Review for One Piece Collection 11

Introduction

I had to jump through more than the usual number of hoops to get a review copy of Collection 10 of One Piece, but it was more than worth it, the best set of episodes yet as the series began its Water Seven arc. On the other hand, no hoop jumping was required for the next instalment, as the Collection 11 discs arrived without fanfare, even as I was belatedly reviewing 10. On the bright side there wasn’t much of break between collections, and the story remains fresh in my mind. I really do hope that this set of episodes will continue in the same vein, that the rest of the Water Seven arc holds up to the quality of its beginning.


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 as well as the enigmatic and multi tasking Nico Robin.


Previously on One Piece, the crew of the Going Merry thought they had it easy when they got to Water Seven, cash in their treasure, get the ship repaired, hopefully add a shipwright to their crew, but their money got stolen by the Franky gang, they got caught up in the middle of some politics between the World Government and the Galley-La company, and subsequently got blamed for an assassination attempt on the head of Galley-La, Iceberg, Usopp left the crew after an argument, and to top it all off Robin betrayed them all. At the end of the last episode, the Aqua Laguna storm surge was bearing down on Water Seven with devastating force, Luffy and Zoro were missing in action, Robin was on a Sea Train to the government justice island of Enies Lobby, along with prisoners Franky and Usopp, Sanji had snuck aboard the train, and Chopper and Nami were looking for the others. And as for the Going Merry...


The next 23 episodes of One Piece are presented across 4 discs from Manga Entertainment.

Disc 1
253. Sanji Barges In! Sea Train Battle in the Storm!
254. Nami’s Soul Cries Out! Straw Hat Luffy Makes a Comeback!
255. Another Sea Train? Rocketman Charges Forth!
256. Rescue Our Friends! A Bond Among Foes Sworn With Fists!
257. Smash the Wave! Luffy and Zoro Use the Strongest Combo!
258. A Mysterious Man Appears! His Name is Sniper King!

Disc 2
259. Showdown Between Cooks! Sanji vs. Ramen Kenpo!
260. Rooftop Duel! Franky vs. Nero!
261. Clash! Demon-Slasher Zoro vs. Ship-Slasher T-Bone!
262. Scramble Over Robin! A Cunning Plan by Sniper King!
263. The Judicial Island! Full View of Enies Lobby!


Disc 3
264. Landing Operations Start! Charge In, Straw Hats!
265. Luffy Cuts Through! Big Showdown on Judicial Island!
266. Battle Against Giants! Open the Second Gate!
267. Find a Way Out! Rocketman Takes Flight!
268. Catch Up With Luffy! The Straw Hats’ All Out Battle!
269. Robin Betrayed! The Motive of the World Government!

Disc 4
270. Give Robin Back! Luffy vs. Blueno
271. Don’t Stop! Hoist the Counterattack Signal!
272. Almost to Luffy! Gather at the Courthouse Plaza!
273. Everything is to Protect My Friends! Second Gear Activated!
274. Give Us Your Answer, Robin! The Straw Hats’ Outcry!
275. Robin’s Past! The Girl Who Was Called a Devil!

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’s a native PAL transfer of course, with 4% speed-up as you would expect. The image is clear throughout, and now obviously comes from an HD source, so improved is the line detail. Colours are strong, the animation is vibrant, and if there is the odd judder to pans (most noticeable in the opening theme song), it’s not detrimental to the viewing experience. 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 5.1 Surround English, and DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. 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.

Extras

The discs present their content with static (widescreen) menus set to the theme song, with jacket pictures to look at when the discs are at rest in compatible players. Funimation took a hiatus of a year between One Piece releases just as they switched to widescreen, and that tells in the ditching of the English version theme songs, and the doubling up of audio commentaries; we now get four, as well as video extras.

Disc 1 has one audio commentary on episode 255, with ADR Director Mike McFarland hosting actors Juli Erickson (Kokoro), and Davy Goodrich (Zambai) for another typical Funimation actors’ commentary, less about the show, more about the actors.


Disc 2 has an audio commentary on episode 263, with Mike McFarland hosting the ADR Engineer, Mix Engineer, and Marketing Brand Manager, only one of whose name I could make out, for the sake of fairness I just kept to the job titles. It’s a nice commentary, looking at another aspect of localisation beyond just the voice actors.

You’ll find the textless credits here, one opening and two closings.

We also get two On the Boat featurettes, Behind the Scenes of One Piece with Christopher R. Sabat (12:01), and Colleen Clinkenbeard (12:52) as they talk about their respective characters, Zoro and Luffy to Mike McFarland.


Disc 3’s sole extra is the audio commentary that accompanies episode 265, and joining Mike McFarland this time are Colleen Clinkenbeard, Alexis Tipton (Fukurou), and Phil Parsons (Jabra), as they settle in for another amiable actors’ commentary.

Disc 4 gets an audio commentary on episode 273 with Mike McFarland, Eric Vale (Sanji), and Brina Palencia (Chopper). It’s another typical dub actor commentary, this one a little more on the goofy side.

You also get the textless credits, the new opening and one of the new closings (the latest closing credit has the chibi versions of the crew at an art gallery where each week the latest fan art submissions are displayed, so essentially it’s a new sequence each week.

We also get two more On the Boat featurettes, Behind the Scenes of One Piece with Sonny Strait who plays Usopp (13:43), and Patrick Seitz who plays Franky (13:57) as they talk about their respective characters with Mike McFarland.

Conclusion

The episodes in collection 11 aren’t as good as those in collection 10 when all is said and done, although expecting One Piece to maintain that standard might have been asking a little too much. For one thing, the story shifts here in tone and approach, from drama to action, and character development and story take more of a back seat for these 23 episodes. It is tremendous fun when it comes to the action though, replete with over the top fighting, bizarre characters and that edge of the seat anticipation for what will happen when the climax comes. A little hint, that climax doesn’t happen in these episodes just yet.


The Water Seven episodes of the previous volume really took the story in a darker and more dramatic direction, and it offered the new trick of pitting the Going Merry crew against each other, as well as throwing in the destabilising influences of the Galley-La Company, Franky and his gang, and the World Government’s assassins in the CP9 organisation. Usopp left the crew after an argument with Luffy, while Robin just vanished with no explanation, then reappearing to commit crimes that implicated Luffy’s crew, throwing into doubt her loyalty. It left everyone in a bad place, literally for Luffy and Zoro, and Franky and Usopp at the start of these episodes.


The important thing at this point is that they’ve figured out why Robin is doing what she is doing, and right at the start of these episodes, that serves to reunite most of the Straw Hat Pirates, and motivate them to rescue Robin. And that is where these episodes differ from the previous collection. Gone is the uncertainty and interpersonal conflict that threatened the unity of the group, and instead comes a common purpose and a determination to take down CP9 and rescue Robin. On top of that, they get some help from Galley-La and Franky’s gang to save Franky as well. It’s all full steam ahead, all guns blazing, literally so as they board a prototype sea train to catch up to the Sea Train on which Robin is held, being transported to the judicial island of Enies Lobby.


They don’t make it in time, so it’s an assault on Enies Lobby itself, another fantastic creation from the mind of Eichiro Oda. It’s an island that hovers in mid air, over a giant sinkhole down which the sea cascades in waterfalls. It’s sealed behind sets of gargantuan gates and a drawbridge from the neighbouring island that juts out over one edge of the sinkhole. And it’s guarded by 10,000 marines as well as giants, dog riding soldiers, a three headed judge named Baskerville, giant Morningstar wielding jurors and more. And against them are the six Straw Hat pirates and a handful of the Galley-La shipwrights and 60 of Franky’s gang. It’s all dealt with the nutty action and wonderful character comedy that I’ve come to expect from One Piece. The downside is that it does stretch things out a fair bit, with lengthy recaps at the start of each episode.


The Sea Train chase takes up about half of this collection, and the assault in the second half takes us to the point where the Straw Hats finally confront Robin about why she is surrendering so easily. In terms of character development, only two things of note happen in this collection. First Usopp can’t deal with simply returning to the Straw Hat fold, following his acrimonious departure, so he dons a daft mask and a cape, and adopts the mantle of the heroic Sniper King (complete with introductory theme tune), which just adds to the comedy. The second thing is that Luffy realises that he’ll have to be even stronger to protect his friends, and this is where we see the debut of his Second Gear abilities.


Then right at the end we get the first episode in a mini-arc that I have long been waiting for, as we begin to learn of Robin’s tragic past. It takes us back 20 years to the island of Ohara, where she was the outcast child, without any parents, bullied by the other children because of her Devil Fruit powers, but a girl who already had a fascination for archaeology. The Ohara library was her one refuge, where the academics taught her, but when she attained the equivalent of a doctorate, and offered to help them with their illicit research, banned by the World Government 800 years previously, she was shut out of even that refuge.


I love narrative and character, but can be rapidly bored by lengthy stretches of action where you tend to lose the context of the story. Were this any other long running shonen show, such as Naruto or Fairy Tail, my appreciation would be slipping from good to average, and for Bleach I’d be asleep two episode into the run. Not with One Piece, which even in the lengthiest of action sequences, the longest stretch of such episodes, remains delightfully wacky and out there. It also will consistently keep the characters’ quirks and individualities at the forefront, their interactions wonderfully observed. 10 episodes into the Enies Lobby assault, 10 episodes of fighting action where in another show my attention might have drifted at this point, One Piece is still hilariously funny. One Piece is the best long running shonen action show, bar none, and this is just one more indispensable collection of episodes.