Just how far can Luffy extend? This is a question that One Piece fans have been asking for years at the Gum-Gum champ with go-go-gadget arms. Sure, there are limits to Luffy’s flexibility, but if you look at his pirate adventure series — a series that has been serialized for 25 consecutive years, has produced over 100 books, over 1,000 animated episodes and 15 theatrical features — it seems that the creator of “One Piece” Eiichiro Oda can extend the entire franchise pretty much as much as he pleases.
Case in point: The series’ latest entry, “One Piece Film: Red,” has expanded into the music district, focusing on a pop star named Uta who gained his power through Sing-Sing Fruit. “One Piece” characters gain special abilities after eating a Devil Fruit (Gum-Gum is Luffy’s), and Sing-Sing skills allow this elegant chant with two-tone hair and a global fan base to transport listeners into a kind of parallel dimension she calls “The New Genesis.” At first, this might sound like a good thing: Ota hates war and wants to make “a better world free from cruelty and violence.” But like Ultron in the “Avengers” movies, her plan to alleviate suffering will come at a huge cost.
Available as either dubbed or secondary in the US courtesy of Crunchyroll, this blockbuster movie (already the sixth highest-grossing Japanese movie of all time in its home country) opens with one of Uta’s concerts. The daughter of Shanks – one of the most famous pirates of One Piece – Ota grew up practically alone on Ilegia, the island of music, where she built a huge following from her remote home thanks to one Piece’s proprietary technology: the video sending snail. Her identity and past have remained a mystery until now. Once her opening song is over, Luffy swings across the stage to reveal a personal connection to the character.
As it turns out, Luffy and Ota were childhood friends (Shanks is the same pirate who gave Luffy his signature straw hat), and the long-tailed kid might be the only person on Earth who could talk about her dangerous plan: she promised her anti-war concert would go on forever. She did not tell everyone present that they risked being permanently trapped in her alternate reality.
Much of the film is devoted to Ota performing her most famous songs (Ado provides vocals), which are not translated by the dubbed version. The subtitles convey the lyrics, but the tunes still sound too sweet to trigger such a phenomenon. This is a different strategy from Mamoru Hosoda’s much better “Belle”, which takes GKIDS the trouble of producing a great English-language soundtrack; Belle also does more with viral sensations and virtual worlds in the narrative itself.
For all the fun of the TV series “One Piece”, it’s known for its below par to awful animations (spend some time on fan forums, and that complaint pops up all the time). The team at Toei has greatly improved the quality of the feature, but no one expects top-notch images. The “red” soundtrack falls in the same area and is good enough for better than you’d expect. The fun here comes from surprising audiences with emotional plot twists and deep characters from characters like Mini Bepo and Rob Lucci (the villain whose motives resonate in Uta) — and of course, Shanks’ return to confront his adopted daughter.
Devil Fruits grant powers but also take something away, and the performance proves too stressful for Uta, who sustains herself by devouring Wake-shrooms between sets, knowing that this crutch will eventually kill her. But if she realized it, her plan wouldn’t work as advertised. This means that the world’s number one sweetheart—the self-proclaimed “Savior of the Oppressed”—can’t go on singing forever, as she supposedly intends. Add in the parallel facts of the movie, and things get really complicated, especially the fight scenes.
The battles between pirates, marines, and Ota’s bodyguards in purple cloaks are as stunning as one might hope, if hard to follow. With the movement split between Elegia and New Genesis, what happens if someone dies in either of these two worlds? Can listeners who change their minds leave Ota’s trance? And what does the demon lord known as “Tut Musica” have to do with everything?
It’s safe to say that director Goro Taniguchi and screenwriter Tsutomu Kuroiwa aren’t afraid to confuse audiences and seem to have little interest in accommodating first-time viewers, who will have a hard time orienting themselves into One Piece’s extensive world of characters. However, for the faithful, Uta proves an exciting new character – an extraordinary influencer and powerful pirate rival – working to bring Shanks and the Red Hair gang back while guiding Luffy and his crew down a new path.
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