Tons of 'Best OP movie ever'. Seriously? This movie is just pure fan-service. It's not bad, either but it's definitely not a good movie. Don't misunderstand me, I'm a huge fan of OP and that's precisely why I can't approve. I know, the plot doesn't matter much, I know we just want to see characters and fights. But, CGI-wise, very poor and sometimes ridiculous. The fights? Cool Sanji vs Lucci - wait that only lasted for 2 seconds. What's the point of bringing out so many cool characters to just make them show up and leave? (cf. MIHAWK). What about Bullet's power? It's again just some kind of gigantification... His background? Near to none. Well, sort of.

Anyway, unless you're just too much of an Otaku, or unless you're 14 years old, this is definitely not a good OP film. Try Z movie instead.

Most of the movie seems to be little bits of fan service stitched together, rather than a satisfying story. Here's character X. They're saying that thing that makes them sound cool (Zoro),or doing that attack that makes them look badass (Luffy),or trying to do both and failing because that what makes them an endearing loser (Buggy).

At this point in the canon everyone is so OP that that the villain has no choice but to be equally overpowered; although One Piece can do smart villain plots, they work better as a slow burn over a long story arc. This is more of a showcase for as many characters as possible getting their 15 seconds of screen time before the unsurprising climax.

The sweet spot for characters with such a power creep is similar to an RPG; at the low levels they can't do much, and the high levels they are so strong they can just spam their strongest attacks. It's that middle ground where the most fun is to be had.

Unfortunately that heyday for the One Piece crew was around the Alabaster era. The ongoing stories are still entertaining when there is room for is a solid story, character development, and plot twists. But in a movie which is trying to shoehorn in as much as it can, those fall by the wayside in favor of a simple battle royale plot. It's still fun, but it could be better.

It's interesting how different Japanese franchises handle their 20th-anniversary movies. In the case of Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You (2017),a nostalgia tactic was used to bring in those viewers who might not have seen a Pokémon movie since the anime started airing back in 1997. Two years later, and another well-known anime (or at least it should be well known) has a movie that celebrates the 20th year of its animated series. One Piece: Stampede (2019) takes a somewhat different tactic here and embraces everything that turned it into what it is today.

While anime movies rarely interact with the canon of the series they're based on, it is essential to note that the author of the original manga did help create the story for Stampede. The reason why this is important is that this movie was able to bring together 20 years' worth of extraordinarily overpowered and unique characters in a way that still somewhat made sense. Furthermore, it still somewhat tied to what One Piece is all about: finding Gol D. Roger's treasure. Sure, there isn't quite enough run-time to fully explore the characters or concepts, but the movie is betting that anyone coming to see it will already know who everyone is.

Extremely light on plot, Stampede takes advantage of its vast cast of characters to do what One Piece does well: over the top battle sequences. If these movies don't have elements of fan fiction-which explores what would happen if characters from vastly different parts of the story came together-then what's the point of even watching these movies at all? Some of the most unlikely partnerships can be seen in this film, and the results are epic in scale and power. I can't imagine how the producers of such a work could top themselves after this movie, and I'm not sure they ever could.

An anime movie that embraces 20 years of uniquely overpowered characters, I give One Piece: Stampede 4.0 stars out of 5.