#anyway. we couldnt find the box again the next day and if the Genuine Tea had any effects theyre certainly nothing ive noticed since

[teagoblin]

. Pt 2

[tumblunni]

Baron omatsuri and the secret island traumatizes me yet again, hooray!

Ok wow that was a nostalgia blast! Finally goddamn have a physical copy of this thing to own. Its never been dubbed and the only way to get it was this weird manga UK licensed reprint of a bunch of (i think) hong kong english subtitles. The style of the subtitles looks like that, at least. Its all weird and grainy and very very old fashioned early days of subtitling style, which contrasts completely with the modern dvd menus and box and stuff. And its also a weird combination disc of four different movies, it seems they just bought out a licensing package deal or something? And just baked it onto the disc without checking or editing anything. Its not really a funny sort of bad subtitles though, its just awkward phrasings of thibgs that are hard to understand or random typos or whatever, no legendarily hilarious stuff. I kinda dislike it more when subtitles are like this, when theyre like...actually written by a guy who speaks fluent english but he just never watched the actual movie so theres a bunch of rookie mistakes. Also has a strange case of what you usually only see on fansubs- the obsession with leaving everything in japanese to Sound Cool. Nah we cant call them the Tea Party Pirates we have to say the japanese word for that. Nah we cant have this man say mustache when he's doing the mustache pose and talking about his crew of entirely mustache men who all do this mustache pose NO it has to be Chobehige because its somehow deep and edgy to not understand the word for mustache. Like i feel if i was watching this sub first i would have no idea what was happening! At least its not as bad as that older sub i saw where they insisted on translating friends as "crew", even when it was llike..a singular. This one man is my crew and here are all my other crews! Like i feel like that subber probably originally did that dumb old fandom thing of INSISTING that you had to say Nakama in japanese and Capitalized and it was a Very Important japanese word for specifically pirate friends that was Impossible To Translate. And then they just did a ctrl + F replace on the whole thing and made an incomprehensible mess. Also for some reason sanji just yells DOCTOR out of nowhere (chopper wasnt even in the scene) and baron omatsuri's one syllable "oh" is translated as some long string of what seems to be baseball jargon..?

But ANYWAY the movie is still fuckin awesome and i actually noticed EVEN MORE dark shit and subtle storytelling that i missed when i was a kid! The whole 'small child zombie stares blankly at the place where a sword stabbed through his chest and cant understand why he got back up' scene is EVEN MORE emotionally destructuve than i thought! Cos the subtlety of the voiceacting seems to make the poor kid sound so tired and resigned to it? He's desperately asking and his father figure feeds him the same old lies he's done a million times about how he's totally still alive and everything is fine. Like wow i missed that inplication that this has happened before! And then he kinda sounds like he's actually aware that Baron is lying and he's just pretending to believe him to make him feel better. And then he starts turning back into a corpse and he doesnt panic like muchigoro or not realize whats happening like the grandpas do. He just looks straight at his hand falling apart and tries to lie to Baron to make him feel better. *long shot of him from behind before you see whats happened* "I'm just feeling dizzy again. I've got used to it." *him staring blankly at his body falling apart, not even capable of feeling sad about it anymore* "Don't worry...i've got used to it." *thud*

Like FUCKING HELL this film is the best damn existential horror thing ever and why the FUCK did they market it as a fun happy kids film? it probably would have been way more successful if the twist wasnt kept all twisty, honestly.

And also WOW YEAH theres a lot of stuff thats the subtlest goddamn storytelling in the universe and youd never notice unless you watched this film a million times like i did! Like during the intro when everythibg still seems all fun and cute and normal, the advert for the Totally Innocent Not A Trap Super Secret Island Resort is being read over some random shots of waves and stuff. But then right near the end you see those same shots again and it becomes clear that it was literally the view from Baron's eyes as he was falling from the ship and drowning, desperately trying to keep his head above water and strain his eyes to see if anyone else had survived. All the moments that just looked like camera cuts were actually when his head fell beneath the waves. Thats fuckin amaizng you straight up showed the ending in the beginning and we didnt notice????

Oh and also right before THE FUCKIN TERRIFYING MUCHIGORO DEATH SCENE you see him casually mention being 'sleepy' a few scenes earlier. It just passes by without notice and you think that he's just drunk until he suddenly starts going from comedic slurring to fucking asphixiating and the SKIN ON HIS FINGERS PEELING OFF. Oh hey! Another thing i didnt notice before! FUCKING THAT. A fun game for you on your rewatch! Looking out to find the secret finger horror! Ha ha ha...ha...

Also MAN OH WOW all the subtle signs of Baron getting more desparate throughout the movie and how it seems the time limit for the zombies was almost up and he had to kill these specific pirates right now because he couldnt spare even a few more hours. In retrospect it makes sense how he was slipping up and leaving evidence for the heroes to figure him out. And its just so subtly offputting and strange how he goes from making a big fun performance about the festival early on and then starts subtky rushing through the formalities faster. Like you dont eveb conciously notice the tone is changing until suddenly BAM the full change happens and you realise you missed all those signs! And aaaa its so fuckin sad how you see him come running when muchigoro drops dead and he's like fuckin GET OUT OF THE WAY DAMMIT and kneels down next to the body and theb he just..turns emotionless again and goes ITS TIME FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE. It is time. Its now. Shut the fuck up and do it, i dont have time to deal with this shit, just die so i can bring my friend back. (Tho of course you dont know thats why at the time) And then whats most jarring about the whole scene to me is how he's like "okay fuck it theres no more fun theres no more attractions, if youre not gonna play along then the final game is just i shoot your damn head off" WHILE YKNOW STILL STANDING OVER THE CORPSE OF HIS FRIEND AND STARING DAGGERS INTO THEM LIKE ITS THEIR FAULT FOR DARING TO CLING ONTO LIFE and then a fuckin half finished hapoy fun carnival game sign pops up in the backgroubd and everyone walks past it. Why was that somehow both hilarious and terrifying????? Just fuckin 'whoops we had this thing ready to go but alright its murder time i guess' and everyone IS SUDDENLY PACKING HEAT AND RIDDLING OUR HEROES WITH BULLETS???

And also even more subtly Baron just?? Stays with muchigoro?? Like notice how the entirety of the endgame takes place around where the dude dropped dead. And how when mustache pirate guy saves luffy you see Baron just walking in circles around the same area angrily shooting arrows at nothing in complete desperation even though the dude is gone and itd make more sense to run after him. No he stays standing right there and actually looks really damn relieved when luffy comes back, he's like 'holy shit you really were stupid enough to walk right into my trap jesus christ im so glad but also youre a dumbass'. And he fights entirely using arrows at this point so you might not even notice that he barely walks more than just circling a two meter radius of fuckin DEAD BEST FRIEND CORPSE. Which btw blends intonthe shadows for this entire scene and they only draw attention it again after Baron wibs and muchigoro comes back to life. And UGH MY HEART you see him smile genuinely for the firstvtime and he's like 'im so glad youre okay' and muchigoro is like 'haha im more than okay i can do somersaults!' and generally being a FUCKING TREASURE and this poor fuckin horrible evil man is hugging his buddy and gently leading him away from the battlefield so he doesnt norice he was just fuckin murdering some dudes to ressurect him. God the scariest damn thing about this film is how the zombies dont know theyre zombies and honestky they probably wouldnt even agree with their boss's plan to kill people to keep them alive. They justvthink they live a perfectly normal happy life on hapoy festival island, and he wants them to stay that way and never feel pain again :(

Aaaaand then yeah the infamous scene of revealing this horrifying intestines flower is growing out of the flesh on his back and all the corpses its digesting are pushed against the undulating flesh of its throat like a snake devouring its prey. And its cutesy fake flower face grows infinate eyes as it just keeps laughing and laughing. And then it gets graphically blown apart and the poor goddamn parasite host tries to shove the bloody instestines back into its body, knowing that without this horrifying monster chewing on his goddamn veins all his friends will go back to being dead.

THE END

THE FUCKING END

God it ends so abruptly seriously

I still cry my eyes out every time at the ending monologue of Baron dying and meeting all the souls of his dead friends and theyre crying telling him he shouldnt be here, they wish he'd been able to find another reason to live without him...

And then THE END

JAUNTY MUSIC OVER THE CREDITS

THE FUCKIN END I GUESS

What a great but very oddly executed movie. Seriously i feel it could have worked better if it was given space to breathe and more deeply explore the dark themes rather than the weirdness of trying to fool the audience into thinking it was cheerful and innocent. Like all of this shit happens in the last 30 minutes of the movie! They spend 60 minutes on the fun carnival games! What a strange sense of priorities!!

I WOULD DEVOUR A MILLION HOURS MORE OF DEEP SAD ZOMBIE CONTENT

I am like the Lily of fanfics

Oh yeah btw the horrifying deadly elder god spine parasite thing is named Lily and it looks pretty much exactly like flowey from undertale. This film kinda spoiled me for that game LOL ive never trusted a single talking flower ever since!