One Piece Movie 5

[Kraco]

An excellent movie. Better than the fourth one for various reasons, although the 4th was already a good one. However, whilst what Throes say about it being out of character is undeniably true to a degree, it didn't bother me at all after a while. Perhaps because in the end One Piece isn't the only anime series I watch, and thus I'm not so attached to the characters that I couldn't allow some artistic freedom for the script writing crew. After all, the other choice would either be crappy movies like the first three, or albeit high quality but still run-of-the-mill movie like the fourth.

The comedy in this movie was less succesful in than in normal episodes, but that can be explained: One Piece is quite light side series despite the numerous villains with evil plans. And this movie was leaning heavily to the dark side. The clash between light humour and the darkness of the plot isn't really something that could be avoided. And since Luffy himself is responsible for very much of the light humour, his character seemed somewhat out of place during the story.

However, in my opinion this was a story especially written for Zoro, and it served his character wonderfully, so it's needless to stare so strongly at the other people. I have always seen some darkness in Zoro, right from those childhood dojo memories of his. He worships personal strength, and looks like a character who would go pretty far to get to his goal - however, by his own means and by the path he chooses. In this movie the blade called Zoro was sharpened to a razor edge, and that's not something we do really see in the series itself (and I'm not talking about his skills here, but the nature of his character).

Well, enough with the ranting... This was a really succesful movie, to say the least. And the fact it stayed till the very end a Zoro movie finally made it for me. Luffy didn't lose, which retained the canon, but allowing Zoro to finish the battle concluded this as a story of swordsmanship.

Edit: Edited a typo for more logic