 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have a slightly obscure topic appearing mostly outside of the One Piece canon, which is just a discussion on why One Piece movie villains often end up being pretty lackluster, despite the fact that they are actually fantastic characters, and heavily underrated by the fanbase at large. And in order to examine this, we're going to look at the four most recent film villains being Shiki, Zephyr, Tizoro, and Douglas Bullitt. And in regards to that last one, do not worry if you haven't seen Stampede, I'll just be talking very generally about him, but my reasoning for focusing on these guys is simple. It's because each and every one of them had the potential to be a phenomenal character within what is otherwise a pretty great film. And we're going to be ignoring the other films because they came about before Oda got involved, and most of the films from that era never had a chance at crafting anything more than a flat villain. However, Stronghold, Film Z, Film Gold, and Stampede were very different. They revolutionized One Piece movies and turned them into eagerly anticipated media with stunning animation and generally stronger stories. But the common thing that most of these films get wrong is the villain, which is really weird because at first glance, they each seem pretty damn perfect. They have great designs, they each possess the power to pose a true threat to the straw hats, and they each have a truly commanding presence on screen. So why are they almost always unsatisfying? And you'll notice that I said almost always. That's because Zephyr is going to be a bit of an exception to this discussion, an exception that proves the rule that is. Because the one gigantic contributing factor to the dissatisfaction generated by the film antagonist is so incredibly simple. And it's because the movies choose not to spend time on expanding these characters. They make a very active decision not to provide the audience with sound reasoning for the motivation within the context of the film itself. And this is a big no-no in a story where so many infamous antagonists had been fully fleshed out. Think Dolph Lamingo, who received his own flashback, which while it did not in any way exonerate the character, gave us profound insight into why he is the way he is and rounded him out pretty damn well. Then you also have examples like Arlong, who after his arc of tyranny was eventually expanded upon and sound reasoning for his unjustifiable actions were given to the audience, leading to a greater understanding of this villainous presence. And here's where you might be saying, yeah, ground line review, that's all well and good, but the movie villains don't have an entire arc to build this sort of story behind them. And I would say that you're right, but it doesn't matter. Because villains do not need the time that was dedicated to Dolph Lamingo to build satisfying motivation and understanding. Take Catechuri for example. This guy had just over one page of manga for his flashback, which perfectly conveyed to the audience why he adopted the guise of a fearsome invincible presence in order to protect his weaker family members. It was all we needed. And in the case of these film villains, that sort of thing is all that was really required as well. But here's the real kicker. For these movie villains, that story actually exists for all of them. It was just never included or poorly incorporated into most of their films. And to demonstrate this point, let's begin with the most egregious example in my mind, being Guild Tazora from One Piece Film Gold. And I want to begin here because Tazora is a legitimately great character to me. I really like him as an antagonist, however, you'd never get that feeling simply from watching film Gold alone. Tazora spends 99% of this film being a murderous asshole with a typical bad guy obsession with wealth. And in the movie, all we get to justify this is a grand total of 57 seconds showing the entire story behind this man, which is thrown together in a completely incomprehensible manner. All that comes from it is the impression that Tazora was a guy down on his luck, met a girl, bad things happened and now he's a dick for reasons. That doesn't tell us why he's so focused on money or why he chose to become the helm of the world's largest entertainment complex. And most importantly, it didn't tell us why we should give a single shred of care to this character. And for a film that he is the centerpiece of, that's not quite good enough. And like I said before, it's not as if the story wasn't there to use. It's all detailed in One Piece Vol. 777, which was the companion book given out to select people who saw the film in Japan. And essentially, it goes a little something like this. Tazora was a boy born into a poor family who loved to sing and always wanted to be an entertainer. With that alone, all of a sudden we understand why Grant Tazora was his eventual endeavor. That was not in the film. But Tazora came from an exceptionally poor family, and so sought money at a young age through various illegal methods. The first flag of his future obsession with money. Then one day he met a girl at a human auction house named Stella, who hated criminals, and for her sake, Tazora began to work hard in a legitimate manner to eventually buy her freedom. Once again, adding another layer to the importance of money. But she was bought by a world noble before Tazora could earn the funds required, after which point he attacked the world noble. And Tazora himself was taken as a slave and tortured for a total of seven years. Eventually being freed by Fisher Tiger's assault on Marijua, however by that time, Stella was long dead. And Tazora's twisted reasoning was that this had all happened because he did not have the money to prevent it. So after seven years of torture, I really feel like I need to emphasize that seven years because the film definitely didn't. Tazora actively set out not only to make sure that he had attained all the money he would ever need, but was seeking revenge on the world nobles, with the goal to gain the wealth necessary to make even them bow to him. And that's just an abridged version, there's actually much more. But really, all it would have needed was an extra two minutes or so to really hammer this home and turn Tazora from a fairly flat movie villain into a character whose ambition and cruelty is clearly understood, adding a very necessary dimension of tragedy to this man. Without this story, his character has no real purpose other than to be bad for the sake of being bad. And I guess you could say that well, if you want to know more about the character then just go ahead and read volume 777. But firstly, that's a big problem because being a movie special edition thing, it was never distributed and translated. So as an English speaking one-piece fan, you're already pretty screwed. But even if you're a Japanese fan, only a limited amount of these volumes were printed. So if you can't get your hands on one, then well, no Tazora for you. But more importantly, this isn't like, you know, going to read some extended media about some random details. This stuff is integral to forming a character who is charged with the task of helming an entire movie. Leaving this out is an abysmal decision from a filmmaking perspective because this kind of story is only as strong as its antagonist. Now let's look at another example of this decision in place. Moving to Stronghold in which Golden Lion Shiki was chosen to be the crowning antagonist. Just like Tazora, Shiki's motivation is not explicitly expanded upon in the film itself. And if you just watch Stronghold, then Shiki is a bad guy for the sake of being a bad guy. He has some nice character quirks being a bit of a weirdo, as well as some sense of honour displayed, but as for why he was breeding gigantic animals to destroy East Blue in particular, well, I'm sure he had his reasons, right? Well, he did. But in order to find out what they were, you need to read Chapter Zero, which to be fair was a much better idea than presenting Tazora's backstory was because Chapter Zero is an actual drawn story and it was published in Weekly Shonen Jump and even adapted into an anime special being known as Episode Zero. And this is where Shiki shines. It details his history with Roger, an epic battle on Marineford with Garp and Sengoku, his escape from Impel Down, his greater connections with the world, and it makes it clear why he chose East Blue to be the target of his first wave of destruction because he actively despised that sea for being Roger's final resting place, as well as it being the symbol of peace according to the Marines. And all of a sudden Shiki's actions make perfect sense. It's just a shame that you needed to look outside of strong will to get that context, because once again, this is Shiki's film. He is the character that is supposed to hold all of this together, the man who is causing a big enough threat for all of the straw hats to get involved. And yeah, all of this history may have added another five minutes to the film, but I would make the argument that this information is much more integral to the story than pretty much anything the film itself actually presents. And here's where we get the old, well, you know, it's all well and good to say that Grand Line review, but you've never made a film. You're just one schmuck on the internet who very loudly and quickly spouts his meaningless opinion. And in any other situation, you may be right. But in this case, we just so happened to have an example of what happens when a villain is given everything I've just demanded of Shiki and Tezora. And that villain's name is Zephyr. Welcome to One Piece Film Z. This is why they regarded as the best in the entire series of One Piece movies. Now, Stronghold and Film Gold, they were great films. A lot of fun, but neither of them come close to how Zed was elevated purely through actually giving the antagonist some depth within the context of the film. I mean, for example, if you've already seen film Zed, there is not a hell of a lot I can tell you about Zephyr that you won't already know because it's all in the movie. He was a lifelong loyal marine whose family were killed by pirates, commencing his intense hatred with that faction, and his marine division was massacred by a man who would later become a bullet of the sea, thus instigating his hatred of the world government. So what's left to do when you hate the entire world? Well, destroying it seems like a fine idea. And do you know how long it took him to get to that point of being a fully fleshed out character? About a three minute flashback narrated by Garb. Three times the size of what Tazora got and I tell you that makes the film. Take these three minutes out of film Zed and the overall product would suffer incredibly for it. Now, I will say that Zephyr did have some other things going for him as well, specifically his relationship with the marines and the connection to Kuzan throughout the feature, as well as the underpinning idea that all he ever really wanted was to be a hero, which is only truly revealed right at the end of the film in one of the most heartbreaking flashbacks I've ever seen in media, juxtaposed against his death, and all it took to achieve that was a handful of seconds. There really wasn't a lot more you could really ask for with Zephyr. Taking that extra couple of minutes to tell his story in a meaningful and coherent way is why we are able to empathize with him, whereas we were unable to connect with Shiki and Tazora. Two characters I would argue have similarly tragic paths, especially Tazora, but not giving them the time they needed is what made all the difference. And it's not so much an issue of timing either, because all of these films run at just under the two hour mark. In fact, film Z is actually the shortest of the three, coming in at 107 minutes, while Stronghold and Filmgold are 115 minutes and 119 minutes respectively. So had the creatives chose to do so, they could have included these essential beats, which would have transformed standard villains into great villains. Now, we do appear to have left someone out here and that's on purpose. Let's briefly discuss Douglas Bullet. First of all, it does need to be noted that One Piece Stampede is a very different film from the other three we've discussed. The way I would describe it is more of an event than an actual movie. You know, if you're hunting for a good story, Stampede is not where you go. It's very action, very fan service-y, and a lot of fun for longtime One Piece followers. As a result, I do believe the bullet is unequivocally the worst villain of the four we're examining here today. And it's weird, because we do have a scene which examines his past in a very similar manner to which Zephyr's past is presented. Once again though, it's just over a minute and a half of pure exposition, and his past is never expanded upon beyond that. And this is pretty outrageous, because while I still find him to be a bit flat, after reading about his past, which comes courtesy of yet another special volume, being volume 10,089, he is so much more interesting than anything Stampede presented. I'm not going to go into it here because Stampede is still fairly new and a lot of people haven't seen it, but there is a lot to explore with Bullet. He's led a remarkable life to say the least. But in Stampede, all that comes across as a big, fighty dude, who wants to be the best big, fighty dude of all the big dude bros. It's just really boring, and a huge disservice to a character who is supposed to be the glue that is expected to hold this incredible beast of a film together, just like Sheiky, and just like Tazora. And you know it would be one thing if Zephyr was like that as well. At least then you could say that these films have an established model and they aren't willing to pursue something different. But films that prove that you could not only have a spectacular one piece movie, but you can do it with a great antagonist as well. I would argue that any one of these villains could have been just as memorable as Zephyr. Yes, even Bullet, probably. All they needed was a handful of minutes, like 120 seconds extra, to focus on their characters instead of their technical implementation in the plot. These characters are pretty fantastic, but you would never know it unless you searched far and wide. And as a result, they will always be heavily underrated within the One Piece fanbase. Because so few people go to the effort to seek out their stories. And to be fair, they shouldn't have to. It's the responsibility of the piece of media to portray its characters as best it possibly can. They had some real gems to work with here, and the decision that was made was to bury those gems, and instead focus on the imprint of dirt that they created in the ground. But that pretty much does it for my thoughts on why One Piece Movie Villains are heavily underrated. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line of Hugh 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 but applied to other anime and manga series, then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. 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