End of 2013 by Roger (Spoilers)

Season Greetings!

Ahoy, One Piece regulars! Roger here to wish you all Happy Holidays. For starters, I apologize for my absence during the past two months. I was suppose to have a Rogers List for the month of November, but unfortunately there were some complications. It seems my alter ego had some living inconvenience when his apartment was flooded after a hot water pipe burst, stranding him at his parents for the last month as construction was underway. Add to that the busy holiday rush at his job at the movie theater, and we just didn't have the time or energy.

That's not to say we haven't had some exciting developments with the series of recent date. For starters, not only has Funimation completed dubbing arguably the best arc of One Piece to date, they have also released Strong World on DVD and Blu-Ray

The perfect holiday gift for the anime fan in your life!

  
With the release of Strong World in the states comes our first hearing of Ian Sinclair as the English voice of Brook. As far as first impressions go, he... pretty much sounds like Brook, which I guess is the point. Mr. Sinclair is another one of Funimation's regulars (best recognized in Tokiro as the title character), and while I personally would have preferred they got an actor of Jamaican, African, or Aborigine decent to play Brook (or just called up Greg Eagles, who played Grim in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, seeing as he has already played a very similar character and sounded perfect in my head), however, after hearing about the audition process and seeing that Funimation did hire the best person they had for the part, I very much look forward to hearing more of Mr. Sinclair when the Thriller Bark Arc comes around, hopefully this coming year.

In other news, One Piece Pirate Warrirors 2 is available for download for the PS3, and just in time for Christmas, has dropped down in price to an affordable $25.00.

25 bucks is about how much this game is worth anyway.

After playing through a couple hours of the game myself, it's pretty much a Dynasty Warriors game with a One Piece paint job. What that means is 90% of what you will be doing in the game is running up to hoards of enemies and spamming the square and triangle buttons. After I play a bit further and get a better analysis of what all it has to offer, I may do a full on review of it, so keep a lookout for that. In the meantime, if you like the idea of a mindless beat-em-up where you get to play as your favorite One Piece characters and use all their best moves, go for it. If you're a weirdo who's an anime fan but for some reason owns a different console than a PS3, than I don't know what to tell you.

As far as the current run of the anime goes, Toei has recently finished the Punk Hazard Arc, and it looks like we will be going into some filler here before we head into the Dressrosa Arc. I'm all for it. Perhaps seeing our heroes on a little side story can give us a chance to see more of Law, Kinemon and Momonosuke interact with the Straw Hats before they all split up again for their big mission.

Meanwhile, the Dressarosa Arc in the Manga just seems to be getting more and more intense every week. I will save the chatter about the most recent events for Mike and Neku to cover in their manga chapter reviews, but rest assured, we have had quite the surprise.

I'll let this image speak for itself.

It has been quite a productive year for One Piece on all fronts to say the least. That said, here are a few quick things on my Christmas wish list to see happen going forward.

• I would definitely like to see One Piece video games for other genres than button mashers made by Koei. An RPG would be nice, or a Smash Bros style fighting game, or perhaps a God of War style action game that's still a button masher but with platforming and puzzle solving mixed in. Or if they ever do go back to making more of the Unlimited Cruise series that they made for the Wii and continue those for the WiiU, I would love it if they started translating those again.
• It would be nice if we in the US didn't have to wait four years for One Piece Z to get an official release like we did with Strong World. Just a thought, Funimation.
• This was actually something a friend of mine in Japan mentioned that I actually agree with. Oda, continuing on with the series, it would be nice if you saved some big fights for characters OTHER than Luffy. 

 

One of the reasons I found Sanji's grapple with Doflamingo such a nice change of pace was because it showed a legitimate amount of growth (initially) in the strength and competency of the crew. While it is true that Luffy is not the average pirate captain, and doesn't like to let others fight his battles, and he does want to be the one to protect everyone, it's still a two-way road. His crew needs to meet him half way and be strong enough to be trusted in battle as well. Yes, even against Warlords and Marine Admirals.

Remember, Luffy wants to be the greatest pirate of them all. Whitebeard was just one of his rivals, and his first mate Marco was strong enough to got head to head with Kizaru during the war. That means Zoro needs to be strong enough to take on guys like Fujitora as well. Hopefully, Oda realizes this and disperses the big fights appropriately so the Crew isn't stuck fighting lackeys all the time.

And that pretty much brings us up to speed this year. Enjoy the rest of your Christmas Break, One Piece Fans, and stay tuned for new editions of Roger's List and whatever else I have in the ballpark comming up in 2014. Comming, up the Top 5 Plotholes of One Piece. Yup, as tight and well thought out as this story is, even it's not perfect.

And with that I adjourn and set sail from this site.

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.