting build-up to that moment to make you feel like it’s worth waiting one hour just for a piss-poor excuse of a showdown. The main rival, Saga, is completely uninteresting and there is nothing else besides Zoro acting all mysterious and serious to keep you looking forward to. Not recommended if you don’t want some generic excuse for Zoro to do some magic energy blasting.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 9/10
Analysis: General Artwork 2/2, Character Figures 2/2, Backgrounds 2/2, Animation 1/2, Visual Effects 2/2

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Analysis: Voice Acting 2/3, Music Themes 2/4, Sound Effects 2/3

STORY SECTION: 3/10
Analysis: Premise 1/2, Pacing 0/2, Complexity 1/2, Plausibility 0/2, Conclusion 1/2

CHARACTER SECTION: 4/10
Analysis: Presence 2/2, Personality 0/2, Backdrop 1/2, Development 0/2, Catharsis 1/2

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Analysis: Historical Value 0/3, Rewatchability 0/3, Memorability 1/4

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Analysis: Art 1/1, Sound 0/2, Story 0/3, Characters 0/4

VERDICT: 4/10

Well, that was a semi-fun movie. It had a decent premise going for it but missed a ton of marks.
Review:

Story/Plot - 3 - It's premise is decent, albeit cliche. It was relatively interesting and had plenty of potential, however, I feel like it was wasted. The first problem being the way it was presented, and how the whole thing started off. Zoro just flat out betrays his crew at the beginning... that's bullshit! Especially considering how deeply he cares for his friends! Talk about awful character writing! I found it dumb how Zoro didn't get the slightest clue that Saga had ill intentions until the ... plot demanded him to do so. The way everything unfolded was really predictable and nothing interesting is done with the ideas the writers had in mind. My next issue is the pacing. It's just really inconsistent, and when the movie finally gets to the climax, it quickly jolts through it at lightning fast speeds! It doesn't build up to a satisfying climax and suspense becomes non-existent due to the poor execution. The other problem is how events just occurred for the convenience of the plot, and character actions and behavior were altered for the same reason but more on this later. The direction this movie takes is just awful! In the end it feels like it has no substance!

Characters - 2.5 - I love the One Piece cast, however, whoever was writing the script for this film completely fucked up the characterization! Their behavior and personalities are altered to 1-dimensional versions of themselves and only barely resemble the bare outline of their character. It's as if the writers were given brief descriptions of the characters that summarized them into simple, run down versions of themselves. Luffy may be dumb and reckless at times, but he's not a complete moron who puts both him and his friends in danger while being unaware of it! "Woah this is fun!" he says as both he and Usopp are in a life-threatening situation. Next are the movie characters. None of them really had a hint of personality, even Saga, the antagonist. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of them or feel any kind of emotion. The only good thing I have to say here, is that it at least let some characters share the spotlight.

Visuals - 7.5 - One Piece movies always pull through in this aspect! If the story fails, at least there's cool animation! The final fight between Luffy and Saga was really well done and had very nice choreography coupled with flashy sakuga to compliment it! The art also has this nice, polished look to it. I do have some gripes with it though. My main one being the CGI used. There were attempts to create dynamic shots and fast, cool-looking camera panning, zooming and movements with it, but it ended up looking pretty jarring. This results in the characters looking like they aren't part of the environment and are just plastered on.

Sound - 4 - The usual stuff. Except the voice actors feel like they're trying too hard to fit into their roles, which is strange considering how long they've been doing it for. It's probably a consequence given birth from the script which gives the characters these awful lines that sound really forced and fail at giving life to the characters. Everyone sounds artificial and dead.

Overall: I didn't like this film. Bad writing, poor characterization and usage of the characters, it's just not a well executed film. Take a mediocre idea, and do nothing unique with it.

Final score: 3.83/10 Rounded to 4/10 for MAL score.