Okay, so I think this special is something fans of both the manga and the first season of the anime can enjoy. Lots of stuff was (as expected) skipped over or very, very rushed and a few minor details were changed to push the special along. I'm not sure if such a condensed telling of over 10 volumes of material or 40 plus episodes of the anime is a good way to introduce casuals, but then again, the art and animation was overall superb. I know some people don't like the post-timeskip similarities but aside from Zoro and perhaps Usopp being a bit buffer than they should be at this point and Nami's boobs being larger than they were back then (did we expect anything else at this point?) I would say it was a fun special. Not as good as original specials like Heart of Gold (IMO) but one of the better retellings for sure. I would say it places near the top of the "Episode of" specials, maybe around the same tier as Episode of Nami and Episode of Sabo and higher than Episode of Luffy or Episode of Merry. The order is a bit random and hard to follow for people that don't actually know the story.
A few noteworthy points in comparison with season one and other retellings:
- Chapter 1 was animated even better than Episode of Luffy's version I feel. Maybe a couple things were skipped but out of the back stories shown in this special this was the one that (naturally) got a complete showing.
- Unlike Episode of Luffy, they actually showed Luffy stab himself under the eye while that special showed it off screen.
- Far less censorship for Shanks arm for literally the first time in every retelling of the flashback I've seen.
- Fairly positive they used Oda's intended color schemes for minor characters such as Makino and Pearl compared to the original anime.
- Despite the amount of blood uncensored in the special, Zoro slicing Morgan had no blood at all and the reason is that Oda didn't show blood in the manga either.
- I guess they could get away with Luffy stabbing himself in the eye but still couldn't air Zeff eating his own leg on TV. Unlike the anime and even the retelling of that flashback a few weeks ago, though, they opted to use heavy implications of him eating his leg by not revealing how his leg went missing and just showing Sanji react to it. Kind of the better option here since they don't stress the non-canon anime version of him cutting his leg with the anchor. (Note: I never actually had a problem with the anime version, but I admit I read the manga first for that arc and it just feels better showing how the heck Zeff could survive 3 months or so with a bag of treasure, plus also makes him seem even more convicted)
One thing, though. I thought some cover stories were supposed to be animated. What happened with that?
EDIT: I watched the raw for now since I know enough Japanese to follow. For those who don't, Crunchyroll and FUNimation will be streaming the subbed version early this (Sunday) morning. I plan to rewatch the legal version then with the subs.