Giant Venus flytrap creatures and speed lines ensue. Luffy (Clinkenbeard).Īfter docking with gargantuan, Mos Eisley-on-a-Trump-trip entertainment ship the Gran Tesoro, Luffy and his crew find themselves embroiled in a battle of self-consuming greed (their own, and that of the space city’s gold-maddened Emperor Gild Tesoro) while the fate of the future hangs in the balance. So much plot is crammed into the film’s relatively lengthy 120 minutes that it can be downright confounding trying to figure out who’s a good guy and who’s the villain, but after the expeditionary overload of the first act, it becomes apparent that our heroes are the motley band of the Straw Hat space pirates led by Captain Monkey D. If your best-loved Japanimation character remains the Totoro next door, chances are this new chapter in the One Piece Film super-saga – the first film in the series came out in 2000 – will leave your head spinning. I’m a newcomer to the world of One Piece myself, but barring befuddlement, this film rocks the classic, convoluted, and insanely colorful world of traditional action-comedy anime. To date, there’s been a baker’s dozen of feature films based on Eiichiro Oda’s hugely popular manga series, so if you feel like you’ve stepped into the middle of a universe with pre-existing characters, backstories, and impenetrable motivations, you have.
