One Piece, written by Eiichiro Oda, is the best selling manga of all time, selling over 345 million copies worldwide. Oda has been writing One Piece since 1997, and in 2010 he finished the first half of the manga. In honor of starting the second half of One Piece, Oda agreed to work on and produce a brand new One Piece movie, titled One Piece Film: Z. One Piece stars Monkey D. Luffy, captain of the Straw Hat pirates. Luffy aspires to be the pirate king and in order to do this he needs to find the treasure One Piece, left behind by the previous pirate king Gol D. Roger. Luffy's crew is comprised of Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, Franky and Brook. One Piece Film: Z is about a former Marine named Zephyr (who goes by the alias Z), commander of the Neo Marines, who steals powerful weapons called Dyna Stones from the Marines, and tries to use them to destroy the world. Z absolutely loathes pirates, so when he runs into Luffy and company he attacks and defeats them, turning some of Luffy's crew into children. Now it's personal as the Straw Hat pirates go after Z to avenge their loss and to restore the age of some of their crew members.
The visual cinematography in this film is quite the sight to behold. From the big set pieces, like an exploding volcano, to simple things like making sure that the characters never go off model, this film is really quite nice to look at. Besides getting the obvious things right, this film also goes the extra mile to enhance its visual presentation. A great example of this is whenever characters fight each other in this movie, whenever their attacks collide, they have a visual accent to them, and the accent changes colors and never repeats its shape. At the end of the film the characters all put on battle gear to go and face Z (pronounced Zed in the English dub and Zetto in the Japanese version). The dominant color for each of the character's battle armor is red, which symbolizes anger and passion, which is exactly what the Straw Hat pirates were feeling when they went to attack Z. Eric Farrar, a man who has done extensive research on film visuals and psychology, said that "Color affects mood along two dimensions; color temperature (warm to cool colors) and color saturation.
Visual frames that are dominated by warm colors can feel enclosed, connote richness, suggest anger (red), eroticism, high emotional arousal, physical warmth and degeneracy." (7) This quite helps to show that the creators of this movie knew what they were doing and purposefully choose to outfit the characters in a color that would accurately represent their emotions towards the upcoming fight they were about to face.
The creators of the movie used music to highlight the wonderful animation in One Piece Film: Z. The soundtrack for this movie is well composed, and I suggest a listen sometime. The standout song from the film has to be Ocean's Guide. This is a hauntingly beautiful song that is played at key parts in the movie and can be considered the film's theme song. A film composer knows this best, so composer Bernard Herrman's statement, "I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience". (Fischoff 1). This quote really drives home how a piece of music can really lift a scene in a movie from OK to exceptional. Besides having great vocal pieces in this movie, the film also makes great use out of its background sounds, like how the use a power guitar rift right before Z attacks Luffy, or the incredible theme called Zeal that plays during the opening credits scene.
After seeing One Piece film after it was released in America, I have to say this film is quite good. The magic that Oda brings to the manga shines through here, and there aren't many bad things I have to say about this film. If I had to say one bad thing, it would probably be whenever there's fan service in this movie it comes off as obvious, distracting and unnecessary, however, there isn't that much of it in the film, so it doesn't take away from the film too much. But other than that, the film really stands strong and comes highly recommended from me. If you like what you see with One Piece Film: Z, then I suggest that you give the series a try, even thought the series is long, both it and this film are excellent. One Piece Film: Z easily comes with my highest recommendation; it's a great movie, so give it a watch if you have 108 minutes to spare.
