Back at it again with another One Piece special, god I love these, and who wouldn't want expansions on the already existing adventures of the straw hat pirates? - Story (8.0/10): The straw hats, while sailing the new world, they stumbled across an oddly hand-shaped island known form its renowned artists of all sort of stuff, to only find out some trouble taking place there, an abusive Marine officer that forces the citizens to work for his selfish needs then gets them involved in his ambitious plans. While roaming the island, Luffy gets to meet this guy, a wax artist that admires the pirate life and has acollection of wax status for all sorts of great pirates that he met, and so it happens that one of them is red-haired Shanks.
Across this special spans multiple flashbacks concerning Luffy, seeing how the special is focused on him, as well as some other character that I don't want to reveal.
- Art (8.9/10):
Stunning, not breathtaking, but at least better than decent, the art style looks so crispt and not as lazy as the anime's, the animation was fantastic, almost movie-budget.
They weren't cheap with the vegetation where you'd mostly have them put some cheap oil-painted background, no, this was all very detailed and it's obvious how much time they production team have put into it.
- Sound (8.0/10):
I love the original soundtrack, believe me, I do, and we got a lot of it here, but the voice acting for a specific character was just a let down for me, he/she seemed so immature and childish for that voice, but because this is his/her first appearance after the time skip, they must not have put a lot of thoughts into it.
- Character (8.0/10):
As always, the straw hats are in the middle of the action, we get to see them interact more with each other, something that's rare to happen lately, the side characters were at least deserving my attention, their backstory (while not that complex) was relatable and touching.
And lets me not forget the start of the special, that character.
- Enjoyment (7.0/10):
In term of enjoyments, I must say I've seen better specials, this one while not having so many flaws, I didn't get so invested or too interested in the mini-story told, it felt more like just another decent filler, to be honest, a well-done filler.
- Overall (8.0/10):
I wouldn't normally recommend this right off the bat, probably if you're already caught up, and been a while since you last seen the early parts of the story, this can be a good refresher to the mind. Also, the atmosphere is a lot less serious than what we have lately if you're up to some giggles, there you go.