More than Rum and Treasure
The One Piece series takes a very different view of piracy from many pirate stories. In the One Piece universe, captain Luffy and his band of “Straw Hat Pirates” are on a quest for something far greater than any haul of gold or jewels. Luffy wants to be king of the pirates.
But Luffy is not what one would typically picture as pirate king material. He doesn’t have a beard, a parrot, an eye patch, a peg leg, or a scurvy crew of bilge rats. Luffy is a skinny boy with a straw hat traveling with a band of anything but ordinary crew members. He does have one thing up his sleeve which helps him match even the toughest of foes… the power of the mystical gum-gum fruit.
After eating the magical gum-gum fruit, Luffy has gained the ability to stretch his body in ways that would make a Stretch Armstrong doll break open and spill corn syrup everywhere. Through many battles, Luffy has learned how to swing a killer punch, and use his rubbery body to counter the baddest pirates… even those who have consumed other magical fruits and possess their own strange abilities.
Pirates with a higher calling
One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates – Adventures in Alabasta isn’t about the quest to be king for Luffy. Something far more urgent has the whole Straw Hat crew off their ship and in the middle of a desert. The desert kingdom of Alabasta, home of Luffy’s friend Princess Vivi is under attack! Luffy’s long time pirate rival Crocodile, along with the help of some other sinister and familiar One Piece characters, has caused a civil war in Alabasta. Through manipulation and deceit Crocodile has pitted Alabasta’s own people against each other.
Giving everything they have, Luffy and all his friends are in for the fight of their lives as they try and defeat their arch enemies amongst the chaos of a war. Time isn’t on their side, numbers aren’t on their side, and it looks like a pretty unfair fight. This should be right up Luffy’s alley. As Crocodile points out, unfair is how pirates fight.
Anime… on Blu Ray?
Blu Ray is a fantastic format. Pictures are crisper, sound is better, and features are richer. Or… they should be. I do have to question the choice to release lower resolution anime on the Blu Ray format. While the packaging does boast 1080p high-def 16×9 picture quality, I wasn’t super impressed. I didn’t see a huge difference between the quality of the picture in this film compared with what I have seen broadcast in standard definition on Cartoon Network.
The sound quality, Dolby 5.1 did boom nicely… although I did have to turn down the piercing female vocals at times (is it just me, or are females in most anime movies VERY high pitched?). Explosions in surround sound are always cool, as are fight scenes. I still catch myself looking behind me when sound is coming from behind and not in front of me as I watch a movie. So, kudos here.
One expectation I’ve come to have with the Blu Ray format is special features. With a suggested price over $20, I want to get my money’s worth… and while I buy a disc for the feature presentation, it’s value comes in the extras that are included.
One might expect story boards, voice cast interviews, some sort of online capability, or at the very least an art gallery. One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates – Adventures in Alabasta contained NO noteworthy special features, and I was very disappointed. There only other disc options besides scene selection and language options was the ability to watch previews for other Funimation titles. This is not really a feature… this is just an advertisement tucked into a disc menu.
The menu design was very poorly done as I could barely read the menu choices because the font size was too small. I have a fairly large television, this should not have been a problem. Perhaps in switching to an HD format, it’s assumed we can see everything better despite it’s size, but even with 20-20 vision and a large screen I found myself working hard to read my menu options (although the ironic “anti-piracy” warning at the beginning of the disc was very large and easy to read.)
The total lack of special features combined with the poor menu design gave this film a very cheap overall presentation. It wouldn’t have taken too much work to include a little something extra for the fans. When putting together a Blu Ray release in the future, I hope Funimation realizes the expectations that people have for Blu Ray are higher than that for standard DVD. We pay a premium price, we expect a premium product.
