Anime: One Piece: Taose! Kaizoku Ganzack

Art & Animation

The main characters look almost as good as in the main series. Attacks look decent. However, since it's an old animation, especially an OVA, there was considerable lack of vividness of colors.

Sound

The soundtrack was kind of lame. It didn't fit the situations well (or at all actually), and the music itself felt nothing special.

Voice acting was great, I'd say of same level as in the main series. The difference is that the main 3 characters that show up in this OVA all have different voice actors than in the anime. However, to me their voices sounded really close to voices in the main series, so I was quite surprised and glad actually. Luffy's, Nami's and Zoro's voices all fit their characters really good, just like in the main series.

The ending song is.... nothing special.

Story

Considering the length of this OVA, the story really couldn't have progressed better, because there was surely no time for it. But this OVA is just an introduction to One Piece, so the story shouldn't be taken seriously anyway. It was okay, considering this is just a "show preview" OVA, which runs for 30 minutes. There is a main villain, his minions, main good characters and other people with their roles. For an OVA of this type, the story was okay. But generally viewed, this wasn't much, mostly because everything happened too fast, with too little portrayal of characters and situations.

The story resembles the initial Buggy arc from the main series.

Character

Luffy was funny and awesome as he is in the main series, although Zoro didn't get much screen time for his battle, just like Nami lacked a bit of emotions (of realizing what kind of person Luffy is, even though he is a pirate), or at least they weren't shown. All of this was done better in the main series, but of course, there was time and room for a lot of action and development there.

The villain and his crew were pretty much on the same level as (at least initial) villains in the main series, minus the time it took to defeat them (paralell with the OVA time), which made them seem easily beatable.

Value

Honestly, even though the OVA wasn't really bad to watch, I'd say that it's completely worthless now. Its main function was to introduce One Piece to the audience, and to stir some interest before the main series would start airing. Things done in the OVA were much better done in the main series. I say this because this OVA resembles certain episodes from the main series. I guess the only value of this short OVA would be people realizing how lucky they are because the main series has much better animation, has awesome soundtrack (compared to this lousy one), and voice actors with more impact.

It's not really memorable or rewatchable, because it "copies" segments of story from certain main series episodes (even though the OVA was made earlier, but manga beats even OVA).

Enjoyment

It was okay, but nothing special. The main characters didn't get much screen time showing their actions, moves, thinking, etc.

One Piece may be considered the best perpetual ongoing shounen of all times, but its first anime adaptation was actually a short OVA, aiming to promote it and subtly prepare the way for the main series to begin next year. Strangely enough it is made by an entirely different studio, and for that reason it also has a very different animation style, as well as voice actors.

I have heard from most viewers how they didn’t like it because it looks weird and has different voices but these reasons are mostly aesthetic since we were accustomed to the Toei style. It is not bad at all for the year it was made and actually has some very good names in the production team. Studio I.G. has far better budgets than Toei and poured enough in this short to make it look ok. The director of it was Taniguchi Gorou, and this was also his first wok. Later on he went on to direct many other famous/cult anime, such as Infinite Ryvius, Planetes, and Code Geass. As for the voice actors, the villain is voiced by none other than Wakamoto Norio, one of the most distinguished and cherished ones in the field.

All the bright people in the world though are not enough to make a good omelette out of rotten eggs, and it is true that the plot is too short and simple to mean anything. In just half an hour, we get a more than linear story of the gang having to beat a pirate for food. It also plays out quite anti-climactically, as there are only three of them, they don’t even have their first ship yet (just a small boat) and the villain just wants to build a ship and a base. Not that the later movies were doing a much better job but at least offered a bit more time to building up the tension and fleshing out the secondary cast a bit. Yet here we have this child trying to protect the island and the bad pirate exploiting the population and we barely get anything worth remembering them about. And seriously, having a kid asking from the heroes to help turned out to be an overused and lame trope for the franchise.

Now something regarding the pirate Ganzack. Aside from being a filler character without a backdrop that we will never see again, he is also a very weird blend of various cannon villains. He has the clothes of Baggy, and the mechanical weaponry of Don Krieg. And if I stretch it, since Oda eventually took ideas even from the movies for his later arcs, Ganzack also uses a crab weapon like a very minor pirate captain in Merman Island. But hey, he is voiced by Norio and that alone gives him some style, lol.

The action scenes are good for their time; simple yet with fluent motions for the most part that make them a bit likable. The problem is, they last too little to get you into the proper mood but they are not bad. The sound part is unimpressive in terms of music and terrible if you can’t get past the different voices the characters have.

In all, it is quite the passable little OVA but the open minded should accept that it’s well made or how it was meant to promote what was to be the most adorable long-term shounen of them all.

And now for some excused scorings.
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