Review for One Piece Collection 10

Introduction

This time the One Piece review is a little late, a few weeks after its release. You can thank Royal Mail for that, but for the first time I get to see what a retail copy of the show looks like in the flesh, as opposed to the silver check discs in paper sleeves that I usually receive. And given that this is the continuation of the Water Seven arc following its brief start at the end of collection 9, this was one release of One Piece that I was not going to miss out on.


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. He’s later joined by the world’s first and only blue-nosed reindeer doctor, in the form of the fatally cute Tony Tony Chopper as well as the enigmatic and multi tasking Nico Robin.


Previously on One Piece, following a few filler adventures, the Going Merry and her crew had finally made it to the island of Water Seven, renowned for its shipwrights. It’s about time too, as following their previous adventures, the Going Merry is falling apart. But they’re not about to get a warm welcome at Water Seven, while it’s also there that Robin’s past catches up to her.


The next 23 episodes of One Piece are presented across 4 discs from Manga Entertainment.

Disc 1
230. Adventure n the City on the Water! Head to the Mammoth Shipbuilding Plant!
231. The Franky Family and Iceberg!
232. Galley-la Company! A Good Sight: Dock #1!
233. Pirate Abduction Incident! A Pirate Ship That Can Only Await Her End!
234. Rescuing Our Friend! Raid on the Franky House!
235. Big Fight Under the Moon! The Pirate Flag Flutters With Sorrow!

Disc 2
236. Luffy vs. Usopp! Collision of Two Men’s Pride!
237. Severe Shock Hits the City of Water! Iceberg Targeted!
238. Gum-Gum Human vs. Fire-Breathing Cyborg!
239. The Straw Hat Pirates are the Culprits? The Protectors of the City of Water!
240. Eternal Farewell? Nico Robin: The Woman Who Draws Darkness!
241. Capture Robin! The Determination of the Straw Hats!


Disc 3
242. Cannon Fire is the Signal! CP9 Goes Into Action!
243. CP9 Takes off Their Masks! Their Shocking True Faces!
244. Secret Bond! Iceberg and Franky!
245. Come Back Robin! Showdown With CP9!
246. The Straw Hat Pirates Annihilated? The Menace of the Leopard Model!
247. The Man Who Is Loved Even By His Ship! Usopp’s Tears

Disc 4
248. Franky’s Past! The Day the Sea Train First Ran!
249. Spandam’s Scheme! The Day the Sea Train Shook!
250. The End of the Legendary Man! The Day the Sea Train Cried!
251. The Truth Behind Her Betrayal! Robin’s Sorrowful Decision!
252. The Steam Whistle Forces Friends Apart! The Sea Train Starts to Run!

Picture

One Piece is presented at a 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio, and we get anime of the quality that we’ve come to expect on DVD in this high definition age. It’s a native PAL transfer of course, with 4% speed-up as you would expect. The image is clear throughout, and now obviously comes from an HD source, so improved is the line detail. Colours are strong, the animation is vibrant, and if there is the odd judder to pans (most noticeable in the opening theme song), it’s not detrimental to the viewing experience. There are still 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. 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. 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

You get 4 discs in an Amaray case, two discs overlapping on each inner face. This time the case offers Franky sleeve art, rear and front with the usual blurb at the back. The case is transparent allowing for the inner sleeve to offer more artwork and an episode listing. The disc labels feature characters from this arc, with Lucci, Mozu or Kiwi (I can’t tell them apart), Kaku and Franky.

The discs present their content with static (widescreen) menus set to the theme song, with jacket pictures to look at when the discs are at rest in compatible players. Funimation took a hiatus of a year between One Piece releases just as they switched to widescreen, and that tells in the ditching of the English version theme songs, and the doubling up of audio commentaries; we now get four, and from this collection, there are video extras as well.

Disc 1 has one audio commentary on episode 233. Mike McFarland hosts voice actors Brina Palencia (Chopper), and Philip Weber (Iceberg). Alas, I fell asleep through this commentary so I don’t know how interesting it is. What little I did hear sounded reasonably mundane.


Disc 2 offers the “textless” credit sequences, albeit with locked subtitles.

You also get an audio commentary with episode 236, with Mike McFarland now joining Colleen Clinkenbeard (Luffy), and Sonny Strait (Usopp) for their big showdown episode, and they talk about acting and stuff.

You get two audio commentaries on Disc 3, both hosted by Mike McFarland, and featuring Brina Palencia (Chopper), and Patrick Seitz (Franky) on episode 244, and Luci Christian (Nami), and David Wald (Paulie), on episode 245. Really, I found both commentaries to be the usual Funimation gigglefests, and quite quickly tuned out of what was being said.


Disc 4 has the textless opening and two textless closings (with locked subtitles).

You also see the debut of some video extra features from Funimation for One Piece, as ADR Director Mike McFarland interviews Brina Palencia (Chopper) for 12:12, and Eric Vale (Sanji) for 15:29, about their characters, and their impressions of the show. These are liberally garnished with clips from the show.

Conclusion

Damn you One Piece! Don’t make me cry! You’re ‘just’ another shonen action show aimed at the mass market, with goofy characters, goofier comedy, and insane rubber man action. You’re not supposed to tug at my heartstrings so strongly that tears escape. But that is what happened with Collection 10 of One Piece. And my manly tears were shed for a ship, not a character. I find that I have become just as attached to the Going Merry as I once did the USS Enterprise, and there was definitely a ‘Search for Spock’, choking up moment in this set of episodes.


But really this is the best collection of One Piece episodes so far and that’s down to the Water Seven arc, which really gets underway here after teasing us with a brief start at the end of collection 9. We’ve had fun and adventures, peril and swashbuckling with the crew of the Going Merry over the 200 odd episodes so far, as they’ve faced increasingly challenging foes and dangerous situations. But in Water Seven, they face their toughest enemies yet... each other (and not in the Bleach evil duplicate sense of the word). This time it could just be the end of the Straw Hat Pirates. In a genre where the protagonists are supposed to stay pretty much the same from one season to the next, One Piece does the unthinkable, it offers character development.


It was all supposed to be so easy, just head to Water Seven and get the Going Merry repaired, and hopefully take on a shipwright as part of the crew, but from the first moment it all starts to go wrong. They take their hard-earned treasure to be converted into money, and wind up having most of it stolen by a gang of reprobates, the Franky gang, who when they aren’t thieving and generally being a nuisance, work as ship demolishers. Trying to get the money back introduces the Straw Hats to Franky, a coiffed, bikini bottomed and Hawaiian shirt wearing poseur, who’s often flanked by identical square haired twins Kiwi and Mozu as he expounds. He’s also a cyborg with detachable arms, incredibly strong, and fuelled by cola. Getting the money back proves to be difficult.


If that isn’t enough, when they head to the Galley-La company to get the Going Merry appraised for repair, the news is the worst possible. Usopp has a real tough time in this set of episodes, as first he beats himself up over losing the money, and then when Luffy opts for the pragmatic choice regarding the Going Merry, a choice that Usopp who has an emotional connection to the ship can’t countenance, the rift that forms between him and Luffy seems insurmountable. And if it looks like Usopp and the Straw Hats are going their separate ways, then Robin runs into a familiar face on the island and simply vanishes.


The next thing anyone knows, the head of the Galley-La company and mayor of the island, Iceberg is attacked... by Nico Robin and a mysterious masked figure. Iceberg survives the attempted assassination, but accuses Robin and the rest of the Straw Hats of the crime. Suddenly, the Straw Hats are public enemy number one, and given the strength of the shipwrights on Water Seven, they’re at a disadvantage. Not only do they have to deal with being hunted, they have to come to terms with Usopp’s choice, the state of the Going Merry, and Robin’s disappearance and apparent betrayal.


It all boils down to Iceberg’s, and as we learn Franky’s past, and an ominous set of blueprints. We also learn of the World Government, its CP9 agents, and what lengths they will go to just to ‘preserve’ world peace, although their definition of peace leaves a lot to be desired.


This is an awesome collection of episodes, not least because we’re finally beginning to learn more about the past of the most enigmatic of the Straw Hat Pirates. To this point, Nico Robin has really just been there, close-lipped but slowly becoming part of the crew, to the point that her actions here seem like a real betrayal. Besides, she breaks Chopper’s heart. It’s not the only conflict in the crew, given the arc that Usopp goes on here, his disagreement with Luffy, his heartbreak over the Going Merry, and with the crew split across the island, all apparently heading in different directions, dealing with half a dozen crises separately, it really does feel as if the Straw Hats are falling apart. If you’ve seen ahead to the movies, you’ll know that Franky will continue to play a part in the show, and just as happened for Chopper’s introduction, we learn a lot about Franky here, his tragic past, and the challenges he faced growing up. It’s a more dramatic and character focused storyline than we have seen before in One Piece, and it’s all the better for it. And in case you’re worried, it still does the goofy characters, the goofy comedy, and insane action on top of all this.


It also leaves us on a major cliff-hanger, with Franky and Usopp captured by CP9 and Nico Robin, and on their way to the World Government’s justice island of Enies Lobby, a tidal surge called Aqua Laguna threatening to inundate Water Seven, and with the exception of Sanji, the Straw Hats in no position to do anything about it. Thanks to the lateness of this review copy, I don’t have to wait too long for Collection 11 to find out what happens next. You know, I was recently thinking about shonen action shows and the Kai re-edit that has happened to Dragon Ball Z, cutting out the extraneous and the filler, to get to the essence of the story. I opined that that’s an approach that ought to be taken with Bleach as well. With One Piece, which has just passed its 700th episode in Japan, if someone took it upon themselves to give the series a Kai-style re-edit, it would still be 700 episodes long. You don’t want to miss a minute of this show.