 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece and today the time is upon us. It is time for a full spoiler review of One Piece Stampede. Now, if you haven't seen Stampede and desperately do not want to know anything, then rather count productively for me. This is where I suggest you add this to the watch later pile because there will be no holding back here. So for all of those people, I look forward to seeing you in a month, maybe two. And for everyone else, let's begin. Now, the structure of this review is probably going to be a bit all over the place. If you watch the non-spoiler review, you already know my general thoughts about things like the story, action and the amount of characters. So I'm going to use this as more of an opportunity to examine some specific points. But I will say that despite the very bare-bones story, a hell of a lot happened in Stampede and I cannot promise that I'll be talking about all of it. There was just far, far too much. And after having seen it only once, I'm certain that I didn't even catch everything the first time around. So I guess I'll try and go chronologically through the film as much as possible so as not to miss anything, but I cannot promise that I won't go in infinite tangents. However, let's start at a nice wonderful place of simplicity with the opening of the film. And this was brilliant because the very first words you hear are, ha ha ha, completely unexpected. I had no idea how Blackbeard was going to be inserted into the film, but this was a perfect way to use him as we essentially see the results of the massacre he conducted in level six of Impel Down in order to gather his extended crew. And of course, this goes on to introduce Bullet and a mate of level six in a fantastic way as well when Blackbeard refuses to take him and the air around Bullet is just so ominous at that moment. The feeling continues rather nicely as we transition into a darker version of the very original anime opening of Roger with the wealth fame power speech narrated by the secondary villain of the film, Buena Festa. And this was the first hit of nostalgia that Stampede provides. And it immediately put a huge smile on my face because it was the first proper sign that Stampede was intended to be a celebration of two decades of One Piece and that's exactly what it goes on to be. Almost every little auxiliary thing that happens in Stampede is a callback to something that has happened in the series. Now rather notably for the first time in One Piece history, Roger's bounty is shown on screen. The exact number is of course masked but it is in the billions. And that was the first indication that this movie was going to take us into some really fascinating implications for the series despite it being non-canon. But while we're here, I'm going to deal with my thoughts on Buena Festa here very briefly. As the instigator of everything, I don't think that he was a great addition to the film. The most intriguing thing about him is his motivation which is to put on the world's greatest festival and he sees Roger as a rival because he started the great age of piracy which Festa believes to be the current world's greatest event. And I do like this motivation, it's certainly unique but Festa as a character is not implemented well. He's very flat and anytime he was on screen, he just gave us more of the same. You know, he's plotting, he hates Roger and he wants to see the world burn. That is Festa's character summed up and he doesn't quite have the charm required to sustain his role in the film. What is very important about Festa though is that he is the one who apparently found the eternal pose to Raftel which is the mysterious treasure that everyone is fighting for during the festival. And just briefly on that because this is one of the biggest takeaways from Stampede as Raftel is now officially Romanized as Laugh Tale or I say officially, but at least in Stampede it has been. Now sadly, this was something that was spoiled a lot in the comments section of many, many of my videos in the lead up to this. So it did not catch me off guard but I'm still not entirely sure how to process the sir, the sir news. I mean, first of all, as far as I'm concerned at the moment, it is not canon. I don't care if Oda himself stated it for the purpose of the film until it's officially in the manga I'm going to continue calling it Raftel but this has heavy potential implications for the series and I'm certainly not opposed to it especially if Laugh Tale becomes a very poignant part of the story, but as a native English speaker it does sound a bit met to me. So I'm kind of hoping that we stick to Raftel but this is not a reverie levely situation. Given how important this is to Stampede as well as One Piece as a whole I don't think this decision was made lightly so we'll have to see. Moving on the next scene is the classic straw hats on the sunny introduction. Every movie since Stronghold has had their incarnation of this scene and the straw hats are just chilling and talking about their impending adventure. It was fun and it's one of the very few moments in the film that adopts a more chilled out pace. Almost everything after this scene is a bombardment to the senses. In some way either through action, cameo appearances or just the sheer amount of stuff incorporated into Stampede. So speaking of this is where we go into the opening of the film which is a montage of the straw hats enjoying themselves at the pirate festival. And honestly this left me somewhat disappointed because after this montage we were just bam straight into the action. And I felt this was a shame because I really wanted to know more about the pirate festival, explore some of its attractions and stores and just generally have fun with the straw hats in the same way that they were given time to have fun on Gran Tazora during film gold. But this montage is where we are bombarded with many, many, many, many cameos from characters who have appeared all throughout the series and even its extended media. One of the first characters I remember clocking was Conus actually who was not a pirate nor anybody who has ever visited the blue sea. So that's the kind of thing you can expect from Stampede. Anybody and everybody can pop up here and I'm not going to go into everyone I saw because there's just, oh my God, there's too many of them. And I'm confident that I didn't even come close to spotting all of these Easter egg appearances. But soon enough it is time for the main event where an island is shot up into the sky by a knockup stream which I love because it's another piece of nostalgia and it is also very cool to see in a post-Frankie world how the straw hats would deal with sailing up a knockup stream which comes in the form of an emperor penguin. But this is also where the characters begin as the entirety of the worst generation minus Blackbeard and Lore who we'll get into later swiftly appears to contest Roger's treasure. Where do I even begin here? It was incredible to see them all gathered in one place and fighting directly against each other. One of the highlights of that section for me was when Zoro took on Killer briefly which for Manga readers there's another Easter egg there in the way that Killer laughs if you pay specific attention to it. The worst generation do make up a huge chunk of the film though, fighting amongst themselves and then going on to somewhat team up against Bullet. Their action was of course pretty spectacular but my main thing in regards to this group is that there was no time taken to focus on any of the specific relationships that they had with one another. Now this is tricky territory here because it does verge among the spoilers but there are certain members of this collective who would be absolutely infuriated to see certain other members. But instead of showcasing that kind of depth they're all relegated to this standard role of ambitious standalone action heads. And oddly enough there's actually not a whole lot to say about the worst generation except that they are a spectacle to watch in action. They go all out as far as we're aware of their abilities like Beige activates Big Father, Hawkins summons his straw man which is really interesting actually because Stampede would have come out in Japan prior to the episode where Hawkins first uses it in the anime. That would have been a nice surprise for manga readers. One particular highlight of their portion of the film would probably be Bonnie for me though who we know very little about and she takes on Bullet in hand and combat. And it doesn't go very well for her at all but she whips out some pretty nice moves which was cool to see because in the series as a whole Bonnie has done a whole lot of nothing in terms of combat so it was great to see her have a moment here along with everyone else. But as for her opponent it is probably time to talk about Douglas Bullet. He is by far the most powerful film villain we've ever had. And in fact apart from the four emperors he is probably the most powerful person if he has ever directly faced in general. In the film his strength was compared to that of Rayleigh which while that serves as incredible hype I think put Stampede in a very awkward place by the end of the film when Bullet has to be defeated because from everything we'd been shown of him up until that point nothing should have been able to bring this man down. He's just far too strong which is a shame because that strength comes to define his character. Like Vesta Bullet is also pretty flat his motivation is incredibly boring it's the stock standard I want to be the strongest dude out of all the dudes and there's really nothing more to him than that as presented in Stampede and by the film was over I had a hard time believing his connection to the Roger Pirates. Like yeah, I get it Roger was the only person capable of defeating him so he grew up to respect the pirate king and after Roger died Bullet regressed into what he once was but he doesn't fit into the Roger Pirates in my mind and the movie makes no attempt to go into his relationships with other crew members like Rayleigh, Shanks or even Buggy and I get that you can't bring too much of that series canon into a film like this but at the same time if the premise of your movie is that you're going to explore a former member of the Roger Pirates then what I wanted was for that to actually be explored as it stands Bullet did not need to be a member of the Roger Pirates that aspect of him could have been taken away and it would not have hurt the character at all instead what you do is something like make him an old rival of Roger which might actually fit a bit better even however as it stands Bullet left me feeling very wanting of more in regards to his devil fruit abilities the clank clank fruit which were also awakened I don't think that this was adequately explored at all essentially he can create stuff by manipulating existing objects a fruit which holds a ton of creative potential and the only thing Bullet does with it is to make big punchy things which is very reflective of how flat a character he is I also wasn't a huge fan of the big CGI monster thing that he ended up inhabiting you know it's not the worst looking thing in the world and in fact during the final battle there are moments where at sheer scale looks pretty damn cool I just felt like I'd already seen this though because you know that's how film gold ended up Tazora made a big gold mech and they had a giant fight and the thing about Bullet is he doesn't need to make stuff like this he is powerful enough on his own to wreck anyone and anything that comes his way so it feels very at odds with his blunt and physically focused character to have him retreating into his creations for a huge portion of the movie so yeah not a huge fan of Bullet from any perspective the best thing about him is that he provides an excuse for the eventual big team up which I have to say was where I had by far the most fun in Stampede so the film was marketed with an all-star team up of Luffy, Smoker, Law Bola Hancock, Sabo, Buggy and Luchi and this was deceptive in a couple of ways both good and bad the big thing I mentioned in my non-spoiler review already is that I don't like how Luchi was used once again just like film gold Luchi did a grand total of one unit of things and not only that but he didn't even officially join the big old team up like he was sold as doing he just lurked in the background and that was a big disappointment to me because I wanted to see how Luchi would interact with all of these individuals and come to put his own mission and feelings aside to join forces with them for the sake of survival but that's not what happened at all and I do blame the trailers and marketing material for setting him up to be something that he wasn't of course you can also make the argument that a lot of it's my fault for investing too much into that idea but what we lack with Luchi we do make up for with the surprise addition to this final seven which is a certain Sir Crocodile so we knew that he was going to be instamped in some capacity but seeming him join the fray in the final battle against Bullitt was incredibly satisfying Crocodile is one of my all-time favorite characters in the series and so he is always welcome plus my God that moment where he is intercepted by Zora was just one massive fangasm because yeah for the briefest of moments that matchup did occur and it was great to see Zora going up against an enemy that he previously would have stood zero chance against whatsoever and similarly Sanji also had his moment of course when he intercepted Luchi which was equally as amazing to watch and really makes me want to see an extended battle of Sanji versus Luchi because I think that that would be an amazing matchup Zora and Sanji are two of the straw hats who get a lot of the physical glory in Stampede though early on Sanji takes on Smoker in a beautiful clash while Zora goes up against Fujitora when the Marines arrive now I have mixed feelings on this because while it did look great to see Zora going up against the Admiral again I still just don't know why I mean why beyond clear fan service Fujitora just pops up out of nowhere straight into Zora's grill which was a great moment of shock and cheering from the audience but nothing really comes of their skirmish no new information is gathered but Fujitora does end the battle by summoning a meteor which looked pretty damn incredible actually and led Zora to performing his greatest feat of the film in attempting to slash it it's just that after that moment Fujitora doesn't do anything ever again which is weird for a character of his power and importance he just disappears and he's not the only character I have this complaint with because the same thing happens with Mihawk he just shows up at the festival does some cool stuff and then vanishes for no reason in fact, Mihawk didn't really have much of a reason to be there in the first place I honestly don't know why the festival would interest him he doesn't seem like the type to care whatsoever about becoming the pirate king he's just there and I love what he does but it doesn't serve anything but a technical purpose that technical purpose being the destruction of Fujitora's meteor and it really can get a bit much at times with the constant flow of new incredible characters popping up out of nowhere in fact, I remember thinking really the first time crocodile mate himself known because like everyone else he comes from nowhere but at the very least he does serve a greater purpose than most in the movie speaking of purpose, so I'm going to jump way around here because let's talk about Ann now this character is a strange one because she originally appeared in the Tokyo Tower show and her devil fruit is very important in making that whole spectacle work and the movie takes some very specific time in the beginning to explain her abilities to craft temporary illusions and that would make it seem like Ann's powers are going to be relevant to the plot in some way shape or form but in the end, they just don't what Ann does is serve as an excuse to have an 11th hour cameo appearance of Ace when Saba requests her to generate him as he conjures some walls of flame to allow Luffy to escape now seeing Ace was cool especially in the side-by-side pose with Saba but I do think that Ann's potential was a bit squandered I mean, she can make anyone appear in a pirate festival you think you'd may want to use that to craft some really famous figures like perhaps one of the four emperors or even generate Roger himself to address the crowd but in the end she was just an excuse to plonk Ace into stampede but you know, I'm not complaining about that I just think there was a missed opportunities to really use this ability in this context All right, next up, it's taking a while to get here but let's talk about the breakout star of Stampede and his name is God Usopp Going into this movie I had no expectations of him or any of the straw hats really and Usopp was a marvelous surprise He is one of, if not the only character in the film who has some sort of emotional resonance and I love the decision to focus on him like this especially in the presence of Douglas Bullitt who for all intents and purposes is one of the more ultimate physical powers we've seen so to have him juxtaposed against Usopp one of the physically weakest individuals on the island was brilliant and in the end Usopp as far as I'm concerned is responsible for Bullitt's defeat the moment where his pop greens activated and crushed Bullitt's mech is burned into my mind because it was just such a boss play and not only did it give Usopp his moment to shine but it also emphasized the idea of teamwork which is a sort of theme of the film teamwork or lack thereof plus Usopp had a great emotional scene where he was carrying a defeated Luffy through all the debris and even used what little strength he had to prevent some of it falling on Luffy he was just the best even amongst all of this crazy action Usopp's small moments eclipsed pretty much everything in my opinion and really showed us just how far he has come since the humble days of East Blue and you know what? If anything, Usopp is closer to achieving his dream of becoming a brave warrior of the sea than any of the other straw hats are to theirs and just to talk about them for a bit any straw hats who weren't Usopp, Luffy, Zora or Sanji were pretty neglected and stampede and understandably so because under the circumstances there just isn't any time for them they are there and they do important things but they serve an almost purely technical function Going back to the final group though this was very much a dream team to see in action and I'm also very happy to report that Boa Hancock got an incredible moment where she sprinted up the gigantic expanse of bullet and delivered what I think was by far the best attack of the film where she just plain kicked him but you could feel the sheer power behind her blow and in fact it got a huge whoa reaction from the audience because it was pretty much the first decent attack that had been landed on bullet after invoking his fruit powers. Moving on to lore, he was a great presence throughout the entirety of stampede as he had the unenviable job of playing the straight man against all of the crazy characters who showed up and especially Luffy but he was integral in the strategic elements of taking down bullet and they also very much enjoyed his encounter with crocodile because lore and crocodile are just a pair of characters that I have never even considered being in the same place. Prior to stampede, they may as well have existed in completely different series in my mind but that's one thing that stampede is great at it gives you these character combinations that you never would have thought of and another one of those for me was when Smoker encountered Saba and not only that but they had a brief fight which was another nice nostalgic reference to when Smoker fought Ace on Alabaster and very importantly, Saba as much as I'm not the biggest fan of him in the series was very good in stampede. He showed up, he looked cool and he delivered some nice action and in a film like this that's really all you can ask of most characters. The highlight of the final group for me though was certainly Buggy. Buggy is incredibly important to stampede not because of anything he does to move the plot forward or contribute to beating bullet but because he was one of the very few sources of consistent comedy that stampede had to offer. Without Buggy, this film becomes far too serious and there would be nowhere near enough moments of relief like when Buggy attacked giant bullet with a buggy ball and Luchi just happened to strike bullet at the same time leading Buggy to believe that he was the one who caused such massive destruction but my personal favorite Buggy moment is when Law summons a room and accidentally incorporates Buggy into the group's big final attack and he just appears up in the air having no idea what's going on and simply shitting himself, it was so great. But while we're here, let's get into bullets demise and you could say that what it really boils down to is a big, big, big punch. That's right, in order to commence bullets defeat Luchi invokes the power of a King, King, King Kong gun which is incredible in scale. It's quite possibly the biggest attack we've ever seen in one piece and I really can't even begin to describe the scale of this bad boy. Like you cannot even see Luchi when the full thing is on screen. I should also say that it is heavily implied that the eventual impact is assisted by advanced armor metaki because it ends up breaking bullets' abilities from the inside, which is pretty, let's say, contemporary considering manga events. However, the true end of the conflict is a slugfest between bullet and a Gear 4th Luffy and to be honest, yes, it looked cool but it just wasn't that believable. Earlier on we'd seen bullet wipe out the worst generation with ease, including Luffy who to be fair was using Snake Man instead of Bound Man but it was no contest. To go from that to what is portrayed as an even match between Luffy and bullet is pretty unbelievable because Luffy didn't become any stronger and the only logic for bullet becoming weaker is that he seems to incur damage taken by attacks on his devil fruit constructs. Still, with everything we've been shown I do not think Luffy should have won. It was an arse pull of the highest order and the inevitable result of what happens when you make your villain far too strong and I sure do hope that Oda has better plans than this to deal with Kaido in the series but that was kind of that and we're treated to a short flashback of bullet and Roger but once again it didn't really provide much to salvage bullet as a character. However, right at the film there's a bit of a different story as we see a flashback of Roger chastising someone for making an eternal pose to Raftel and afterwards Roger makes a very interesting statement claiming that they were too early. Clearly referring to whatever it was that they found on Raftel and I find this endlessly fascinating. The idea that after their grand adventure the Roger pirates realized that they had arrived too early to act on whatever the one piece is and decided to pass the torch to the next generation. Which speaking of Roger posits that perhaps his son will be the one to find the one piece next with Rayleigh replying that he doesn't have one and Roger saying something along the lines of well I will have one soon referring to Ace which is kind of bittersweet because Ace is obviously dead and this was very shortly after seeing his illusion generated by Anne. And yeah, look there is so much more to this film as I see him with Garpence and Goku, Bartolomeo and Cavendish do some fun stuff and the clash of Conqueror's Haki between Luffy and Bullet was just superb but I will be going on into infinity if I go through everything. In summation though, one piece Stampede is a creation unlike anything you will have experienced in the one piece world. As a film it has lots of issues with a lack of story, flat villains and a constant bombardment of characters but Stampede is more of an event for one piece fans than anything else. It's a celebration of 22 years of glorious story and well worth seeing on the big screen but there's many other one piece fans as possible. And that pretty much does it for this spoiler review of one piece Stampede. This is not quite the end though as I will also be uploading a review of Stampede from my wife who knows nothing about one piece and that is a very different conversation and just a warning it will be much, much longer than even this video which is already absurdly long. But if you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general then please do consider donating to the Grand Line review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this that applied to other anime manga series then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigans takes place on a daily basis. And finally please do comment with your thoughts on one piece Stampede. This has been the Grand Line review and I'll see you next time.