on pirates

[xparrot]

Have been catching up on the One Piece anime with the bro (and gnine now that she's here visting). And yeah, the anime is but a weak reflection of the manga (the pacing is usually off since they're stretching the manga as far as it can go, so it takes forever for anything to happen; and the art is all over the place, ranging from decent to hardly watchable - what I wouldn't give for the whole series to look like Strong World) but it's still OP. We're almost through Marineford, which I especially appreciate animated because it got hard to follow in the manga, though yeah, I wish the animation was up to the EPIC. (The scope of that battle is unbelievable; I can't think of anything like it--definitely not in fight shounen, with its usual orderly one-to-one hero and opponent ratio. Maybe some of the cross-series events in American superhero comics? But even those tend not to go down in one place, with so many fighters of insane strength and powers - and that's not even getting into the emotional side, both the personal stories and the world-changing significance of the war.)

I love the way OP shifts gears - the first time it happens is in Arlong Park, when you start to realize that this fun little kid's adventure series has more to it than shiny action and silly antics; and it keeps upping the ante as it goes, changing and expanding and widening its scope, both breadth and depth, while never losing its original heart (or absurdity!) (That's something manga tends to do better anyway. Supernatural started out this small, personal show about two brothers, and then tried to expand into an epic about saving the world, but it couldn't handle the expansion; it never quite succeeds in making you care about the fate of the planet, beyond what that means to the Winchesters and their little family. While as series like Babylon 5 and Avatar: TLA do a fantastic job with epic, universe-spanning stories, but they present as such from the get-go; they're about one-of-a-kind heroes in one-of-a-kind situations, making history. But fight shounen often start small and personal and scale up into saving the universe - Dragonball started out as the story of a girl looking for wish-granting magic balls for lack of anything better to do. OP develops into something more complicated than most, however, between its increasingly huge cast and lack of a single dominant villain to defeat, and with its weird mix of obvious protagonists and antagonists but increasingly complex morality - you usually know who you're supposed to be cheering for, but they're not always on the same side...)

(...and now I want a good Marineford/Ace & Luffy vid to Shinedown's "Diamond Eyes". There's a few OP AMVs to it on youtube already (it's hard not to see it, with the refrain of "the story is just beginning/I say goodbye to my weakness/so long to the regret/and now I see the world through diamond eyes"), but nothing quite like what I'm picturing. Does anyone have any recs for OP AMVs? Especially in the mood for action - would love something as fantastic as ManyLemon's Sail On with later footage.)

Comments

[libor13.livejournal.com]

I know it's an old post, and has a little chance that somebody will read it. BUT! I'm in love with an amv: Luffy&Ace, Marineford, Shinedown-Diamond eyes :) It has everything, what you asked for. The title: One Piece: Nothing to lose (Shinedown-Diamond eyes) :) I hope, you will read it.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for the link, that's an awesome vid! (it's funny, that's actually totally different from the vid I was thinking about - which would've been much more Luffy-focused - for all it's using the same arc - there's just so much going on in OP to expore!)