Luffy and his pirate friends—Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji and others—arrive at the island Elegia to attend a concert of the new singing star Uta. Luffy recognizes her as the girl he met 12 years ago, when she was adopted by pirate leader Shanks, but who left her at Elegia so that she can make a music career. Uta ate the magical fruit and obtained powers which allow for her singing to place people into a dream, as she intends to make the world full of happiness. When Luffy’s team declines to stay, she captures them with her magical powers. Demon entity Tot Musica appears in both worlds, so Luffy’s team beats him in both the dream world and reality, returning people back from the dream state, while Uta and Shanks reconcile.
Made as a commemoration of sorts for the 1,000th episode of the neverending anime series “One Piece”, the 15th “One Piece” anime film is overburdened, overstuffed and at times too dense to be truly enjoyed, since the authors struggled to cram so many subplots and characters into the story, yet it still has enough charm and anime spirit to make it work. “One Piece: Red” shares the basic plot elements of Hosoda's anime film “Belle”, where a teenage girl is attempting to become a singer superstar in a parallel world, since there are uncharacteristically many songs for this kind of genre thanks to the new character of singer Uta, who uses her singing as a form of magical powers that allow her to do anything, Genie-Aladdin-style. The opening act works the best: it almost starts as a reference to Hill's film "Streets of Fire" in which a singer is abducted on stage during a concert—here, several gangsters want to kidnap singer Uta on stage, but, in a great twist, she turns out to be the one in full control, since her singing powers easily defeat said villains. In a further twist, the sympathetic Uta turns into an unlikely villain herself: initially, she wants to create an utopia of happiness for everyone, but when Luffy and the gang decline, since they want to go on their own adventures and don't want to stay with her for the rest of their lives, she starts enforcing her vision, thereby creating a fundamentalist dictatorship, in a sly jab at numerous revolutions in history that started out with good intentions, but ultimately just brought about a new layer of terror. Unfortunately, the rest of the film feels out of touch with the viewers, since its frenetic pace doesn't allow for the rushed story to simply calm down and give the audience time to "interact". Numerous characters feel almost like extras (Nami, Zoro, Usopp) since there was not enough time to give everyone a scene to shine, and even Luffy is almost the supporting character in his own movie. The bizarre finale involving a double fight in the real and dream world ultimately just leads to the typical 'fightorama', feeling more obligatory than inspired. "One Piece: Red" is good and imaginative, but feels like a syncretic "A Star is Born" and "Dragonball" patchwork dictated by the committee.
Grade:++
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