One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie Review

It's a strong, strong, strong, strong world.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 21, 2013

Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (also due soon in a new Blu-ray edition from Criterion) is a manic film about a disparate bunch of fortune hunters out to find buried treasure. As fans of the film know, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World exists in various versions, but even the most widely seen and shortest of those runs a bit over three hours, certainly a somewhat ungainly length for a comedy. So imagine this: say you’d never seen It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World before and joined the proceedings at, for example, the two hour mark. You’d probably have an inkling of what was going on, but you’d similarly probably feel a little lost. Much the same situation is going to greet those who watch Strong World, even if they catch it from the very beginning, for this is the tenth film in a long running enterprise culled from the One Piece manga, anime and feature film franchise. The manga has actually been around since 1997, with literally hundreds of millions of copies of the series sold by this year. A series of OVAs quickly followed (though they were rather strangely intermittent), which in turn gave birth to an actual anime series which debuted in 1999. As of the writing of this review, the series is still going strong and shows no signs of diminishing its seemingly inexhaustible popularity. But wait, you also get: starting in 2000, the venerable Toie animation house has released annual films, which tend to be big attractions during spring break in Japan. And while Strong World won’t necessarily be incomprehensible to newcomers to this rather labyrinthine franchise, there’s little doubt that those with a solid grounding in the background of the story and its many characters will reap the most rewards from this particular outing which, much like the Stanley Kramer comedy of yore, deals with a disparate group of folks trying to track down a treasure.

To say that the huge cast of characters in the One Piece franchise is odd is perhaps the understatement of the year (if not the millennium). It’s actually not feasible to give a complete wrap up of various backgrounds and interrelationships in this relatively brief review, but suffice it to say the film’s main hero in Luffy (whose full name is Monkey D. Luffy), a scrappy young boy who has the ability to stretch and morph himself kind of like Mr. Fantastic from Fantastic Four. Luffy is obviously on some kind of mission as the film starts, using his “special” powers to allow him to parachute into a flying island (the film utilizes a bunch of levitating islands that may remind some of Avatar). This particular island seems to be something out of The Lost World (the original, not the Jurassic Park sequel), with a bunch of mutant beasts and plants that Luffy has to decimate in order to get done whatever it is he’s attempting to do.

It soon is revealed that what’s actually going on is that Luffy’s cohort (and maybe even romantic interest) Nami has been kidnapped by the film’s villain, Shiki the Golden Lion, a Caribbean accented pirate who nonetheless dresses more like a Zulu warrior. When the Straw Hats (the group to which Luffy and Nami belong) had warned Shiki’s floating island ship that a cyclone was approaching, Shiki’s own navigators insisted that Nami, who had been the main person warning them, didn’t know what she was talking about. Of course, a cyclone quickly appeared, and Shiki, after ruthlessly dispatching his own navigator, abducts Nami and insists she become part of his crew.

It turns out that Shiki has more on his mind than merely getting weather reports from Nami, and his nefarious plot of course sets up a battle between his forces and the Straw Hats. Nami ends up getting some unexpected help from one of the mutant animals on the island (Shiki has been experimenting on the island’s wildlife, a la Dr. Moreau), a huge pelican like bird named Billy, who has been genetically engineered to emit electricity. Billy ends up shocking Shiki, and Nami rushes to the bird’s aid when it looks like Shiki might deal with it like he dealt with his navigator.

Strong World is loud, frenetic and frequently nonsensical, but it’s also kind of crazily entertaining at the same time. I only have a passing knowledge of the One Piece franchise, and I was able to mostly follow what was going on, but even those who share my underdeveloped acquaintance with One Piece will probably be just as hypnotized by the totally lunatic shenanigans and similarly kaleidoscopic animation style. Strong World is in fact a riot to simply watch—from the weird looking beasts, to the insane henchman Dr. Indigo (a clown whose footsteps cause farting noises) to the disparate crew of the Straw Hats, not to mention some of the really cool CGI elements, like the flying island ship Shiki commands. Strong World provides a lot to look at, which may at least help a bit to distract minds that might otherwise be wondering what exactly all of the madness means.

One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Strong World is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a great looking anime feature film that is full of incredibly bright and vivid colors and some amazing character design. Shiki's island has a number of great looking elements, including everything from dense tropical jungles to (rather strangely) lots of snow. While the backgrounds are very well rendered, it's really the characters that stand out most in this outing. Most of the characters are almost surreal looking, with only occasional Straw Hats like Nami appearing more or less normally "human". The palette throughout the film is incredibly varied, but greens and purples are especially prevalent and look nicely saturated and impressive. Line detail is sharp and solid and helps to make Strong World a very unique viewing experience.

One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Strong World features nice sounding Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes in both the original Japanese as well as a better than average English dub. To my ears, there's a tad more brightness to the English mix, but otherwise they're virtually identical. Strong World is a rather sonically boisterous film, with odd elements like a bizarre "theme song" that introduces a dance that Shiki and his henchmen do for Nami. There are also a number of fairly sonically active set pieces that offer nice surround activity, though the mix tends to be a bit frenetic at times. Fidelity is excellent on both tracks, with no damage of any kind to report.

One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes of One Piece: Introducing Brook (1080p; 20:00) revolves around some Cos Play participants at a big One Piece gathering. That segues into interviews with the cast and crew discussing Brook.


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:32)

One Piece: Strong World Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It seems a bit odd that franchise as successful and long running as One Piece has been should have such a fitful Blu- ray schedule in the United States, with only Strong World and One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates: Adventures in Alabasta having been released in the format so far. That dearth of product may make this entry less accessible than it ought to be, though I can vouch for the fact that at least the basic outlines of the plot are quite clear here without any great previous knowledge of the ins and outs of the long and twisted One Piece saga. The visual aesthetic here is just flat off the wall and is perhaps this anime's most immediately compelling feature, but the characters are a lot of fun and even those without a long history with the franchise will probably get a kick out of Strong World. Recommended.