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One Piece: Season Two, Sixth Voyage
FUNimation // Unrated // March 16, 2010
List Price: $49.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Series:
The Alabasta Saga comes to a sad, joyous, and surprise-filled conclusion with the release of FUNimations One Piece: Season Two, the Sixth Voyage (though Wikipedia has this set finishing up season four...) It's a great conclusion to the best One Piece story so far, and one of the more interesting and fun chapters in any shojen anime series. The tale ranks right up there with the Cell Saga from Dragon Ball Z and any fan of fun and exciting kids show should put this on the top of their "must watch" pile.
I'll assume you've been following along so far. If not, start back at Season One, the First Voyage and catch up. I'll wait.
Okay, up to date? Good. At the end of the last collection, things were looking rather bleak. Vivi was just about to blow up the royal palace in order to stop the fighting between the rebels and the soldiers, when Crocodile appeared along with Vivi's father, the King, who had been tortured. Nailing the king to a wall through his arms, Crocodile reveals his plan, as all good villains do before they carry them out. He has a hidden cannon somewhere in the city that is going to shoot a powerful bomb into the middle of the fighting masses, killing both the rebels and the royal troops. With all the fighters gone, he'll be able to pick up the pieces and rule Alabasta. Not only that, but he'll be able to control the ancient and very secret weapon, Pluton that is hidden somewhere in the country. With that fierce instrument at his disposal, Crocodile will eventually be able to rule the world.
Luffy is missing, Crocodile claims that he's dead, the other straw hats are in pitched battles with the senior members of Baroque Works or have just finished their battle and are severely wounded. There's only half an hour before the bomb goes off, and when the leader of the rebels orders his men to put down their weapons, he's shot by a Baroque Works member dressed as one of the royal troops. The elite guard rushes up to Crocodile in order to save their king, but even after taking a potion that doubles their strength, they're no match for him. Things look totally hopeless... until Luffy shows up.
Like the previous collection, this story also has a lot of drama and heart, but even more so this time around. That's not something Shonen Jump style shows really worry about, after all they're aimed at young boys who are more interested in action than drama, but this show manages to work it in none the less, and it's a stronger series because of it. There are several very touching moments in this set, especially when the guard who protected Vivi as a child, Pell, arrives on the scene near the end and has to make a horrible decision, and when Vivi realizes that she has to choose her path too at the end. Both of these scenes are heart wrenching and not the type of thing usually found in kid's anime.
There's a lot of action too. As a mater of fact, this set is almost non-stop action. From the battle in the town square between the two armies to Nami's battle with Miss Doublefinger and Luffy's ultimate showdown with Crocodile, the show has wall to wall fighting that is as entertaining as it is exciting.
As I mention in every review of this series, this is the uncut version of the show. Though it is aimed at kids, there is some swearing. People called "ass" and "son of a bitch", but nothing worse than that. People do get killed too, and when blood is spilled it's red. The show isn't very bloody though, and I had no problems letting my 6th grader watch it.
The DVD:
This set contains the next 13 episodes (117-130) on two DVDs, each in its own thinpak case. The two cases are held in a nice slipcase.
Audio:
This set offers the original Japanese track in stereo as well as an English dub in either stereo or 5.1. While the 5.1 dub was nice during the battle scenes, I preferred the original language track. The voices just seemed to fit characters better and made for a more enjoyable viewing experience. The English voice actors did do a good job however and people who like watching in English shouldn't be disappointed.
Video:
The full frame video looked pretty good overall. The colors were bright and solid and the blacks were nice and inky. The image was generally sharp too. The only real problem was a more than average amount of aliasing. Diagonal lines are often jagged and when the camera pans across a scene, fine lines tend to shimmer a bit. There's also a bit of cross colorization, but it wasn't distracting.
Extras:
Like the other volumes in this series, I was a little disappointed that the bonus items were so meager. There's a "Marathon Play" option, which lets you watch the show without the opening and closing credits, which is really cool. I wish more anime would offer something like this. Unfortunately the only other bonus items are clean animations and a series of trailers.
Final Thoughts:
I loved the last collection, but this one is even better. This show is a 'must-buy' for all fans of action oriented anime. It's easy to see why this show is so popular in
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