Review for One Piece Film: Z

Introduction

To think that just a couple of years ago, we in the UK were the One Piece deprived, the sole English speaking territory yet to discover the animated delights of the world’s most popular rubber limbed pirate. Now in 2015, we’re steadily working our way through the television series, we’re up to Collection 10 which next month should take us past the 250-episode mark, and more significantly, we’ve had more of the One Piece movies than any other English territory, getting movies 1 through 9 where the US and Australia have only had movie 8. All that’s left is the half hour 3D movie, Straw Hat Chase. Otherwise, with the release of this One Piece Film Z movie in the UK, we’re all up to date with the One Piece movies. It’s a shame then that we aren’t up to date with the television series, as just as the state of play was for the Strong World movie released here last year, we’re still to catch up with the introductions of Franky and Brook (we only have to wait four more episodes for Franky). More importantly, One Piece Film Z takes place after the two year time-skip in the series, after the crew of the Thousand Sunny have made it to the New World. That won’t happen until anime episode 516, so questions about character development, such as ‘what the hell happened to Zoro’s eye’ will have to wait until then. They won’t be answered in this movie.


Monkey D. Luffy wants to be a pirate. No he wants to be the best pirate of them all, sail the Grand Line, find the legendary One Piece treasure left behind by Gol D. Roger, and become the Pirate King. He’s inspired in this by his mentor, Red-Haired Shanks, who saved his life when he was a child. He also ate the Gum-Gum fruit, a devil fruit which has given him stretchy rubber limbed abilities, although at the cost of his ability to swim. You’d think this would be a fatal handicap in a pirate, but Luffy has set sail nevertheless, looking to gather the best crew on the high seas, and venture forth onto the Grand Line. With him are his crew which include the mighty pirate-hunter swordsman, Roronoa Zoro, the skilled, pirate-hating thief Nami, the world’s greatest liar, Usopp, and the toughest chef around, Sanji, as well as the fatally cute Tony Tony Chopper, the enigmatic Nico Robin, the shipwright Franky and the skeletal troubadour Brook.


Trouble lies ahead for Luffy and the crew of the Going Sunny, indeed for all of the New World, although you wouldn’t get that from the cherry blossom viewing party that’s in full bloom. The cherry petals turn to ash though, presaging the crew finding an injured man with a cyborg arm adrift in the sea. The man’s name is Z, and he’s the leader of the Neo Navy. He’s just raided a Marine base, and stolen the Dyna Stones kept there, powerful weapons on a par with the Ancient weapons, and he just used one to destroy the base, indeed the entire island. The ash that is falling from the sky is volcanic ash that resulted from the devastation. And when he wakes up, it turns out that he hates pirates.

He’s doing all this to destroy all the pirates, and when his Navy turn up to collect him, they half near wreck the Going Sunny in the process, before Luffy can escape. His method is expedient, if overkill. He’ll use the Dyna Stones to destroy the End Points, key islands in the New World, which will result in a colossal volcanic devastation, wiping out the New World, all the pirates within, and everyone else will be just collateral damage. Luffy doesn’t care about saving the world, all he wants is to beat the man who insulted his dream about being the King of the Pirates.

Picture

One Piece Film Z gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. It’s a very pleasant transfer, with strong consistent colours, excellent detail, with no visible compression or digital banding. You do get the conceit of strong grain in some scenes, particularly the opening of the film, but it’s a deliberate stylistic choice by the creators. The image is clear and sharp, line art detail is excellent, and in motion the film looks fantastic. One Piece Film Z is the best One Piece Film yet when it comes to the action set pieces and dynamic sequences. Nami’s boobs fill the fan service quotient, before they are cruelly snatched from us by the Devil Fruit Power holder Ain!

The images used in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 English and Japanese, as well as PCM 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, along with optional translated subtitles for the Japanese audio, and a signs only track for the English. What little I sampled of the stereo Japanese was subdued and quite muddy, the really only effective tracks here are the Surround tracks, which convey the action and effects well, while keeping the dialogue centralised and clear. I didn’t bother with the English track this time.

If the off-white shade of the subtitles wasn’t a tip-off, this disc is authored locally by Manga, they haven’t used US or Australian assets. They can’t show more than two lines of subtitles simultaneously, which means that the subtitles alternate with the text translations. They’ve also learned a new trick to annoy with this release, deciding to randomly change the placement of the subtitles during the film. Usually they’re at the bottom where they should be, but sometimes, randomly and for no reason, you get a few lines at the top of the screen. Don’t ask me why. Maybe they think your eyeballs need the exercise. It seems as if they’ve used the Funimation subtitle script, certainly the random translations of the first 9 movies don’t occur, and Gum Gum stays Gum Gum throughout. But I would like someone to parse the syntax in this subtitle for me and explain it, “I hope being Admiral Kizaru of the Navy that has gone soft isn’t going to your head”. I haven’t the slightest. Oh, and Avril Lavigne...

Extras

Manga authored disc... Sweet Fanny Adams. Just an animated menu.

They’ve stripped the Funimation (and I assume Madman) extras, the most significant of which is the ‘Patrick Seitz at Sakura-Con 2014’ featurette, as well as all the various trailers and promos.

Conclusion

Now I don’t understand this. Manga Entertainment had previously stated that they would re-author titles that didn’t get native PAL releases in Australia, as they couldn’t release NTSC in the UK. That’s got nothing to do with Blu-ray by the way, all they need is a Region B compatible disc, which is what you’ll find in Australia. But Madman released Film Z on DVD in PAL format. Manga could have used the Australian masters for DVD and for Blu-ray, kept the decent subtitling, and kept the extra features. Instead they go it alone, again, and issue forth a release that is technically below par, and won’t satisfy anyone.


This release is good enough to watch certainly. It’s even worth a punt at a decent, low price, especially for newcomers to anime, who want to try one of these weird foreign cartoons, and find an interesting looking cover peeking at them in an HMV somewhere. But for a One Piece fan, a genuine lover of all things Luffy, someone who’s collected all five million volumes of the manga, bought all the available series discs, the movies, has plushy toys, a 3D Nami mousemat, if you’re a full on One Piece maniac, why would you settle for this? You’d go for the US release if you could spin Region A, otherwise the Australian release. And at this point in the One Piece life-cycle, 10 volumes and 10 movies in, I doubt that Manga will be picking up too many new fans for this show.


As for the movie itself, One Piece Film Z is pure shonen action. Not for it the character studies of a couple of the earlier One Piece films, and certainly not the experimental message movie of Mamoru Hosoda. This is One Piece as the fans want it, a suitably strong villain to test our heroes, and plenty of awesome action set pieces to gawp at. It also has the requisite One Piece humour in abundance, Sanji and Zoro bickering as usual, Luffy obsessing about meat, and Nami pouncing on money. I loved the bit where Chopper channelled Bruce Lee. There has to be a quirk, a bit of individuality to make a spin-off movie stand out, and one aspect of Film Z is that Z’s lieutenant Ain has a Devil Fruit Power that sucks time out of her targets. Suddenly Chopper, Brook, Nami, and Robin are twelve years younger (hence the loss of Nami’s fan service assets, and engendering a very creepy moment from Sanji). Brook doesn’t look any different though.


Another unique selling point is the tragic nature of this film’s villain. Z isn’t the usual power mad megalomaniac. He used to be one of the good guys, a former Marine Admiral, but he was pushed over the edge by a series of tragedies at the hands of pirates, which explains his single-minded determination to exterminate the pirate menace once and for all. So you get the sense that not only does Luffy have to defeat him, he has to redeem him as well in some sense.


One Piece Film Z has some spectacular action to it, the characterisations are still engaging and entertaining, and there are more than a few cameos that will tickle as well. But when all is said and done, it really is just another shonen series action movie spin-off, and it adheres to the established formula faithfully through its run time. One Piece Film Z is solid entertainment. It’s just a shame that Manga’s presentation isn’t as solid.