Reviews

The plot of Film Red is kinda held together with duct tape and glue, there’s some inconsistencies as well as the overarching plot of Elegia and Tot Musica not being as fleshed out or interesting as the movie pretends it is. The character cameos vary from questionable to completely random like Big Mom still being alive and kicking despite G5 Luffy, Kalifa showing up for nothing, and Saint Charlos (lol). The fanservice cameos weren’t as ham-fisted as One Piece: Stampede was, but it still often had me mind boggled or slightly confused. Almost to the point of nearly taking me out of the movie when I thought about these appearances for longer than a second. There was also a few too many boring plot twists in my opinion between the whole "Red-Haired pirates destroyed Elegia!" to then "Actually, Uta destroyed Elegia unknowingly!" to another "Actually Uta knew she destroyed Elegia the whole time and didn't care!" Yet, despite that, I still had a lot of fun though mostly thanks to the colorful and cheerful energy that pulls me right back in. The visuals and the very Vocaloid-esque concert performances during the movie which made me glad that I spent the extra for MPX sound on opening day. Ignoring my problems with the narrative, I do appreciate how much of a love letter this was to One Piece fans with all the subtle callbacks to memorable moments in the show like Luffy being in Roger's execution pose, Ben Beckman holding his gun on Kizaru, and Luffy having his hat ripped. I try my best to be objective in my viewing of movies and separate them from the series but it's pretty much impossible with this movie as there's not much there to chew on as a standalone movie (other than the songs, nothing but bangers from Ado in this movie). So although I had a great deal of fun with Film Red, I definitely don’t think this movie is worth viewing by itself though unless you’re already a big One Piece fan.