One Piece Film Z

If something is popular enough, you'll inevitably find a movie version or spin off of it. More often than not, it's because some executive is trying to make a quick buck by using the name value to bring people in to see whatever movie they're selling. While every now and then you'll find a diamond in the rough or a true gem, most of the time the movies feel forced, rushed, or unfaithful to the original material and the quality tends to suffer as a consequence. If a manga is popular enough, you can almost be sure there'll be an animated or live action movie of it. Or two. Or three…

So I went to the theater with a pretty skeptical mind; I'd been somewhat burned with the one of previous movies, One Piece Film: Strong World. I was skeptical, but at the same time, I hoped that the movie would be good. Something that was, at the very least, not a pile of dung. What I got was something I totally was not expecting.

Overall, One Piece Film: Z was immensely satisfying. It wasn't a prefect movie, but as Shonen Jump anime films go, it was the best one I've ever seen. While most other movies have a tendency to buckle under the limitations of being a stand-alone movie, (i.e. they have to end exactly how they started) Z seemed to make the most such limitations and genuinely feels like it is part of the main series. Full size Personally, I feel what they had was good enough that they could have taken what was a single dense stand-alone movie and made it into a two- part masterpiece to further develop other characters and satisfying tie everything up. Personal ideas aside, the movie is definitely well worth seeing for any fan of the series.