Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

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Well, over the past few days I've been watching a few One Piece movies. If you remember, I watched the first two a few months back, and my reaction was basically along the lines of, meh. The first was just alright, the second was a little bit better but not anything great. Well I just watched the third, (Chopper's Kingdom I'll shorten it to, since it has an obscenely long name) fourth, (Dead End Adventure) and fifth. (The Cursed Holy Sword)

Despite Chopper being one of my favorite characters (just look at my avatar, he's so cute!) I really found Chopper's Kingdom to be a complete bore. The plot was beyond cliche, the kid (Mobambi) was irritating, and the villain was also quite lame. What truly irked me was just how week the villain was, there were plenty of opportunities to take him down, even Chopper could've, and should've beaten him easily. But they needed to stretch it out more, so they just had us wait until he got a random power-up (by eating a horn...sure there are devil fruits but that doesn't really sound like it should work in-universe) and was actually somewhat of a challenge before fighting him. I was kinda hoping Chopper would finish him off, since he definitely could, and it is supposed to be Chopper's movie, but oh well, Luffy pounded him away in a few seconds. There was a bit of the trademark One Piece humor which I liked, and the animal designs were creative, but overall it was easily my least favorite One Piece movie so far.

Dead End Adventure though...that's a whole other story. This was, in my opinion, the first really great One Piece Movie so far. All before it were either meh, good, or just plain bad. Not so with this movie. This was the first full length film (1 1/2 hours, instead of the 50 minute, double-feature length of the last ones) and it really shows. The animation is much better, the story is better paced and developed, and the characters are far more interesting. The whole aura of the film really felt like One Piece, and all the character's had fun moments. While a lot of people complain that Zoro and Sanji didn't get any fighting in this movie, I don't mind that much, since One Piece is more than just the fights anyway. They did get to bash around a few noob pirates though, haha. The kid character's voice might have been irritating, but overall, as a character she wasn't that bad. Plus, the side character they added, Shuraiya Bascud, was very cool. He had an interesting, if typical One Piece style backstory, was a fun fighter, and had funny interactions with Luffy. His design, while simple, was also pretty neat. The only character I wasn't too fond of was Gasparde, the villain of the flick, as his powers, personality, and final fight with Luffy all screamed Crocodile clone. Oh well, at least the fight was fun to watch. Speaking of fights, they were amazing in this film. Not in the show, or in any of the other movies so far were the fights this fluid and fun to watch! One of my favorite scenes was early in the movie, were Luffy and Shuraiya were fighting a bunch of Gasparde's thugs in a pirate bar. The scene was unlike any fight I've seen in One Piece before! Sure, the fights have indeed been epic and fun before this, but none of them can match the fluidity, and obvious budget behind the fights in this movie. Overall, Dead End Adventure was great.

The Cursed Holy Sword was also pretty good. It had nice fights, a fun, if non-canon back story for Zoro, good animation, good laughs, a pretty good plot. While perhaps not as amazing as Dead End Adventure, it's a great follow-up, and definitely gives me hope that from here on out the movies are only set to improve in quality. This movie doesn't lower the standards of the last, but instead keeps the amazing animation and fluidity of the fight scenes, and gives us even more of them! The two fights between Luffy and Saga, as well as the fun little side fights the others had (Usopp, Robin, Nami, and Chopper all got their first fights in a movie! Even if they were very small ^_^ ) and the final fight with Zoro was cool too. The story, while rather cliche (cursed sword that is sealed for a limited amount of time, and needs to be held back by a few sacred objects, reminds me of Zelda too much) was well executed, and provided for some fun moments. I really enjoyed the part where Luffy and Usopp were away from the group, wandering aimlessly through a death-trap infested tunnel. One of the few problems I had with it was that at times Zoro felt out of character, like when Saga took precedence over his crew, and when he attacked harmless villagers and Sanji just for that guy! Honestly, when I heard that he and Sanji had a legitimate fight in this film, I had guessed it was because Zoro was under the control of the sword, but I guess he did it just cuz Saga told him to...kinda OOC. Overall, while not as great as Dead End Adventure, The Cursed Holy Sword is another solid film and gives me hope for the next One Piece movie, which has a great deal of hype around it, Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island.

Well that's all for now, I really didn't like 3, but I really did like 4 and 5. See ya!