One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix
Directed by Marc Jobst
Before we get into this, I should probably put my cards on the table and confess that I just don’t like the One Piece anime. I’ve seen maybe forty or so episodes back when it was originally airing on Saturday mornings, but it never stuck with me the way that Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, or even Naruto had back when I was a kid. I love pirate stuff too, which you’d think would make it an easy sell, and yet every attempt I’ve made to watch it just ended with disappointment and apathy. It always felt lacking whenever I compared it to other Shonen anime that I liked and it never felt like more than the bare minimum clichés blown up to an entire series. That’s why I was interested when Netflix announced they were gonna attempt a live-action version since a fresh take on the material could be exactly what I need to truly enjoy this story, and the fact that it wasn’t going to be over a thousand episodes didn’t hurt either. Will this be a show worth checking out, even for those of us who didn’t get the anime’s appeal, or will this fail to be more than just a lesser copy of what we’ve been getting since 1999? Let’s find out!!
Monkey D Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) is not your everyday wannabe pirate. Sure, he has stretchy powers due to a magical fruit he ate as a young boy, but what really makes him special is his unyielding optimism and unflinching courage in the face of danger which he finds himself several times here as he searches for a crew and a ship to start his journey to becoming King of the Pirates! His first stop takes him to a port town ruled by a ruthless Marine Captain named Morgan (Langley Kirkwood) who has a mysterious swordsman named Zoro (Mackenyu) held prisoner and holds a map that both Luffy and a thief named Nami (Emily Rudd) have set their sights on. Will Luffy succeed in convincing these two outcasts to join his crew and find him a ship? What secrets will be revealed on this map that Morgan holds, and what forces will bear down on Luffy and his friends if they do manage to take it from him? I mean look, if you can work together to take out an entire platoon of soldiers within five minutes of meeting each other, you pretty much have to become a crew, right? It’s like an Anime Law or something.
I couldn’t tell you how fans are going to react to this, but I found it to be an utterly delightful interpretation of the material that solves a lot of the problems that I couldn’t get past in the anime. Much like the recent live-action adaptation of Halo, this finds its strengths in using the source material for inspiration without being slavishly devoted to it, and while the changes so far have been minimal in scope, I found everything about this to be far more interesting and instantly engaging. Its sights are set on a more grounded aesthetic drawn from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies with a dash of Black Sails for good measure, but it never feels inauthentic to the source material. I’d say that some of it is because both Hollywood and Eiichiro Oda were drawing from the same source when it comes to pirate lore so there would inevitably be some overlap, but it’s clear that a lot of love and attention was paid to every detail of the set design, costuming, and props to find a perfect balance between the look of the original and what they were trying to accomplish with this new series. A significant improvement as far as I’m concerned, but as mentioned I do love this kind of pirate stuff, and moving the dial a few notches toward that and away from its anime roots is what I was hoping for when they announced this. This thankfully extends far beyond the look of the show as the characters themselves lean harder in that direction. Where I found the characters to be rather flat and overly animated in the anime, the actors here play things down significantly and make for far more compelling characters with Koby in particular having a genuine sense of pathos to him instead of just a tag-along for Luffy’s initial adventure. Speaking of whom, Iñaki Godoy is fantastic in the part and brings a sense of charm and humanity that I felt was lacking before; not that I want to spend this whole review griping about the source material, but from the episodes that this series is adapting, Luffy was definitely light on depth and relied heavily on Anime Protagonist clichés. Here, Iñaki is allowed to tone it down a bit which makes him feel that much more human and his optimism more impactful. This applies to the rest of the cast as well with Emily Rudd and Mackenyu giving us subtly different spins on these characters and the comradery between them is evident even if they have a ways to go to becoming a crew. The only issues I have so far are that you can feel the budget in certain places, especially with how restrained they are with Luffy’s powers, and the colors are not quite what I was hoping for. Even with this somewhat darker tone, I wanted the colors to pop and for the cinematography to be crystal clear, but the day scenes are a little hazy and anything set after dusk is nearly incomprehensible. It’s an odd choice that either had to of been forced on them due to production limitations or is a misguided attempt at bringing even more edge to the series. Pastels and brighter sets would not have taken away from what this series is already doing to differentiate itself from the anime, but it’s not a huge stumbling block for the show. If I were to condense my thoughts on the anime into something pithy, it’s that I’ve always found it to be annoying and this manages to get to the heart of what makes the series work while shedding its more obnoxious tendencies which is all I could really ask for in something like this. Scaling things back allows for more thoughtful storytelling and only makes the moments of explosive action all the more meaningful when they occur, and while we’ll need to see if it can maintain this calculated restraint for another seven episodes, we’re at least off to a great start with this first one.
The Reviewers Unite 