One Piece Movie 05: Norowareta Seiken

I am a huge fan of One Piece, and I know for a fact that many people also love it! But something I really hate is when a bad movie is created using "One Piece" as the title. That's exactly what happened here with "One Piece: Norowareta Seiken".

This movie doesn't even compare to the awesomeness that One Piece offers. I'm guessing that whoever wrote the script for this didn't really have "One Piece" in mind. They very well could have just written a script and thrown the cast of One Piece into the roles.

It's necessary to be harsh with this movie because it ... is by far one of the worst One Piece movies, and anyone who loves the show shouldn't waste their time to watch this movie.


Story / Character: 5
Basically, the summary of this movie is that The Straw Hats go to some random island to look for a sword and then Zoro betrays his friends to go meet with his old companion and fights against the crew. Okay, already you know that this is ridiculous.

How many of you have seen One Piece? If you're willing to watch this movie, I'm guessing you have. And you should then realize that this is crazy because even though Zoro comes across as a scary, mean swordsman most of the time, he does care deeply for his 'Nakama' and would never betray them, even if it were to help an old friend.

That's mainly what made me angry while watching this. Seeing the characters personalities and values changed just for the convenience of the movie was a terrible idea.

Even Luffy seemed a bit off while he was on screen. Luffy may be reckless and doesn't think things through, but he's not a complete moron. The writer of this movie didn't seem to understand that fact.

Of course, in this movie we have a new character. That's right, Zoro's friend known as 'Saga'. Now how can I put this? Well first of all, I hate him. It doesn't matter how 'justified' his actions were; as an audience, I didn't feel any compassion for him.

Sometimes in shows we end up feeling sad for a bad guy because you realize that he was just trying to do the right thing! It makes us think to ourselves "wow, maybe he is really a nice guy that just went about doing what he thought was right", or something along those lines. Trust me, you won't feel any of that while watching this movie. It's really pretty impossible to be immersed into such a shallow character such as Saga.


Art: 8
Now, even though the story is horrific, the art is actually quite good! The characters have the same general 'One Piece' look to them, and then the backgrounds are quite beautifully detailed. It seems as though some computer animation was used throughout the movie as well, there are times when the camera shot moves around and looks almost 3D.

The fighting is also very well done. We see some pretty intense fighting shots, angles and colours during the movie. So in a way, the art reminded me of the original show, which is sad that the story couldn't be as good as the art was.


Sound: 9
If you've seen One Piece, you know what the characters sound like. You will also know that the voice actors always give 110% no matter what! Their voices are part of what make the show amazing! The way they can sound so emotional, sarcastic or angry is just incredible.

As mentioned before, we have a new character in this movie. Saga. His voice actor, Nakamura Shidou, is not very well known, the only role he's done that is worth mentioning is Ryuk from Death Note. I think there may be a reason that he hasn't gotten a lot of voice acting roles, it's not that he's bad, but his voice only works for certain characters. And Saga isn't one of them. He sounds quite out of place and out of character.


Enjoyment: 5
Alright, so I'll be fair. I didn't love this movie obviously, but I didn't feel the need to fall asleep while watching it either. Being a Shounen anime movie, it focuses on fighting a lot, which is something most of us can enjoy even if the story is terrible. And since the fights were good, I was able to keep my eyes on the screen and watch the movie all the way through.

I also love Zoro, he's a great character, so it was nice to see him get the spotlight for a movie.


Overall: 6
I certainly don't plan on watching it again. I've seen fanfics that have better story and character than this movie did (which is really saying something)!

If you like One Piece, feel free to watch this movie. But I'm warning you now that it isn't the One Piece that we all love dearly. It's an insult to One Piece and Oda himself to make a movie that messes with the original story and the original characters.

One Piece Norowareta Seiken (The Curse of the Sacred Sword) is definitely my least favorite One Piece movie. I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

Obviously if you are watching this movie you have seen the series, and have in all likelihood seen the first 4 movies, so I will save the talk about having to be a fan to see this first. So I will just jump into it section by section.

Story: Not bad. One piece has had some pretty terrible storylines in the past, and so this movie was easily forgiven by having a passable story, and one that focuses on one of my favorite characters Zoro. I didn't love it, I didnt hate it, so it gets a 5.

Art: Very One Piece style. ... I really don't want to talk about the art because one piece is one piece in its style of art, love it or hate it. It gets and 8 from me.

Sound: Good. Nothing much to say about this. Not as good as the series or Movie 4 or 2, but still good.

Characters: Main Character = Zoro = +. I wish Luffy had a little bit more of a role, because it felt like he wasn't even needed in the entire movie, yet he was still the "main character". No one else really seemed to matter in this movie except for Zoro. I felt like they included all the other characters because otherwise it wouldn't be One Piece. Really disappointing on how they used everyone.

Enjoyment: Made me laugh at times. I watch One Piece to laugh, and get me really excited when someone is pissed off. Surprisingly no one got that pissed off in this movie. I thought I would have enjoyed it more because of this fact, but I didn't so now I appreciate it more when someone does get really angry. Other than that it had its usual jokes that put a smile on my face.

Overall: I still enjoyed it, would never watch it again, and if I could have gone back in time to tell myself to just go ahead and skip it, I would have. Your not missing much if you decide to skip this movie.

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