Review of One Piece: The Curse of the Sacred Sword

One Piece Movie 5: Norowareta Seiken Review Story (5/10) Average The story in the 5th One Piece movie is average but also generic at the same time. Why because it's basically your typical "I'm your comrade from the past now back out of nowhere and I'm evil now" story. And I'm not hating on it because it was forced or I've seen it done before because I have seen it done many many times before and I did like it in the past, I like The Bleach Diamond Dust when it did it there and that's plot is basically the same as this. I felt once againthe execution fell short and I think majority of the issue is pacing. They are given an hour and a half to do this and I think they realize that the substance/plot they have for this movie has to be stretched if they want to make this last as long as they have. With Luffy and Ussop running around for who knows how long in the cave, to having the remaining straw hat crew just sit in with the movie characters basically doing nothing for majority of the movie until Luffy and Ussop get back, to letting Luffy have two fights with the movie villain instead of feeling entertaining and like some sort of story progression is taking place it all felt like fluff kind of like what the anime does to stretch out certain scenes because they need to make this certain amount of content fit the amount of time they have in this episode. So if there's anything that killed it for me in this movie it's definitely pacing.

Art and Animation (7/10) Good
More Specifically (7.75/10) Good+

This one does look a bit better than all of the previous films but not enough to give it too much of a compliment. The colors used did fell like it did bring out a more saturated feel and it made certain scenes look more lively but once the setting got dark or night time those colors aren't needed anymore and it looks just like the previous movie.

Sound (7/10) Good
Sound is good nothing in particular to talk about

Characters (8/10) Very Good

I was going to give this section a 7 because like some of the previous movies the Straw Hat Crew wasn't utilized and a lot of characters hit the back burner for majority of the movie and they usually let the movie MC or movie villain or villains have more spotlight. But not really in this one as the movie antagonist does indeed get more spotlight than majority of the crew yes but at least they didn't end this movie the way they ended the 3rd movie (the Chopper one) where basically you can tell other than Luffy himself you can tell that (just like chopper was in movie 3) Zoro has majority of the spotlight and he is a focused character in this movie. In the 3rd movie I wanted Chopper to have the final blow to the villain in that movie because I felt he deserved it but that didn't happen it he lost and Luffy saved the day. Even though Luffy saved the day technically in this one for plot convinces of finding the Orbs and bringing them back even though he had no clue he knew that were that significantly important at least they didn't let Zoro loose the final battle against the movie Villain and let Luffy obtain the final blow at least they let Zoro have that and for that I will give this movie a little more credit in the category than i did the 3rd movie.

Enjoyment (5/10) Mediocre

Just looking at the poster for this film it got me a little hyped to start watching it because it looked (and was) Zoro focused and I'm currently Team Zoro right now. And I was indeed enjoying myself for like the first 10 minutes but after watching Zoro go rogue and then pacing issues kicked it it went from an 8 to a 7 to a 6 to a 5. Pacing killed it..

Overall (6/10) Fine
More Specifically (6.55/10) Fine+

The movie was fine but far from recommendation quality it was one of those movies were I couldn't even finish it in one sitting, the pacing was too slow for me I tried to skip ahead a couple of minutes because I was either getting pissed at the movie for taking so long to progress a certain scene or I was straight dozing off again and didn't care what was actually happening. As a Zoro fan right now I'm disappointed I got my hopes up a bit too much for this one. Like I said earlier I'm glad Zoro got the final blow but even that wasn't enough for me to think the overall was even a 7/10.