One Piece Movie 2: Clockwork Island Adventure [2001]
Back during the months of April and May, I watched a lot of stuff that I didn't have the energy or time to sit down and review. And some of those include the older One Piece movies. I reviewed the relatively short first movie forever ago, as well as those considered to be canon or quasi-canon due to mangaka Eiichiro Oda's involvement (Strong World, Z, Gold, Stampede) but I've never actually watched these particular ones.
And "Clockwork Island Adventure" basically serves as exactly what one of these older filler movies would be. And honestly, having watched a lot of these 'non-serial' movies that tie in to an ongoing anime (or live-action show, if we're talking about Kamen Rider or Super Sentai), they do go through a lot of similar beats. Disposable villain with generic motivations, a bunch of colourful goons for the secondary characters to beat up, maybe a brand-new setting with a one-note gimmick but the art team put a lot of work in making it pretty, and, of course, the child-appeal movie-exclusive character that is a snotty kid that shows up in the movie and befriends our heroes and has character development, but it's kind of meaningless since the character's exclusive to that movie and won't affect anything in the series. Be it Naruto, Doraemon, One Piece, Bleach, Pokemon, Digimon or what have you, if you're an anime franchise in the 90's and 00's, these tropes are basically all but guaranteed to show up in your given summer movie.
And One Piece's second movie, Clockwork Island Adventure, basically has all that. It is interesting to see the older Oda artstyle that we got before he solidified his current artstyle. It's a bit more... I don't want to say 'deformed' since that's mean, and I don't want to say stylized since current One Piece is also stylized, but the art style is a lot more rough and a lot more exaggerated. And there's a lot of fun in that, even if the current artstyle is a lot more crisp. And, of course, being a movie, the art team clearly had more resources compared to the concurrently running anime (and, at this point in time, I've never actually watched any of the pre-Thriller-Bark One Piece anime). There were certainly points in the movie where I went, "well, shit, that's cool", mostly in the larger panning shots of the huge, towering Clockwork Island, as well as this one shot of Honey Queen's transformation into her jelly form as she and Boo Jack moves off to deploy against the Straw Hats.
The movie itself really wastes no time in developing their premise. While relaxing on a beach, Luffy finds a strange wind-up toy, and also the Going Merry and all their equipment get stolen by some mysterious force, and they end up dressing up in different costumes (Nami has to wear a wedding dress because of course) and going off on a ratty old paddle-boat to hunt down the boat thieves. They meet our ally-characters of the movie, the Thief Brothers Borodo and Akisu, who are a scrappy pair that immediately introduce the crew to the villains (the card-based Trump Pirates), the island they're based on (Clockwork Island) and some plot device McGuffin that they're trying to steal. Zoro, Sanji and Nami catch on pretty quickly that the Thief Brothers, while friendly, are a bit shifty, and seems to be very keen on pitting the Straw Hats against the Trump Pirates. Oh, and there's of course a mysterious music box memento that Akisu is holding on, that is a clue to his past or something.
Of course, the movie only has so much screentime, so the Trump Pirates immediately show up and introduce themselves and their one-note gimmicks pretty quickly... and, well, this is One Piece, so gimmick henchmen is actually extremely common in most of the actual canon arcs, so it's certainly something that ends up feeling a bit more natural. We get Bear King, the big brutish leader who has a personality of [insert generic villain here]; we've got fanservice lady Honey Queen who later shows off her jelly Devil Fruit power; we've got the chubby, spiky Boo Jack; we've got mysterious scarred swordsman dude Pin Joker; and we've got creepy Time Bokan ripoff villain Skunk One. They're a motley bunch, but I feel like the movie sort of gives away who's going to be fighting who considering that they all essentially match the tropes of a member of the Straw Hats.
The Trump Pirates kidnap Nami and is intent on making her the 'bride' of Bear King. Thankfully, though, this is a Shonen anime so all this basically amounts to is Nami being held hostage and lording it over the Trump Pirates and cleaning house with them in poker. It basically sidelines Nami for the entire movie, though, making her nothing but a damsel in distress and unlike Strong World she doesn't even do anything. The situation is actually an interesting way to 'nerf' the Straw Hats, so to speak, as Zoro doesn't have his swords, Nami is captured and Sanji, um, doesn't have his shoes? Okay, sure.
The backstory for Clockwork Island and the Thief Brothers basically alternate being what you expect for this sort of story or being so oblique that I'm genuinely not sure at the end of the movie what the Diamond Gear or whatever the central treasure of Clockwork Island is meant to be. It keeps the gears of the island running, I guess? But the Trump Pirates have basically gang-pressed the inhabitants of the island to make a super-weapon for them, the King Cannon. And this, I feel, is perhaps the biggest fail of this movie. Sure, the shots of the titular Clockwork Island is pretty, and the idea of it extending into the sky and then spreading out into a huge island supported by a pillar is neat, but we never really learn what makes the gear-ran island so special. Strong World and Film: Gold are sometimes accused of spending too much time hammering home their respective island-of-the-movie gimmicks, which are 'dangerous animals' and 'Las Vegas' respectively, but for a movie that titles itself on the setting, Clockwork Island left very little of an impression.
Akisu's story, though, is surprisingly well-developed in the story. Sure, the writing and the voice acting makes him a gigantic brat, but the movie and the characters emphasize how Akisu is always so happy to be around Borodo because his big brother's going to protect him from everyone out there, to the point of losing an arm. And Luffy draws upon his own bond with Shanks (a point that the movie alludes to but doesn't hammer home, and I appreciate the subtlety) and basically tells Akisu that he's kind of a shit and a burden, and he really needs to fight and be a proper man and all that. Sure, Akisu is kind of a flat character compared to other characters Luffy would give a similar speech to in canon One Piece (mostly Momonosuke comes to mind), but it's a pretty solid story that I can get behind, and while Akisu standing up for his newfound friends is telegraphed, it's at least told well.
Beyond that, the movie plays out how you think it would, and while, sure, it's a filler One Piece movie, I kind of expected more? Bear King decides to defeat Luffy's entire crew to impress Nami into marrying him, and one by one the Straw Hats get more and more wounded and captured and crucified above the Trump Pirates base, a fact that feels believable due to the fact that at least two members of the Straw Hats are without their usual weapons. None of the villains impress me at this point other than Honey Queen (who's a surprising Logia-type user, which is honestly a rarity at this point in the series) and Pin Joker, who's actually harbouring a massive grudge against Zoro, who gave him the massive gash on his face and is essentially being an 'unknown rival' type antagonist to Zoro. I do like that, the fact that Zoro spends his pre-Straw-Hat-crew days as a pirate-hunter is kind of glossed over in the series, and having this dude gunning for him due to a grudge is a fun one.
Of course, due to the traps and the situation one by one the Straw Hat members (and Borodo) get beaten up and captured, while Akisu sees more and more of the Straw Hats' more selfless and heroic attitudes. The big revelation, of course, is that the Thief Bros are the ones that stole the Going Merry in an attempt to have the Straw Hats take down the Trump Pirates for them... but of course it's all because Borodo is heroic and wants to return Akisu to his hometown of Clockwork Island. Again, it's pretty obvious, and we get the typical 'darkest hour' with everyone incapacitated before Luffy bursts through like twelve floors of supervillain base to stand in front of the bad guys. Oh, and the King Cannon gets very indignantly disposed off by Luffy in this sequence.
With all that build-up, though, the movie ends with a pretty neat action sequence. As usual with these Shonen movies, the lady fight is very shafted and despite Honey Queen being a Logia Devil Fruit user, she gets trapped by Nami in a jar in a sequence that lasts less than ten seconds and is never seen again. Usopp risks himself to blow up Skunk One's gas jetpack to reach his, Zoro and Sanji's equipment, and then they very handily one-shot their respective enemies. Luffy's fight against Bear King is... a bit more drawn-out and honestly not very interesting. Bear King has the "Kachi Kachi no Mi", giving him generic endurance and glowing fist powers. There's a sacrificial moment with Borodo and Akisu (they're fine, though) and Luffy ends up catching the cannonball from the King Cannon and then launch it back onto Bear King, destroying the pirates' base, the huge central gear and the entire Clockwork Island. Fortunately, everyone is equipped with parachutes, which is the kind of ridiculousness that I guess just happens in One Piece.
Anyway, it's... it's actually a pretty solid watch. The actual plot is kind of whatever, and there are a lot of parts of this movie that feels samey with other anime movies and the villains are paper-thin, but Akisu's story is actually not that terrible, the action scenes are decent, and I did enjoy watching this one, as vanilla as it feels.
Random Notes:
- Continuity placement of these non-serial anime movies are always nebulous, but at least One Piece tends to have more wiggle room compared to Dragon Ball Z. The details presented here and the crew members active in this movie place the events of this movie between Loguetown and Reverse Mountain in the manga. The wiki tells me that film's actual release date is between the filler "Warship Island" arc and the Reverse Mountain arc.
- There are some bits of obvious gratuitous fanservice, yeah? Nami gets to strut around in a bikini and get Sanji put sunscreen on her back, and Honey Queen is introduced to us nude in a pool. And while really nothing lewd is actually done, Nami does make a couple of "pay me with your body" jokes. I don't think modern One Piece is even allowed to do these anymore.
- The 'Hyena Three', a trio of goons working for El Drago in the first movie, make a very brief cameo as part of the Trump Pirates' goons. Pandaman also appears as an easter egg among the Trump pirates.
- There are a lot of aspects of this movie that end up sort of being kind of similar to future One Piece beats, huh? While not exclusive to this movie per se as far as One Piece filler characters go, Akisu's story arc has a lot of shades resembling Momonosuke; an island in the sky pre-empts Skypiea; while the Doflamingo Pirates and Beast Pirates would also use an organization based on card decks.
- I find it hilarious more than dramatic that Akisu's moment of standing up against the bad guys just happens to cause his wind-up toy to fall into the exact spot that Luffy is holding the collapsing corridor trap back.
No comments:
Post a Comment