 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a review of the recently released episode of Sky Pier, a tale chronicling the adventures of the Straw Hearts during the Sky Pier saga. Or at least that's what it was supposed to do. I'm going to get straight into this. Episode of Sky Pier is almost certainly the worst arc or saga summary special that has ever been put to screen. And I don't think I'm exaggerating at all when I say that and I will attempt to justify that statement throughout this video. And just as a warning, this is going to be a lot more negative than most of my videos. I don't have a lot of good things to say about this special at all. And I'll probably end up swearing a lot more than usual as well, just to appropriately convey my feelings on this particular piece of media. But just in the interest of fairness, I want to point out from the get go that these specials don't have the greatest of histories behind them. More often than not, they end up being quite disappointing, blasting through material in a way that makes it almost impossible for anybody who has not seen or read the original story to comprehend. And in addition to that, Sky Pier was always going to be a tough one to tackle because it is very dense and relies heavily on arc-specific characters like Viper, Cricket, and their ancestors Nolan and Kalkara to have any emotional impact whatsoever. So Toei was always going to be starting this race from behind. But nonetheless, let's get into it. This special actually starts out promisingly enough with a fairly well-animated scene of the ship falling from the sky, setting up the ever-intriguing premise that is an island in the sky. Okay, brilliant. Sadly, this is where things start to go wrong as before we know it, we've met Cricket and almost instantly after that we're riding the knockup stream into the sky. No Blackbeard, no Bellamy, no Southbird, well, a bit of Southbird actually, but generally no nothing. Jaya is all but removed from the story entirely. And look, the predictable argument to that is that this is called the episode of Sky Pier, not the episode of Jaya. And the problem with that is that these arcs are so intrinsically linked that they simply cannot work in isolation. Jaya is the entire foundation for Sky Pier. What this portion of the story does is build up the mystery of the Sky Island, as well as really hammer home the common belief that it's entirely made up through characters like Bellamy. In this special, we don't meet a single individual who denies the existence of the Sky Island or the City of Gold, which has a huge detrimental effect on the character of Mont Blanc Cricket, which is very, very bad because like it or not, this guy is the heart of the Sky Pier saga. It is very important to feel sympathy for his cause and like the entire world is against him because otherwise Liffy's climactic moment of ringing the bell has no resonance. In this special, you see Cricket and the Sarayama Alliance looking at Luffy's shadow in the sky and it's kind of like, oh, I guess that thing nobody in this special ever really doubts it existed, exists after all. There's no emotional payoff in regards to justifying Cricket's struggle and it's all as a result of cutting out the events of Jaya. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. At this stage, I was still pretty on board with the special because I was thinking to myself, holy hell, they just cut out all of Jaya? That must mean they're planning on spending some serious time to flesh out the complicated details of the Sky Pier saga and fuck me was I wrong. It's really weird to say this about a film that lasted 105 minutes, but nothing really happened. We got up into the sky and at that point is when Toei took the manga volumes of the Sky Pier arc, cut out every panel individually, put them in a hat, perhaps even a straw hat, and drew out the panels at random to craft this bizarre Frankensteining of an arc that is already quite difficult to consume. In the previous few specials, I haven't really cared too much when Toei made changes of convenience because yeah, we do need to condense the story. Some of the decision making in the episode of Sky Pier just has me completely puzzled. For example, when the straw hats first emerged on the White Sea, we cut to a shot of the Kami Temple and immediately introduced NL and the priests. This is one of the worst possible places this scene could have been inserted, because it immediately ruins the mystery of what could possibly be up here in the sky. It doesn't allow us to discover the sky civilization with the straw hats through their eyes like we did in the original arc, and furthermore it ruins any hype that we could have possibly had going for the character of NL. The first time NL made an appearance in the actual series was by the action of a big fuck off flattening blast. We didn't see him, we just saw his power. It was devastating and intimidating, building up this mysterious figure as somebody perhaps worthy of being called a god. And in this special we are introduced to NL in the exact opposite way. He doesn't display any power, he's just a dude reclining. There's absolutely no reason why we should care about this scene. If anything it's just annoying because it broke the action of the straw hats exploring the White Sea to deliver us to a miscellaneous location with characters we don't care about yet. And I should say that the same moment is in the original arc but only after we've seen NL's power at work. And in that context, after seeing how strong this man is, it is highly deserved to encounter him in this arrogant position and it gives the audience a full picture of NL. But this special is full of crap like this, really odd placements of characters and scenes where they don't belong which reduces their overall effectiveness and in some cases as I just illustrated has an entirely detrimental effect on well, everything. And that's when they actually decide to have scenes at all. The biggest failure of the episode of Skypeer in my mind is the complete disregard for the events that actually occurred on Skypeer. At certain points this special becomes a glorified slideshow of images which do have meaning to those who are familiar with the arc, but when stitched together like this contain no power or narrative value whatsoever. This special moves from scene to scene with little to no explanation regarding geography or how characters even got to certain places. It's just like, I'm here now and I did a thing. And then more things may have happened and I'm somehow now on this part of the island that you have no idea where is because fuck you. Like seriously, what is the point of saying that we are going to embark on an adventure and then skipping over all of the actual adventure parts? Just makes me so incredibly confused when I think about who this special is targeting. It can't possibly be aimed at bringing in new One Piece fans who aren't familiar with the arc because it makes no effort to adequately tell the story, develop the characters, or build the world for them. People who have nothing more than a passing familiarity with One Piece will simply stop watching because this special is entirely incoherent. At the same time this special can't possibly be for seasoned One Piece fans to relive the arc or feel some nostalgia because Toei didn't actually add any of the parts of Skypier that make the arc memorable. And yes, a big part of that I'm talking about are the fights. The other summary specials have their own problems but my personal criteria for success is show me a beautifully reanimated fight. I mean, even the episode of Alabaster has redeeming moments with what we get of Zoro vs. Mr. One or Luffy vs. Crocodile. Episode of Skypier cuts out everything, bar a few final attacks, and some select portions of Luffy vs. Nel. It's an absolutely abysmal effort and to me if you're not going to tell the story or show the action then it defeats the purpose of reanimating the arc at all. And you know I suspect that at some point during development Toei realized that fact and actively decided you know what guys, let's not bother animating a whole ton of this special. No. Instead, let's spend almost 20 minutes of the special using old animation from the early 2000s. And obviously this is a reference to every portion of the Nolan Dankelkar flashback which is just taken from the original episodes. And at that point I'm like why the fuck am I even watching this? If I wanted to see this flashback again in the old animation style I would have just watched the episodes again because at least that way I can get a proper non-butchered story. So I'm particularly bitter about this because one of the things I was most looking forward to was seeing a modern incarnation of this flashback which I think is still one of the best in the entire series. Putting a shitty filter over old animation does not make it new. It conflicts with the style of the special and is visually disconnecting when we are forced to endure these portions. Speaking of the animation though my god it's shit. Don't get me wrong the general artistic style suits one piece to a tee and the individual stills in this special look fanatastic for the most part. But that does not translate into the actual animation. This special gives you the illusion of good animation and attempts to hide its incompetence with very quick cuts. I mean even the thing they did put time into the final strike of Luffy vs. NL really doesn't look any better than the original anime. It's quite pathetic. And speaking of pathetic as for NL as a villain he has done a complete disservice. At no point is his character abilities or motivation adequately developed. Here he's vague evil for the sake of evil. Something to inspire the story and action that Toei wasn't planning on animating anyway. In summary this special is a new low for Toei and honestly it's very difficult to review a piece of media that makes no attempt to tell a story or even convey an idea. There is no benefit whatsoever to taking time out of your life to watch episode of skypeer. If you're a new fan you will not understand anything. If you're an old fan you won't see anything you want to see. In fact here's just a quick list of what you can expect to be cut out of episode of skypeer. Heaven's Gate. Pagaya. Zoro vs. Bram. McKinley. Robin vs. Yama. A plot. The entirety of Jaya. Respect for the audience. But hey at least we got a pointless credit sequence featuring an animated Namie Amuro. Oh and some legitimately amazing animation of the Ace vs. Blackbeard fight on Banaro Island. I don't know why it's here. It has nothing to do with skypeer as it took place after any slobby. My only guess is that maybe it's an apology from Toei after they viewed the final cut of the special and realized that they spent all this time and money to achieve a grand total of sweet fuck all. And that pretty much does it for the episode of skypeer. If you enjoyed this video then please feel free to like, favorite or subscribe and if you are in any way keen on supporting this independent channel then please do check out my patreon discord server or twitter. The links to which are in the handy description below. Finally please do comment with your thoughts on the episode of skypeer because I am very keen to hear them. This has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.