Anime Movie Review: One Piece Movie 4 - Dead End Adventure

One Piece Movie: Dead End Adventure

Okay, this one is actually non-ironically enjoyable. The first two One Piece non-serial movies were not terrible but ultimately just throwaway standalone episodes, while the third one was kind of unenjoyable to me. But this fourth movie of One Piece? I dunno, I actually felt like this was a pretty good one -- albeit one that perhaps could've been given a bit more polish in terms of storytelling. And, sure, my expectations coming to these sort of movies tend to be pretty low, and people keep telling me that all movies prior to Oda's involvement in Strong World are unwatchable, but "Dead End Adventure" was... a pretty fun movie that checklists a lot of what I look for in these non-serial movies. The biggest weakness, I feel, is that the climax felt kind of derivative of the fight between Luffy and Crocodile in the canon storyline, but ultimately that doesn't really detract from what I feel is a genuinely decent, well-told story. 

And I do think what made 'Dead End Adventure' appeal to me is that the story genuinely does feel like it's the draft of an arc that the One Piece manga would do, and the story feels tied into the One Piece universe (unlike the previous movie) without feeling like it's contradicting anything from canon material. The movie's concept of a pirate 'race' and a secret conclave of various pirates meeting for a huge event is also one that I feel is a pretty cool bit, and it's apparently so cool that it's even adapted into one of the newest movies, Stampede. 

Most importantly, though, is the backstory for the three main movie-exclusive characters. And granted, it's nothing particularly in-depth, but I felt like for movie characters, they were interesting for me to care for. Main villain "Shogun" Gasparde is a huge ringleader of an armada of pirates, but has the interesting backstory of being a former marine turned pirate... which, between Zephyr and Gasparde, I am kind of surprised that we don't ever quite have a proper canon villain with this backstory. The closest we got was Vergo, and he was portrayed more like a double-agent more than anything. Gasparde's huge motivation and personality is admittedly extremely simple, just an asshole who values strength and nothing else, but his 'the sea is a battlefield' mentality is a pretty neat way to get him to get a clash of personalities with Luffy. The ability of turning into candy-like goop is also an interesting one that makes part of the fight not just Luffy punching through things, which is something that made the fights in the previous couple of movies kind of bland. 

I don't tend to like characters like him that are introduced as a cool dude and is nothing but a cool dude, but the 'Pirate Executioner' Shuraiya Bascud ends up fighting against and then alongside Luffy early on in the movie in a pretty fun bar brawl scene, and we later learn that Shuraiya has entered the huge Dead End Race to hunt down Gasparde out of revenge. We later learn that he's not just a soulless bounty hunter, but driven to take out Gasparde to avenge a childhood tragedy where Gasparde turns out to have killed his family, and it's pretty unnerving to see Shuraiya portrayed as basically being near-suicidal in his hunt for Gasparde, not caring who he takes out and whether he dies in the mission.

The token 'kid' of the movie (these anime movies need to have a movie-exclusive kid character) is Anaguma, whose story is also surprisingly something that I did like. She's first introduced to us as a ratty boiler-operator assistant abroad Gasparde's huge ship, the Salamander, and she begs Gasparde to help cure her sick grandpa... but Gasparde, being the cruel asshat that he is, tells Anaguma to go off, kill someone and take their bounty. Of course, she attempts to take on the Straw Hats, snuck on board and even shoots Luffy (harmlessly), and then Nami gives her a long, long talking to that she should never call her life 'worthless' despite her shitty condition. The fact that Anaguma is actually Shuraiya's long-thought-dead little sister Adelle, just dressed as a boy, is an almost-obvious plot twist, but I was genuinely surprised particularly due to how detached the Anaguma and Shuraiya storylines seem to be. 

Anyway, those are the movie-exclusive characters... but the way they are introduced to us is pretty neat. The Straw Hat crew (circa post-Alabasta) arrive at a bar in a town and Nami figures out that there's something interestingly fishy going on, and I do like the bits where they sort of figure out things like "the password is two coins" and stuff, and they discover a massive underground complex filled with pirate ships and a bunch of pirates, and Nico Robin, helpful expositioner that she is, tells us that this is the Dead End Race, a vicious anything-goes race between pirates. Again, I do love the idea of a massive pirate tavern and while kind of goofy, a 'pirate race' is also something that's perfectly explored in a one-off movie like this. Luffy and Shuraiya get into a bit of a fight that, of course, being a bar brawl, ends up involving a bunch of dudes, and the fight that ends up leading to them jumping all over the location with one of Gasparde's goons is actually pretty well-choreographed and animated. 

The actual pirate race is also fun, even if it's ultimately dropped pretty quickly in favour of the Gasparde and Bascud storylines. The hectic chaos of the Straw Hats basically yolo-ing their way as the various pirate ships crash and burn and fight each other is a neat bit to watch, although we then quickly get to see the Straw Hats interact with their stowaway, Anaguma, and the confrontation is pretty neat -- seemingly giving us all of Anaguma's backstory and making her sympathetic and getting her ingrained with the Straw Hats almost immediately after said backstory is a neat move. That Nami speech, and Luffy daring Anaguma to take the shot, are all pretty neat scenes, too. 

Of course, turns out that because Gasparde is a gigantic ass of a villain, he's actually in cahoots with the sleazy-looking race organizer, causing all of the pirates that participated in the Dead End Race as sailing straight to the marine fortress of Partia... and, interestingly, Gasparde has also double-crossed the show organizer, giving him a log pose that leads into a maelstrom. Basically, all Gasparde wants is... a fight or something? I'm not entirely sure, but Gasparde's a dick. We later get to see Shuraiya fight against Gasparde in his vendetta, having stowed away on Gasparde's ship and meeting Anaguma's grandpa. Shuraiya fights (and kills!) Gasparde's silent Killer-esque first mate, Needles, and then fight Gasparde only to be swiftly beaten because, well, Gasparde's a Devil Fruit user. 

And then it's basically a long climax as Luffy's crew raid Gasparde's ship, with Luffy being super-angry at knowing what Gasparde did to Anaguma and her grandfather. The fake-sacrifice with grandpa (and honestly, grandpa's stubbornness prior to the Straw Hats' arrival) is a bit frustrating and unnecessary, but the revelation that Anaguma is actually a girl and Shuraiya's long-lost sister is a well-done one... but it basically goes off into just Luffy and Gasparde facing each other and ranting; with Gasparde mocking Luffy's dreams and protecting his hat (he ripped the hat, the bastard) and Luffy condemning Gasparde for essentially disrespecting the sea and pirates. The voice acting is pretty great, and while Gasparde isn't the move well-developed villain, the dialogue and trash-talking he gets to do is pretty well-done.  

The rest of the crew escape with one of those 'we trust Luffy that he'll do what he says he wants to do' mentalities, although Sanji figures out the weakness of Gasparde's candy abilities by giving Luffy some flour which disables Gasparde's Logia-ness. Again, it's essentially very derivative of Crocodile, but the fight and animation is pretty cool, and Gasparde ends up being lobbed into a cyclone, presumably to his death. And then the Straw Hats leave the new Bascud family behind and sail off with the marines hot in pursuit. 

And I'm not saying that 'Dead End Adventure' is suddenly a masterpiece that's worth talking about in the same level as the Oda-supervised movies, but it's probably easily the best pre-Strong-World movie. My big problem, of course, is that the Dead End Race, for all its build-up, gets ignored halfway through the movie. It works in the context of the movie, of course, since the Gasparde/Bascud storyline is a bit more interesting than a random race, but I kinda wished that it incorporated the race and the Gasparde storyline a bit better. Likewise, as relatively cool as I found them, I do still wish that Gasparde and Shuraiya got a bit more -- they're the sort of characters that I could see showing up in real One Piece canon, a renegade violent ex-Marine and a bounty hunter who's out for blood due to a personal tragedy, and while Shuraiya's story is relatively fleshed-out... Gasparde could've gotten more beyond being a power-crazed deceptive asshole. Still... I did have a surprisingly good time watching this one. It's not bad, just probably could've benefited in some extra editing to.

Random Notes:

• Continuity-wise, this movie isn't as hard to place as the previous one, easily slotted between the Alabasta Arc (Robin is present and Crocodile is mentioned) and the Jaya/Skypiea arc.
• There's an odd bit with the camera tracking the way through the pirate town at the beginning of the movie that I felt didn't age as well. 
• Gasparde's Ame Ame no Mi (Candy Candy Fruit) is basically more or less reused in canon as the Paramecia type devil fruit Pero Pero no Mi, belonging to Charlotte Perospero. Manipulating candy is a wee bit too specific of a power.
• Considering how careless the crew is with the Going Merry in this movie (and, sure, it's non-canon) it's pretty sad since we know what eventually happens to poor ol' Merry later on. 
• Robin doesn't actually gain the power to do so until after the timeskip, but this movie debuts a move where Robin does one of her Gigantesco Mano abilities to create a large arm with a swarm of smaller arms.