One Piece Movie 14: Stampede
One Piece: Stampede
劇場版『ONE PIECE STAMPEDE』（スタンピード）
Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hats arrive aboard the Sunny to the Pirates Festival, the world's largest celebration created by and for pirates. Buena Festa, the festival organizer, invites the Straw Hats and all Worst Generation crews to partake in the festivities. Luring even Shichibukai and Marines to its shores, it seems that no pirate or sailor can resist the enticing secrets that the event hides behind its glamor. The festival's contest is simple: find one of the treasures Gol D. Roger left behind. As the competition progresses, the various pirate crews fight each other in a free-for-all battle royale—that is, until the sudden appearance of an unexpected pirate drastically changes the game. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Synopsis
Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hats arrive aboard the Sunny to the Pirates Festival, the world's largest celebration created by and for pirates. Buena Festa, the festival organizer, invites the Straw Hats and all Worst Generation crews to partake in the festivities. Luring even Shichibukai and Marines to its shores, it seems that no pirate or sailor can resist the enticing secrets that the event hides behind its glamor. The festival's contest is simple: find one of the treasures Gol D. Roger left behind. As the competition progresses, the various pirate crews fight each other in a free-for-all battle royale—that is, until the sudden appearance of an unexpected pirate drastically changes the game. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Trailer
Recommendations
Reviews(20)
_cjessop19_
April 28, 2020
Warning – this review might have some spoilers; you have been warned. One Piece is one of those franchises that is known to have produced many movies and specials over the years to make a quick buck since the series is so massive and popular, and oftentimes, those movies are either a hit or miss. Those movies can range from really good to absolute dog shit in terms of quality, luckily for us One Piece fans, this movie is not dog shit. Stampede is the latest movie to have come out as of writing this review, and thankfully, the gods have blessed us with good fortuneas the movie has turned out quite well. Now that I’ve ticked this off from the dozens of One Piece items on my list, I’ll go into detail explaining why this movie is one of the best One Piece films to have been released to date. Before I get to the positive aspects of the film, I would say that the plot is probably one of the film’s biggest letdowns. The movie follows the Straw Hats and nearly everybody else as they all set out to partake in a festival just for pirates, a banquet of sorts and everyone is enjoying themselves. The festival is located on an island and is kept hidden from the marines. One of the events of the festival is a treasure hunt, and it turns out that the treasure everyone is hunting for can lead them straight to the one and only treasure that is One Piece. They have a massive battle with a previously unknown enemy who’s overpowered as shit, yada yada yada, Luffy defeats the enemy and saves the day, the end. The plot is actually very similar to a lot of the previous films, especially Gold, so when reflecting on the story of the film, I’m a bit disappointed the writers couldn’t think of something completely different, though it might be because it is One Piece and you can only do so much with pirates as the theme. I don’t think the story isn’t too bad, though it might be a bit rushed as well, if they did an overhaul of the writing and the story, the movie would be a whole lot better. One of the things that keeps this movie afloat is probably the fan service with the amount of characters they’ve thrown in, as most of the pirates make an appearance. It was fun seeing them come together and fight among/work with each other, the film does feature Buggy and his crew quite a bit, which I have no complaints with. We are introduced to the villain, a former crew member of Blackbeard’s crew, and one of the prisoners who’s escaped from level 6 of Impel Down. He actually adds quite a bit of information to what we already know about Blackbeard and his crew since we know only a little about them, which adds to the lore of the One Piece world. Though he does present a challenge to the pirates and the navy, and since his powers were cool to see, he is a cookie-cutter villain. In terms of tragic backstory that sets him down the path of greed, evil and revenge, he is the same as Tesoro from One Piece Film: Gold. Overall, I think the characters were implemented quite well and their character dynamics were fun to watch, there were loads of gags and Easter eggs scattered around the film and the rest of the cast were good, nonetheless. Where the film excelled the most is probably the animation and artwork, I think Toei pulled out all of the stops to create something that looks amazing. Just like the previous One Piece films, Stampede is well animated and has great artwork. Since we’re all used to the weekly half-a-chapter episodes, any One Piece content that has some sort of budget and time & effort put into it will look good. Fluid animation and the artwork for the films will always be on the plus side with the films. They decided to rely more on the CG, which had it’s up and downs throughout the film; on the downside, stuff like the transformation scene, most of the giant monster scenes, and the tiny background characters looked out of place and weird, and it was a little bit off-putting, though the CG monster was used well alongside the 2D animation in most instances. The cinematography was really well done as well, whether it be the camera movement around the character’s body or the panning and zooming into characters, you will be impressed by how well they made use of the camera motion. Out of all the films, I enjoyed watching the fight scenes here the most. The Luffy vs Bullet fight is one of the better fights out of all the One Piece films, and probably in my top 5-10 fights in all of One Piece. Overall, the animation and art was great. Production-wise, the soundtrack, the sound effects, the voice acting, and the ending song were good and did their jobs well. We get an original ending song just for the film, which is sung by WANIMA, which closes off and wraps up the movie nicely. The OSTs did their jobs in evoking emotional responses for the viewers, be it emotional music for the sad and depressing scenes or the fun and exciting music for the introduction or the hype and intense music for the fight scenes; the music was implemented quite well. I felt as if the sound effects were a bit better than usual, not that repetitive and bland sound effects that are played on repeat when characters do repetitive attacks (like clanging of swords) you’d see in the main series. For a movie based on festivities and fighting, the music is a positive aspect and is something that should be accredited for. Compared to the other films, I enjoyed this a whole lot more. This is pure fan service for anyone who’s invested in the series and/or is up to date with the latest episode like I am. If you like to see fighting accompanied with excellent animation, and if you’re a fan of One Piece, then definitely check out this film. Even with it’s flaws, out of all of the One Piece films I’ve watched so far, this is probably one of the best out of the lot. Overall score: 8/10
