Review for One Piece Collection 3

Introduction

It’s only the third instalment of One Piece (although it would be the fifth if it was progressing at the usual episode density of shonen anime releases), and we’re already face to face with that which tests the patience of shonen anime fans the most. We come up to our first batch of One Piece filler, those storylines which are created by the animators solely to pad out the anime run while they wait for the manga creator to create more canon story for them to animate. Usually it doesn’t live up to the standards of the main storyline, on some occasions it bears little resemblance to it, and once in a while it just insults the intelligence of the viewers. One Piece’s first stretch of filler comes just before they finally make it to the Grand Line, a moment that we’ve been patiently waiting for over the last 52 episodes. Well now we have to wait seven episodes more than we should.


Monkey D. Luffy wants to be a pirate. No he wants to be the best pirate of them all, sail the Grand Line, find the legendary One Piece treasure left behind by Gold Roger, and become the Pirate King. He’s inspired in this by his mentor, Red-Haired Shanks, who saved his life when he was a child. He also ate the Gum-Gum fruit, a devil fruit which has given him stretchy rubber limbed abilities, although at the cost of his ability to swim. You’d think this would be a fatal handicap in a pirate, but Luffy has set sail nevertheless, looking to gather the best crew on the high seas, and venture forth onto the Grand Line. The first candidates for his crew include the mighty pirate-hunter swordsman, Roronoa Zoro, the skilled, pirate-hating thief Nami, the world’s greatest liar, Usopp, and the toughest chef around, Sanji.


Previously on One Piece, Nami truly became a member of the crew when Luffy and the other helped her deal with the pirate Arlong, who had been terrorising her home since she was a child. Following their departure, it was onwards towards the Grand Line, but they had a stop to make first, a pilgrimage to Loguetown, the birthplace of Gold Roger, and also the site of his execution. Naturally Luffy managed to annoy the navy contingent on the island, so it prompted a hasty exit and full sail ahead to the Grand Line. Except as we start this collection of episodes, we’re procrastinating again, and this time it’s because of the dread scourge of many a shonen show, filler.


The next 25 episodes of One Piece are presented across 4 discs from Manga Entertainment.

Disc 1
54. Precursor to a New Adventure! Apis, A Mysterious Girl!
55. Miraculous Creature! Apis’ Secret and the Legendary Island!
56. Eric Attacks! Great Escape From Warship Island!
57. A Solitary Island in the Distant Sea! The Legendary Lost Island!
58. Showdown in the Ruins! Tense Zoro vs. Eric!
59. Luffy Complete Surrounded! Commodore Nelson’s Secret Strategy!
60. Through the Sky They Soar! The 1000 Year Legend Again!

Disc 2
61. An Angry Showdown! Cross the Red Line!
62. The First Line of Defense! The Great Whale of Laboon Appears!
63. A Promise Between Men! Luffy and the Whale Vow to Meet Again!
64. A Town that Welcomes Pirates? Setting Foot on Whisky Peak!
65. Explosion! The Three Swords Style! Zoro vs. Baroque Works!
66. All Out Battle! Luffy vs. Zoro, Mysterious Grand Duel


Disc 3
67. Deliver Princess Vivi! The Luffy Pirates Set Sail!
68. Try Hard, Coby! Coby and Helmeppo’s Struggles in the Marines!
69. Coby and Helmeppo’s Resolve! Vice-Admiral Garp’s Parental Affection!
70. An Ancient Island! The Shadow Hiding in Little Garden!
71. Huge Duel! The Giants Dorry and Broggy!
72. Luffy Gets Angry! A Dirty Trick Violates the Sacred Duel!

Disc 4
73. Broggy’s Bitter Tears of Victory! The Conclusion of Elbaf!
74. The Devilish Candle! Tears of Regret and Tears of Anger!
75. A Hex on Luffy! Colors Trap!
76. Time to Fight Back! Usopp’s Quick Thinking and Fire Star!
77. Farewell Giant Island! Head for Alabasta!
78. Nami’s Sick? Beyond the Snow Falling on the Sea!

Picture

Manga Entertainment and Toei logos precede the content on the disc, which dating from 1999 is presented in 4:3 regular format. The show gets a native PAL transfer with 4% speed-up. The image that is clear and sharp throughout, but there’s no getting away from the vintage and the budget of the show. There is a bit of rainbowing around fine detail, but by and large the biggest problem with the transfer is the compression artefacts around fast motion, bursts of mosquito noise that on occasion are distractingly obvious. Also on a rare occasion, the quality of a scene will suddenly drop, aliasing will increase and the image will take on a static feel, as if it’s just a placeholder for an animation that was never completed.


One Piece looks like an early digipaint show, an anime accomplished wholly in the innards of a computer, and the stability of the image, absence of flicker and print damage tends to support that. There are moments where the show can look a little too static and obviously digital, but on the other hand, there are moments where the animation really takes a walk on the wild side, bringing to mind the wackiness of Tex Avery cartoons and the like. This is a show where surprise can make people’s eyeballs bug out of their sockets, and their jaws drop to the floor.

Sound

You have the choice of DD 5.1 Surround English, and DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. I’m still to try the dub while in a waking state, although give the quantity and rate of One Piece coming to the UK, that isn’t very likely. As usual, I watched the series through in Japanese with subtitles, and found a fairly standard shonen anime dub, with enthusiastic and over the top performances that suit the tone of the show well. The stereo does a good job in conveying the show’s ambience and action sequences, while you get an instant hit of spatial separation in the audio with the opening shot of seagulls. Where One Piece really impresses is in its music score. Far from the comparatively weedy synth efforts afforded to the usual anime shows, One Piece apparently gets a full on orchestral score, at times giving the show an epic and grand soundscape that by far belies its comic book origins.

The subtitles are free of error and are accurately timed.

Extras

The discs present their content with static menus set to the English version of the theme song, with jacket pictures to look at when the discs are at rest in compatible players.

Disc 2 has an audio commentary featuring ADR Director Jason Grundy, and Brittney Karbowski (Apis) and Sonny Strait (Usopp). It’s the usual inconsequential offering from Funimation, and just about held my attention.


Also on disc 2 are the textless credits, presented in NTSC-PAL to maintain the original audio pitch. Note that the songs are dubbed into English for the English version, and the audio is locked during playback. Fortunately this time around there are no locked subtitles to render the textless claim moot.

On disc 3 you get an audio commentary with episode 67, with ADR director Scott Sager and voice of Vivi, Caitlin Glass and voice of Robin, a.k.a. Miss All Sunday, Stephanie Young. If that isn’t indication enough for you, expect beaucoup spoilers in this commentary.

Disc 4 holds another batch of textless credits.

Conclusion

My first brush up against One Piece filler and it doesn’t turn out to be all that bad. Extending the anticipation before Luffy and his friends finally get to the Grand Line, we get an anime only story that sees him encounter a young girl and her dragon. It’s a nice action adventure interlude, with a corpulent corrupt Navy Commodore looking for the secret of immortality, rumoured to exist within dragons, a Devil Fruit powered henchman who’s apt to look for a double cross, and an aged amnesiac dragon looking for the way home. When Luffy and his friends get involved, naturally they side with the dragon and the girl, and you get the usual mix of comedy, action, and heartfelt emotion that had typified One Piece so far. That Luffy for some bizarre reason becomes Dr Dolittle for the duration is easy to ignore.


The second bit of filler in these episodes is shorter, just two episodes in length, but is by far more tedious and unfulfilling. We return to catch up with the adventures of a couple of characters encountered right at the start of the series, back when Luffy had just started recruiting his band of pirates, and first met Coby and Helmeppo. Since that adventure, Coby and Helmeppo have been recruited as cabin boys, basically doing the grunt work of the Navy. Coby still has dreams of becoming an officer, while Helmeppo laments the days when his dad ran things, and he lived off that borrowed glory. These two episodes reveal what happened to Helmeppo’s father, and also charts the next step in their career paths, as they find themselves a mentor. I found these two episodes rather dull and an unwelcome distraction from the main story. The disappointing thing is that it’s likely that One Piece will return to these characters in later filler, as the episodes are left open-ended.


But all in all the filler comprises nine episodes out of twenty five on these discs, and the rest is canon material, which sees the crew of the Going Merry make it to the Grand Line, and immediately get involved with the Baroque Works criminal group, led by one of the dread seven warlords of the sea. The Baroque Works, ostensibly bounty hunters, almost operate like secret agents, sending out operatives in pairs, with a female agent with a calendar based code name, and a numerically named male operative. Luffy’s first encounter with the Baroque Works comes when they first enter the Grand Line and come across the great whale Laboon, a typically daft storyline that makes Jonah’s adventure seem unimaginative in comparison. Miss Wednesday and Mr 9 are on a mission to capture the whale, but are thwarted by Luffy and his friends. In return they invite them to the welcoming harbour of Whisky Peak Island, the first stop on many an adventure in the Grand Line’s itinerary. That the town is populated by cutthroats and brigands in the employ of the Baroque Works, who prey on the unsuspecting arrivals, making it their last stop on the Grand Line, is less well known.


They haven’t counted on the prodigious appetites of Luffy and his crew, as well as Zoro’s appreciation of a good fight. In the process, the Baroque Works discover they have a traitor in their midst, and send Miss Valentine and Mr 5 to deal with her, and all others who may have discovered the secrets of the Baroque Works. Incidentally, if you think that One Piece is getting decidedly serious and ominous at this point, Mr 5 is a wielder of Devil Fruit powers that allow him to flick exploding bogeys. The traitor, revealed to be Princess Vivi of Alabasta Island, asks for Luffy’s help in fighting the Baroque Works and saving her island, targeted by Mr 0 of Baroque Works as his next step in world domination, a readymade empire just waiting for him to take over.


It becomes imperative for Luffy and his crew to get Princess Vivi (and her pet duck/trusty steed Karoo) to Alabasta as quickly as possible. Unfortunately they set course for Little Garden, despite the dubious advice against it from Baroque Works’ Miss All Sunday, who appears to have her own agenda, despite sitting at the right hand of Mr 0. Little Garden turns out to be a prehistoric nightmare, where dinosaurs still roam, volcanoes explode, and a couple of giants named Dorry and Broggy have been stranded, fighting a duel for the last hundred years. That duel is about to be rudely interrupted, as not only have the crew of the Going Merry landed at the island, but they’ve been followed by Mr 5 and Miss Valentine, and sent to finish the job are Mr 3 and Miss Golden Week. With Mr 5’s exploding snot, Miss Valentine’s variable weight powers, Mr 3’s waxwork abilities, and Miss Golden Week’s mental control powers, you’d think that Luffy’s crew would be in trouble, and you’d be right. It actually falls to eternal coward Usopp to save the day.


One Piece Collection 3 ends on a cliff-hanger. Once more heading for Alabasta the crew are waylaid by a powerful enemy at the worst possible time, with Nami taken dangerously ill, and the crew in desperate need of a doctor. One Piece continues to entertain. It’s shonen action with tongue firmly in cheek, which is refreshing given the po-faced seriousness of shows like Bleach, and to a certain degree Naruto as well. There’s nothing like the sight of seriously dislocated jaws, bugged out eyes, and intense double takes to put you in a frivolous frame of mind, and this cartoonish aspect of One Piece continues to be its strongest selling point. Despite the filler, The Baroque Works arc is proving to be interesting and engaging, although at this point it by no means reaches the emotional weight of the Arlong arc. One Piece Collection 4 isn’t too far away, and Manga Entertainment have recently announced the licensing of Collections 5-8 as well. We’re well set for more adventures on the Grand Line going into 2014.