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The Series:
Monkey D. Luffy and his band of eclectic pirates continue to
sail the waters of the Grand Line in FUNimation's release of One Piece Season
Three Voyage One. This time the
Straw
Hat pirates run into a problem when their navigation device says that
the
nearest island is straight up. It's
never wrong, so there must be an island in the sky!
Once the idea of sailing through the sky gets
into Luffy's mind, there's no turning back.
He and his crew start searching for a way and if there is one,
you know
the rubber boy will find it.
I'll skip the basic recap, if you're not sure who Luffy and
his companions are, check out my reviews of the earlier sets.
After a pleasant set of short adventures, Luffy and the gang
set off on another epic adventure, the Sky Island
saga. As Luffy and his crew sail along,
a giant 200-year-old ship falls from the sky and almost crushes their
ship, the
Going Merry. Intrigued by this turn of
events, some of the crew dive down to examine the wreckage and return
with a
map of Skypiea, a legendary place that is said to float in the sky.
Some people think the map is just a hoax, but when Nami
notices that her Log Pose that always points to the next island is
aimed
straight up, she becomes a believer. The
crew set off for a nearby Jaya
Island to look for
information on how to reach this legendary floating mass of land.
Jaya is an island that makes its money off of servicing
pirates and the baddest pirate in the place is a man by the name of
Bellamy the
Hyena. He laughs at Luffy when he asks
about Sky
Island and
ridicules his dreams of
finding the One Piece. Instead of
fighting however, Luffy and Zoro allow themselves to be beaten, since
Bellamy
isn't worth their time. Later Luffy will
be back.
They finally find some information about the floating island
from a local kook, Montblanc Cricket.
He's collected information about the island for years, and
though
everyone thinks he's crazy, he tells the Straw Hats exactly what they
need to
do to reach it: Just sail up a waterspout
that erupts every once in a while... and the next time is very soon.
I was glad to see the show start on another big
adventure. While the short stories that
populated the previous set were a lot of fun, I prefer the more grand
sagas. This one is shaping up to be a
good one too. I really enjoyed Luffy's
interaction with Bellamy. He was the
exact opposite of Luffy, and it is very obvious from their first brief
encounter that they'll end up fighting, but it was a lot fun seeing how
they
postponed the confrontation. Just when
you thought they'd battle, they don't.
It only makes you want to see Luffy clean Bellamy's clock even
more, and
when he finally does it's very satisfying.
The Sky Island promises to be an
interesting place to visit. This series is
filled with wacky, far-out ideas and the way Skypiea works is right up
there
with the best of them. Strange,
unpredictable, creative, and bizarre, this next port of call for the
Straw Hats
is going to be another unique experience for the group.
I won't give too much away about the place,
but there are a couple of aspects that make it quite interesting.
As I mention in every review of this series, this is the
uncut version of the show. Though it is aimed at kids, there is some
swearing.
People called "ass" and "son of a bitch", but nothing worse
than that. People do get killed too, and when blood is spilled it's
red. The
show isn't very bloody though, and I had no problems letting my 6th
grader
watch it.
The DVD:
This set contains the next 12 episodes (134-156) on two
DVDs, each in its own thinpak case. The
two cases are held in a nice slipcase.
Audio:
This set offers the original Japanese track in stereo as
well as an English dub in either stereo or 5.1. While the 5.1 dub was
nice
during the battle scenes, I preferred the original language track. The
voices
just seemed to fit characters better and made for a more enjoyable
viewing
experience. The English voice actors did do a good job however and
people who
like watching in English shouldn't be disappointed.
Video:
The full frame video looked pretty good overall. The colors
were bright and solid and the blacks were nice and inky. The image was
generally sharp too. The only real problem was a more than average
amount of
aliasing. Diagonal lines are often jagged and when the camera pans
across a
scene, fine lines tend to shimmer a bit. There's also a bit of cross
colorization, but it wasn't distracting.
Extras:
Like the other volumes in this series, I was a little
disappointed that the bonus items were so meager. There's a "Marathon
Play" option, which lets you watch the show without the opening and
closing credits, which is really cool. I wish more anime would offer
something
like this. Unfortunately the only other
bonus items are clean animations and a series of trailers.
Final Thoughts:
The next great adventure begins as the Straw Hat Pirates try
to find a way to get to Skypiea, an island that floats in the sky. Filled with all of the fun and adventure that
One Piece fans have come to expect, this newest set is sure to please. If you've followed the series this far, you
can't stop now. Highly
Recommended. |
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Buy: