Last weekend I attended Anime Weekend in Atlanta also known as AWA for short. At AWA, Funimation premiered the dubbed version of the 10th One Piece movie, One Piece: Strong World.
As a One Piece fan this was a excited occasion. I wasn’t into the One Piece series originally, but around the summer of 2010 I watched Strong World and by the end it made me want to watch the series, in the end I did and now I’ve been a huge fan since then.
One Piece: Strong World is a story by original creator Eiichiro Oda, which it the first time he stepped up to work on a movie idea for his series.
The plot of One Piece Strong World is about the Straw Hat Pirates trying to save not only their navigator, Nami, but also try to save their home sea, the East Blue, from a pirate named Shiki the Golden Lion who escaped from Impel Down after being locked up for 20 years planning his revenge.
During the premiere at AWA both the voices of Zoro and Brook (Chris Sabat, new added to the cast Ian Sinclair) appeared and told us how it was fun to dubb the movie. They made jokes at each other and also shared some fun times in the studio. Ian Sinclair was also amazing enough to do Brook’s laugh for the audience right before the film started to get us hyped up.
The event was fun and the movie played, people cheered, people laughed, and in the end people awed. As I was watching the film I was enjoyed it but all the while I was seeing how the American cast did for such a big movie in the franchise. The cast sounded fine and they expressed the humor and sorrow that is contained in the film. My small problem was the script change to when Nami was leaving a message to Luffy and the crew. In the Japanese I felt it was more sincere, sorrowful and powerful. In the American version it felt sorrowful but not very sincere or powerful. Eventually it still got the message across and hearing the whole message at the end did leave me to saying an “awe” but where they left off the message it felt too predictable for my own taste.
Ian Sinclair becoming the voice of Brook was an interesting one. Seeing him in the autograph line earlier that Friday, he was nice, sweet, and adorable sassy to all his fans. He’s new in the voice acting community and started to gain lead roles only about a
year ago. When I first heard his voice for the role I wasn’t very sure but when he did the laugh of Brook I felt he was spot on! The problems between going from dubbed to subbed then back to dubb you get used to voices over, and over again that it feels a bit awkward. But despite that I can see Ian Sinclair becoming a great voice for Brook and I welcome him into the One Piece family.
I think the movie premiere was a huge success and I look forward to owning One Piece: Strong World sometime in November.