Anime Movie Review: One Piece Movie 7: The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle

One Piece, the Movie: The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle

After the rather... odd cookie that is the Baron Omatsuri movie (to say the least), we return to something far more basic with "the Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle". The thing is, though... it kind of does feel very basic. 

Even discounting the Baron Omatsuri one, which is clearly a special case, Movies 4 and 5 both had some sort of interesting hook. The fifth movie was a very Zoro-and-swords centric one, which is instantly a hook that's different from a lot of the canon stuff at that time. The fourth movie had an interesting setting with the Dead End Race, and while it's not particularly novel, it's at least something. 

This one... this one just has our heroes rescuing an old woman, who leads them to her island with the promises of the legendary Golden Crown. There's a significant hammering of Luffy believing the treasure exists JUST BECAUSE and it gets absolutely grating throughout the movie despite all evidence to the contrary. But, of course, his blind dumb faith gets rewarded. And... and that's honestly about it. A good chunk of the movie has our heroes try and work out the overly-complex Indiana-Jones-esque riddles on the island.

Before, hey, turns out that the island is a giant slumbering turtle who wakes up! And, surprise, the three very shifty-looking guys who are very obviously evil turn out to be villains! The thing is, though, they are utterly incompetent and while there's some merit to having comedic villains -- One Piece tends to have a field day with some of them -- it also doesn't really carry 95 minutes of movie. Ratchet has two goons, Honki and Maji, each with their own verbal tics... and they're all obviously incompetent. When our heroes do get serious, Honki and Maji get quite literally one-shotted, and while Luffy's fight with Ratchet could actually have been something serious... Luffy also so obviously outclasses Ratchet's giant mecha-suits that at that point it honestly becomes sad. 

Then Chopper talks to the giant turtle, the monster trio destroy the mechanical castle (some New Fishman Island vibes here, but less good) and our heroes save the day and sail away. Ratchet quite literally gets spanked by his mom, while the treasure they find sink to the bottom of the ocean. There's also the neat little Gear Second nod when Luffy fights the giant machine, but it's in such an underwhelming fight scene that I can't be bothered to care for it. 

There are a bunch of neat moments throughout the movie, which I will praise. Nami gets a lot of great scenes, particularly when she basically becomes the de facto negotiator in sniffing out Ratchet's attempts at swindling them. The animation of the castle splitting up into giant spider-feet is pretty neat. Every single Straw Hat crewmate going "what a dumb motivation" at Ratchet's bland world-domination plan was fun, too. There was a very cool scene that I liked with Zoro slicing the arrows in the beginning of the movie, too, and I love the running joke of everyone freaking out at the giant turtle.

Ultimately, while I don't think anyone's said anything about it officially, I guess they were really afraid of the blowback from Baron Omatsuri that they ended up making this movie a bit too bland-fun and safe, I guess? It does make this movie easily one of the least memorable one, not helped by the fact that the second movie already had a clockwork theme.

Random Notes:

• I didn't mention it in the main part of the review, but this movie is notorious for having Robin and Nami's boobs quite literally jiggle all over with every bit of their movement, something that's so utterly ridiculous even by the standards of this series. 
• Several bits in the movie -- like poor Merry being somewhat abused, Usopp making the Perfect Clima-Tact in the opening credits, the foreshadowing for Gear Second and a reference to the treasure from the Sky Islands -- put this in the gap between Skypiea and Water Seven.
• There's a bit of a "wait, Chopper has the Voice of All Things?" going on, but turns out that he just hears the turtle. Was the Voice of All Things even foreshadowed in the manga at the production of this movie? 
• Ratchet's mechas are pretty stupid-looking and I love it. 
• This, incidentally, is the last One Piece movies before we get two 'recap with fancier animation' movies (Alabasta and Chopper) and finally get into the string of movies with Eiichiro's Oda's involvement where there's more of a sense of... legitimacy, I guess? Strong World and Gold can honestly still be massaged into canonicity (Strong World is canon until something contradicts it, honestly) while Z and Stampede feel more like stories that Oda wanted to tell in the main series but couldn't fit it between arcs or something. 
• Let me talk about the next two movies here because I really don't have enough to fill up even a full review:
• The Desert Princess and the Pirates: Adventures in Alabasta: Movie 8! It's a retelling of the Alabasta arc. The Alabasta arc is one of my favourite arcs in One Piece, and it's nice, but it also feels very rushed? And I never quite appreciated just how crucial the build-up in Whiskey Peak and Little Garden are not just to the sheer scope of Baroque Works, but to caring about Vivi at all. It's neat to see these scenes with a different, fancier animation than what we're used to, but it's also just a straight-up retelling, minus Smoker and the Marines for some reason. Okay. 
• Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in the Winter, Miracle Sakura: This is an even weirder one. So the Alabasta movie is an abridged, shortened retelling of a canon arc. This one is a weird reimagination! The current crew of the Straw Hats arrive in Drum Island, so we've got Franky, Robin, the Thousand Sunny, Gear Second/Third Luffy... and most of the Chopper stuff plays off as usual. It's just that there's a bunch of extra characters thrown in -- most notably, Wapol's big brother Musshuru (he has the mushroom-mushroom fruit) that presents a bit of a bigger threat and essentially takes over Chess and Kuromarimo's place in the climax. The animation studio for this one is different, and the Gear Second scenes are particularly beautiful. I do like the Chopper story and Ikue Otani acted the hell out of the scenes... but ultimately, a bizarre and honestly odd choice for a movie.