751: ''The Start of a New Adventure - Arriving at the Mysterious Island of Zo!''

Crossword

Dressrossa Purgatory and Film Gold hype are finally well and truly behind us. It is finally time for us to embark upon a new journey, starting with the island Zo, a strange place that lives up to its name in more ways than one and did you know that the prized straw hat that Luffy wears upon his head used to belong to his idol Red-Haired Shanks, who lost his arm saving Luffy from a sea monster, and that Usopp…

Title: ''The Start of a New Adventure - Arriving at the Mysterious Island of Zo!''
Chapters Covered: more of 802 + East Blue recap
Episode Director: Katsumi Tokoro (****)
Animation Director: Shigefumi Shingaki (**1/2)
Time: 8:30PM EST
Watch It: www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece

Galaxy 9000

Streaming Link: http://vaughnlive.tv/sherming666

Tabasco Boshi

Scared to see the difference between the colors in the re-animated flashbacks and the current ones.

thaihoa91

One Piece Episode 752 Preview

One Piece Film Gold - TV Spot 7

o-chan

So the funny thing they did here…when they hit the Water Seven portion they use the same footage except they lighten up Robin's skin. Why?! Is there something wrong with her tan skin now?!

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

@o-chan:

So the funny thing they did here…when they hit the Water Seven portion they use the same footage except they lighten up Robin's skin. Why?! Is there something wrong with her tan skin now?!

Oh my god, really? That's just…wow.

Johnny B. Decent

@o-chan:

So the funny thing they did here…when they hit the Water Seven portion they use the same footage except they lighten up Robin's skin. Why?! Is there something wrong with her tan skin now?!

Well, she was never actually tan, in canon, so…

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

@S.C.:

Well, she was never actually tan, in canon, so…

Still, there's nothing wrong with tan Robin, it made her stand out from everybody else.

Mr. Reloaded

#tanlivesmatter.

Bamind

I fully enjoyed today's episode.

Except for Shigaki's arts.

Mr. Luffy

Pretty bald filler material, with the one saving grace being Barto's narration. The Morgan fight looked strange, though.

Best part is Law recognizing Usopp as "God" and Borsalino making a cameo.

The Robin thing is just a consistency change given her current color palette. No big deal. It's similar to Nami's eye color changing during the TS. I assume Robin's got altered during the separation arc when the new artists during the got out of practice in depicting Robin, moreso because Tate's team did all of her separation scenes up until the reunion.

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

Still, just seems pretty worthless to do if all they were going to do was reuse animation. All they did was simply trace over it DBZ Kai style. If they weren't going to reanimate it, they should have left it as is. The episode was enjoyable though, Loved Barto's commentary and I'm very excited for Zou to start and the recaps that were actually reanimated made me want an Episode of Romance Dawn (beginning til Orange Town), Episode of Syrup Village and Episode of Baratie.

goty

@Mr.:

I assume Robin's got altered during the separation arc when the new artists during the got out of practice in depicting Robin, moreso because Tate's team did all of her separation scenes up until the reunion.

I'm pretty sure it was deliberately changed, perhaps as a Strong World consequence.
It's not like they would "forget" her skin color.

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

@goty:

I'm pretty sure it was deliberately changed, perhaps as a Strong World consequence.
It's not like they would "forget" her skin color.

I know why it was changed and I've been fine with them using that skin tone since then because it felt natural with the timeskip coming up after but why tamper with her appearance in Enies Lobby if they're just going to leave the rest of the animation the same? Same goes for Thriller Bark's recap in the episode because it did the same thing.

Kalley

Not impressed this episode. After a two week break, One Piece returns with 17 minutes of recap. The 4 minutes of actual content covered was not adapted how it was in the manga, they changed then order of events and ruined the flow of the story.

Bartolomeo telling the history of the Straw Hats was very basic, but I wish all recap episodes are done like this. It's not just a recap, it's the Barto Club's recap. It's kind of like watching a DVD with commentary, not just a straight recap like you see often in Naruto.

The recap itself was making me wish the old colour palette would return–when the characters had different skin tones and Robin was brown. The post timeskip palette has too high colour saturation, and the wireframe linework is much worse. In the Thriller Bark/CP9 flashbacks looked much cleaner than the actual episode.

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

@Kalley:

Not impressed this episode. After a two week break, One Piece returns with 17 minutes of recap. The 4 minutes of actual content covered was not adapted how it was in the manga, they changed then order of events and ruined the flow of the story.

Bartolomeo telling the history of the Straw Hats was very basic, but I wish all recap episodes are done like this. It's not just a recap, it's the Barto Club's recap. It's kind of like watching a DVD with commentary, not just a straight recap like you see often in Naruto.

The recap itself was making me wish the old colour palette would return–when the characters had different skin tones and Robin was brown. The post timeskip palette has too high colour saturation, and the wireframe linework is much worse. In the Thriller Bark/CP9 flashbacks looked much cleaner than the actual episode.

Thank you! I've been looking for the exact way to describe my feelings on the anime's look nowadays. I don't hate it but the colors are too highly saturated and the linework was much cleaner pretimeskip.

Mr. Luffy

@goty:

I'm pretty sure it was deliberately changed, perhaps as a Strong World consequence.
It's not like they would "forget" her skin color.

Could be. I honestly never noticed the palette change. Come to think of it, Franky also ends up with somewhat paler skin over time, but his tan is retained in the clips shown in this episode. But the period around SW and the timeskip does seem to be when the series shifted into using a more standardized palette and character modelling.

I guess a closer comparison with them bothering to change Robin's coloring are the instances where earlier scenes are redone giving Nami larger breasts to match her current appearance. Though in those cases of redrawing characters, it tends to be an odd hybrid of the newer styles and the classic artwork.

Though another reason they might did it in Robin is because they were just using old footage for half of the flashback portion, so this particular unit took the unnecessary time to alter it in some way so they could still get close to full wages as they would have gotten animating a full episode from scratch.

MasterKingJC

I find it weird that they re-animated the pre-HD episodes, but they just re-use clips from the HD Enies Lobby and Thriller Bark episodes.
Even if they can't use the animation from the Episode Of specials, then they could have gotten hold of re-animated materials post-207. I'm almost positive these Straw Hat moments have been re-animated repeatedly over the anime's run.

Chopperrules

The purpose behind the recap was likely due to Film Gold hitting theaters as a way to introduce new fans. It's not unusual for long running series like this to hit the recaps occassionally. Not to mention we just came out of a huge arc that barely focused on the Straw Hats with some of them missing from the group for a year and a half. Some refreshers on who they are was welcome honestly.

But that doesn't change that the execution of this episode was straight terrible. Again, after coming off the Heart of Gold special that was really well done overall, it's sad to see the beginning of the Zou arc get such a badly paced episode. The big mistake here was trying to make a half clip show episode and half canon episode. Not only were the the flashbacks SUPER jarring and horribly put together, but they really didn't do a good job showing who the Straw Hats were. At least not in depth. Then shoehorning in random manga scenes and ending the episode where they did was really jarring. I was wondering at first why the scene with Kizaru felt off and then a Youtuber reminded me that they cut out Weevil's introduction entirely (to use for next week) and then just showed them arriving on Zou. This is even worse than how Punk Hazard was introduced in the anime.

Long John Silvers Rayleigh

@Chopperrules:

The purpose behind the recap was likely due to Film Gold hitting theaters as a way to introduce new fans. It's not unusual for long running series like this to hit the recaps occassionally. Not to mention we just came out of a huge arc that barely focused on the Straw Hats with some of them missing from the group for a year and a half. Some refreshers on who they are was welcome honestly.

But that doesn't change that the execution of this episode was straight terrible. Again, after coming off the Heart of Gold special that was really well done overall, it's sad to see the beginning of the Zou arc get such a badly paced episode. The big mistake here was trying to make a half clip show episode and half canon episode. Not only were the the flashbacks SUPER jarring and horribly put together, but they really didn't do a good job showing who the Straw Hats were. At least not in depth. Then shoehorning in random manga scenes and ending the episode where they did was really jarring. I was wondering at first why the scene with Kizaru felt off and then a Youtuber reminded me that they cut out Weevil's introduction entirely (to use for next week) and then just showed them arriving on Zou. This is even worse than how Punk Hazard was introduced in the anime.

Did they shoehorn all the elephant stuff into the last minute and ruin the reveal completely?

Tabasco Boshi

The thing is… When they animate the old episodes they use the old palette and makes me wonder why did they change it.

They changing Robin's skin tone was weird but I guess they didn't want to show that big of a change between pre timeskip and post timeskip, but even there, they used the post Marineford tone, which was waaay better than the current skin tone.

They're not trying to hide that they used old colors before (except for that specific case). The anime looked more vibrant in those re animated scenes (even if they didn't have the best animation) than in any of the post timeskip episodes (which, in my opinion, lost some of the One Piece spirit). Sad.

RamistaR

Could it be any more ironic ?

They changed her skin color to make it more canon…..in a filler flashback.

Envy

Eh… Personally I don't feel like I wasted my time... The Sanji flashback and the way it was done had a moment of unintentional humor: Sanji makes that goofy face and asks Luffy if he has heard of the All Blue, and it cuts to Luffy saying "No", and then cuts to him just walking away. The way they made it seem was like Luffy just coldly shot Sanji and his dream down and started walking away, combined with that goofy Sanji face before, I laughed.

The lightning randomly striking Bartolomeo's crew also made me laugh.

...But yeah, flashbacks we have seen a billion times. This is not what I expected from an episode by that title.

Chopperrules

Pretty much, yes. I guess the ending just feels lackluster because it was basically thrown into an episode that focused on recap. That's the problem with poor directing of an episode. There's a certain flow you have to follow which gets ruined if you spend too long dicking around.

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

Just a comparison for people who haven't seen the episode yet.
2006

2016

Long John Silvers Rayleigh

@Chopperrules:

Pretty much, yes. I guess the ending just feels lackluster because it was basically thrown into an episode that focused on recap. That's the problem with poor directing of an episode. There's a certain flow you have to follow which gets ruined if you spend too long dicking around.

Possibly but when reading your description I thought they botched it in a vacuum. The reveal is still really good IMO and didnt feel like it was rushed

Maju

and here i though they couldn't step any lower…

Mr. Luffy

Judging by the screenshots, it looks like they just boosted the overall brightness of those scenes and white saturation. Saturation is also notable in her hair, where it loses its solid blacks while her tears have more of a light bleed. Pretty pointless. I gueeesss so it could match the newly animated post-Alabasta sequence, but that's pretty sloppy regardless.

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

So they didn't even reanimate it? Oh Toei, Toei Toei Toei.

dropper

So when did One Piece make the switch from being animated in 720 to 1080? A forum member said it has always been 720 but I doubt that, what I'm looking at from the recycled footage (Water Seven etc) is 720 footage up-scaled to 1080? It looks like Robin was the only one that they changed the color palette, messed up.
Here are some comparisons, not sure where they got that shot after Brook joins the crew without the filter. However looking closely there's a shot where they fixed Chopper's face but Nami's foot is now under the barrel, in which case they were working from the source production files from previous episodes rather than the video footage. Also look at Chopper's blue nose which they fixed for one shot. A lot of effort for nothing really.

!
Next episode looks good but damn the scale of Zou looks very lackluster.

Long John Silvers Rayleigh

I thought it looked pretty similar to the manga. Note we are looking at the ship being in front of the elephant which means the elephant is larger close to scale

TheGreatCaptainUsopp

@dropper:

So when did One Piece make the switch from being animated in 720 to 1080? A forum member said it has always been 720 but I doubt that, what I'm looking at from the recycled footage (Water Seven etc) is 720 footage up-scaled to 1080? It looks like Robin was the only one that they changed the color palette, messed up.
Here are some comparisons, not sure where they got that shot after Brook joins the crew without the filter. However looking closely there's a shot where they fixed Chopper's face but Nami's foot is now under the barrel, in which case they were working from the source production files from previous episodes rather than the video footage. Also look at Chopper's blue nose which they fixed for one shot. A lot of effort for nothing really.

! https://i.imgur.com/UKEoVDo.jpg
Next episode looks good but damn the scale of Zou looks very lackluster.

So they probably just went into the source and changed Robin's skin tone and hair color. I seriously hope they didn't leave the EL episodes like that after changing them because any new home releases (possible Blu Ray) would have to use them.

Tabasco Boshi

I made this quick edit. How Zoro looks now vs How would he look if they'd never changed the palette (I took the colors from this episode's flashback).

Dahaka. 0

old palette was much better

The Tenth Strawhat

@Tabasco:

I made this quick edit. How Zoro looks now vs How would he look if they'd never changed the palette (I took the colors from this episode's flashback).

http://i.imgbox.com/X49wlMXc.png

I never noticed until now that Pre-Timeskip Zoro had a tan.

Don Quichotte De Flamingo

For a young audience watching it was a good reminder and seeing Zou was breathtaking.

imperioonepiece

Wait, no intro?

I hope next episode we see a new one, because I'm already tired of the current (possibly previous) intro.

Machineman

wow I didn't notice this episode had no intro.

Cyclone_Baroness

Huh? I saw an intro.

Galaxy 9000

@Cyclone_Baroness:

Huh? I saw an intro.

They mean the New World recap intro that's been playing since the beginning of the timeskip.

Cyclone_Baroness

@Galaxy:

They mean the New World recap intro that's been playing since the beginning of the timeskip.

Oooh. I see. I've been annoyed by the for years and always just zoned out during it. Didn't notice it waa gone lol.

Galaxy 9000

@dropper:

So when did One Piece make the switch from being animated in 720 to 1080?

As said to you previously, any 1080p source for the One Piece anime's episodes are simply upscales at the moment. It is not produced at that resolution. Only a few studios do it, and those studios are producing only seasonal shows, not a weekly anime.

Films are a completely different story though.

not sure where they got that shot after Brook joins the crew without the filter.

From the source files. That filter was likely added on in post production back in Episode 381.

in which case they were working from the source production files from previous episodes rather than the video footage.

Yes, they probably do that every time they reuse a scene. Why would they use the episode footage when they have production footage that they can modify if need be? It's how they're able to remove music from scenes that had music previously, or remove filters from scenes that had them before.

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

I don't know if anybody else shares this opinion, but Yamaguchi's original "I want to live!" beats every single repeat that she's recorded. Every other iteration just seems rushed or stale.

Vectorkov

@Galaxy:

I don't know if anybody else shares this opinion, but Yamaguchi's original "I want to live!" beats every single repeat that she's recorded. Every other iteration just seems rushed or stale.

I agree, the original is absolutely gut wrenching

goty

@Don:

For a young audience watching it was a good reminder

Yeah, i doubt it's a coincidence that they made this recap right after Film Gold premiered, when Oda openly expressed his expectations on using the movies to keep bringing in new fans, which Z and especially Strong World succeeded to do - i dare say One Piece can be easily separated between pre and post-Strong World.

They really gotta do this kind of thing once in a while, OP isn't Sazae or Detective Conan where anyone can start following it anytime.

dropper

@Galaxy:

As said to you previously, any 1080p source for the One Piece anime's episodes are simply upscales at the moment. It is not produced at that resolution. Only a few studios do it, and those studios are producing only seasonal shows, not a weekly anime.

That's interesting, why do the latest episodes from this arc not suffer from jaggy edges due to upscaling to 1080, yet the episodes from Enies Lobby do?

Galaxy 9000

@dropper:

That's interesting, why do the latest episodes from this arc not suffer from jaggy edges due to upscaling to 1080, yet the episodes from Enies Lobby do?

Faulty upscaling is the most likely culprit.

The "special edition" episodes of 1-206 also look pretty terrible due to bad upscaling and cropping. If done properly, they wouldn't look half as bad.

dropper

@Galaxy:

Faulty upscaling is the most likely culprit.

The "special edition" episodes of 1-206 also look pretty terrible due to bad upscaling and cropping. If done properly, they wouldn't look half as bad.

They should have access to the project files for 1-206 too, whatever software they are using after a certain point they were able to upscale without issues. I think it's Retas. I'm surprised they still have access to project files over 10 years old.