The island kingdom of Alabasta is about to erupt in civil war - a war engineered by the evil Crocodile, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea (Shichibukai), and his criminal organization Baroque Works. Monkey D. Luffy, his Straw Hat pirates, and Princess Vivi race to the island, where the strongest warriors of Baroque Works wait to stop them. Can Vivi and her friends stop an entire war? And how can Luffy fight Crocodile, when Crocodile can turn into sand?

This eighth 'One Piece' movie is the first in the series not to utilise an original storyline and instead, condenses the 40 or so episodes of the "Alabasta arc" into one feature length outing. In theory, this sounds like a good idea as this was both an entertaining and important phase for the show, but sadly the execution is far from perfect. The main issue lies with the story development as the producers seem to have no idea how to competently filter out and pace the basic plot points. This is particularly evident right from the opening which struggles to even explain how or why the Straw Hats got into their current predicament. Similarly, character development is practically non-existent as new players such as Vivi or Karoo are barely touched upon, making it very difficult to become emotionally attached to the events that ensue. However, perhaps the worst element of all is the obvious omission of several key comedic moments which makes the overall film a lot less fun than it was the first time around.

Incredibly, this "slice n dice" attitude also stretches into the action as several of the fights are edited down to become nothing more than footnotes. In particular, this applies to the henchmen battles which all lasted for several episodes during the series and gave each of the crew a chance to shine. Well you can forget about that here as they are all cut back to only a few minutes combined and show nothing more than a couple of finishing moves before stopping with an abrupt freeze frame. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they were limited for time but when you look at the sacrifices made in the story, you would at least assume they could keep the action scenes intact. That said, they do redeem themselves slightly with the finale which is a great fight no matter how you look at it, but even this seems to lack the emotional intensity that it originally had when it is shown without the proper build up.

Although the idea showed potential, this movie is just too sloppily constructed for it to work effectively. I'm sure most fans will spend the majority of the running time playing "spot the missing link" whilst newcomers will be scratching their heads throughout. Do yourselves a favour and watch the episodes from the show instead, they are far more satisfying and cohesive than this could ever be.