One Piece Filler Arcs, Part 3 -- Ice Hunter, Spa Island & Movie Tie-Ins

Last time we covered the G-8 arc and the pre-Water-Seven filler arcs. Not much to say here, we're just jumping right along to the next batch of filler episodes, all of them before the timeskip. 

Ice Hunter Arc [Episodes 326-335]

Okay, this is another relatively long filler arc, and honestly the only one that could be called an 'arc'. This one slots between Enies' Lobby and Thriller Bark, being supposedly placed in the time of travel from Water Seven to the Florian Triangle. Again, after Thriller Bark... we really don't have much of an opportunity to slot in filler episodes, what with Sabaody, Impel Down and Marineford basically happening bam-bam-BAM one after the other. 

Running for nine episodes (G-8 beat it out by two), the Ice Hunter arc has the amount of episodes to theoretically flesh out its plot, villains and side characters... only, uh, it doesn't really end up feeling like it lives up to anything. This arc just feels extremely safe, and honestly... pretty boring. There are some interesting parts of this filler arc that just kinda goes nowhere, or end up feeling pretty bland. 

The arc starts off with the Straw Hats meeting and nearly getting tricked by a bunch of pirates on a damaged ship, the Phoenix Pirates, which are working for another different group of people, the bounty hunter group called the Accino family. The Phoenix Pirates have a pretty interesting backstory -- their leader, "Phoenix" Puzzle, is wounded and pretty depressed after a terrible defeat in the New World. And actually having his best friend and first mate Vigaro die in the process of trying to save them has really demoralized him. And that's actually a great story! Even without foreknowledge of what's going to happen in Sabaody, there's something to build from this. But other than having Puzzle angst for five episodes, while the young boy of the crew, Jiro, tries to convince him to get out of his funk... we really go nowhere with the Phoenix Pirates. They basically hang around for the entire arc and none of them ever grow beyond being one-dimensional. 

The villains are interesting in that they're supposedly bounty hunters, and both from a visual and gimmick perspective are way, way more engaging than the identikit-looking Phoenix Pirates. But... that's really about all they have going for them. Despite being bounty hunters (which haven't been relevant in the manga since... since Johnny and Yosaku?) they act like a generic bad-guy pirate group. 

And the first leg of the arc really drags on and on, with the Straw Hats basically immobilized one by one. Though honestly, Luffy and Chopper are basically just talking with the Phoenix Pirates; Sanji is obsessed with perving on the pretty lady; Robin gets distracted by talking to the little girl; Franky and Nami get accidentally frozen inside their submarine; Zoro quite literally gets lost on some ice shelves... a lot of the 'first round' of the Straw Hats losing ends up feeling honestly pretty eye-rolling. 

A theme going on throughout this is that the bounty hunters basically collect the pirate flags of those that they have defeated. We know Luffy really takes flags seriously from the Chopper saga, so I guess that's kind of a pretty neat motivation. I also do like that the rest of the Straw Hats are mostly panicking and afraid that Luffy would use this to berate and lord over them, which is a lot more fun than just playing the trope straight. 

The villains in this one are... uh... they sure are something? I can't really take the hockey-puck son Hockera really seriously, but the others are... all right, even if they're weird. The two muscle-men twins Campacino and Brindo somehow have the ability to become magnets. Not because of devil fruits, they're just using TWIN POWERS, which gets a bit creepy when some of their attacks have a love theme. Arbell and her husband Salchow are acrobatic figure-skaters who really only manage to be moderately threatening because Sanji keeps trying to perv on the pretty lady. And Lil, who has the unexplained power to control plants and animals, is less of an antagonist and more of the subject of a rather bland sub-plot where she wants Robin to take the place of her now-negligent elder sister. 

I actually really like the final couple of minutes of episode 333, where the five adult children show up and four of them get beaten within the span of a minute. Franky just missile-shots Hockera; Nami just thunderbolts Arbell; Luffy uses a gatling barrage on one of the twins; Sanji kicks down Salchow. While it does underscore how long it took for the baddies to beat our heroes, I really didn't take them seriously and it's cathartic to see them taken out.  

And then there's the main big bad villain, Don Accino, who, as Luffy calls him, the 'Naked Balloon', who can generate heat with the Atsu Atsu no Mi. He's... he's basically what you expect from his character design, a generic nyeh-nyeh-your-dreams-are-dumb villain with an annoying voice. His heat-heat-fruit abilities are nowhere as interesting as it might be. I thought the episode was going somewhere, too, showing his heat abilities affecting the environment around him, or a brief moment when Nami uses her weather balls to stop Luffy from falling into the lava... but the way Luffy beats him? Scream really loudly while doing the exact same jet bazooka move. It's kind of disappointing, honestly. I've never been a huge fan of filler-exclusive moves personally, but something else would've been far cooler, you know? 

And... and honestly? It's pretty bland and disappointing, and the length really doesn't help. If this was just four or five episodes long it might've been a bit more forgivable, but I really did feel that none of the huge themes really stuck. The whole flag-is-pride situation is something regurgitated from the far better Drum Island story; the villains are unengaging; Robin and Lil's story felt tacked on; and the Phoenix Pirates' whole thing felt really underwhelming. Sorry, I can't really muster enthusiasm for this one. 

Random Notes:

• Episode 336 is a one-off "Chopperman" special that parodies Japanese superhero shows or something. It's neat, I guess, but I didn't really care for it. 
• Okay, though, but seeing the Straw Hats fight in arctic environments is kinda cool. It's kinda subdued since we've seen ice environments in Marineford and Punk Hazard, but at this point in the anime we haven't really seen giant icebergs and stuff. 
• Marco has most definitely debuted in the anime at this point, but I'm sure the anime staff had no idea that he was "the Phoenix". So, uh, oops on Puzzle's part. He's most decidedly the less-cool phoenix.
• The filler arc actually gives us a nice little preview of the little vehicles within the Thousand Sunny. Since this takes place directly after Water Seven, it's definitely neat! 
• The scene where Robin makes like a half-dozen thumbs-up come out of the walls of a corridor is funny.
• The idea of a family devoted to a fat, lazy parent that sometimes loses their temper and goes on a destructive rampage is executed much better in Big Mom and the Big Mom Pirates.
• Zoro does nothing in this arc, did he? He drinks a bit with Accino, gets scared that his sword will get melted, and spends the rest of the arc in an overly long 'Zoro gets lost' gag. 

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Spa Island Arc [Episodes 382-383]

Mmm, yeah, not really feeling this one either. This one only has two episodes, but it sure felt kind of long. The Straw Hats end up on an artificial swimming pool/spa resort island, Spa Island. After the requisite fanservice scenes are out of the way, we get to meet the obligatory young kids Lina and Sayo, and their transforming pet tanuki Nuki. We later get a backstory about them, how their dad is obsessed with the dream of making a gem so much that he kind of neglects them. 

Then, uh... Foxy shows up! This is the third arc in the anime that he shows up! But instead of being the primary antagonist here, he basically gets taken out within less than half of an episode after a brief attempt to steal the girls' notebook. At least it isn't too long, and they're kinda funny in this one. But then the villain of the arc, Doran (owner of Spa Island and the one who hired Foxy) kidnaps Sayo and demands the book. 

In easily the best part of this two-parter, Luffy just shrugs and go "well, screw it, let's destroy the island" so the Straw Hats just rampage and utterly blow up the spa resort. I was about to say that it's overkill, but they did just kidnap a little girl. The second episode is more of the same, but with a giant cannon... which gets absolutely pulverized by the Straw Hats. 

Turns out the treasure is a glowing red X-shaped formation under the water... which creates a giant round rainbow... which, somehow, is meant to clue in the girls to the fact that they need to mix chemicals in the colour of that round rainbow to make gems. Oooookay? That's bizarre, honestly, and more than a bit eye-rolly. It's only two episodes and is harmless fun, and at least seeing the Straw Hats rampage was pretty fun. 

Random Notes:

• Interestingly enough, this arc is actually based on three panels on a montage in chapter 490 of the manga, which is the Straw Hats seeing candy rain, meeting a sea tanuki and seeing a round rainbow. Do other filler arcs make use of the travel montage panels too?
• The sea raccoon, despite being shown to be able to transform and stuff, really didn't do jack shit throughout the two-parter. 
• The neglectful dad has some shades of Hiriluk (he's a bit of a quack but is happy when everything is fine; plus trying to make something supposedly impossible) and Yasopp (abandons his family for a dream), but unlike those two he really ends up feeling nowhere as sympathetic when we don't really know why he left his daughters and only returned after they finished the gem.  
• Episode 384 is technically also a filler arc. It's a very charming one, with Brook trying a bit too hard to fit in with the rest of the crew and fucking up a couple of times... before talking to Robin, who gives a pretty nice little speech about how this crew is different from the others. Anything with Brook gets a thumbs-up from me, but I felt like this is a particularly fun little filler episode -- we really don't see the Straw Hats interacting with each other too much these days. 
• Another good moment here is Brook actually reading up on the Straw Hats' logbook and actually being enamoured with their adventures in the past. That's cool -- we never really acknowledge if any of the later members of the Straw Hats ever got caught up with the events that the crew experienced earlier in the series. 

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Little East Blue Arc [Episodes 426-429]

Chronologically taking place between Thriller Bark and Sabaody, but aired randomly between Impel Down episodes, the Little East Blue arc is the first movie tie-in, acting as a prologue to One Piece: Strong World. It's the Shiki movie! I actually like the Shiki movie a fair bit. This arc... doesn't actually tie into what made Strong World so interesting -- the introduction of Shiki, a great pirate from the Whitebeard and Roger's generation -- but rather sort of deals with what could charitably be called a 'sidequest'. 

Instead of dealing with Shiki or finding out anything about him, which we can't do since we have to see the movie to learn all about him, we instead have the Straw Hats encounter Boss, one of the many monstrous giant animals that has escaped from Shiki's island. One of Shiki's many subordinate pirate crews, the Amigo Pirates (who, uh, are pretty much what you expect them to be; and more than a little racist if we're being honest), go and hunt down Boss, and end up attacking the small village that he has hidden out in, Little East Blue.

And the concept of Little East Blue is kind of cute; a bunch of people from East Blue who's relocated to an island whose population either originally hail from East Blue or are just huge fans of it. It's actually a pretty fun little concept! We've got a mini-Baratie, a mini-dojo, one of the huge windmills from Foosha Village, a Nami fan-club... pretty neat, though it's mostly a chance for origin-story nostalgia in the second episode. Oh, and of course we have a little child. The little child of the arc is Yoko, Boss's friend, and a little girl who hates pirates because her Marine dad died defending the town from pirates. 

The villains show up to catch the beetle, and we get a pretty short fight. Other than being racial caricatures, Largo and Corto are pretty entertaining as villains go. Corto's arms are two giant cannons, and Largo has eaten the Net-Net Fruit (Ami Ami no Mi) that allows him to create barbed or sticky nets. The monster trio get trapped for a surprisingly long time in the third episode, allowing the villains to monologue and for Boss to go through a dramatic sacrifice to try and protect the village, and for Yoko to cry and say she wants to stay with Boss. But then he sheds his skin and transforms into a new form, and we get the pretty typical villain beatdown with Luffy and Largo. There's a pretty neat sequence where Usopp and Nami rallies the civilians from 'the weakest sea' to use their brain and blindside the pirate goons... which is nice, I suppose. 

Sure, the character designs are eye-rolling, but the Ami Ami no Mi is... kind of interesting? Largo can create nets out of any substance he ingests, from fire to hot water to sticky goop... but he has to eat them first to create the nets. That was very One Piece-y. Another pretty cool ability is turning his entire body into a net, which causes all of Luffy's punches to bounce off. And the way Luffy beats being trapped in a fleshy net is to abuse Gear Third and bone balloons up so large that he rips through poor Largo's net-flesh. 

It's not particularly avant garde anime, but it's... it's all right, I suppose. It ties in so loosely with Strong World and the plot is honestly kind of throwaway that it honestly gest a shrug from me. The action scenes in this one gets my approval. It's at least not as long as the Ice Hunter arc, although it truly felt like the biggest definition of filler. 

Random Notes:

• Strong World was produced before the timeskip, right? I've always felt a lot of the animals in that movie looked familiar. I know the kraken's design got reused for Surume, but this beetle in particular really feels like something I've seen in like, Usopp's timeskip-training island. 
• The arc focuses primarily on the East Blue characters, so it's mostly just the five original Straw Hats. The other four kind of hang around in the Sunny for a good chunk of the arc. 
• Why the net net fruit, you wonder, since it doesn't fit the Spanish caricature theme of the pirates? Well, ami (net) sounds like amigo, right? Sigh. 
• The ideal anime tie-in for a movie would be for like a two-parter to build up the movie itself. Strong World is actually unique in that Oda actually drew a 'chapter zero' (which I've always assumed to be canon) of Shiki's backstory, and how he relates to Garp, Sengoku and Roger... wouldn't that be a lot more fun to make into a tie-in episode? But I get that they probably wanted the Straw Hats front and center for filler arcs, and that neither the prequel manga nor the movie would be around for the anime team to really properly adapt since the production of all of them would be near-simultaneous. 

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Z's Ambition Arc [Episodes 575-578]

And we skip ahead more than a hundred episodes and a timeskip to the tie-in to probably my favourite One Piece movie, Film: Z. Did I ever talk about Strong World and Film Z on this blog? I thought I did, but that might be back in like 2017 or something. I wouldn't be opposed of rewatching all the post-Strong-World movies. 

This one is actually a little bit more tied into the movie itself! The concept is honestly kind of similar to Little East Blue, with our heroes encountering and fighting one of the far-off allies associated with the main villain of the movie. In this case, we get Shuzo, a member of Z's Neo-Marine organization, who gets in a bit of an argument with Z's actual right-hand woman from the movie, Ain. 

Meanwhile, fresh off from Fishman Island, our heroes meet a tiny little woman called Lily Enstomach, who's a giant who's eaten the Mini Mini no Mi, allowing her to shrink or become a giant. She's trying to rescue her father, the pirate cook Panz Fry, who's being escorted to Impel Down by Momonga! I like Momonga, he's one of the vice admirals that left a fair bit of impression on me. The Straw Hats (well, mostly Nami) cook up a plan to rescue Panz Fry from the prison escort -- which goes just about as well as any stealth mission with Luffy in it. Unfortunately, Shuzo finds out and he's got a huge "all pirates must die" boner and we get our three-way conflict. 

I actually do appreciate this. In the movie proper Z's main plan is to still wipe out all the pirates via drastic means, but short of the conflict with the Straw Hats, we don't actually see that. The brief motive rant on Shuzo's part and his conflict with the outraged Momonga is pretty well-done. Momonga's already rather prominent among the legion of vice admirals -- I mostly remember him for being the one that was able to confront Hancock's love love powers, but I really do like how he's utterly pissed off that a former member of the Marines would go around just murdering captive pirates. 

We get a pretty standard fight scene between Luffy and Shuzo (he uses Rokushiki, which is a nice callback) and Zoro clashes with Momonga a bit. Nothing too fancy, honestly, though the I do like the slightly different vibe. This is essentially a grab-and-escape situation, with our heroes needing to evacuate a giant ally on a raft while dodging two different Marine groups out to kill him, and also the weather patterns of the location. Shuzo pursues the Straw Hats and the two giants to where they were getting ready to enjoy Panz Fry's volcano cuisine, and Shuzo beats the two giants and Luffy up. In a pretty interesting way to incorporate the plucky side-character, the way that Luffy beats Shuzo is by having Lily expand into a giant inside of him, which stretches his own body into a giant. It's actually kinda neat! And then Shuzo gets arrested by Momonga, who drags them off to Impel Down to let the law decide their fate, because that's how justice works. And, okay, Momonga, that's actually kind of cool!

So, yeah, despite being a movie tie-in, this one is surprisingly enjoyable. It's a combination of multiple factors, really, but an actually interesting (if definitely one-off) villain, the unique situation of rescuing a prisoner under escort, Lily actually being pretty cool with her powers. This one is an arc that I surprisingly enjoy! 

Random Notes:

• The Mini Mini no Mi is a fruit consumed by a video-game exclusive character, Blyue, from One Piece: Round the Land. He's also a giant, apparently, and I guess he died because, well, Lily's got his fruit now. If he's canon at all to the anime; the video games are a rung below anime filler in terms of canonicity. 
• Also this one makes some great use of the little auxiliary vehicles in the Thousand Sunny; something that the actual canon stories barely ever do.
• Yet another neat callback is that the weather patterns of this area also includes the Thrust-Up Stream, a smaller version of the Knock-Up Stream from the Skypiea arc. 
• Despite Panz Fry being a famous cook that Sanji recognizes, we get absolutely no interaction between him and Panz Fry when the Straw Hats actually hang out with him. 
• Shuzo is a member of the long-armed tribe. He's also the most muscular member of the tribe that I remember seeing, and man, the extra joints look so weird on someone with such well-defined muscle tone. He also has a pet alpaca cyborg called Alpacacino (oh my god, that name), who I assume is one of those 'items that ate a devil fruit' situations like Funkfreed or Lassoo. 
• Everyone from the Marines to Neo-Marines keep making fun of Sanji's wanted poster. That's hilarious, actually! One of Shuzo's goons theorizes that Sanji might have had cosmetic surgery to hide from the Marines. That's... that's actually an interesting thing to bring up; do pirates do that? 
• There's a surprisingly chilling moment where all of the random Neo-Marine soldiers tell Shuzo that they are ready to turn their smaller submarines into torpedoes to bring down the Straw Hats. Fanatics are scary! 
• It's kind of a shame that Film: Z is pretty hard to slot into canon, because the Z's Ambition arc fits kind of perfectly between New Fishman and Punk Hazard. 

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That's it for this segment. Next time we get to the filler arcs in the new world, which is almost exclusively movie tie-ins, I believe -- the actual arcs post-timeskip are pretty long and I think the anime staff tended to focus more on extending or extrapolating scenes that aren't really shown in the manga. Wano is particularly good for this, since the manga chapters themselves tended to have some pretty obvious 'hey, anime staff, you can expand on this!' segments.