Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week, as you might imagine, I watched a whole bunch of One Piece. Seriously, I say that pretty often, but it was a loooot of One Piece. Dressrosa is over one hundred goddamn episodes long, and I ended up powering through the last two-thirds of it in roughly eight to ten days. And as if that weren’t enough, I also started diving into One Piece’s associated films, and at last checked out Hosoda’s utterly stunning contribution to the One Piece canon (canon as in body of work, not canon as in… you know what I mean). I did also watch one live-action film this week, but I’m warning you now that the One Piece onslaught is about to begin. Let’s break it all down in the Week in Review!
First up this week, we actually went back and watched James Wan’s first post-SAW hit, Insidious. I remember Insidious scaring the shit out of me back when I saw it in theaters, and though I’m a bit tougher of a customer these days, it still impressed as a sturdily constructed possession story, complete with some inventive setpieces and well-orchestrated jump scares. The camerawork is also far more aggressive than in The Conjuring, with hand-cams frequently chasing the cast around their house, and plenty of dramatic tricks of lighting. Between that and the plentiful distinct monsters, the film evokes an overall sense of a director with plenty to prove – like, say, that traditional ghost stories still have their place in a world that’s been jaded by years of SAW and Hostel.
The film has a fair number of highlights, like the excellent séance midway through, as well as its spin on the haunted photograph conceit. But during both my first and second viewing, one scare always stood out to me as particularly inspired (and I’m going to spoil it, so skip on past if you’re not interested). Early-ish in the film, before the actual threat has been pinned down, a medium visits their house and recounts an ominous dream. We’re carried along with her words into a blue-filtered night vision of their house, as she walks us towards the haunted room, and begins to describe a creature lurking in the corner.
As the tension builds, we expect to see something truly terrible – but then her story ends, and we return to her brightly lit current face, sitting at the table with the parents. Tension dissolves – then we cut to the father, with a demon grinning and murmuring right behind his ear. It’s a perfect instance of thwarted expectations, and one that simultaneously demolishes any sense of safety even during the daylight hours. I’d be happy enough with Insidious just for the sake of learning that eminently steal-worthy trick; the fact that it’s such a solid horror film on the whole is just gravy.
After that, our next film was… One Piece? Yep, we finally started breaking into One Piece’s sprawling film catalogue, starting with a film I’ve been eager to see for years: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island. Taking place sometime before Water 7, Baron Omatsuri finds the Straw Hats invited to a luxurious resort island, only to be presented with a series of bizarre, almost Davyback-esque challenges. Things go from bad to worse as the competitions continue, leading to splinters in the group’s unity, and eventually the reveal of some truly horrifying secrets about this mysterious island.
Baron Omatsuri is One Piece at its absolute darkest, shifting from cheerful adventures to a straight-out Lovecraftian finale. The film’s imagery and layouts are stunning, and that’s no surprise – this film was directed by Mamoru Hosoda himself, showing as much energy and artistry as anything in his career. Each scene is a parade of visual wonders, frequently pushing into bold, dynamic tricks like a POV walk through a forest, or a sequence where backgrounds are dismissed entirely in order to heighten the sense of isolation. And the arc’s “villain” is a visual setpiece of monumental, harrowing proportions, which uses its CG nature to enhance the sense of a foreign and malevolent intruder on our world. Baron Omatsuri assuredly counts as one of the most successful adaptations of Lovecraft’s cosmic and body horror into other mediums, a feat made all the more spectacular given animation’s usual difficulties with horror.
And dear lord, the animation. As accomplished as its background art and direction are, it is the character acting that truly steals the show here, astonishing again and again and again. Largely dispensing with any finicky shading or linework, the film’s flat character aesthetic provides a perfect template for absurd feats of character acting and action animation. The Straw Hats have never felt this alive before; this infused with small quirks of movement, this reflective of their personalities in their every expression and gesture. Watching this film, I felt like I knew them in an oddly personal, physical sense – Zoro and Sanji jostling each other is here captured with an incredible sense of physicality and pent-up aggression, while Luffy’s movements embrace the jubilant excess afforded by his devil fruit, and Robin’s cool stares pierce like never before.
Looking through the staff list, it becomes clear that Baron Omatsuri was a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the stars, boasting many of the best artists of the last thirty years. Sushio himself tackled character design and animation direction, replacing One Piece’s usual manga-reminiscent designs with ones specifically constructed for flexible animation, yet still more realistic than the show’s standard, evoking something like the Whiskey Peak highlights. Sushio was assisted by a rogue’s gallery of Gainax legends like Hiroshi Katou and Hiroyuki Imaishi, along with genius-level talents whose legend extends beyond any single studio, like Yoh Yoshinari and Norio Matsumoto. Make no mistake, Baron Omatsuri is a prestige production in every way that could possibly matter; in fact, given the broad stylistic template afforded by its franchise-adjacent position, it actually feels like more of an animator showcase than most theatrical films, unbound by an overbearing director or animation director’s limiting vision.
As a narrative experience, Baron Matsuri stretches One Piece’s character dynamics a tad in order to present the series’ most horrifying adventure, stretching into cosmic horror more effectively than basically any anime I’ve seen. As a visual experience, it is an absurd buffet of riches and wonders, quite simply one of the most beautiful and unabashedly animation-driven films I’ve seen. As a combination of the two, it demonstrates the Straw Hats enlivened by character acting so distinct and expressive that I felt like I knew them better than ever. Obviously the film hits a bit harder if you’ve spent a few hundred episodes with the Straw Hats, but there’s no real “spoilers” or anything, so if you’re not planning on taking the full One Piece plunge, I’d still emphatically recommend checking out this film. It is one of the medium’s true hidden masterpieces.
We also checked out one of One Piece’s more conventional tie-in productions, the TV special Adventure of Nebulandia. Though the production values were indeed a bit better than the show’s standard, Nebulandia still more or less plays out like one of the show’s filler sequences, offering a tight island adventure starring the return of the Foxy Pirates. Seeing Foxy again was quite nice, but what I most enjoyed about this film was its clear favoritism towards the Straw Hats’ less combat-oriented members.
Although Usopp, Nami, and Chopper are essential members of the Straw Hats, they rarely get to be the ones who “save the day” in the end. Nebulandia sets the Straw Hats on an island that’s basically one giant Devil Fruit-cancelling stone, and sees Sanji and Zoro poisoned by bad mushrooms within the first act, meaning it’s up to the underdogs to save everybody. Nami, Usopp, Chopper, and Brook all get satisfying hero moments here, making for a nice counterpoint to the show proper. It’s nothing worth checking out if you’re not already into One Piece, but it’s a perfectly fine one-off adventure if you are.
And indeed, there was a copious quantity of mainline One Piece as well. My house stormed all the way through Dressrosa this week, finishing off the first epic-scale arc of the New World. I’m sure parts of this arc must have dragged on a weekly schedule, given the copious flashbacks and general slowness of progress, but the pacing was no problem at all at our own breakneck speed. Instead, we just got to enjoy Oda at the height of his powers, weaving his tales and cashing in on characters that have been lurking for over five hundred episodes.
Dressrosa incorporates a wide range of Oda’s favored conceits: rebellious princesses, overwhelmed kings, mad scientists who transform and enslave people, superficially upbeat police states, reflections on the nature of family, etc. But as always, he’s able to lock those pieces together in such a way to create something entirely distinct, while simultaneously making use of seven hundred episodes’ worth of backstory and anticipation.
The choice to open the arc with a grand colosseum tournament is the glue that holds everything together. Dressrosa requires a serious chunk of episodes just to establish its key players, and not only does the tournament offer a convenient introduction to many of them, it also gives the audience some action-based drama to enjoy while the larger conflict is being established. The tournament introduces Luffy to a broad cross section of Dressrosa’s key players, setting up dynamics like his relationships with Rebecca and Bellamie, while also ensuring that Dressrosa at large has a relationship with Luffy as well. A dozen sets of powers are introduced naturally over the course of its fights, exciting payoffs in the immediate sense that can then be employed for essential narrative purposes long down the road.
The colosseum also provides the essential arc role of keeping Luffy busy, allowing his crewmates to embed themselves in this world and flourish in their own ways. One Piece’s defiantly unequal power distribution has always been one of its signature quirks, as the show scales up in threat level while maintaining the importance of non-powerhouses like Usopp or Robin. Frequently, this means that Luffy is forced to spend a lot of time stuck in a snake’s belly, or a hole in the ground, or at the bottom of a pool, just to keep him from resolving everything with one punch. Here, Luffy instead gets to throw plenty of satisfying punches, with the tournament structure providing a caged environment for him to both ply his skills and foster a bunch of new friendships. Everything in Dressrosa hinges on the brilliant invention that is the colosseum.
And of course, along with that satisfying innovation, Dressrosa offers its own tale of love and tragedy spanning multiple generations, maintaining Fishman Island’s complexity of conflict and perspective. The various key players are introduced naturally over a dozen sub-adventures, while true demons like Doflamingo and Fujitora roam the land, maintaining a constant sense of threat and consequence. Dressrosa embodies the stillness of a “negative peace,” a peace maintained only through the persistence of oppression, and its arc interrogates a variety of ways to approach peace or justice as ideals, from the hard-fought principles of Fujitora to the potentially self-destructive idealism of a character like Corazon or the old king. These ideals are then contrasted against the ways we perceive justice or duty as individuals, offering pointed comparisons like the obstinance of both Bellamie and Kyros, and reflecting on the meaning of loyalty to family or country.
Along with all that, Doflamingo himself is absolutely One Piece’s most satisfying villain so far, with a brilliant mind and an absurd array of terrifying devil fruit innovations. He doesn’t feel “overpowered” in any way, but nonetheless incredibly threatening – he’s a natural genius who’s dedicated himself to his cause from childhood, and developed his devil fruit powers to a level few could dream of. One Piece rarely impresses in terms of its pure action execution, but the sheer scale of Dressrosa’s battles demands attention, and there are even some genuinely thrilling animation highlights. How can you not cheer at Oda pulling the trigger on reveals we’ve been waiting hundreds of episodes for, like the results of Luffy and Zoro’s training?
Unfortunately, the end of Dressrosa also heralds the end of a now-beloved friend: the One Piece dub. One Piece has one of the best dubs I’ve heard, with a great cast of actors, a charming conversational tone, and an elegant, at times almost lyrical script. The dub has done a masterful job of maintaining One Piece’s sense of humor – and unfortunately, the far more literal subtitles that I’ve been able to find can’t begin to compare to it. One Piece’s tone demands localization, not just translation; with the official subtitles I’ve seen, a great deal of both its charm and its emotional resonance are lost.
Just compare the lyrics to the Tin Soldier song that features so poignantly in Rebecca’s story. The dub translates it as “This toy soldier, he is brave and true/In the rain or in the snow, he will stay with you.” A charming little nursery rhyme, with a solid internal rhythm, a child-appropriate tone, and lyrics that convey both the gentleness and the constancy of Kyros’ support. In contrast, the subtitles translate this song as “Soldier-san is a brave man/He will always be by your side.” What the fuck is that? Sure, it might be literally correct, but it captures none of the intended tone, rhythm, or lyricism. Overly literal translations are a plague affecting a vast number of properties, but it’s frustrating seeing firsthand what a deleterious effect they have on One Piece.
