Review of One Piece: The Curse of the Sacred Sword
Well, that was a semi-fun movie. It had a decent premise going for it but missed a ton of marks. Review: Story/Plot - 3 - It's premise is decent, albeit cliche. It was relatively interesting and had plenty of potential, however, I feel like it was wasted. The first problem being the way it was presented, and how the whole thing started off. Zoro just flat out betrays his crew at the beginning... that's bullshit! Especially considering how deeply he cares for his friends! Talk about awful character writing! I found it dumb how Zoro didn't get the slightest clue that Saga had ill intentions until theplot demanded him to do so. The way everything unfolded was really predictable and nothing interesting is done with the ideas the writers had in mind. My next issue is the pacing. It's just really inconsistent, and when the movie finally gets to the climax, it quickly jolts through it at lightning fast speeds! It doesn't build up to a satisfying climax and suspense becomes non-existent due to the poor execution. The other problem is how events just occurred for the convenience of the plot, and character actions and behavior were altered for the same reason but more on this later. The direction this movie takes is just awful! In the end it feels like it has no substance!
Characters - 2.5 - I love the One Piece cast, however, whoever was writing the script for this film completely fucked up the characterization! Their behavior and personalities are altered to 1-dimensional versions of themselves and only barely resemble the bare outline of their character. It's as if the writers were given brief descriptions of the characters that summarized them into simple, run down versions of themselves. Luffy may be dumb and reckless at times, but he's not a complete moron who puts both him and his friends in danger while being unaware of it! "Woah this is fun!" he says as both he and Usopp are in a life-threatening situation. Next are the movie characters. None of them really had a hint of personality, even Saga, the antagonist. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of them or feel any kind of emotion. The only good thing I have to say here, is that it at least let some characters share the spotlight.
Visuals - 7.5 - One Piece movies always pull through in this aspect! If the story fails, at least there's cool animation! The final fight between Luffy and Saga was really well done and had very nice choreography coupled with flashy sakuga to compliment it! The art also has this nice, polished look to it. I do have some gripes with it though. My main one being the CGI used. There were attempts to create dynamic shots and fast, cool-looking camera panning, zooming and movements with it, but it ended up looking pretty jarring. This results in the characters looking like they aren't part of the environment and are just plastered on.
Sound - 4 - The usual stuff. Except the voice actors feel like they're trying too hard to fit into their roles, which is strange considering how long they've been doing it for. It's probably a consequence given birth from the script which gives the characters these awful lines that sound really forced and fail at giving life to the characters. Everyone sounds artificial and dead.
Overall: I didn't like this film. Bad writing, poor characterization and usage of the characters, it's just not a well executed film. Take a mediocre idea, and do nothing unique with it.
Final score: 3.83/10 Rounded to 4/10 for MAL score.