One Piece Film Z Review

You lucky, lucky people I just finished another anime and this one is a film, One Piece Film Z.

We start off on an island where a guy going by the name of Z sporting a heavily weaponized arm steals some high powered explosives from the marines and proceeds to blow up a Volcanic Island while battling a Marine Admiral.
Cue later on and the Strawhat Pirates are having a party when they bring Z onto their ship when he's floating in the ocean. Sadly not being very grateful to Luffy proceeds to destroy him and his crew upon hearing that they are pirates with some crew members getting younger thanks to a female subordinate of Z having the power to make people 12 years younger leaving Robin, Nami and Chopper in dismay while Brook simply enjoys having a fuller head of hair.
Upon the second Volcanic Island, Luffy with advice from a former Admiral and enemy named Aokiji has a rematch with Z only to lose again and that island blowing up as well. Apparently Z plans to blow up the three major Volcanic Islands in order to create a chain reaction that destroys the New World and everyone with it, Pirates, Marines and Civilians. The story comes to a climax on the final island where Luffy settles the score with Z once and for all.
Now this is not entirely a typical One Piece film as the villain has a lot of depth to him, rare when you consider most One Piece film villains to be 1 or 2 dimensional with very little reason to care for them, but with Z you do sympathize with his cause and you do get a sense of why he feels so strongly about his beliefs that he'd want to cause wide spread devastation. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the film. Don't get me wrong it's a good film but lacks a strong story to go with it's strong villain. You get a sense that this is all been done before and while the initial payoff at the end is a good one you feel that the experience is as typical as every other One Piece film before it and that's a real shame.
Dubbing is top quality, and despite my disdain for anything Avril Lavigne does in anime since the whole "Make 5 Wishes" incident, she does do a decent cover of "Bad Reputation" and "How You Remind Me", a rare choice of Western Music in an anime.
Final Verdict: It's a One Piece film and behaves like one, it's got a lot going for it but fails to take full advantage of it's greatest strengths. Still a fairly decent watch.

End