Review for One Piece Collection 27

Introduction

It’s a worrying prospect, the thought that you might have fallen out of love with a show, when you still have six volumes, around 150 episodes still to watch. I’m even trying to leave sensible gaps between them, so as not to get fatigued with this particular franchise. Then I put the first disc of One Piece Collection 27 into the player, to watch the first two episodes, and I wind up sleeping right through them. Now is not the time to get bored with this show! Thankfully, I tried watching them again the following night, and it turns out that it was just me who was fatigued, not the franchise, at least not yet. Still, I have to admit that watching One Piece has become just a bit of a chore over the last few volumes; giving the sense of a show whose glory days are behind it. Yet if I try to actively make an effort to enjoy it, that will only make it worse. It’s up to One Piece to enthral me again.


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 Gold 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. The first candidates for his crew 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. He’s later joined by the world’s first and only blue-nosed reindeer doctor, in the form of the fatally cute Tony Tony Chopper, the enigmatic and multi tasking Nico Robin, the cola-fuelled cyborg shipwright Franky, as well as the perverted skeletal troubadour Brook.


Previously on One Piece, having resolved the mystery of Punk Hazard, and having captured the mad scientist Caesar Clown, Luffy and the Straw Hats teamed up with Trafalgar Law to deal with the power behind the evil plan, Don Quixote Doflamingo, a.k.a. Joker. That meant going to Dressrosa, where it seemed the dice were falling their way. They had a plan to shut down the poison gas factory, and taking down Doflamingo was made easier as he had quit as leader of the island. But their plans never survive Luffy and his crew unaltered ... Luffy got distracted by a fighting tournament, Sanji fell in love and got distracted, Zoro got distracted when one of his swords was stolen by a ghost, Franky got distracted by a toy soldier, Usopp and Robin got distracted and wound up on an island of fairies, which was where Law was just about to encounter Doflamingo...


26 episodes of One Piece are presented across 4 DVDs in this collection from Funimation UK.

Disc 1
642. The Stratagem of the Century! Doflamingo Makes His Move!
643. Shaking Heaven and Earth! Admiral Fujitora’s Power!
644. A Blow of Anger! A Giant vs. Lucy!
645. Destruction Cannon Blasts! Lucy in Trouble!
646. The Legendary Pirate! Don Chin Jao!
647. Light and Shadow! Darkness Behind Dressrosa!
648. Making a Sortie! The Legendary Hero Usoland!

Disc 2
649. The Fierce Battle Coming to the End! Lucy vs. Chin Jao
650. Luffy and the Gladiator of Fate – Rebecca!
651. Protect You to the End! Rebecca and the Toy Soldier!
652. The Last – and Bloodiest – Block! Block D Battle Begins!
653. A Decisive Battle! Giolla vs. The Straw Hats!
654. Beautiful Sword! Cavendish of the White Horse!


Disc 3
655. A Big Clash! Sanji vs. Doflamingo!
656. Rebecca’s Special Attack! Back-to-the-Water Dance!
657. The Most Violent Fighter! Logan vs. Rebecca!
658. A Big Surprise! A True Identity of the Toy Soldier!
659. A Horrible Past! The Secret of Dressrosa!
660. A Nightmare! The Tragic Night of Dressrosa!
661. A Showdown Between the Warlords! Law vs. Doflamingo

Disc 4
662. Two Great Rivals Meet Each Other! Straw Hat and Heavenly Demons!
663. Luffy Astonished! The Man Who Inherits Ace’s Will!
664. Operation SOP Starts! Usoland Charges Forth!
665. A Burning Passion! Rebecca vs. Suleiman!
666. The End of the Match! A Surprising Result of Block D!
667. The Admiral’s Decision! Fujitora vs. Doflamingo!

Picture

One Piece is presented at a 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio, and we get anime of the quality that we’ve come to expect on DVD in this high definition age. It is native NTSC encoded progressively; the image is clear throughout, and now obviously comes from an HD source, so improved is the line detail, although there is the odd moment of shimmer on the really fine detail. Colours are strong, the animation is vibrant, and there’s no more judder if you’re watching the show with progressive playback. There are still moments where the animation really takes a walk on the wild side, bringing to mind the wackiness of Tex Avery cartoons and the like. This is a show where surprise can make people’s eyeballs bug out of their sockets, and their jaws drop to the floor.

Sound

You have the choice of DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, with translated subtitles and a signs only track locked during playback. As usual, I watched the series through in Japanese with subtitles, and found a fairly standard shonen anime dub, with enthusiastic and over the top performances that suit the tone of the show well. The stereo does a good job in conveying the show’s ambience and action sequences. Where One Piece really impresses is in its music score. Far from the comparatively weedy synth efforts afforded to the usual anime shows, One Piece apparently gets a full on orchestral score, at times giving the show an epic and grand soundscape that by far belies its comic book origins. The subtitles are free of error and are accurately timed. There are English language text overlays burnt into the print. Any place where a new character or new location is introduced, text appears to inform us of it.

Extras

You get four discs in an Amaray style case, one on either side of two centrally hinged panels. The inner sleeve offers an episode listing.

The discs present their content with static menus set to the background music from the show. The episodes can be played with Marathon Mode, stripping out the credit sequences. The episodes get a few screens of translated English credits at the end.


Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Dr. Stone.

Disc 3 autoplays with a trailer for My Hero Academia Season 4.

Disc 4 autoplays with a trailer for Dr. Stone.


Note that we in the UK get DVD only for the One Piece TV series. The US has switched to Blu-ray for quite some time at this point, and if you had bought the Blu-ray, you would have had the following extras on the HD discs...

Funimation Con 2020: One Piece Panel – Part 2
Textless Opening Song "Wake up!"
Toei Animation and Funimation Present: A One Piece Livestream Watch Party
Textless Opening Song "Wake Up!" Ver. 1
Textless Opening Song "Wake Up!" Ver. 2

That’s close to 90 minutes of extras that we miss out on in the UK.

Conclusion

What’s painfully obvious with this collection of One Piece episodes is the cyclical nature of One Piece’s storytelling. It’s a show of story arcs, a series of adventures that the Straw Hats go on. Encompassed in these 26 episodes are all of what is good and what is bad about this series. I have had my issues with One Piece over the last few volumes and for the first half of this collection, I actually worried that I had fallen out of love with this show; not good when you have another five or six volumes on the to-watch pile. Then One Piece did what it always does, the pieces started to fall into place, and I was hooked again.


One Piece is only as good as the current arc that you’re watching. It’s no secret that I wasn’t a fan of the previous arc, Punk Hazard, but sometimes you get veritable classic stories in arcs like Arlong Park or Alabasta. The length of the arc also plays a part. One Piece has a formula of meandering openings to each arc, where characters are introduced, and world-building (or island building) occurs, with little bits of plot dropped in at random, making little sense at first. Somewhere around a third of the way through an arc, the story kicks in, and you start to see the direction of travel, and if it’s something you’re interested in, you’ll get invested enough to see it all the way through to the arc’s conclusion, hopefully leaving you with enough momentum to anticipate the next arc.


Coming off Punk Hazard, I have to admit that I didn’t have much momentum going into this Dressrosa arc. Also, at 118 episodes, Dressrosa is the longest story arc yet. What that does mean is that this has the longest meander yet, building up to its story. It’s got plenty of characters to introduce, a whole lot of plot to set up, with one significant element the kind of tournament arc that has been annoying me since I first watched Dragon Ball Z, and here it did nothing to really grab me for almost 30 episodes. Can you imagine sticking with a show for almost a year, hoping that it will get better? One Piece survives on the strength of fan goodwill whenever they perceive a slump. It was past the halfway point of this collection that it did its usual trick of the elements falling into place and making me sit up and pay attention once more.


On the surface Dressrosa is a happy island full of contented residents, all in awe and in love with their leader, Doflamingo. That’s an immediate impediment to our heroes, who are there to bring Doflamingo down, so they have to enter the island in disguise. And the first thing that happens is Luffy is distracted by a fighting tournament where the prize is the coveted Flame-Flame fruit of the kind that had given his late brother Ace his powers. That means there are whole lot of tournament interludes as the story continues in the first half of this collection. Sanji falls in love as usual with a nefarious woman named Violet, while Zoro chases after a “fairy” that had stolen his sword. Franky’s intrigued by the population of living toys on the island, all while Trafalgar Law tries to use Punk Hazard’s Caesar Clown as a bargaining chip with Doflamingo.


There are a whole lot of story elements to deal with here, and all of it seems subservient to the tournament plot, where dozens of characters are introduced, all fighting for the prize. It’s not something that I enjoy, and I was drifting for the first half of this collection. However there is one important character introduced in the tournament that is rightfully worthy of attention. She’s a gladiator named Rebecca, a fighter who is roundly hated by audiences, but someone who Luffy bonds with. At first she seems like Vivi Nefertari redux, the character from the best One Piece arc to date, Alabasta. But once we learn why audiences hate her, all tied into Dressrosa’s past prior to the advent of Doflamingo, the story starts coming together.


It’s through the Tournament that we learn just where the various toys living on the island come from; another key element to the story. At the same time, the nature of the fairies living on the island is also revealed. Again it’s all tied into Dressrosa’s past, and all these factions have an interest in seeing Doflamingo overthrown. This is all to the good, as Trafalgar Law’s perfect plan to destroy the Smile factory and bring about Doflamingo’s downfall doesn’t succeed. It gets to the point where Nami, Chopper, Brook and Sanji have to leave the island on the Sunny to keep Caesar out of Doflamingo’s hands.


Thankfully, there are other plans afoot to deal with Doflamingo, a triple pronged attack. The latter half of the collection follows Luffy, Zoro, and Kin’Emon as they make a frontal attempt on Doflamingo’s palace, while Franky fights a hard-boiled man-baby named Senor as a distraction while Usopp and Robin team up with the fairies and the toys to attack from underground.


It took a hell of a long time, but by the time this collection had passed the halfway point, One Piece was interesting me again. Given that my antipathy to the show had peaked with Punk Hazard around episode 579, I’ve been waiting for almost 80 episodes for the show to enthral me once more. Given how much these DVDs cost, that’s a fair bit of money just to cross your fingers and hope.

One Piece Collection 27 is available from Anime On Line, All the Anime, and mainstream retailers.