Last Saturday my wife and I went to the special screening of a quite brand new Anime movie based on famous manga by Eiichiro Oda. Even though we had never seen the series or read the comics, we wanted to give this a try and hope to know & understand the story and characters better. Who knows it might kickstart our own fandom with this series. The film itself started at 2 PM after brief introduction and few movie trailers. OK, let us get on with the movie.
Brief Story Line
During a Pirates Expo, an event where all the pirates could come and have a "party" was held which was promoted by the mysterious Buena Festa (Yūsuke Santamaria), all the pirates including the Straw Hats led by Monkey D. Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka) and his team such as Zoro (Kazuya Nakai), Usopp (Kappei Yamaguchi) etc went to this expo.
However, when the powerful pirate Douglas Bullet (Tsutome Isobe) appeared and wreak havoc in the event, Luffy and other pirates had to face one of the biggest threat they ever faced. Things got even more complicated when the Marines also came and had their own agenda.
So what would happen to Luffy and his friends? Find them all in this anime movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I have mentioned above that my wife and I never saw or read this series. However, we do know that the main character was Luffy and his friends. And we really thought that this would be one of its adventure movie which we should be able to enjoy while getting to know the characters. Unfortunately though, this movie was anything but. It was a film that had many many many characters showing up which was definitely a good thing for fans of the series, but not for us who did not recognize any of them.
While most audience who are real fans and came to this screening applauded every time their favorite character(s) appeared, my wife and I were left clueless. The plot of the movie was actually not that difficult to understand and we generally could understand who were the protagonists and who were the villains. But due to the too many characters for us to remember, it made me having difficulty to keep track while my wife had given up half way through the movie and became a bit sleepy. However both of us were excited and manage to enjoy more when the story became more focused on the fight between the good guys and the bad guys, plus when we became more familiar with the main characters. We even manage to laugh at few scenes as well.
To be honest, I think this movie is certainly a great one for the fans. However, it is definitely not the best one to start for people who had never known or read the story like me and my wife. From the sound of appreciation of most of the audience during the movie, I concluded that this was definitely a real treat for them. I myself thought that the action was good, the animation was not the beautifully drawn anime type and felt rough, but during the climax fight scene, it was somehow transformed into an awesomely done anime. Some of the characters were also impressive like Luffy himself and our personal favorite Zoro.
Overall this was a movie that fans would have loved dearly and should be seen by people who had known the story. If you are like us who are unfamiliar with the characters and story, better at least watch few episodes of the series first or read 1 or 2 of the comics. It should not come as a surprise if the characters were so many, considering this film was to celebrate the anime's 20th anniversary. So fans of One Piece, better get your costume ready like some of the cosplayers who came to the show on Saturday and see this movie in your favorite cinemas when it's officially released on 18 September 2019!
Another big thank you from us to Rivki from CGV for the invitation to this event. We really appreciate it and look forward to future events.
Below are some pictures from the event:
Photo of some of the cosplayers appearing during this Special Screening
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