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cyberkevvideo · 2 months

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The Dragon Ball Z TTRPG -- Yes, an Official One Does Exist

Before I go into the game itself, I want to talk about the creator of the franchise.

Yesterday, the world learned of the loss of the great Akira Toriyama. He was so incredibly influential to so many of us, and like many others, I was absolutely gutted by the tragic news. He was far too young.

Dragon Ball was a big part of my life growing up, and it's what helped me create bonds with so many people who became good friends. Other people online have written poetically about how much each of his series and creations have touched their hearts, and I don't know that I can do the same justice. I'm not wordy like that.

I grew up during the start of the NES era so I knew about Dragon Quest, but at the time I had no idea that the iconic character and monster designs were thanks to him. When the SNES came out and Chrono Trigger was released, I immediately recognized the style of art. Dragon Quest VIII is still my favourite, if only because it's cool to see the characters go pseudo-super saiyan. In 1995, the original dub of Dragon Ball hit airways here, and a few months later Dragon Ball Z was released. It was surreal to watch kid Goku and adult Goku every week, simultaneously. Seeing the flying nimbus, but not seeing the Power Pole, and not knowing who Piccolo or Krillin were, but recognizing Master Roshi and Bulma, and finding out Goku was an alien the whole time. It was jarring at times, but seeing references to each series like the Kamehameha Wave and capsules, helped. Then there were all the Budokai games for PS2. I practically broke my dual-shock controllers trying to win those beam battles.

This is going to get long, so I'll put a separation bar here.

When the internet finally came out publicly and schools had access, I looked up Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, discovered what anime was, learned of Akira Toriyama and how he had a comedy series called Dr. Slump, that the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z anime were considered separate stories, but the manga kept it as Dragon Ball, etc.

Heck, when the cards came out, I was one of the first people to buy Ani-Mayhem's DBZ set.

What's really great to see is people discovering the Dragon Ball manga for the first time, hearing their thoughts on YouTube videos (namely Merphy and TotallyNotMark), and how original and groundbreaking the fight choreography is compared to others series, and how much his style has influenced current day shounen manga. And that doesn't even include how Team Four Star and DBZA has influenced people.

But, let's get into the rest of this post.

When the TTRPG came out in 1999, DBZ was such a phenomenon that our local bookstore was having trouble keeping it in stock. My gaming group ended up having to pre-pay for a copy of the TTPRG. DBZ: The Anime Adventure Game from R. Talsorian Games was a little rough around the edges when it came to balance, and how powering up worked compared to the series, especially when that system was revised in the Frieza saga book. Still, it was nothing any of us had experienced before. Up until that point, we had done AD&D, Rifts, Toon, Shadowrun, and Marvel Super Heroes.

The person who usually ran the games, ended up being the GM and we did two campaigns. I had an absolute blast. Unfortunately, I was kind of alone in that. The TTRPG doesn't leave a lot for social interaction, which a number of our players preferred doing. This is closer to a war game. As such, we never played the game system again after the two campaigns. In fact, we never even finished the second one. I still picked up all three books as they came out though, and the GM from that group still has his original Saiyan Saga book.

The first thing that made me happy, as I didn't have nearly the dice collection I do now, was all you needed were 6-sided dice. That made my life so much easier, and for the Shadowrun players, they had tubs of d6 ready to use.

When it came to the contents of the book, what I really enjoyed was seeing all the power levels, and the character art.

These power levels updated with each book, and the lore and special abilities would also update.

If you kept the game to Dragon Ball levels, you felt that you could keep the campaign going for a very long time. The character sheet was extremely simple, and there were tips on what you could build a campaign around, as well as basic suggestions on trying to keep the "main character" complex to a minimum. The Star Wars RPG systems have a similar concept where the GM is told that either everyone's a Jedi, or no one's a Jedi. Same thing for ewoks since they were so limited for weapon proficiencies (they literally could never learn how to use tech, ever, which I find ridiculous). Basically, for Dragon Ball, namekians should look at fushions to power up, or everyone should be a saiyan or half-saiyan, especially if you're bringing in the super saiyan transformation. Otherwise, no saiyans in the game at all. This way everyone stays about the same level and can't be a spotlight hog while everyone else is forced to sit back and watch the game instead of participate.

If you'd like to read a full review of it, you can check one out here. Barnabas did a great write-up.

Personally, I find it kind of wild that there's literally zero stats for dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals. Where's the T-Rex and sabertooth tiger? This feels like a massive oversight given that people live alongside dinosaurs and other extinct-in-our-world beasts.

Overall, it was original in what it tried to accomplish, and I appreciate that. We've since seen other game systems that can replicate this fairly well. I prefer BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth), and any edition works, but I know others really enjoy doing DBZ using FATE, which I can see working. I've seen people try to pull off DBZ characters using 3.5e, Pathfinder 1e and 2e, and 5e, but you'd need to homebrew your own class from the ground up, and it likely wouldn't be balanced. At best, you could maybe get something close with a 20th level character.

If you find a copy somewhere, I definitely recommend it for a one-shot, if nothing else. Maybe you can run it at a convention. I'm considering doing that. It'd be a nice send off. And this year's convention is dinosaur themed, so maybe I'll have the mission be to teach a dinosaur how to ride a ball.

In closing, I'm so grateful to Akira Toriyama for giving us the stories and designs that he did. I can not convey in words just how important the Dragon Ball franchise was for my friends and I to even have met one another, and then Chrono Trigger brought us even closer and we'd go to one friend's house every lunch (he lived across the street from school) and we'd watch him play because we were so immersed in the story and with the characters...

So much respect and admiration for him. Akira Toriyama, thank you for everything. In Eiichiro Oda (One Piece mangaka)'s words: "I wish that heaven is as jolly of a world as the one you imagined and drew."

#d&d #pathfinder #dungeons & dragons #d20 #roleplaying game #dragon ball #dragon ball z #akira toriyama #ttrpg #tabletop #R. Talsorian Games #dbz #dragon ball super #goku #saiyan

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duhragonball · 5 months

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Nanwum VII Update: 72,197

I'm starting to run out of gas, which is probably not a big deal since I already cleared 50k, but this bears out my whole strategy of building an early lead. My intention was to pull down 2k per day from the 13th to the end of the month, and I'm still on track, but on the 14th I fell a little behind and only got to 1709. It's not a problem, since I got caught up, but I need to be careful from here if I want to make it to 100k. Not that I need 100k, but I like bragging rights.

To reward myself for the insane wordcounts I put in earlier this month, I decided to watch all of the recent DBZ review videos that TotallyNotMark put up. You know, the ones with the new Team Four Star DBZA clips in them. I'd already watched the "Buu Bits" in a separate compilation video, but now I'm finally checking out the review and...

I don't know, there's a lot of good material in these things. The editing is top notch, and you could play these videos with the sound off and still enjoy it just as an hours-long DBZ highlight reel. And Mark has a lot of salient insights on the series. I particularly liked his analysis of Gohan and Videl's dynamic, and it's also refreshing to see a DBZ fan who, you know, actually likes the show. Like, he's gushing over Vegeta's character arc, or talking about how great the androids and Cell are without a bunch of qualifiers, and it's just refreshing to see that.

That having been said, the writing for these videos often ends up sounding like this:

Like, arguably, you can't do a six-hour review of a cartoon show without being a little pretentious, but there's sentences in these videos where it feels like YouTube is paying Mark by the word.

Also, he tends to make these off-the-cuff style remarks, like he's discussing creative decisions about making the video in the video. I get that too. I write my blog with that same stream-of-consciousness energy, because I really am making this up as I go. It's a blog, there's not gonna be a second draft. But he's doing a YouTube video, and there's a lot of production values involved and the work is pretty polished. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for him to talk about how the sausage is made. Just give me the sausage, which is footage of the cartoon with a guy telling me what he liked about it.

I've sort of had this fascination with the writing style throughout the series, and I think if I had to spoof it, I'd go with something like this:

"Again, as I said before earlier in this video, when I started this review, I wanted to avoid sounding pretentious, an attribute the likes of which can be disastrous for the making of a successful review. But, having established that fact firmly and decisviely, perhaps even conclusively--not withstanding earlier comments made about the length of Piccolo's cape, which is a subject for another day-- I can say with great certainty that Goku and Vegeta do indeed comprise a dramaturgical dyad, not only upon which the series depends upon, but through which we can see the true genius of one of the most influential manga authors of all time."

And while you hear this word salad, there's a cool shot of Vegeta beating up Pui Pui or something.

The weird thing is that I didn't really pick up on this in his GT, Super, or OG Dragon Ball review videos. It's almost like he's purposely writing more stuff so he has room for all the cool footage.

Right now I'm in the tail end of the Buu Saga, and while I give him credit for being diplomatic about it, Mark still falls into the same trap I see with a lot of critiques of the Buu Saga: They keep comparing the existing text with some hypothetical better story that they assumed Toriyama was planning to write instead, before he changed his mind.

I think everyone has run across this before. People saw Gohan take the main-character role after the Cell Games and assumed this was a guarantee. When Gohan gets demoted and Goku takes the lead again, they cry foul and complain about how Toriyama failed to make it work, or he just plain gave up. There's an old fan rumor about how he was "forced" to put Goku back in charge because of backlash from angry fans, but this is absurd on its face.

This leads to critiques of the Buu Saga that operate on the premise that there's some idealized "correct" version of the story, where Gohan trains really hard, beats Buu all by himself, and so on. Whenever the published version of the story deviates from this "correct" version, critics suggest that Toriyama got his wires crossed, and blame everything on the awkward pivot back to Goku.

To me, that doesn't make sense. "Gohan and the Next Generation defeat Buu" is a what-if fan theory. Maybe it's better than what we ended up getting, but it's not fair to review the published work by comparing it to a hypothetical draft that may never have existed. That's like if a food critic gave a steakhouse a bad rating because he thought it was a pizzeria and he's still mad that his sirloin didn't have anchovies on it.

When you look at the Buu Saga as it was actually presented, the throughline is clearly not about passing the torch to the kids, because they all get jobbed out and killed. So it's dumb to review the thing and complain that the Gotenks stuff is pointless, and Gohan's power up is unearned, and his loss to Super Buu really sucks the life out of the story, and gosh, this is a really terrible passing-the-torch story. Well that's because it's not a passing-the-torch story. It's a story about Goku trying to pass the torch, failing, and discovering that he still has a place in the world after all. The "torch" he was trying to pass was his identity and personal responsibility, things he can't just confer on someone else.

You can't just tell someone else they're the new protagonist of your story and now they have to go do your job and feed your pets while you play video games. Everyone talks about Vegeta going Majin as a manifestation of his mid-life crisis, but Goku's mid-life crisis was him dying at age 30 and nope-ing his way out of life to train in Valhalla for the rest of eternity. The Buu Saga forced him to accept that this was a mistake, which is why he doesn't just drink a vial full of heart-virus juice after the story ends. He's back in the world of the living and this time he knows he needs to stay there.

And when you look at it from that perspective, suddenly all the Gotenks/Elder Kai Ritual stuff makes a lot more sense as awkward farce. It's anticlimactic and unsatisfying because none of those plans were ever going to work. Nothing worked until Goku and Vegeta both got their heads out of their asses and worked together. The world didn't need martyrs or torch-passings or a 'next generation', it needed adults to put their personal feelings aside for the greater good.

#nanwum vii #i should probably expand these buu saga thoughts into a standalone post #oh well

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cutecatdoodles · 1 year

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Inspired by this video by TotallyNotMark, I tried drawing the same image in the span of 1 hour, 10 mins and 1 minute respectively!

He did a 10 hour version too, but I’ve never spent that long on an image in my life, so I decided to skip that step... Will say though, it’s a rather stressful challenge. I’m just happy I never ended up with a half-finished Button.

#art #challenge #time limit #original #oc #Button Bit #cute #finished artwork #sunbleach style #art challenge #artists on tumblr

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pancakeke · 7 months

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is it the totallynotmark video on the buu arc with special guest teamfourstar?

my husband put it on so I didn't see the channel but teamfourstar was in it so that sounds right

#ask #thatsalamanderguy

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Pirate Month Finale: One Piece Poll Winner: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island!: Pretty Spooky Huh Folks?

Ahoy swabs and welcome to the final review of pirate month, my monthlong salute to piracy. And I decided to shove off this grand experiment with one of the greatest pirate franchises of all time, One Piece!

My love of One Piece is paradoxical, as I dearly love it as one of my faviorite mangas, an intricatley built work that's bonkers as it is epic, the story of one man's goal to become pirate king and the band of misfits he picks up along the way. I'm also super behind as while i've read spoilers, i have not read the work itself from Amazon Lily onward, as I simply haven't found the method or time to do so yet. I truly WANT to and miss this franchise and intend to rectify that before the manga ends.

That being said it's obvious reviewing the ENTIRE series would fill up a month at the LEAST, especially a series this size. Thankfully like many popular anime one piece has a buncha cruncha movies. Unthankfully most of them haven't gotten a proper release in the US as of the time of this article. Yeah it's weird: The two recap films (Though none of the specials as far as I know), covering the events of Alabasta and Drum Island, have gotten translated but otherwise only the films from Strong World onward have been released. And stupid old me used to think it was simply because there weren't any before that, hence why they translated desert princess and the pirates: episode of alabasta (which I used to own), first.

Yeah.. as I found out via the YouTube channel TotallyNotMark, which I HIGHLY recommend as he does blind reviews of various manga, analysis of dragon ball all sorts of good stuff, reviewed all the one piece films both pre and post oda's involvment in them, which piqued my intrest. So to help explore this further I put it to you guys to pick one for me from my own selectoins and my patrons. And I gotta thank you all as it not only ended up being THE most popular poll i've done, but compettion got so heated, I had to do a SECOND vote. And because the second option, Clockwork Kakruki Castle, was SO popular i'l lbe reviewing it sometime next year so if I do another one piece poll (For next pirate month or just for my own amusement), the result won't be obvious. So thank you all

This one is out of all the movies I hadn't seen yet (Having only seen Strong World, Film Z and Episode of Alabasta before this) the one that intrigued me the most both for how impressed Mark was with it, and for the director, Mamoru Hosada. While I've seen criminally little of his work, I know him well from his digimon work, being the director for both the 20 minute promo film and the much more known and loved Our War Game, aka the first and second segments of digimon the Movie. For the record the Our War Game dub still holds up well, with only ONE part in the original film not matched by the dub while the short film.. dosen't mostly because the film added a bunch of excessive narration that critics call

He's a director with a unique visual style, tons of flair, and thus seeing him tackle ANOTHER franchise I love was a VERY easy sell.

Unsuprisingly I loved this one, and as I want more people to see it properly, i'm going to do something unusual for me. See normally I do full spoilers in my review wether the work is recent or not. It helps me analyzie it fully and normally I feel you can still enjoy it. However this film has such massive swerves in the plot and tone that I recommend going in with as little spoilers as possible. So i'm going to take a page from multiple youtubers book and try and review the film WITHOUT spoilers first, then dive into analyizing the spoilery bits after a warning. So you can come back. If you've seen it all, then your good to go hombre.

This film.. is a masterpiece. While I fear I use that term a bit too often and have tried to be more sparring.... in this case it FULLY and unconditionally applies. This film is easily the best anime film based on an existing property i've seen which may seem a tad narrow but keep in mind i'ts beating out the likes of dragon ball super: broly and Pokemon The Movie 2000 when I say this. And for anime film themselves, which mostly consists of miazaki's genius works, it's still high up there, as well as with just plain animation. In every catagory this one is a high water mark and one I would watch again.

The animation, as is typical for it's director is gorgeous. It's a wonderful blend of Oda's iconic style and Hosada's gorgeous, low line , brightly saturated animation. The two combine effortlessly, and the bright hues Hosada prefers fit wonderfully with these cast, while still alwoing them to move a bit diffrently. There's tons of gorgeous set pieces too and much like Oda himself, Hosada made sure the island felt like a character with each area our heroes end up in, from an omnious jungle to a canal for the most epic and gorgeus game of ring toss ever, to the finale in a dark dismal cavern, everything loks breath taking, you get a sense of where everything is in relation to each othe r(Which as I realized from mark's reviews of the manga itself is something One Piece excells at), and thus your transported to this majestic and beautiful island.. but also run because things get very dark very quickly

Which brings us to the films tone which for some is a turn off: While the film starts like a typical arc of One Piece, the crew get a mysterious invitation to a resort island and Luffy of course is all in on diving into it because it mentioned bringing your nakama (or as he puts it because their pirates), they end up over their heads fighting some weirdos who challenge them to

Lead by the mysterious and titular Baron Omatsuri, whose crew of former pirates compete with our heroes in said ordeal, and things are far more than they seem and our heros naturally have to beat this guy, save the island and all that good stuff.

The story isn't out of place. Honestly this could easily take place right between Skypeia and Water 7 and be intergrated with the main story if Oda wanted it to, and it even feels like a typical crew origin story as one of the island's few omatsuri unrelated inhabitants, Brief, is a pirate with a tragic backstory Luffy bonds with and could've easily joined the crew were this canon. It's part of why the film works is that it feels fully on brand and on quality with the world Oda set up, his writing and characters despite him not being involved at all as far as I can tell. Even the weridness of the Baron's crew and the ordeals of hell feels VERY oda: we have a weird speckled man who has a giant pet goldfish our heroes have to combine their skills to rangle into a bucket (Whcih is an excellent highllight of the film where EVERY strawhat contributes and robin delivers an awesome coup de grace after realizing that the rules never mattered and she can just cheat, creating a finger net with her powers. )

To a high stakes ring toss compettion down a river, which is easily the most beauitful part of the film, and Sanji getting so annoyed with a chef doing Mongollian BBQ on a griddle using giant food he challenges him to a fight. Is that last one as plot relevant? No. Does it matter?

It does what a good writer should do when taking on material they didn't create, and something most good writers for marvel and dc do: Have it match the style and honor what went before, but make it your own in the process.

That being said part of making it it's own.. is where this film apparently divides people: See this work isn't just an action shonen adventure piece like usual.. but a horror film, one using the very themes of one piece as a whole and twisting it into something truly horrifying. As a fan of horror these days, I naturally loved that but I also went in KNOWING it took a turn. If you don't like horror, you likely won't like this one and that's fine. While it's not bloody, well not any more than one piece, it is DEEPLY unsettling, with a fairly ominous tone even before we find out what Omatsuri's deal is and the nightmarish climax kicks in. The last half hour is bleak, unsettling and epic in equal measures so if your not ready for that, you might want to skip this one. And yes the world of one piece has some very horrifying concept: a power that turns you into a toy and wipes people smemories of you, everything about lava murder man with the two names, the celstial dragons horrible amount of power, crocodile draining luffy of all moisture. Ther'es some true nightmarish stuff in there, but nothing really out of step with most manga. In contrast this one is both horrifying emotoinally in what it puts LUffy through, something equal to the nightmare that was the end of Sabody if you need a yardstick, and just in tone. It's GOOD horror, but you have to be ready and even being prepared for things to go sideways, it was still VERY intense.

That being said said intensety also has emotoinal complexity. While many complain "this really sin't one piece".. it honestly truly is. It's a story of overcoming odds to protect those you care about, and as well as how doing so can corrupt and twist you. It's diffrent from the normal tone sure.. but the core of the work is still there and if you can stomach the unsettling last act, then you'll REALLY enjoy this one as it easily stands with some of the best tales of the strawhats proper.

So with that in mind

SPOILERS BITCHES GET OFF THE BOAT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING IMPORTANT ABOUT THE FILM.

So with that we come to what makes it so horrifying and the film so brilliant: See our big bad Baron Omatsuri.. is a truly haunting, tragic and complicated villian. He's still not a good man and still needs to loose less our heroes all die via mean white mother from outer space and she's bad. But Omatsuri's backstory is heartbreaking: Like Luffy he had a crew who were his "nakama' , his true companions, his family of choice, people he'd fight and die for and loved before anything else... and he lost them all. Not through any fault of his own, not through anything wrong., but through one of the most common hazzards of sea travel: The storm. A storm destroyed his boat and left him alone.. and thus he found lily, a cartoon lily whose on his shoulder the whole movie, gives him wood powers.. and is VERY hungry. In exchange for feeding her scores of victims, she brought back a simulation of his crew, plant zombies who don't remember what happened to them and who he misleads and who can't die as long as lily lives and is fed. He's easily what LUFFY could've become in his lower moments and oddly despite coming WELL before the heartbreak of Sabody and the Paramount War, foreshadows them well by showing just how much a pirate can break and what they'll do to get these sort of things back. If it wasn't for Jinbei or knowing his crew was alive, would Luffy be willing to make this sort of bargin? If he were in a position to get his brother back, would he have taken the same bait despite the cost? It's easy to say no and on a good day he absolutely woudln't.. but on the worst day of his life when he's lost everything? When he's broken completely? Whose to say Luffy coudln't of sunk to the depths the baron did if someone hadn't pulled him out of it and got hi mto focus his energies into getting stronger instead? That's what makes Omatsuri so damn compelling: He's just a hare off what Luffy could've become and instead has turned into his complete oppsiite: someone who will GLADLY destroy other people's friendships and lives as long as he gets what he wants, who mocks the concept of nakama because he truly lost his. And someone who GLOATS while basically crucifying luffy as he's forced to watch his crew be abosrbed into the giant worm... plant.. thing.

Yeah as you can tell this one also gets lovecraftian, at least in design as while lily's brain is grafted to omatsuri ti's stomach.. is a giant dune-esque sandworm type thing, a white tube that reflects attacks and whose top is a horror scape that slowly sucks people inside. And Luffy gets to WATCH as that happens, after his crew had already been breaking apart due to omatsuri's machinations. It's easily one of the most heartwrenching bits of the franchise and that is a LONG list it's hard to climb to. Sure we know deep down it'll sort itself out, this movie isn't canon and all that.. but the movie does good in making you still feel the pain anyway: that Luffy has TRULY lost everything.

What saves him is what always does: other people. Specifically the other residents. The afformentioned Brief is a charlie Chaplin esque fellow, who even gets an utterly hilarious chase scene with luffy earlier in the movie who at first seems like comic relief.. but ends up being the core of the movie. He lost his Nakama to Omatsuri, the hitler mustach.. errrr j.jonah jameson... toothbrush mustache pirates. Yeah that's it. And we see the two options someone has after that: breif despite having lost his nakama STILL fights, and tries to help Luffy despite being outmatched as omatsuri has the wicked cool power of arrows he can direct anywhere, and given sharp objects are one of Luffy's only weaknesses yeah... dosen't go well. He's seen what can be lost.. but dosen't give up. I meant what I said that if this were canon, he'd be a strawhat: He's brave, fights despite heavy loss, and Luffy outright calls him nakama, accepting him because despite Omatsuri mocking the poor guy for weakness... he's strong. He kept fighting even though he lost EVERYTHING, simply so this horror show dosen't continue, making tunnels, planning just so he can win and allying with Luffy despite both being outmatched.

In contrast we have the Teacup Pirates.. who are really just a family who came here for vacation, the mom got eaten and now the dad tries to look strong for his kids despite his older teenage daughter know he's full of shit.. and as we find out his yougner daughter Daisy

Has super hearing, but belives in him anyway. He does a terrible but understandable action, refusing to help chopper earlier when he's taken.. but later realizes his kids truly belivie in him. He gets an arc going from someone so terrified they can't do the right thing.. to someone who risks everything to fire an arrow into daisy, destroying her and saving the day. It's another thing this has: the characters are damn strong and the emotoinal pull is massive.

The horror elment again is also strong, from Omatsuri sicking a faceless horde with guns on our heroes , to his tendency to snipe anyone who gets too close to things, hence why Robin and Chopper despite finding out stuff end up not to useful, and of course th efinale. Oh my the finale. So yeah if the stygian arakis worm wasn't enough it then EXPLODES over a red backdrop.. and daisy FUSES with omatsuri, not only taking on a terrifying face.. but then becoming some horrifying monstroisty with all the strawhats suspended in it

Yeah this film has some great horror and is deadly intense, with the last bit being great as Luffy is IMPALIED with tons of arrows. .but keeps going. This is what I mean by the series spirit: Luffy ONLY gives up when he thinks his crew is dead. earlier when Omatsuri first shows his true colors Nami leaves thinking he's not carring to look.. but he instead charges the guy DEMANDING his missing friends (as in horror fashion Chopper, Robin and Usopp were picked off one by one and Nami, Sanji and Zoro follow after) and even as he gets crucificed sends his fucking head to try and save Zoro. This film gets luffy fully an dgets one piece: it's a work about friendship, and how far you'll go. For Omatsuri it meant selling his soul but for luffy.. it's what keeps his soul going and ultimately wins the day. By showing someone how to be better.. he saved his friends, the surivvors and the world And Omatsuri gets a fitting sendoff.. not as the corrupt man he became.. but greeted by his crew as he passes on, with them telling him he should'v ecreated a new nakama.

So yeah as you can tell emotoinally it's graet and really the only two flaws are part of the plot: The first is the film just kinda.. ends. It's a great ending: Luffy, barely moble as usual after punching out some tyranical jackass, reunites with the other survivors then turns his head up and sees his friends, recovered, free and wandering what the hell is going on. Now granted I think the film would be a smidge more impactful if luffy had to start over, but I get this is a liscened work and thus has to keep everyone alive, the only time being based on ane xisting property holds the film back. And it ends on Luffy grinning as his friends are confused, happy he finally has his Nakama back. And then just ends without explaning what happens to the teacup family or Brief. it just.. ends. It's a good impactful ending it just feels.. cut short. Like there's still a lot of loose ends to tie up.

The other is minor: Nami's grudge against Usopp. Now people complain about the strawhats fighting here.. and I disagree when it comes to Zoro and Sanji. They USUALLY hate each other and can't go five minutes without arguing. This is normal for the most part and only esclates due to the tension of the situation. And while you could say that's out of character.. it is partly Sanji's fault there there. Granted he dickishly blames Luffy but the point is the two fight on a normal day, being trapped on an island in a death game probably woudln't help.

Nami and Usopp is clearly meant to be similar.. but she's mad he seemingly abandoned her.. after it's proven he didn't and ewas just flying out to fly ina nd save everybody and be all badass as one's lord and savior should. God i love that long nosed man. So it just falls flat.

That being said everything else works: the ordeal from hell provides plenty of the action the series is known for, while also having a nice invesgitation portion as Luffy, Robin and Chopper find out more, and the horror at the end is as beautiful as it is terrifying. This film is amazing so watch it however you can till there's an offical release. As it stands there isn't a way to watch it as it isn't on Crunchyroll for some reason , as even undubbed it'd still be neat. Btu there's a wonderful fan sub out there, so go check that out. Seriously watch this film.

So that does it for pirate month. This was a fun voyage but it's time to weigh anchor for a while. If you'd like to vote in more polls like the one that made this movie, join my patreon, links on the blog, and i'll see you in a week. Thanks for reading.

#one piece #monkey d luffy #baron omatsuri and the secret island #Mamoru Hosoda #rorona zoro #nico robin #anime #films #shonen jump #toei #chopper tony chopper

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