Luffy is at it again in his fourth movie: One Piece: Dead End Adventure. Well, lets clear something up before I continue my cliché introduction: Movie 3 sucked. In fact, all of the previous One Piece movies were lacking. And you're probably thinking the same thing I was thinking before I saw this movie--another non-Oda inspired crap of a movie is ready to take a dump (on us). Well saddle up your horses and listen up; One Piece movie 4 (otherwise known as Dead End Adventure) is breaking away from that stereotypical, linear, and down right boring road it's predecessors have taken. If your jaw doesn't fall from the first 10 minutes of watching this movie, then you must have glued your teeth together in a horrible home improvement project. This movie is that good!

Lets get down to business now: the story. And what is every cliché One Piece story about? Pirates, adventure, and beating the bad guy to a bloody pulp at the very end to help save some one or some thing. While the adventures, characters, and settings change, the basic story never does. Some may say this leads to a very repetitive cycle that no one notices. I, on the other hand, feel that no one cares to notice it because every one is too busy enjoying it; one Piece is good because it is SIMPLE! So now that I have established that (*phew* -_-"), I can give you the jist of this movies story: Luffy and the gang are strapped for cash so they decide to join The Dead End Race with other pirates, and all they have to do to win this race is to just get to a certain island before any one else. Sound simple enough? Ok, throw in a cash prize of $300,000,000 belly (that's 300 million!) with a race that has absolutely no rules and is filled with pirates who will turn on you in a blink of an eye--then things aren't so simple any more. A cast of new and interesting characters fill up the rest of the plot where their stories will become intertwined to our straw hat pirates.

Now let's move on to the animation. It is without a doubt the series best. Although the animation begins to dwindle as the movies reaches it's end, it was nonetheless very richly detailed. Consistently fluid, the animation reached points where it was semi-CG, allowing the camera movement to become real time; for example, the camera revolved around the whole city, and then it intelligently reached it's destination on the main characters. It's very evident how much the big screen production money was put to good use towards it's animation.

Your ear will thank you a million times over for letting you hear the tunes in One Piece: Dead End Adventure. Sounds are loud, crisp, and a pleasure to listen to. The music is extremely well done. I can't emphasize how much effort the production team put into this one, and how well they use every bit of their budget to make this movie spectacular. Every bit of sound goes so perfectly with every scene, so much so that I didn't even notice it's entirety until I rewatched the movie, twice. And every time I watched it, I couldn't help but notice how good the music sounded--it actually got better the more I watched! Koodoes, again, to the production team.

One Piece: Dead End Adventure was very enjoyable. It will be without a doubt, the best anime movie any one will have in their collection. It is a must see, being a One Piece fan only makes it that much more better. If you feel you want to know more about this movie, then go watch it. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

WNK~