The Garish Seas of Saturation

The more things change, the more anime stays the same. While most of the world knows anime from outstanding examples like Princess Mononoke and Akira, the vast majority of anime films that get pumped out are like 2016's One Piece: Gold. The thirteenth theatrical release in the One Piece series, following on from the long running TV series and manga, it has all the usual earmarks of franchises that are long past their expiry date--it's overladen with old characters who get spotlight moments and can't be killed and the climax is a by-the-numbers fight that mostly involves characters screaming at each other about how powerful they are or how important friendship is or something similarly trite. Since this is One Piece, there was a fair amount of references to straw hats.

I saw this movie on the bus on the class field trip to and from Mie last week. By the third act of the film, I was the only one, apart from the driver, still awake on the bus. Sure, the kids were tired from the trip but I suspect they could've stayed awake had the movie contained the tiniest spark of life.

I've seen the first couple episodes of One Piece and they were entertaining. I always meant to go back to it. It's about pirates, obviously a subject of interest for me. The creator supposedly researched real pirates but that's so far never been at all apparent. The series is set in a fantasy world with the usual hodgepodge of historical signifiers. The main character is a kid named Luffy who has a stretchy limbs superpower like Reed Richards except he also seems to be nigh-indestructible. Along the way, he picked up a vast crew of quirky characters whom I'm sure all have their own delightful introductory episodes but in Gold are mostly just a roll call of character types.

The few female characters stand out, particularly the popular Nami, but every woman in the movie, without exception, is rail thin with massive breasts. I'm not against titillation and if that's your thing, more power to you, but surely some of the women in the background could have had variant body types at least. They all look like strippers, which I suppose kind of fits with the modern casino setting of the film. The movie's about the pirate crew attempting a heist. That is, until things devolve into the usual battle royale.