One Piece has released 15 feature films over the past 26 years, and as with any long-running movie franchise, fans have plenty of differing opinions about how good or bad they are. Many of the films are often written off as just truncated adventures, especially when it comes to the early films with shorter lengths, and while the more recent films with Eiichiro Oda’s involvement are generally agreed to have an uptick in quality, that’s only made it easier for people to debate which of them is the best.
With how varied the One Piece movies are in story and tone, everyone has different ideas of which ones are good or bad, and it’s hard to imagine there being a definitive answer for which one is the best. That being said, recent One Piece news has probably given fans as good an answer for the question as they could hope for, and overall, the results are hardly surprising.
In early March, One Piece launched another global popularity poll where, just like the first one, fans from all around the world could vote for their 100 favorite characters, with the top-ranking characters not only receiving new illustrations and merchandise, but also new eyecatchers in the anime starting from 2027. The midterm results for One Piece’s popularity poll have just been published, and very notably, Uta from One Piece Film: Red ranked as the ninth-most-popular character in the world.
2022’s One Piece Film: Red was the biggest One Piece film in history, and with a box office gross of $246.5 million, it even holds the honor of being the eighth-highest-grossing Japanese film in history. That, in turn, has made its star, Uta, an incredibly popular character who still regularly gets merchandise and appearances in spinoff material, all of which is certainly helped by her being voiced by legendary singer Ado. Uta has become a phenomenon in her own right, and, as the poll shows, she’s still incredibly beloved by the One Piece community worldwide.
One Piece has many movies but not all of them are worth watching, so here is a ranking of every One Piece film from best to worst and why.
What’s even more telling is how Uta compares to the only other movie character viable for the poll: Shiki. Between the two, Shiki is the only one who’s made a proper appearance in the manga, and Rocks and Harald’s flashback arc finally gave him some time in the spotlight, yet even with that recency bias, he didn’t even place in the top 100. One Piece Film: Strong World is also held in high regard, but if Shiki did so poorly, it only further emphasizes how much fans love Uta and One Piece Film: Red compared to other movies.
The midterm results of One Piece’s popularity poll show that Uta and One Piece Film: Red remain as popular as ever, and it’s easy to see why. For starters, the film has some of the most gorgeous action, animation, and overall direction of any recent One Piece project, with every scene being beautiful to look at and even getting wonderfully experimental at times. Legendary director Goro Taniguchi of Code Geass fame was brought in as the director, and his talents shine at every turn.
The biggest standout of Red, of course, is Uta. Not only does Uta have great chemistry with Luffy that never fails to sell their friendship, but the movie always does an incredible job of exploring her tragedy while never ignoring the horrendous reality of her actions. The result is one of the best-written villains in modern One Piece, and the character-driven focus spawned from her did wonders to make the movie stand out from its predecessors.
In the years since Red’s release, many people have accused it of being overhyped solely because of Ado’s involvement, but the film has so much going for it visually and narratively, and with Uta ranking so highly in the popularity poll, that’s easier to see than ever. As things stand, Uta will go down as one of the most popular One Piece characters of all time, with One Piece Film: Red being one of the most popular One Piece movies of all time, and four years after the fact, that’s a great thing to see.
One Piece Film: Red ](/db/movie/one-piece-film-red/)
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Tsutomu Kuroiwa