Posts made by Charagon

I'm going to miss Fight Together. It's easily my favorite opening since Believe.

I'm going to take the Vivi scene as Oda telling Toei to hint at Vivi's return to the crew… and none of you can stop me!

VIVI!

I'm not sure if it's ever been confirmed, but he seems to have the ability to create wind and lightning, so I'm thinking something along the lines of the Storm Storm Fruit.

I hear watch the episode and find out for yourself.

I have a feeling that we are in the long-haul when it comes to filler. Expect Toei to drag the flashback out as long as possible and then milk the other Straw Hat adventures out for as much as they're worth while the manga builds up a buffer.

Cute opening, very nostalgic. Not big on the emphasis on chibi-Luffy and Ace.

It would be nice if Japan could go a while without putting out another half-dozen pedo-bait shows. I'm getting tired of looking for shows that look like they'd be good for my little sister, only to find that they're not appropriate at all for her.

@Slappy402:

http://www.mania.com/aodvb/showthread.php?t=104227

Cover is up.

Was a little jarring to see at first…since I own the wallscroll of that already.

I know I'm WAY behind on my One Piece, but I gotta say that cover is pretty damn cool. Way better than the first batch of S3 covers.

@Kaiolino:

Wait, you think the fact that the only thing people remember from OP is the retarded rap? lol.

Yes. For the vast majority of people, the only thing they know about One Piece is its retarded rap. I have a friend who's just as big into anime as I am, but he doesn't watch One Piece and anytime I bring it up he starts singing "Ya Yo Ya Yo"…

At which point I threaten/inflict physical violence. He'll learn one of these days.

@Kaiolino:

Your theory is proven wrong by Dragon Soul, which is a hit on Nicktoons, regardless of its "Japanese" opening.

You know, using anything related to Dragonball to make that point is kind of silly considering the fact that the vast majority of DBZ fans prefer Rock The Dragon to Cha-La.

Anyway, trimming the openings down to a minute probably wouldn't be too difficult, and if it is, it's not like they have to use them all anyway. They could trim down We Are and use it all the way to the end of Arabasta if they wanted, skipping Believe entirely.

Or just make a new one from scratch. It wouldn't really matter.

Both covers are okay. Certainly a step-up from the first two of the season.

Actually, this brings up something I've wondered about for quite a while. What is the anime culture like in Australia? I mean… Japan is practically right next door compared to North America.

@Legionarius:

haha So because I don't agree with the average opinion, that warrants me being banned? What a joke.

You know what else counts as trolling? Making the same inflammatory comments over and over while ignoring the explanations already given to you.

You know, if you're going to criticize alliteration, at least call it such.

@onemoment:

The action was great, there were nice twists at each turn, and we got to see a creatively done movie by the One Piece author.

Wait, what?

When were there twists?

I was watching that prelude episode to Strong World last night and I realized why the movie itself was such a let down.

Shiki is supposed to be a relic from the old school pirate era. He hung with Roger, Garp, Whitebeard, and such. He's the one man to escape from Impel Down and he's been hidden for 20 years. He should be a HUGE name in the world of One Piece.

But what happens in the movie? The Straw Hats come across a flying ship at random and curbstomp the guy once they get sufficiently motivated. That's it. None of that backstory meant a darn thing. Shiki might as well have just come out of nowhere for all it mattered.

Virtually all of Shiki's character development happens in the prelude. He was far more interesting there. In the movie, he was just a typical bad guy.

@Supa64:

Ya this is true. I doubt Toei would just ruin a good arc like this.

Why? What makes you think they wouldn't?

@Buuhan1:

Speaking of past openings/endings, I really think I'm the only person who really REALLY liked Crazy Rainbow…

I enjoy it more than most. It'd easily go in the top half of my ranking.

@Buuhan1:

I honestly can't figure them out from their history, or rather I've never bothered to do research. It's still not clear if Toei took OP away from 4kids cause it just wasn't doing well, they didn't approve of how 4kids was editing it, or if 4kids actually gave it back cause they couldn't deal with it anymore.

Then there's Sailor Moon, which they apparently took away cause they didn't like how DIC handled it. So much so they locked Sailor Moon's license away in a vault and didn't allow any other dubbing company to attempt the series. Almost a decade later I hear they're finally actually shopping Sailor Moon around again.

I sure don't want that to happen to One Piece tho, so hopefully Toei lets FUNi do their thing.

I've heard a lot of reasons for a lot of the weird crap anime licensing companies have pulled, but I've never seen treating the intellectual property and its fans right cited as a reason for anything.

If Toei is doing or not doing something with Sailor Moon or One Piece, it's because of the $$$.

Spoilers Ahoy!

[hide]Eh, it didn't live up to the hype, but at this point it couldn't have possibly done that anyway.

I second all of Vauny's comments above and add some disappointment that we didn't get to see the Straw Hats work with the Marines like we initially thought. The movie was actually surprisingly light on story.

On the upside though, spectacular animation and amazing creature/character design. Robin has never looked cuter than in her adventure outfit and Luffy never more badass than in his suit.

I loved all the crazy animals too. I think my favorite is the one that had a scythe for a front leg. (It was a deer or something).[/hide]

@RomanceDawn:

Well thats something. I was so dissapointed that I didn't get any One Piece news from Funimation or Viz. I kept going to their booths each day asking about it. Then tried to see the voice actors again this year but was just a bit too late in lining up.

Yeah, I didn't see anybody this year either. Couldn't make it to their panel and never saw thing going on at the booth except people handing out those SSJ headbands.

An absurdly tiny.

@LucidL:

You're right. Here in Korea, there are people who collect, but there are also people who go to these so-called "book rental shops", where you can rent the volumes for a day at less than one-tenth of the original price. Like, One Piece is 4500won if you buy it but 400won if you rent it. Not surprisingly, the manga/manhwa industry in Korea sucks.

We have those in the states too. Except you don't rent the books, you just say you want to borrow them and that you'll bring them back in a week.

@Samemind:

Look on the bright side! This could indicate they're taking more time to make this war excellently well-made.

I seriously doubt this has affected their production schedule at all.

@Greg:

Bash the melody/singer all you want.

Okay! It was an incredibly bland song with little redeeming value.

I don't know. I just assumed it was Whitebeard breaking the 4th Wall with his awesomeness. It never occurred to me that the effect was an aspect of his power until some jackholes starting talking about it here.

I'd absolutely get Movie 4, and probably 2 (That had Jango's Dance, right?) but I'm not sure I'd bother with the others.

@Unbreakable:

this is a good song?:w00t:

Blink 182 > You

People who dislike Blink obviously have nothing of significant to contribute.

@Mumbling2:

I tried my hand at doing my own version of the opening. Granted, I love the new opening, but I had so much fun when everyone made their own versions of opening 12, that I felt compelled to do this.

That wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. I'd take it over what we got.

@Thousand:

How about you put up or shut up and link a good sad song then?

2MRdtXWcgIw

@Mumbling2:

This opening is epic because the shot of Nami confirms the existence of doughnuts in OP. I don't think I've ever seen them in the series. EPIC.

Dude, huh? In Garp's very first appearance he was going for the world record of doughnut eating.

I give it a resounding 'meh'. The visuals were pretty cool, if not a bit typical. The song wasn't as aggressively annoying as Share the World or aggressively kiddie as Kaze wo Sagashite. Instead it was just… boring. I think I may try recutting the video to fit with a different song to see what happens.

Edit: After a second look, I think what really gets me is the complete lack of creative editing. The bulk of the opening is just two-beat clips playing in succession. Of course, that beat goes through most of the song so there really isn't much to work with. There's one beat change from 1:32-1:56, but the only clever thing done is matching Luffy's footsteps to the increased tempo for the few seconds there aren't out-of-place chibi-Luffy/Ace scenes.

The video really doesn't interact with the audio very much beyond that.

Kaze wo Shagashite may not be anybody's favorite, but actually put a lot of effort at playing off the synergy between audio and video, which is about the only reason it's as tolerable as it is.

@Bludgeon:

It's like you guys are trying hard to not understand his point though.

Funimation screws early adopters.

Just like all of us who bought animation on tape, and again on DVD when selection was limited and price was higher. We know we could be payin' more and also know had we waited prices would eventually plummet.

This is true for EVERY PRODUCT IN EXISTENCE!

@DarthEnder:

The thing you are conveniently forgetting is that Funimation, while they don't get any income from television airing at the moment, also isn't PAYING any of the money it costs to actually MAKE the program. Yes, they pay a licensing cost, but that's not as much as Toei pays to make it.

I guess in Texas dub actors are all volunteers, recording equipment grows on trees, and DVD production facilities fall from the friggin sky.

A coloring book killed my parents. :(

No, it just reminds me of those crappy merchandise tie-ins of whatever was popular at the time when I was a kid. The kind that insulted your intelligence with their presentation as if you didn't know what the hell you were looking at. It annoyed me when I was five and I get the same reaction looking at the S3V2.

@Badass:

HOW IS S3V2 CLIP ART IMAGES?

Where have you seen those images before? At this point, it just seems like your pulling random things out of your ass.

::Facepalm:: You know, if you guys are going to bitch about me acting like Mr. Smarty-Pants, you could at least stop deserving it.

1. Nothing in the forest background is interacting with anything in the foreground nor is there a single tree branch, vine, or leaf in front of any of the characters. Likewise, none of the seven pieces of clip art are interacting with each other.

2. Sanji's appears to be directly under Luffy, but the perspectives of the two of them are completely different. Look at Sanji's left arm for pete's sake!

3. Sanji's breaking out of the goddamn frame! This is an incredibly complex thing to do with a singular piece of art and an incredibly simple thing to do with layers.

Did people actually think that this was a whole image? That Toei gave Funi a piece of art for the cover that just happened to make it look like Luffy's swinging from the One Piece logo or that they stopped drawing everything around Sanji's right arm so it could stick out like that?

It's so obvious I could probably tell you the layer order of each piece of clip art.

From Highest to Lowest
1. One Piece Logo
2. Luffy
3. Sanji
4-6. Balls
7. Cover Frame
8. Woodish Panel with Season/Voyage numbers
9. Satori
10. Usopp
11. Forest Background

At least that's how I'd do it.

Considering the fact that every One Piece DVD cover to date has been a clip art image, I can't imagine this is a surprise to everybody.

Yes, even the S3V1 cover is clip art. In fact, it's two clip arts. You can see very clearly that the right wing, Luffy, and Merry's head are not quite lined up with the rest of the ship behind it. This is why the wing and the head are shown above the metal frame and the rest of the ship is shown behind it. It's a perspective trick.

Also, although I haven't picked up S3V2 yet, I'd bet a dollar that some of the clip art on the cover is standing alone on the inner DVD cases.

A few things things, then I'm done for reals.

@Silver:

Now Season 3's DVD changed that instead of clip art we got images that recreate the scenes from the show.

Not true. The S3V2 cover, which is the one I dislike most, still uses clip art. The only difference is the forest background.

@Silver:

This I believe that is a much more tasteful way of doing the sets.

This is just where we're never going to see eye-to-eye. I think it looks like it belongs in a coloring book. Hardly more tasteful than the previous ones.

@Silver:

Taking something iconic to the show especially to fans, and they'll say, "That's bad ass." Its like making a Legend of Zelda: OoT Poster and putting kid link pulling the Master Sword for the first time. We all know exactly what part of the game we saw, and its so iconic that it brings us back to that moment instantly.

::Cough::Million Seller::Cough::

@Silver:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/1912/voyage3p.pnghttp://a.yfrog.com/img228/610/voyage6.png

Okay yeah, those are pretty badass. But you are using two of the most awesome and iconc scenes from the series to pull it off (Likewise, why Going Merry sailing up doesn't bother me all that much). Luffy, Sanji, and Usopp running from Satori's balls… not exactly in the same league, and that's the problem. Not every DVD is going to have an awesome scene to slap on the front, but you can't really screw up clip-art on a uniform background (unless you forget to take Chopper's leg out of the front of the image). So for every awesome cover we'll get, there will be four or five crappy ones with scenes like... well, Satori and his balls.

And while Puto's inability to get a DVD drive that doesn't butt!@#$ you is both funny and sad, I do understand his point. If there is nobody actually licensed to sell One Piece where he is, then you gotta do what you gotta do. Importing is an option, but that's hardly ideal. And why buy from an organization that isn't actually selling to you?

@Demon:

Don't you dare. EVER, compare me to Glenn Weepyboy Beck. That's the highest insult you can ever pay someone. I wouldn't incite it upon even my worst enemy.

And, I've never seen someone abbreviate "YMMV", I didn't know what you meant by it.

So you read my post, ignored the parts you didn't understand, misunderstood the rest, attacked me because of it, and somehow out of all that I'M the asshole?

Seriously?

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to use the Jimbei Facepalm pic.

@Demon:

This is probably the MOST annoying. Essentially, "I've been in this business for xx years, so I should know a thing or two by now" doesn't suddenly invalidate all of our opinions on the subject. After all, Uwe Boll started making movies in 1991.

Reality to Rin, I'm not the one who brought credentials into this! That was Chopper.

When somebody says you don't know jack about something that's been part of your career your entire adult life, what exactly do you expect the response would be?

How would you react if some Nakama fanboy came out and said you didn't know jack about the Japanese language?

I may not agree with you 100% about that particular subject, but I've never questioned your knowledge in that field.

Quite frankly, I may be an asshole, but none of you are any better.

Cripes, does the phrase 'tongue in cheek' mean anything to you, or is the stick so far up your butt that there's no room in your mouth for it to maneuver?

Nice how you completely ignore the fact that the very sentence you bolded starts with 'Your mileage may vary". After all, wouldn't want to let things like reality get in the way of your absurd conclusions. Isn't that right, Glenn?

It sure is!

@Chopperrules:

Obviously you know jack shit about the art of advertising to a crowd that is not familiar with a product.

@Chopperrules:

So in the end, none of us know what we're talking about and he's a walking dictionary on One Piece.

I was going to drop this since I've been really busy this weekend but this was too funny to pass up.

First of all, if you're depending on the cover art to sell your product, your advertising department has failed. But don't take my word for it, let's ask the best selling DVD this year what it has to say…

Man, with a crappy cover like that, that movie is lucky it got any sales at all! How is somebody even supposed to know what the movie is about from that cover? AmIright!

Secondly, One Piece is not exactly sitting in every Wal-Mart nor is a $35 DVD set of a series your kid doesn't know a thing about a common impulse purchase. So targeting the cover towards that demographic is about as productive as advertising exclusively to the Amish. To put it simply, very few people are going to buy One Piece on a whim, and of those that do, very few of them are going to do it because the cover tipped the scales.

And finally, if I come across like I know what I'm talking about, it's because I've been in the newspaper business for eight years and odds are good that I have more knowledge about advertising than all of you combined.

I don't mean to come across like an asshole, but you guys are grasping at straws. This is most telling from the fact that the big argument I'm hearing for this new style of cover is not that it's more visually appealing, but that it's better advertising. That's an insane conclusion and leaves me believing that side of the debate is fueled by nothing more than blind Funi worship.

I never heard one complaint about the covers for the first two seasons, but to listen to you guys talk now you'd think that they were horrible mistakes.

Well they weren't. They were awesome. So awesome that I, me, Charagon, yeah, THAT Charagon, can't think of a single thing he'd change about them. (okay, maybe I'd change Arlong's clip-art to something a little more dignified than him holding his own teeth, but that's a trivial detail)

The S3 covers don't compare. Period. They aren't more eye catching, they aren't telling a story, and they aren't going to increase sales. To put it terms I know this board is familiar with, 'they aren't some magical covers with special significance to the series'. It's just Funi trying something new.

Something new that isn't as nice looking as what we had before.

YMMV, and if you like the covers for what they are that's one thing (a wrong thing!) but don't try to pretend that this new format Funi is going with will in any way boost sales. You're just hiding behind your own ignorance.

@Badass:

This shows that you would rather have generic poses over covers that tell a story.

….... how long exactly did it take you to figure that out?

Yeah, covers that tell stories are for MORONS. If you're so stupid that you need to look at pretty pictures in order to figure out what the hell you're about to watch, you must be braindead.

Me, not being a moron, would much rather have awesome looking posed art than some screenshot copy pasted onto the box.

@BatrozX:

I understand what you mean Charagon, but your OPINION that it looks like "amateur hour crap" is a bit off. Also, you didn't really say exactly why should it have been the character cover instead of the official cover there is on S3V2. Yeah, you showed some nice covers from past DVDs, but you didn't compare it at all with the ones at hand.

Well, of the three S3 ones, the character cover was still bad, but at least it wasn't AS bad as offensively bad as the Balls one. (I had trouble linking the S3 covers, hence why they do not appear in the post)

@BatrozX:

You must also remember that the covers aren't for us already fans, but for those who haven't seen the show at all.

That's a pretty thin rational. If that were the point of it, you'd see it happening more. But the vast majority of all DVDs don't follow that philosophy.

@BatrozX:

Now we take this new cover art in S3V1 and S3V2, and we see covers that are more colorful and shinier.

Like a coloring book.

@BatrozX:

These things catch people's eyes far more than a cover with just character illustrations, and I hardly doubt it looks like amateur hour crap.

I'm glad you agree.

@BatrozX:

The idea is that this cover art that S3V2 officialy has will make it sell more than the other one, because let's be honest, fans will still buy the DVD regardless of the cover art.

I'm still not buying it (not the DVD, the idea). The only people that cover is going to stick out to is children and typically parents don't drop that much money on a show their kids aren't fans of. And really, there can't be a significant number of people buying One Piece that aren't already fans of it, and they certainly aren't going to start at Season 3 if they do.

@BatrozX:

So you prefer a DVD cover art that says absolutely nothing of the actual events taking place on it with recycled images photoshopped together than an actual cover art that tells you what's happening on the actual DVD?

First off, you're completely ass backwards on the whole concept of how a cover relates the events of a story into a single image.

Look at this.

Freaking epic Hell, it's so great that I want to find a super high-res version of it to make a poster. It's the kind of cover art that could easily pass for a movie poster.

In fact…

Those two are examples of how you do cover art. Everything you need to know about the Arabasta arc, boiled down to the most basic core, is shown in that art.

By comparison, these new two pieces of !@#$ look like something out of a friggin coloring book. Luffy on the boat isn't too bad, but the latest one is just godawful. There's no sense of style or to it at all. It doesn't tell you anything important about the story. There's nothing important about the Trial of Balls. They just ripped off a scene from an episode and stuck it on the box.

Moreover, there was no need to start putting scenery in the background or having clip art breaking outside the frames. There's no reason to for the cover to play out a scene from the show. That's what the DVD is for!

Pull out any DVD on your shelf and odds are good you won't be able to find one that does this. Why? Because it looks like amateur hour crap.

I was totally serious by the way. I like the group shot 1000x better than either the S3V1 or S3V2 art. Hell, the S3V2 one doesn't even make sense. Why are Luffy and Sanji both facing AWAY from Satori?

Clip shows are the worst kind of filler. This one was especially bad because the preview lied to us. I was promised a rousing adventure of young Ace and Luffy. What I got was a minute or so of contextless memory and then recap, recap, recap. Gee, I wonder why they didn't put that in the preview…

I'm sure the animators need a break sometime, but that's just a dirty trick.

You're all retarded. The 'bad cover' is the best one for Skypiea yet.

@Captain:

How is it breaking continuity by using different words that carry similar meaning? Shipmate, friend, one of us, it's all good.

The repetition of a specific word or phrase throughout a story is a writing technique. It ties important events together by earmarking their significance.

While not quite the same as One Piece, look at Shaun of the Dead. What makes that movie so awesome is how it uses the repetition of lines in different situations to tell the story.

@Demon:

So yes, I mean, using more than one word to refer to the theme of a series just doesn't make sense, it's not like Oda did it all the time.

And for every one of those examples there are five that specifically use Nakama, so you're right. It's not like Oda does it all the time.

@Demon:

Either is a better translation solution than "Just leave it".
The same exact argument can be made about any word in any language. Nothing comes across with a 1:1 solution.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but true enough. You make valid points, but neither 'Urusai' or 'Hige' are the key theme of One Piece.

@Demon:

But FUNimation does the right thing, they translate it. Anyone who thinks they shouldn't doesn't know what they're talking about.

I'm relatively certain those people don't even exist. That's what gets me about you and this argument, you keep referring to opposing arguments I've never seen anybody make. From my point of view, you are putting a lot of effort into debating imaginary people.

@Chopperrules:

In the case of nakama, that's why FUNi sometimes uses friend, sometimes uses crewmate/crew… you can use ally, or "join"... there's so many different ways to choose from given the situation.

And the problem with that comes from the fact that when you use multiple translations for a single word, you're breaking the continuity of repetition.

From a translation standpoint that's fine and dandy, but from a storytelling standpoint it's harmful. A minor loss, but a loss nonetheless.

Every major arc, and many minor arcs, have explored and involved the concept of 'nakama' in some way. You could use 'friend' all the time and have awkward lines of dialogue every so often, you could use friend most of the time and break the continuity, or you could leave it untranslated and depend on the viewer's ability to expand their vocabulary.

For a professional release, especially a dub, breaking the continuity is the obvious option. The dub has to appeal to the mass market and that means making the script as easy to understand as possible takes priority, even if you lose story elements in the process.

In the case of a fansub, where expectations for both producer and consumer are different, learning a new word is an extremely small price to pay in order to keep a significant story marker intact. But none of these are perfect options and it's foolish to say that any one is inherently better than the other in all situations.

@Demon:

In Peter Pan, they call the stuff that makes people fly "Pixie Dust". That's what the writer of the original story decided to call it. Nothing in the phrase "Pixie Dust" implies that it does what it does. By your logic, if something needs to be named by the dictionary definition of what it does, it should have been called "Magic Flying Dust".
No, the writer called it "Pixie Dust" for a reason. Because it comes from a Pixie.

I'm not arguing with you about Haki as I don't really care one way or the other, but that is incredibly weak comparison. Not even close.

@Demon:

Oda called this the Japanese word for "Ambition" for a reason. I think, and from what I've seen, quite a few people think it's because it comes from/ Is fueled by a person's actual Ambition.

Ummmm, duh?

Of course, by that logic, I suppose you drive around in your gas and listen to music on your battery.

@Demon:

If you cal it "Ambition" in English then you cover both bases, and when Oda finally explains what it truly is, if actual "Ambition" has anything to do with it, then you've done right because it all comes full circle with the name.
If Oda doesn't reveal that, then it's still fine because it's just named the same way the author did.

Totally agree. Never said it wasn't right, just that it's always going to be awkward. Hell, it's awkward in Japanese.

@Demon:

Can we not and say we did?

"Nakama Should be Translated, it's Just a normal Japanese word."

"No it shouldn't, it's a super special magical word that means magical happy awesome spectacular things that can't be conveyed in this weak 'English' language you people think is so cool! No, Japanese is better!"

Have I told you lately how bitter you sound when you make up crap like that?

I like how you 'forgot' to mention that in the context which is continually used within One Piece, there is no 1 to 1 English equivalent, so you're left with either using a word that won't fit right in every situation or multiple words to fit in as needed. Neither being a great translation solution.

The biggest issue here is that until somebody can find a dictionary entry that says 'Ambition' is a reality altering inner power, it's going to seem awkward regardless of whether or not it's an accurate translation of 'Haki'.

I liked the Zanpakutou arc. The only problem was it ended about twenty episodes after it finished.

@Miadestroystokyo:

am I the only person who is dissatisfied with Crocodile's voice actor?

I don't mind the actor, but I dislike the acting. Dub Crocodile sounds more like a brutish thug than criminal mastermind.

Well, let's see. Last time they met, Crocodile impaled him, poisoned him, nearly drained him dry, and buried him alive. Luffy came back from all that and gave him a beat down that landed him in prison.

By this point Crocodile must realize that working against Luffy is not in his best interests.

There is a top dog on that boat and it isn't either of the Warlords.

@o-chan:

Luffy- So it’s a mystery disease. Think you can help him?

YAY! I'm happy! Huzzah for Funimation!

@Quexinos:

I guess I'm a little disappointed because Robin's "That's 7 million per person genius" line to Ussop is still in there. But the "genius" part seems to be quieter XD IT's like they tried to edit it out but couldn't quite or something.

LAME! I'm angry! You suck, Funimation!