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One Piece: The Princess and the Pirates - Adventures in Alabasta Movie #8 (Blu-ray) |
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One Piece: The Princess and the Pirates - Adventures in Alabasta Movie #8 (Blu-ray)
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| FUNimation // Unrated // January 27, 2009 // Region A |
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List Price: $24.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
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Review by John Sinnott |
posted February 14, 2009 |
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The
Movie:
Two steps forward and one step back.
Over the last year or so FUNimation has become my favorite
anime producer in the US. They
have a wide variety of titles, they're
releasing anime in season and half season sets at a reasonable price,
and they're
still offering the choice of subtitles or dubs.
A little over a year ago they started releasing the One Piece TV show,
one of the most popular anime and manga (which the show is based on)
titles in Japan. Released uncut in two disc, 13-episode sets
I've reviewed the first two (read my reviews of set one and set two)
and loved
them. I was excited to see that
FUNimation was releasing one of the
One Piece movies on Blu-ray too, how cool
is that? Well, not too cool
actually. I'll admit I'm not a big fan
of movies based on anime series, but this one is worse than usual. One Piece
Movie 8: The Desert Princess and the Pirates:
Adventures in Alabasta ends up being a confusing mess, and
looses a lot of the
fun and charm that makes the show so enjoyable.
The movie starts at a spot long after the current release of
One Piece on DVD, so there are new characters and settings that will
have fans
scratching their heads. Apparently Luffy
and his expanded crew are now on the Grand Line, and after rescuing a
cross-dressing
man who has the ability to shape change and putting him back on his
ship, they
set off on a new adventure. This starts
when Princess Vivi (who?) recognizes the rubber-faced man's name just
after he
leaves and realizes that he has framed her father!
He was in cahoots with Sir Crocodile! If
this synopsis makes no sense that is
because the movie doesn't either. It
assumes that the viewer has seen the first three season of the show and
is
familiar with the characters and situations, something that isn't
possible if
you've been buying the official DVD releases.
In any case, the Luffy and his pirate gang decide to leave
the sea for a while and travel to Vivi's desert kingdom.
There they uncover Crocodile's sinister
plan. He has tricked the army into
committing atrocities in the King's name so that the populace starts to
rebel. He wants the army and the rebel
forces to fight, weakening both sides, so that after the battle he can
swoop in
and take control of the country. Of
course Vivi isn't going to stand by and let that happen, and with
friends like
Luffy, Zorro, and Usopp she practically has an army of her own.
This story was condensed from a story arc that basically ran
for all of season four of the TV series, lasting nearly 40 episodes. Needless to say the pace is fast and there's
no time for character development, background stories, or much more
than
spotting the enemy and fighting. I'm
sure if you were familiar with the original story from the comic (which
has not
been released in English in the US
to the best of my knowledge) or TV show (this section isn't available
on DVD
but it was broadcast on cable heavily edited) this would have made a
lot more
sense. As I wasn't familiar with the
story or even the main character, the film was a jumble.
Some things that I thought would be important
story lines were totally dropped (what about the Pluton that Crocodile
was
looking for?) and at other times the narrative grinds to a halt for no
reason,
like when Luffy lectures Vivi about friendship.
Added to that is some questionable stylistic choices that
were made. Periodically the action will
freeze
and the frame will turn into a nicely rendered oil painting. It looks really nice, but serves no purpose
except to remind the viewer that they're watching a movie, just in case
they
were able to loose themselves in the story, which is pretty doubtful.
This is a recent film, it was released in Japan in March
of 2007, and more than a few backgrounds and objects created with
computer
animation. This doesn't blend nearly as
well as it should have, often sticking out like a sore thumb. The scenes where the battle raged in the
distance were particularly disappointing.
The same small characters fighting were repeated over and over,
and
while their movements weren't in phase, it always looked like there was
a
pattern to the action.
The Blu-ray Disc:
Video:
The MPEG-4 AVC/1080p 1.78:1 image looks very good, as one
would expect of a recent theatrical animated feature.
The lines are tight and the colors are bright
and solid. If anything, this disc does
too good of a job. The static
backgrounds don't mesh with the active foregrounds as well as with a SD
DVD. The scene at the beginning with Luffy
is
fishing is a good example. As the sky
and sea roll past, Luffy's character looks like it's sitting on top of
the
background instead of being part of it.
I'll admit this is a minor flaw and though I noticed it early on
it
didn't bother me as I watched the movie.
On the digital side of things the disc looks great.
There is no aliasing, something that plagues
animation, and banding is restricted to only a couple of scenes (like
the sky
when they are walking through the desert) and even then it is very
minor.
Audio:
This Blu-ray disc upgrades the audio options from the SD DVD
too. While the DVD only had a stereo
Japanese track, this disc contains Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks in Japanese
and
English as well as DD stereo mixes in both languages too.
I screened the movie with the 5.1 Japanese
track and spot checked the multichannel English mix and both sounded
fine. The action scenes made full use of
the
soundstage with some nice battle noises emerging from that rear. The dialog was clean and easy to hear and the
sound effects were at an appropriate level.
Extras:
Nothing save some trailers for other FUNimation shows.
Final Thoughts:
One Piece is a fun series,
but none of its charm translates
over to this film. I wonder why
FUNimation chose this particular movie to release since US
viewers
won't be familiar with many of the characters and some of the
situations. It feels as if you're coming
in on the middle
reel of the story, which for most practical purposes you are. If you've never seen the TV show, avoid this
as you'll have no idea what's going on.
If you're a fan, as I am, rent this first. The
image and sound are good, but the story
leaves something to be desired.
Note: The
images in this review are not from the Blu-ray disc and do not
necessarily
represent the image quality on the disc. |
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