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One Piece: Season Two, Seventh Voyage
FUNimation // Unrated // May 11, 2010
List Price: $49.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Series:
After the long, and very exciting, Alabasta Saga the Straw Hat Pirates take a bit of a break and have some fun, short adventures in One Piece: Season Two, the Seventh Voyage. It's a nice break from the huge multi-episode story arc that they just finished, and this set has some interesting tales that are short and sweet.
I'll skip the basic recap, if you're not sure who Luffy and his companions are, check out my reviews of the earlier sets here.
After freeing the
After that there's a cute three episode tale about an old man, Zenny, who lives alone on a deserted island with a herd of goats. The man has a weak heart and is dying, but Chopper concocts some medicine that helps. While the old man is recovering, the Straw Hats discover that Zenny has one wish that remains unfulfilled: To be a pirate.
The set wraps up with a five-part story about the Rainbow Mists, a strange phenomenon of the Grand Line, and one that eats ships. It's a good story arc that has a lot of the elements that make up the best One Piece tales: an evil mayor, an old man who is trying to fulfill a promise he made 50 years ago, an odd section of the sea, and a huge treasure.
While I did miss the epic story that the episodes in the previous collections were telling, this series of shorter adventures was a very nice breather. It was refreshing to take a break for a while and watch the crew relax and have small scale adventures.
One of the best episodes in this collection is the one that tells a tale from Zoro's past. It takes place when he was getting a reputation as a good swordsman, but when he still had problems with his technique. He was so strong that he'd break his swords during combat and needed to discover a way a preventing that. After he accidently takes out a villain that a pair of bounty hunters had their eyes on, he gives them the unconscious crook as a gesture of good will. The guy that Zoro captured was way out of their league, and that shames them into protecting a village from being plundered, even though the pirate attacking it is way more powerful than they are. It was a good story with a lot of action and a good dollop of humor as and it had an interesting surprise at the end too.
Though I've enjoyed all of the One Piece collections so far, I have to admit that the story gets better as it progresses. The characters become more fleshed out and there is no shortage of outrageous, hilarious, and just plain weird situations that Luffy et al find themselves getting tangled up with. After the first collection I was wondering why the show was so popular, especially in
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 (131-143) 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:
This show keeps right on truckin'. Even without the large scale epic adventure the show is a lot of fun. These shorter stories are a nice break from the season-spanning story that was just wrapped up. They don't come across as filler at all. Highly Recommended.
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