Anime Movie Review: One Piece Movie 10 - Strong World

One Piece Film: Strong World

So after the rather lackluster 'Mechanical Island' movie, we go into two movies that are either abridged retellings or bizarre reimaginations-with-some-extra-bits that is Movie 8 and Movie 9. And... they're not terrible ways to spend an evening, but it's also kind of pointless, y'know? Sure, the animation is prettier and Movie 9 has one of the best Jet Pistol animations I've seen, but they're even more throwaway than the actual filler plots because, well, they're just slightly-different retellings of a story we know from the manga or the anime. 

So we then have this movie, One Piece Film: Strong World (or sometimes just One Piece: Strong World), which is actually penned by Eiichiro Oda himself. He doesn't put in every single aspect of this movie, I don't think, but his touch certainly does make this movie feel a lot more tonally fitting compared to, say, Movie 5 or Movie 6. You also get the nice bonus that the dialogue written for these characters, while nothing particularly novel or amazing, still felt like, well, they actually felt like they were interactions that the crew would have and not just banal dialogue to fill in the filler episode. 

Strong World's biggest claim to fame is that it explores the enigmatic Shiki the Golden Lion, who, to manga readers, would be this mysterious guy who gets mentioned a couple of times in the Impel Down arc, and most recently identified as the Rocks crew in the Wano arc. Shiki stars in this movie as the primary antagonist, and Oda even wrote a special bonus 'prologue' chapter that stars Shiki and Gol D. Roger, which is very much worth taking a look at. And I think this particular bit kind of makes the villain of the movie have a bit of an extra oomph compared to if they had fought yet another random generic pirate crew. 

Strong World is also the only one of the Oda-penned movies to, I think, fit rather well into the canon of the manga. You could fit the events of this movie (which took place over a night) during the journey between Thriller Bark and Sabaody -- replacing the forgettable Spa Island filler arc in the anime.=. Sure, there are certain things that don't match up well (Zoro's lack of injuries, for example) but out of the currently four Oda-written movies, Strong World is the only one that we can slot into the manga canon. And you know what? I kind of like this movie, so until something contradicts it in the manga, I'll say that it is canon in my head. 

In fact, this was how I was originally (erroneously) told to watch this movie about. This movie was how I first saw the One Piece anime in any format, and the first time I've actually heard the voices of these characters. And let me tell you, Franky and Brook's voices? They are amazing voices. And things like hearing our main characters yell out their attacks or catchphrases... good stuff. 

The plot of the movie is honestly not even that over-the-top, especially compared to the movie that succeeds this one. Other than the little build-up with Garp and Sengoku looking at Shiki in dread and building him up at the beginning of the movie; the movie itself could've just taken place as it did, and it would've been more or less pretty self-contained. But again... the execution really does matter. And, sure, the animation is pretty and all that, but I really did like just how fantastical the bizarre floating islands of Merveille are, and I can definitely appreciate the setting of a massive amount of wacky monster animals. If you can't tell by the amount of words I've spent talking about fictional monsters in this blog, I'm a huge fan of monsters. 

We get a bit of a in medias res opening because after the Garp/Sengoku prologue, we then cut to Luffy being stuck in-between giant monsters fighting and killing each other, and we get to see the same scene basically repeated with other members of the Straw Hats. Brook totally gets to murder an entire ant nest with his Hanauta Sanchou: Yahazugiri. Then we cut to Nami in the obligatory fanservice scene as she swims around in a bikini with some shots that are clearly meant to titillate.

And then, enter "Golden Lion" Shiki. And... okay, if we're being honest? I know the idea is that Shiki is trying to win Nami over with his comedy, but the way he and his two henchmen (Dr. Indigo and Scarlet the ero-gorilla) are introduced? I know, I know, One Piece has never been a manga that's always serious all the time. More often than not, any given character has a comedic undertone. But yeah, between the dance number, the boke/tsukkomi comedy routine, Indigo's miming... none of them are things I found funny at all other than Indigo's squeaky shoes. 

I did always like Shiki's design, though. He looks like a yakuza boss with a ship steering wheel somehow fused with his skull, but most memorably two big-ass katana replacing his legs -- Shiki cut off his legs and grafted his swords as prosthetics. What an over-the-top way to depict a pirate with a peg leg, am I right? 

Anyway, turns out that Nami has been kidnapped and held hostage by Shiki until she agrees to join his crew. In short, basically the plot of Movie 2, but instead of a tired 'I will make you my bride' plot, at least Nami is sought after for her navigational skills, and she gets a fair amount to do beyond just being a damsel in distress. I mean, ideally she would do more, but seeing how Nami's been treated in these non-serial movies, she gets a decent amount to do here.

Then we get a flashback to how they encounter Shiki and his floating ship (do those oars do anything?) and Nami and Luffy basically helps Shiki navigate away from a cyclone, but in turn this just makes Shiki realize that these random rookie pirates have a talented navigator in their midst. Oh, and throughout all this, our heroes kind of discuss that there's some sort of strange attacks on the East Blue. After pretending to befriend them and showing off his Fuwa Fuwa no Mi ability (it allows him to make any non-organic item he touches fly), Shiki kidnaps Nami and drops the rest of the Straw Hats into his monster animal jungle. 

And... and it's kind of bizarre that Shiki neither just kills the Straw Hats or actually goes out of his way to want Nami to willingly enter his service, but I guess he's just that arrogant? A good chunk of his interactions with Nami (or, as he skeevily calls her, baby-chan) notes that he basically wants to break her spirit so much that she has no choice but to beg to join his crew.

We're also introduced to Billy (or 'Biri' depending on the translation), a lightning-generating peacock-duck thing, which is our main ally for the movie, and Shiki himself goes into a bit of a exposition dump on what his huge plan is. Dr. Indigo uses a magical plant called IQ to make animals evolve, and then enhances it into S-IQ that turns the animals into super animals. Which is part of Shiki's master plan, which he'll only reveal to Nami if she joins his crew. 

We then cut off to the other teams -- Sanji/Usopp and Zoro/Chopper eventually make their way to the village in the floating island, where they meet a young girl called Xiao. Surprisingly, Xiao doesn't actually play that large of a role beyond this! The role of the annoying kid character in the filler arc honestly gets filled by Billy the lightning duck, which I can heartily approve of. Xiao and the villagers give some exposition -- Shiki has essentially strongarmed every man and woman in the village to work for him, he keeps the peace with giant visual Den-Den Mushis, and a bunch of smelly plants called Daft Green drive away animals and keeps the village safe. Other than some comedy moments with Chopper feeling the stench, we really don't get too much of the village. Oh, and all the villagers have feathers on their arms, which I had brushed off as it just being a weird Sky Island thing. 

Turns out that Nami was using that gratuitous fanservice swimming scenes to look for a way out, and escapes via the swimming pool drain with Billy's help. After barely surviving electrocution, she meets up with Luffy, swaps to a different outfit (including a couple of rather obvious shots to her new shorts) and the Luffy/Nami team end up arriving at the same village. 

Meanwhile, the three 'newer' Straw Hats, the team of Robin, Franky and Brook, find themselves in the actual base and just follow Robin's lead. I absolutely love this scene for Robin, who just smoothly lies her way into getting a bunch of nearby pirates to accept that these guys are part of the huge alliance of pirates that Shiki is gathering, and Shiki's master plan is to sic the massive amount of SIQ-powered kaiju monsters into East Blue in order to destroy the weakest sea and force the World Government to surrender. 

At this point, Shiki finds out that Nami is in the village, and we get this cool scene where the Straw Hats there face off against Shiki on top of a stone monument in a sunset. And this scene is just pretty damn cool, actually. Everyone just unleashes their cool attacks, and Shiki himself is no slouch. There's a point where he parries Zoro's Phoenix Cannon sword blasts with his leg-swords, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that it's Chopper of all people to deal the first actual blow to Shiki in his Arm Point. This one is actually a very fun and fast-paced fight... until Shiki ends it by using his Shishi Odoshi attack, summoning giant rock lions to utterly warp the terrain around them and utterly crush the five Straw Hat dudes in a gigantic stone pillar. 

Then it's a pretty interesting moment where Shiki keeps asking Nami if she's "comprehended the situation" yet and if she's going to totally willingly join the Golden Lion Pirates... all the while holding Nami's hometown in East Blue as well as the Straw Hats there hostage. Honestly, the voice-acting of both Nami and Shiki are both on point here, with Shiki pretending to be nice and accommodating, while everyone present knows that Shiki's just bullshitting. Frankly, I'm surprised he even bothered to spare the other Straw Hats at all, but I guess he finds it necessary to get Nami to play along; or he figures the monster animals being released into the village later would get rid of them. Usopp also gets a great moment of defiance here, at least before Shiki bashes his face in with a rock. 

Nami leaves behind a message on a Tone Dial, which Shiki is surprisingly considerate enough to allow her to do. And... and this is basically a combination of Nami's original Arlong Park arc and Robin's Water Seven arc, and there's certainly a lot of similarities. But as the ending of the movie shows, here Nami isn't at any point resigned to her fate. She just pretends to, and sure, it's eventually the rest of her crew coming that ends up wrecking Shiki's plan, but I do really like the subversion that Nami has faith that the Straw Hat crew won't abandon her. It's a pretty nice variant from what I thought was just going to be a rehash of a plot in the manga, and while it's not anything particularly fancy about it, again, I do enjoy the Nami character spotlight here. 

Shiki's men destroy the Daft Green plans which causes the beasts to rampage in the village (which is honestly kind of glossed over). Team Robin show up and the Straw Hats regroup, and I do really like the acting and animation when Luffy sees Nami's Tone Dial. There's a nice bit of animation where Usopp tries to calm Luffy down, then flinches when Luffy jerks his hand as if to punch him, but Luffy just shoves the Tone Dial into Usopp's hand. That's a nice bit of animation there. 

In a moment that I kinda wished was elaborated on a bit more, Nami immediately tries to sabotage Shiki's plans by blowing up the Daft Green around his base, but gets weakened by the poisonous spores. Shiki uses a bunch of metal rods to not-quite-impale Nami near the Daft Green and mocks her for her defiance and leaves her to her fate with the poison. And then Shiki goes off to exchange cups with his small armada of minor pirate crews.

And then my favourite scene in this movie happens. The Straw Hats, dressed in impeccable black mafia suits and every single one of them carrying oversized flintlock-bazookas, stride in like a boss into the meeting room, and start shooting up the place. Luffy's line, "Nami didn't sacrifice herself, she came here as the vanguard!" is excellently delivered, and... come on. The fashion choice here is absolutely on-point. All the One Piece movies and especially the Oda-written movies always have the Straw Hats get alternate fashion, but Strong World's black mafia suits will always be my favourite. 

Everyone gets a badass show of using the cannons to shoot up Shiki's gathered pirate goons... and I love how we cut from the other Straw Hats being stoic in shooting and Brook is just YOHOHOHOHOHO-ing like a lunatic. Luffy's badass walk to beat up Shiki is also great -- Robin and Brook take care of the random goons, and Luffy just unflinchingly chases Shiki down. The two lieutenants step in, but then Zoro and Sanji just effortlessly block them and knock them away, a scene that I always remember vividly from this movie and, I think, they actually redid in New Fishman Island. 

Around this time, Nami gets Billy's help in blowing up the dynamite, which Shiki's men just forgot to remove. The Daft Green barrier is destroyed, Usopp and Chopper arrive to evacuate the poison-struck Nami, and the monsters join in the fray and we get a three-way fight between the Straw Hats, the Golden Lion Pirates, and the giant monsters. Again... the movie basically just lets Brook, Franky and Robin beat up a giant monster each and essentially sidelines them action-wise. Luffy in a very pretty Gear Second jumps in and gets Billy to fly him so that he can fight Shiki mid-air. That is a very cool Jet Pistol. 

We get the requisite Zoro/Sanji fights, too. As Usopp and Chopper raid Dr. Indigo's lab for the antidote to Nami's poisoning, they get confronted by Indigo... who fights Zoro. Indigo's Chemical Juggling attack is actually quite colourful and very pretty! In perhaps the biggest overkill that Zoro has done, he goes into Asura and unleashes a new attack, Asura: Ugui, to blow Indigo up and steal his antidote. He also gets a cool line mocking Indigo here, too, and honestly? All the colours here from Zoro's burning red Asura aura to Indigo's bright purple/green flames are very, very nice looking. 

Robin, previously paralyzed by a butterfly monster, gets taken captive by Scarlet who re-enacts King Kong, and Sanji gets absolutely pissed off that Scarlet is about to kiss Robin, and Sanji just Diable Jambe: Flanchet Shoots Scarlet down. It's a pretty Diable Jambe, actually, but I kinda think that the animation studio really put a whole lot of effort into Zoro's Asura and Luffy's Gear Second. There's a fun gag here where Sanji is distracted by delivering one of his cool post-victory one-liners that he was just a bit too late to catch the falling Robin, and it's Brook that gets to do so. 

Luffy and Shiki get into a pretty fun battle, and the best part is this sequence where Shiki slices apart a giant water island and uses it to trap Luffy and Billy. Nami finally recovers from her poisoning and tricks Shiki into moving the ship into the path of a storm. Meanwhile, the other Straw Hats prepare their escape, while Chopper sets up dynamites to destroy Indigo's research and laboratory. Nami taunts Shiki on top of a building and ends up distracting Shiki long enough for Luffy to get up into the air, for Usopp to charge the lightning clouds, then Luffy uses Gear Third to use his giant leg as a lightning conductor, and then charge it with lightning and unleash a mighty Gigant Thor Axe to take out Shiki and destroy his primary island. 

...wait, isn't the whole point of Luffy's rubber body is that he's immune to lightning? I'm going to assume that maybe Nami knows enough about weather and she and Usopp manages to cook up something that allows Luffy to have lightning around his leg and still be immune to it? Maybe? I don't know. 

Anyway, Shiki's island gets destroyed, Billy saves Luffy, the Thousand Sunny escape with a Coup de Burst (and using Shiki's flag as a parachute)... oh, and remember that the random villagers have weird little vestigial wings on their arms? I guess it's just to give them an easy out, since the villagers just fly out from the destroyed and collapsing islands. With Shiki unconscious and falling out of the sky, the islands he had been controlling all fall into the ocean right where a bunch of Marines are waiting, and Shiki and company get arrested. The movie closes off with the Straw Hats goofing off on the Sunny as Nami gets embarrassed when Luffy tries to replay the Tone Dial, which contains Nami's full message asking the Straw Hats to save her. 

And overall? Overall, honestly, it could've been better. There were definitely parts of the movie where I felt like the plotting could've been tightened up a bit, or that we could've had a bit more expansion here and there. As much as I did love the wacky animals, I also kinda wished that maybe some of the IQ exposition could've been sprinkled into the earlier parts of the movie. The village sub-plot also felt like it really didn't go anywhere, and I'm not a big fan of Shiki's original introduction where it emphasizes his wackiness a bit too forcefully. And for all the talk about Shiki wanting to destroy the East Blue, without the context of 'Chapter 0', all his animosity and him calling out Roger's name at the end feels like a bit of a non-sequitur. 

Still, honestly, I actually enjoyed this movie a lot, if we're not nitpicking. A huge part of it is because I do enjoy Shiki as a villain -- he's such a creep! But the action scenes in this movie are all pretty great and smooth, and while the story's pretty basic... it's also a very fun one to sit through. Nami's story is a neat focus that I think actually is a neat showcase of character for her. And... I don't know. This is my first One Piece anything that I've watched with animation and voices, and it certainly is a pretty bombastic one to start off with. So yeah, I really enjoyed this one. 

Random Notes:

• In a so-far unprecedented tie-in for a One Piece movie, Oda actually released a 'Chapter 0' of the manga that features Shiki's meeting with Roger, his capture at the hands of Garp and Sengoku, and his imprisonment and escape from Impel Down. I'd argue that Shiki viewing Roger as a worthy rival and actually being incensed that Roger was executed in the weakest sea is actually a pretty important driving force in making Shiki more relevant. Also, since Shiki is mentioned a couple of times in the manga itself, this makes Shiki basically the only movie villain that's canon to the story. 
• Also, Luffy actually uses a 'Thor' attack -- Thor Elephant Gun -- in the canon of the manga against Don Chinjao. And since it's sort of a unique situation with lightning surrounding a giant limb and everything...
• You know Oda penned this story when during the conversation at the beginning of the movie about East Blue, we make it a point for Chopper and Sanji to discuss that, no, Sanji was born in the North Blue. Nevermind the Whole Cake Island arc, we haven't even gotten the timeskip at this point, I believe!
• I don't fully remember what the animation effects were at this point in the anime, but man, Gear Second's aura effect here looks pretty sweet. My favourite Luffy attack in this movie is probably the Jet Pistol that slams onto Shiki mid-air. The final sequence of Luffy and Shiki silhouetted by lightning as Luffy summons Thor Axe is pretty neat, too. 
• Not the biggest fan of the (I think) quasi-CGI lion things that Shiki creates, but at one point he uses his peg-leg-swords to slice up a huge chunk of suspended sea and shatter it into cubes. And then 'float' the water cubes to suffocate Luffy and Billy. 
• My favourite minor animation bit was Brook smoking and letting the smoke come out of all the holes in his skull-head. This isn't even mentioned with a skull joke, it's just something that happens in the background while another character is talking. 
• There are a lot of fun giant wacky monster designs in this movie. My favourite has to be the weird flat crocodile at the beginning, or the bizarre stick-tree-insect. That weird anemone-octopus thing that Franky blows up is also neat. 
• I think the weird kamikaze-lion things and the scorpion got reused or retooled to/from the beasts from Impel Down? The giant land octopus was definitely reused for Surume the Kraken. 
• I love how just utterly nonplussed the Marine Vice Admirals are when the islands fall out from the sky. These are the Vice Admirals from the Enies' Lobby Buster Call, I believe. Particularly Yamakaji, who's just grinning throughout the whole thing. 
• As an easter egg, the bartender in Movie 4 (Dead End Adventure) shows up as the bartender in Shiki's base.