Thriller Bark Arc Discussion [Anime-only]

[Rinji]

Okay, is it just me, or was the "Voltron" Emporer move Franky attempted NOT in the manga? Because it seems like I'd remember that....

[Tommy]

Originally Posted by Rinji

Okay, is it just me, or was the "Voltron" Emporer move Franky attempted NOT in the manga? Because it seems like I'd remember that....

It was in there and it was fantastic, however, the anime brought it to a whole new level of awesomeness.

[LeoThugs]

377 was simply brilliant. the anime added a whole new level of awesomeness to the wholo Zoro affair. And the background music while Zoro and Kuma were talking gave that epic effect brilliantly.

[Slayerx]

Y'know, actually i'm getting a bit worried about the anime... i've been watching the last few episodes and i feel like the anime may be falling into the same trappings as Naruto Shippudeen.

Sure, the music is there, but the direction is falling apart. The timing and pacing feels terribly slow. for example, after the intro, it took like 7 minutes to get to where Zoro attacks Kuma (3 minutes of recap, and 4 minutes after that)... and the poor pacing seem to be throughout the episode and some of the last few... I mean, i know you generally slow things down to help increase dramatic tension, but it feels like they are going even slower then they should be... seems like they are following what naruto started and slowing things down as much as they can, trying to cover as little manga material in a single episode as possible (1episode = 1 chapter even though good timing and pacing says 1 episode = 1.5-2 chapters... or something like that)... to avoid catching up with the manga, they sacrifice the pacing to stall for time

personally, i'd much rather see more filler's... waste time like that to help the manga get ahead instead of using poor pacing... this only reminds me of how stupid the shippuudden directors are; they did horribly long, poorly written filler seasons and STILL insist on piss poor pacing for the anime

it really does worry me since i have long since thought that one piece had some of the best direction as far a shonen's go.While the moments are there in the manga, the anime really brings them to life through directing, acting, music and so forth... so i really do find it disheartening to see the directing suffer... i'd rather sit through fillers if it meant seeing one piece aswell done as it has always been.

i'm kinda hoping that the direction gets better in the coming episodes

[ellifeedn]

I hope a solution can be found. With the way the episodes are now, I'm finding myself just watching parts of each episode for certain moments and almost never watching the whole episode.

[Blackbeard D. Kuma]

Originally Posted by Slayerx

personally, i'd much rather see more filler's... waste time like that to help the manga get ahead instead of using poor pacing...

You know what is a much better alternative than this? Reruns of well-paced canon episodes. I find it very stupid how Japan doesn't show reruns of their animes. If someone in Japan happens to miss an episode with very important material from the manga, that person would never be able to see it unless they purchase the DVD containing that specific episode. Then again the internet does compensate for missing an episode now doesn't it? Why can't they rerun episodes with great canon material in the event of catching up too close to the manga instead of resorting to airing crappy fillers that have absolutely no relevance to the story of the author? It is only inevitable for anime adaptations to catch up to their manga counterparts since more material can be covered in the allotted 20 minutes as opposed to one chapter; but because the Japanese audience always wants to see something new each and every week, the pacing of canon material from the manga is greatly compromised/sacrificed. It seems apparent that the Japanese don't like as much to see the same things again, and the fact that fillers are always aired in animes is a testament to such a tendency on their part.

[Slayerx]

Well the pacing in the new episode was a little better... it did feel like it was rather slow, but when it comes down to it, aside from just a few parts, i'm not really sure where it could have been cut down and increased the pace... unlike the previous couple of episodes which could have been easily been cut down. i guess this episode was just an inherently slow episode and their really wasn't much to avoid it

You know what is a much better alternative than this? Reruns of well-paced canon episodes.

You may have a point there... though i can see reasons against doing such a thing. For on thing, there is always profit, nothing says "buy the dvd" than you will not be able to see the episode again; and fillers just mean more dvd's they can sell... however since i've never been to japan and thus do not know, there is a good possibility that the Japanese DO run reruns... i mean, does one piece really only have ONE timeslot a week? seems more likely that it would have more than one timeslot with the other timeslots running reruns...

And the problem with extremely long series like one piece when it comes to reruns is asking "where to draw the line" in terms of where to begin a rerun and where to end it. plots in one piece stretch over MANY episodes, and missing those episodes means missing a bit of a plot, so you are kinda of forced to show those episodes if you want to run reruns... And that could be too long a stretch of time since the series airs only once a week. for example, you want to show off alabasta, well can you really just start off in at the battles of the capitol, or will you need to show from where they first arrive to the country to display all the back story of the rebellion and croc's... and it's a slipperly slope since that could push them into wanting to show everything from laboon to get in all the background behind baraque works... trying to show off enies lobby would be a nightmare since you can't do that without also showing off all of water 7...

I mean, take DBZ in the states for instance... they kept on jumping backwords to show off reruns, and that made it really annoying because it would take so long to get to new material... if DBZ wasn't being aired like 5 times a week(thus getting through the series faster) it would have been downright unbearable to deal with (though i do recall a time in my childhood when it aired only once a week...)

The fans who watch the series are starved for new episodes; its much worse for stories that have an on going story and are not episodic... if your gonna run reruns you want to only do it for a relatively short time so that you can get back to the story... you would only want to run those reruns for like a couple of months (1month=4episodes), and then give the viewers what they want... though with LONG storylines it can be kind hard to just run reruns for a few months and not wind up doing it for over a year... best thign they might be able to do is rerun filler arcs, as those are very short and don't required much at all back story.

[ellifeedn]

I saw episode 378 and it was rather nice. I especially liked the song, very catchy.

[Tommy]

One Piece has had pacing problems for 100's of episodes now, it's nothing new and sadly I've grown accustomed to it. The difference, however, is that despite these problems I still find One Piece very enjoyable unlike other shounens that employ these techniques. This is due to the fact that One Piece is just very well written and really hard to screw up, IMO.

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by Tommy

One Piece has had pacing problems for 100's of episodes now, it's nothing new and sadly I've grown accustomed to it. The difference, however, is that despite these problems I still find One Piece very enjoyable unlike other shounens that employ these techniques. This is due to the fact that One Piece is just very well written and really hard to screw up, IMO.

Agreed. While I do think One Piece has several "not so great" episodes, they're all, at the very least, entertaining and worth watching, and occasionally, like the last two weeks, they give us a truly awesome episode, so even if the anime is no longer AS good as it was back in say, the Alabasta-arc, it's still awesome.

[Tommy]

Originally Posted by Vegard Aune

Agreed. While I do think One Piece has several "not so great" episodes, they're all, at the very least, entertaining and worth watching, and occasionally, like the last two weeks, they give us a truly awesome episode, so even if the anime is no longer AS good as it was back in say, the Alabasta-arc, it's still awesome.

Only seven?

This series is nearing 400 episodes, dozens of stinkers are in there .

[Kavaron]

Is this episode about the whale the start of a new filler arc? I am so sad that Thriller Bark ended because we will have to endure a year of filler eps.

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by Kavaron

Is this episode about the whale the start of a new filler arc? I am so sad that Thriller Bark ended because we will have to endure a year of filler eps.

Um, it's Brook's backstory. How could it be a filler? Also, One Piece has never had any filler-arcs that lasted for more than 13 episodes.

...That being said, I thought the latest episode sucked... It seemed like one of those clipshow-scenes that usually take up like, 3 minutes, only that it lasted the entire episode. They didn't even animate the entire chapter! Next week's episode should be good, though, otherwise totally lose all respect for Toei... And it's not like I really HAVE that much respect for those guys in the first place.

[Kavaron]

They will have to run a whole year of fillers at least in order for the manga to win some distance. bye bye One Piece, I will miss you... At least Naruto and Bleach have no fillers right now.

[Slayerx]

Ya, this episode was rather poor... though it does kinda make me want a laboon plushie; it was cute... Brooke's whole flashback was short enough that it could have easily been only one episode long instead of needing to take more than one...

Originally Posted by Kavaron

They will have to run a whole year of fillers at least in order for the manga to win some distance. bye bye One Piece, I will miss you... At least Naruto and Bleach have no fillers right now.

the only reason naruto and bleach aren't doing fillers now is because they already did... one piece will just be doing what bleach and naruto have already done... kinda interesting when you consider that one piece is the oldest of the 3 yet it was the one most able to go on without an absurdly long filler season...

The question is however, what will be the quality of one piece's season of filler... For naruto it is a black mark as they were mostly terrible fillers... bleach has had decent fillers, but it pulls out an interesting low of having a filler season in the middle of a story arc... one piece is rather lucky in that it's "adventure" theme allows it to easily throw in fillers where-ever needed... it's so easy to plot-kai an event that sends them ofcourse or throws something in their way of continuing...

though their is a bit of a plus side to the use of fillers, at least for one piece... in story time...

on thing that has always bugged me about one piece is that we have no real idea of how long their journey has been going on... i mean, the whole water7/enies lobby was absurdly long but only took place in the course of a few days... same for jaya and skypeia really; hell don krieg and arlong both looked to take place on the same day... if we had to guess based ONLY on what we see, the whole series seems to have only been going on for a relatively short period of time in the one piece world... but that ofcourse does not take into account how long it might take to get to each island and such... the plus side to the fillers is that they can help increase how perception of long their journey has been going on

in fact, considering that, it makes me feel like one piece should have had alot more fillers eariler on... i mean, look at Coby and Helmeppo... their new found strength looks like it was the result of many months of training at the very least, but to our false perception it hasn't been as long as you might think for them to make such a transformation. more fillers early on, one's that further emphasized how much time has passed ("it took us a whole week to clean the ship after we had a tea party with those giant sea rabbits"), would helped to make it seem like a lot more time has passed since they party ways with coby... the same benefit goes for the character's strength; what seems like quick development, could be seen as a slower more gradual development of strength

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by Kavaron

They will have to run a whole year of fillers at least in order for the manga to win some distance. bye bye One Piece, I will miss you... At least Naruto and Bleach have no fillers right now.

They are running at a consistent 1 chapter=1 episode-pace, and have been doing so for two years, with only a few exceptions. There will not be a year-long filler. Even Dragonball Z didn't have a year-long filler, and that one was always in more danger of catching up to the manga than One Piece is now. If there is a filler-arc, it'll be over by spring 09.

[C.A.]

Well I spent the past 5 or 6 days watching 120+ episodes of One Piece, I was up to date with the manga not the anime. The last 12 hours I spent watching 3/4s of the Thriller Bark arc.

Well I'm having much of a One Piece hangover, but since its the Thriller Bark Thread, I'll talk only about it. Basically the Thriller Bark arc was amazing throughout, every bit of it.

This arc was totally hilarious, even more so than in the manga, mainly because Brook sounded perfect and he was seriously funny lol

But through all the amazingness, Brook and Perona-sama were my favourite bits. Of course Kuma's fearsome display of powers and Zoro's act of true manliness was the best parts in the end.

My single favourite fight was the Ussop vs Perona fight, I really looked forward to that in animation.

Anyway Perona-sama is my favourite One Piece cutie, mainly because I'm a mega lover of Lolita fashion. The dress Perona wears is an outrageously amazing design from Oda, if I were to carefully point out its style constituents, its a combo of Gothic-Punk-Sweet-Ero-Princess Lolita style. Yes that style is really that outrageous, like One Piece itself is.

Can't wait to see the current manga situation in animation. Probably I'll just watch till the end of Thriller Bark Arc and then take a long break from the anime again. Then watch entire arcs when they finished airing.

[eyetrendhenry]

Thriller Bark's best character is Hogback!

Amazing body shape, and an outrageous high-pitched squeal for a laugh...

Youtube remix clip of Hogback laughing:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUC5oc2olM

haha....

[Keeper]

I really disliked TB villains laughing, particularly Hogback and Moria. When they laugh, it's equivalent to Usopp Noise if not worse.

[C.A.]

I thought TB villians had the best laughter yet lol

My favourite is Perona-sama's "horohorohoro~!", next was Hogback's.

You must learn to appreciate the laughter, because its one of One Piece's most amazing items.