One Piece Film Z

I remember back when I first heard about "One Piece". I didn't care for it because it looked kind of dumb with the goofy character designs. I've read some of the manga and seen two movies and honestly? I think it looks great now! Nami is so hot. The "Z" in the title actually refers to the name of the main villain.

His full name is Zephyr. The title isn't shown on screen until 15 minutes in! I'm not used to these characters, but I was still able to really like them and I'm no longer turned off by their designs. I guess it just took some getting used to. There's great action to spare and very nice pacing as well. I'm glad to get to remember the names of the main characters. ***1/2

This is truly a great movie. Felt sorry for Z. The straw hats kicked some major ass hell yeah. This had better be in the Japanese Oscar award and win the title of 'best animated Japanese film'. The story and plot are awesome. The action is mind blowing. Overall a masterpiece. Perfection simply perfect. This I heard became the most popular movie with a lot of tickets sold so go to the theater and watch it the experience is even better. I can go on about this for hours. The characters shine- all of the strawhats- luffy, usopp, nami, franky, brook, chopper, sanji, zoro and robin. Not to mention this is the first after-timeskip movie! And of course kizaru and aokiji appear as well we get to see the navy vice-admirals.

I think every fan of One Piece, even just anime should watch this movie. I absolutely loved everything. To be honest the end was so touching i got a little teary... And that's from a guy who usually never cries at movies. I thought it was funny, while still epic and the battle scenes were truly awesome. At times the animation makes it look lie you're in a 3D movie and the drawings are incredibly precise and beautiful. The music was also really good, Kuzan's song was perfect. At times I'm not a big fan of anime movies, but I think Oda and his crew really manages to pull it off every time! This one though.. Oh boy, this should receive an award or something.

If you haven't seen it yet... WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!?

One piece movie Z is an extremely well-made movie despite that it doesn't contribute to the original story. We follow Zito the ex-marine admiral trying to destroy the new world taking as an excuse that you can't stop pirates the traditional way, so let's blow them all even if that means killing the innocents too. But of course, there is people who try to stop him, first the marine second, the straw hats pirates who got caught up accidentally with him. All that said it does look like there isn't much story in here but let me remind you that this is an action anime movie, so 70 % of its quality is judged on the action, and on that regard the action was great, there is some weird CGI scenes but overall, its great. So, what about the other 30%. Well, the story isn't that great like I mentioned before, but the execution was phenomenal. The character build up of zito is amazing, it brang a special flavour to one piece cause we haven't seen much characters who aren't either bad or good in the one piece anime. And there was a very good comedy too like we used to in one piece.

As a conclusion, great one piece side story movie that I really enjoyed.

I can't express in words of how amazing this movie is. All I have to say is go watch it for yourself.

This review will be broken down into four parts: Music, Animation, Characters and Story.

Music: If you watched the trailers, you know that two tracks of Avril Lavigne would be played in the movie but you won't hear that until the credit rolls. First half was "How You Remind Me" and then "Bad Reputation" played after that. The original soundtrack was brilliant. It was different while at the same time maintaining that One Piece feel we all love; high tension to melancholy themes that played throughout different scenes.

Animation: There was a lot of CGI just like Strong World. The action scenes were animated far better than anything I've ever seen in previous One Piece movies or the anime. The angles and camera movements following every scene was done fluidly.

Characters: The title of the movie is quite self-explanatory. The movie focused on Z, at times even more than the Straw Hat gang. Character Z, also known as Zephyr had such deep story to him and if you love backstories of various characters in One Piece, you'll definitely love Z's. As for our lovable characters, the Straw Hats each got their turns to shine in this movie, however the stronger and prominent fighters such as the Monster Trio(Luffy, Zoro and Sanji) had their own individual opponent to fight. Franky was the next in line after the Monster Trio. Usopp also had good action scenes, but not quite on the same level. Nami and Robin at times were used for fan-service until the climactic battle at the end. Chopper was funnier than ever before, but not entirely important to the story. Brook didn't do a lot in terms of getting into battles, but he had his comedic moments just like Chopper.

Story: This movie as an entirety was built around the Marine lore and back story. This will have it's drawbacks for some though. The story had lots of explanation regarding the principle themes of the Marines and some characters were basically used strictly just for the sole purpose of providing exposition. To fit the plot in a movie length time span, it was surprisingly well done. This was one huge gripes that I had with Oda's previous project, Strong World was a bit of a let down. With Film Z, I feel that he understood what it took to make a movie that retains the breathtaking aura of One Piece series, and he delivered it.

I'd be surprised if this movie doesn't win major awards in Japan, it surely deserves the Best Animated Japanese Film Awards. Perhaps it should even be nominated in Oscar Awards Best Picture because this movie just nailed it.