One Piece Movie: Mugiwara Chase

With the lack of time lately, I’ve not had any time to watch an entire series of anime. However, today I managed to set aside thirty minutes of my time to watch the One Piece movie, The Mugiwara Chase 3D…3D! You know, they say that you already decide if you like something or not within the first ten seconds, and if you want to talk about my first impression, I was extremely skeptical. Since it was 3D, there weren’t the original anime drawings, rather it was some pretty shittay graphics. Maybe I was expecting too much for a thirty minute movie, but in all honesty, One Piece brings in extremely high revenue…and this was all they could do? It was muy disappointing to say the least. Despite the fact that the graphics threw me off a bit, one perk was it that it made Usopp look significantly less ugly, and perhaps that is a good thing.

This adventure takes place in which I can only assume is the Grand Line since the entire crew is present. We start off with this old pirate-man who has nothing left but his one and only remaining nakama, Baz. If there is one standout character in this movie, it’s not our main heroes, but our dog friend. Baz is a dog who ate a zoan devil fruit of the eagle category (meaning: he can turn into this hellsa cool eagle). He can also become a hybrid mix of eagle and dog. I guess what I’m trying to say is, he’s sorta coo for such an old fat dog. I really liked the relationship between the old pirate man and Baz, because I'm kinda a sucker for these emotional things, and you would never expect that bird-dog to have so many tricks up his sleeve. Since we’re on the topic of tricks, we also get to see a lot of what Sunny can do. I know that the ship is not the most important part of the anime, but it’s cool that this movie really got to display Sunny in all its glory (literally so badass).

So we have this situation created where Luffy goes on this short and fast-paced chase for his straw hat (hence the title). Other than that there is a little bit of fighting with the marines involved as they end up landing on Marine Headquarters. It’s pretty standard and no great pains are involved which kinda sucked. However, if I had to point out the one thing that really irked me, it was that I felt like I was playing a video game as the force of attacks were coloured with vivid blues and reds…

 

Evidently, there is nothing much plot-wise but I can’t complain because I hate watching the movies that are just condensed version of the arcs in the original plot line. It’s refreshing, it was cute and it was really entertaining! However, because this entire graphics thing made the world so unfamiliar to me, I couldn’t help feeling a little detached from this emotionally…but kudos to trying something new, I guess.

So I leave you with this! Next time I will be back with a review of Air. Until then, hasta las vistas!