Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates head towards a remote island for a secret buccaneer-only bash where the main attraction is a hidden prized possession of Gold Roger. In order to claim it, they have to partake in an all-out battle royale, including crossing swords against some of their fellow members of the "Worst Generation". However, someone is literally lurking in the depths and awaiting to pounce upon the greedy prey. ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE is sadly a significant step down for the mega popular anime franchise's film division after the preceding entry, the predictable but highly raucous ONE PIECE FILM: GOLD. It has several of the main ingredients necessary to make a great shonen film: superb animation, excellent voice acting, and an epic music score. But the film is completely let down by a very lame script that cripples the smooth sailing of its opening moments. The movie loses all of its steam once the big bad Douglas Bullet unearths himself and, after a brief yet very thrilling scuffle, spends the rest of the running time showing off his literal and figurative plot armor and essentially saying "come at me, bro". It then just becomes a big one-sided brawl of punches, kicks, stomps and superpowers where nothing really matters until a great master plan is drawn up, that being having a bunch of the strongest characters come together to make a weak spot by all punching together. And mind you, a good chunk of this fighting happens during a strict time limit of five minutes that somehow stretches itself to 35 minutes in real time. The movie tries to hide its severe shortcomings by including a lot of fan service, bringing out every ally, villain, or side character they can muster for a cameo so you can point them out and clap in delight. But even the most gullible of otakus will laugh at this weak attempt at appeasement, especially when two noteworthy sword-wielding badasses both come in, perform two slash attacks, and then spirit themselves away from the proceedings. There's also zilch in the character development department save for Usopp but even that is just microwaved scraps from past material that fans know and love by heart. I gave this film two tries in the theater to wow me in any way; I originally set out on this ordeal chiefly to watch both the sub and dub versions but it became more important once the first viewing left me and the audience less than enthused. While my appreciation did increase for the technical aspects of the film the second time around, the true meat of it remained bitter. Similar to the poor film entries of Pokémon and DragonBall Z, you might be able to stomach ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE and have glimmers of amusement but there are far better options available to watch. And to those who might be wondering, yes, I have come around on Colleen Clinkenbeard's portrayal of Luffy but it is still hard to top Mayumi Tanaka.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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