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The Series:
The Straw Hat Pirates go looking for a fabled city of gold and end up
fighting
a god in FUNimation's One Piece Season Three Voyage Three.
Their time
in Skypeia has been interesting, to say the least, but when Luffy's
crew has to
face down the god of the cloud islands, it's unclear whether they'll be
able to
defeat the immensely powerful being... even though they have a god on
their side
too.
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.
As this collection opens, the group has split up and is traveling
across the
Upper Yard trying to reach the ruins.
That would be difficult enough but the situation is complicated
by the
fact that they're doing this in the middle of a war.
The Shandians, who claim the island for their
own, are attacking the god Eneru and his priests who currently control
it. The Straw Hats are caught in the
middle, with
both priests and Shandians attacking them.
Luffy, Zoro, Chopper, and most of the others each face a
difficult opponent while battles rage all across the island. The priests are powerful, but so are their
foes, and one by one each side whittles away at the numbers of their
opponents. God Eneru has predicted that
only five people will be alive at the end of the fighting, and it looks
like he
was right.
Meanwhile Gan Fall, the Sky Knight, meets up with Nami
aboard the Going Merry. He finally tells
the tale of the Upper Yard and gives the background on Eneru along with
relating
some interesting pieces to the mystery that is Skypiea, and who he was
before
he took on the mantle of the Sky Knight.
He decides to team up with the Straw Hats, but will even the
power of
this former god be enough to stop Eneru?
The Skypeia storyline has been a lot of fun so far, and
while it doesn't have the emotional impact that the Alabasta saga does,
it
makes up for that with a quicker pace and a lot of unique and fanciful
villains. This story 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.
The whole world of Skypeia starts to come together in this
collection, where a lot of the back story is revealed.
The whole floating world is fleshed out
nicely, with some interesting revelations that make what has come
before all
the more logical. (Well, as logical as a
wacky anime like this ever gets.)
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 13 episodes (170-182) 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:
As the Skypiea story progresses it gets more and more interesting. This collection really does a lot of flesh
out the whole world that's floating in the sky and gives this story arc
a good
deal of heart. This is a fun and enjoyable
collection that comes Highly Recommended. |
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Buy: