Title: One Piece: Strong World
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
Publisher: Toei Animation (JP), Funimation (US)
Original Creator: Eiichiro Oda
Director: Munehisa Sakai
Script: Hirohiko Uesaka
Music Composer: Kouhei Tanaka, Shiroh Hamaguchi
Original Release Date: November 19, 2013
As much as I love One Piece, and as much as I want to love it’s movies, it seems that One Piece movies and I are not quite meant to be…or at least that seems to be the case with the ones I’ve seen so far.
With Oda supervising the production of Strong World, my hopes were relatively high since I went in with the expectation that he, if anyone, would be able to give me a movie that I would enjoy immensely. Though from a visual standpoint Strong World is really quite beautiful, in general, I unfortunately found myself rather underwhelmed by a lackluster story and characters that couldn’t seem to find their balance.
The first part of the movie sets up the current set of islands, spending some time showcasing how gigantic, varied and aggressive the islands’ animal inhabitants are, as well as filling us in on the basic conflicts that will be the movie’s focus: The Straw Hats originally planned to travel back to East Blue, where many of them were raised, in order to try and prevent any more mysterious destruction of towns. However, that plan quickly goes down the drain when Shiki the Golden Lion, impressed by Nami’s skill as a navigator, kidnaps her, hoping she’ll decide to join his crew, and drops the rest of the crew on his floating islands, splitting them up. From then, the movie places a lot of focus on Nami’s personal conflict regarding both her feelings about her hometown being in any potential danger, as well as the Straw Hat’s general efforts to reclaim their friend and foil Shiki’s plans.
Admittedly, the story is pretty simple and doesn’t put out anything too surprising, even taking elements from several other arcs (like Arlong and Water Seven/Enies Lobby) in terms of how Nami’s part of the story plays out. One of the things I, for one, really enjoyed doesn’t even have that much to do with the story itself, but rather with the comedy, or rather the more fun, lighthearted moments. With the amount of drama in Strong World, many of the comedic moments came off as refreshing, and I often found myself laughing at character interactions and facial expressions. These moments, at times, felt the most true to the characters and were fun moments where the Straw Hats, or even Shiki and his goons, were playing off one another.
Though the rest of the story is nice and not terrible, one of the things I think inhibited my enjoyment is that I feel the film in general would have worked better had it spent a bit more time developing several aspects of the storyline. The thing with the story is that it technically spreads itself out over the course of a week, with that week just sort of left there for us to ask questions about. Why did Nami wait an entire week to try and escape from Shiki? What did the Straw Hats do for an entire week by themselves/in their groups? Did they all just aimlessly wander around? Getting to know more about the islands themselves would have also worked in the movie’s favor because it would have helped to better flesh out the villagers, make them more sympathetic.
The conflicts, as well, would have probably fared better had they seen a bit more development which would have made them seem more natural and not as overblown or, sometimes, awkward. Now, I realize that the movie is only arount two hours long, so I realize that not everything I would like to happen actually can. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I think Strong World wasn’t quite able to strike the harmonious balance it wanted to between focusing on Nami Drama and dealing with Shiki and all of his abuses against almost everyone.
What I mean is, Nami’s inner turmoil regarding her desire to keep her village safe and to not give into Shiki always felt a bit…off. With Nami’s character arc being one of my favorites, I can understand and sympathize with her desire to protect the little she has left in terms of family, but she almost felt too dramatic, at one point awkwardly sobbing for a few seconds out of relief that Luffy actually came to save her before instantly switching to serious-Nami (aka a more enjoyable Nami). The change between the two emotions was jarring and felt out of character. The overarching conflict regarding Shiki’s desire to, as all villains do, take over the world also felt rushed, something that probably has to do with the conflict between Shiki as a comedic character and a convincing villain which I’ll get into in a minute.
Additionally, the convenient and easy resolution of some leftover problems at the end let me feeling mildly disappointed. The reemergence of the balance between the humans on the island and the animals, especially, felt like a convenient way for the creators to say “Look, look, everyone ended up okay, even the animals!” In the end, the story ends up following a relatively predictable route that leaves you feeling that not much actually happened and that the stuff that did wasn’t nearly as compelling as it wanted to be.
On the character side of things, as I mentioned before, I only really had fun with them when they were “goofing off” because of how well I think their personalities came through. Aside from that, one of the reasons the story didn’t click too well with me is that I couldn’t get into the characters during their more dramatic moments. In terms of the Straw Hats, one of the things that bugged me the most, strangely enough, is how little Robin seemed to do throughout the course of the movie. Though she’s the one that gathers the information that we need to understand the full scope of Shiki’s plans, that’s about where her job ends. Sure she’s seen defeating a giant animal in the final showdown, but she’s immediately taken hostage afterwards, requiring rescuing by Sanji and Brooke. I suppose a lot of my frustration with the lack of attention she received comes from the fact that Nami, at one point, seemed to be doing something Robin herself did a few arcs ago: siding with the villain in order to protect her friends. I would have liked to see to her relating in some way, like she did with Brooke when he first joins the crew and is worried about his place among the the Straw Hats.
Brooke and Franky also got the short end of the attention stick, something that could possibly be attributed to the fact that they are, technically, the newest members, though I’m not sure how that means they don’t matter as much in terms of the story. Ussop and Chopper were also shortchanged the opportunity to have a major battle, but that’s understandable considering the movie format and the relatively short length of Zoro and Sanji’s respective fights, with Sanji’s being more of a one-sided attack than a fight where he might take on damage. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the dynamic between the Straw Hats and the focus on friendship throughout the movie which, as I’ve mentioned in previous One Piece related posts, is one of my favorite aspects of the franchise.
The villains in Strong World are, admittedly, probably my least favorite part of the movie. Though Shiki had a lot of potential to be really interesting since he’s obviously quite powerful and gives the Straw Hats quite a bit of trouble, he turns out to be the opposite: boring and silly. Now, I didn’t watch the prequel OVA that, if I’m correct, focuses on Shiki, so part of my criticism might be skewed in the sense that I’m only going based off of Shiki in Strong World. Regardless, he ends up not coming off as a powerful adversary because his character tries to mix comedy with villainy, creating a character that comes off as a bit loony but not really threatening or compelling.
I’ll admit I laughed at most of Shiki’s comedy plays with Indigo and Scarlet, but they really took away from his “villain aura”. You wouldn’t catch Crocodile or Lucci making dumb jokes and then shooting someone; that’s something Foxy or maybe Gekko Moriah might do. Shiki’s character also felt overly evil. By that I mean, not only does he want to destroy East Blue (something that is cast in an even more villainous light considering that 50% of the crew grew up in that sea), but he also tries to forcibly recruit Nami into his crew, enslaves the people on the island, destroys their village and hoards the IQ plants. Oh yeah, he also performs routine animal abuse/experimentation that would have PETA foaming at the mouth, just in case you needed further proof that he was a villain. I get it; Shiki’s a bad person, there’s no need to continually bash me over the head with all his evil plans and deeds. As for the other “villains”, they were a joke, only going as far as their comedy routine with Shiki.
The only other noteworthy characters (aside from Billy who’s cute and that’s about it) are the villagers on the island. Conveniently and mysteriously gifted with wings on their arms that don’t come in handy until the movie is over, these beaten down people are pretty stereotypical. To be honest, the other people with wings were a much more interesting group, though, to be fair, they had a guy who was much scarier ruling over them. Xiao was the only one of villagers I was amused by and that was only because, again, she added to the comedic element of the movie with her constant fainting.
For the most part, the movie is a treat for the eye, especially on Blu-Ray. Though anything involving CGI generally looked pretty iffy, the rest is relatively consistent in addition to being generally more detailed and fluid than usual. The close ups, especially, were really great to look at and added a lot of drama to the action scenes; this really came through in Luffy’s final attack on Shiki which looked pretty darn cool. The one thing that I really love about One Piece movies, regardless of story and all that, is that everyone gets to wear a different outfit, which may not seem like much, but in a world where these people only change outfits maybe once a new arc starts, this is pretty nice. Strong World is no different, giving everyone three or four outfit changes, most of which I loved to pieces. I say most because Nami kind of got the short end of the stick as she was either stuck in simplistic outfits or ones that were simply fanservice-y, managing to beat out even Robin. The designs of the animals on the island were another plus simply because of how unique they all looked, with Billy’s design also bringing up fond memories of an equally lovable bird from Alabasta.
For all my complaining I did enjoy Strong World. It’s an entertaining movie, don’t get me wrong, and kicks the snot out of some of the filler that the TV series has put out. Sitting down to watch the movie with my siblings, one of whom doesn’t even watch One Piece, was a fun experience and one that certainly helped add onto my own enjoyment of the film. Most of my dissatisfaction with the film is probably the result of expectations that were a tad too high. The story, though intriguing at face value, doesn’t manage to execute itself nearly as well as I would have liked it to. The characters, in terms of personality, felt off at times, or, in the case of the villains, failed to illicit much of a response. If you’re a One Piece fan and are itching for something beyond the TV series to watch, you should most definitely check Strong World out, if only because Oda himself was involved in the process of making it and the fact that it’s probably one of the better films in the franchise.
