 |
▪ | RELEASED BY: | FUNIMATION ENTERTAINMENT | ||
| ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: |
4:3 FULL SCREEN |
|||
| ▪ | AUDIO: |
ENGLISH DD 5.1 / 2.0 AND JAPANESE DD 2.0 |
|||
| ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | 320 MIN | |||
| ▪ | RATING: | TV 14 | |||
| ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | 06/30/2009 | |||
| ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | 07/19/2009 | |||
| ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | MARGARET VEIRA |
SYNOPSIS:
Letter of Marque
The Straw Hats are headed for the treacherous Grand Line in search of adventure! But before their journey begins, they’ll discover a strange little girl hotly pursued by a fleet of angry Marines. The Merry pirates are badly outnumbered and the cannon balls are getting dangerously close, but Monkey D. Luffy never deserts a mate in need. This crew always stays the course even if it means crossing paths with ancient dragons, a giant whale, and the slicing, dicing, whirlwind of a bounty hunter. After all, risking their lives is just part of the fun for pirates in search of the legendary One Piece!
REVIEW:
Luffy and the crew are off to the Grand Line, but they have a detour along the way. They get stuck in the Calm Belt! It’s a strip of water where no current flows and no wind blows. So how will they get out? With the help of a little girl named Apis, who, apparently, can hear what animals are thinking with the help of the Whisper-Whisper fruit! The way that they get out of the Calm Belt is ingenious and fun!
Apis is being hunted by the Marines under Commodore Nelson, who is larger than life and wants to be immortal. The Commodore thinks that Apis knows where a source of Dragonite, the main ingredient in the immortality potion, is, and hires a mercenary, Eric the Whirlwind, to retrieve her. It ends up that she does, but it’s a real live dragon, Grandpa Ryu! Ryu is a little senile and forgets that he doesn’t eat people, so he does chomp down on some of the crew when they met him. After that fun exchange, Ryu asks to go home. Of course, Luffy agrees very enthusiastically!
The pirates have several adventures, including a fast and furious ride down a mountain, and a fight between Zoro and Eric! In the end, will they find the Lost Island of the Millennium Dragons?
After that little detour, they are off to the Grand Line! The crew finds out that they have to go up a mountain to enter the Grand Line. Are you kidding?? How is the Going Merry supposed to go up a mountain?? Well, after some interesting little events, it does, they have their first adventure on the Line. The crew gets up close and personal with a whale named Laboon, who is being treated by Dr. Crocus, a compassionate man who really cares for the whale.
While helping the good doctor, the crew meets two members of an elite organization called Baroque Works. Miss Wednesday and Mr. 9 take them to their headquarters, Whiskey Peak, and try to collect the bounty on Luffy. The problem they have is getting through Zoro first! And there’s more to Miss Wednesday than meets the eye!
More things happen than can be described here, but this is such a fun and action-packed DVD set that it would be like losing your pirate gold to miss it!
The animation is, as usual, very fluid, vivid and extremely well done! The dragon arc, even though it wasn’t part of the manga, was quite good in storyline and visualization. It’s nice, every once in a while, to have something new. The start of the next arc is part of the manga, and introduces some new characters that could be with us for a while.
The audio is great! The voices are perfectly chosen for each character, including Eric, Nelson, and Miss Wednesday. The background music is the same in the English and the Japanese. The opening and closing music is sung in English and Japanese on their respective tracks, with a new ending starting at episode 64. The subtitles are very clear and easy to read.
EXTRAS:
The extras include clean opening and closing songs, trailers of other Funimation productions, and an audio commentary in English on episode 61 by Jason Grundy (ADR Engineer and Director; other projects: RahXephon and Trinity Blood), Brittney Karbowski (Apis’ voice; other projects: Claymore and Darker Than Black), and Sonny Strait (Ussop’s voice; other projects: Full Metal Alchemist and Case Closed). The box is a soft box with excellent art on both sides. The front has Luffy, Nami, Ussop, Zoro, Sanji and the Going Merry, the back has Luffy, and the inside has an old looking map. The disc covers have Sanji, Nami and Luffy on the first one and Ussop and Zoro on the second. There is also a Marathon feature that allows the viewer to watch all the episodes without the openings, closings and next episode previews, although the opening of the first episode on each disc is played.
IN SUMMARY:
Dragons, whales and pirates, oh my! Join Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Ussop, and Sanji as they go on their first adventure on the Grand Line!