One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix
Directed by Marc Jobst
Netflix’s adaptation of the long-running manga came out the gate swinging and delivered a fun opening episode that drew me in despite my apathy toward the franchise. Now that they’ve proven it can be done, will the rest of the season convince fans that it should be done? Let’s find out!!
The Straw Hat crew has barely escaped the clutches of the Marines stationed in Shells Town when they find themselves in yet another pickle! The famed pirate captain Buggy the Clown (Jeff Ward) has kidnapped our heroes and is demanding they turn over the map they stole from the Marines or they too will suffer a horrific fate much like the citizens of Orange Town who have also been captured by the ruthless Buggy. Luffy, Zoro, and Nami (Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, and Emily Rudd) have to find a way out of this terrifying, albeit whimsical, prison that they find themselves in and it may just require the power of friendship to do so! Will our heroes overcome their differences and put an end to the spooky clown’s reign of terror? What tricks does Buggy have up his sleeve, and can he possibly be a threat to the rubber man, Luffy? Is it everyone’s goal in Hollywood to one day become The Joker? I know that movie made a billion dollars, but it still wasn’t very good!
The first episode did a great job of selling the concept of the show and proving that a live-action can work. This episode gives us the first real glimpse into its characters’ inner workings and manages to weave that into a fun adventure about fighting a sadistic clown who steals every scene he’s in and is already my favorite character in this series. Buggy is one of the Straw Hat Crew’s earliest foes and I remember liking him in the anime, but once again this live-action series manages to dive a bit deeper and delivers a fascinating interpretation. Jeff Ward is certainly no Mark Hammill when it comes to portraying creepy clowns, but the guy does a great job imparting a sense of menace and dread while also coming off as pathetic and childish. He’s a character straight out of a Tim Burton Batman movie, complete with an army of circus weirdos who know how to punch things, and while the lighting is still an issue in this show, Buggy’s Big Top was a fun set to stage some great scenes and exciting action. Any good villain needs a good hero to bounce off of, however, and this is where we get into what this episode brings to the overarching storyline. The whole episode is built around our young crew as they are forced to confront their own shortcomings and decide how they wish to move forward with Buggy and his nefarious clown crew serving as foils for this growth. Zoro in particular is put in mortal danger due to his past catching up to him, but Nami and Luffy are also forced to face uncomfortable truths with the former revealing her ruthless self-interest and the latter having to confront a less-than-ideal view of his hero Shanks which is delivered by the nefarious Buggy that knew him long before Luffy did. The three ultimately decide that friendship and caring about one another is what’s important, and that’s not to say that they don’t have room to grow still as we see that Nami is still hiding quite a bit from her crew, but as an arc to carry us through an episode, it works fantastically and gives this episode the purpose it needs to be more than a fun clown beat-down. The show is still struggling with its technical limitations and I doubt those will be going away any time soon. I mentioned some technical issues in the last review as some scenes were just too dark, but those seem to be screen and stream-quality dependent as I’ve seen some footage that looks much better with brighter colors. Still, the first time I watched this episode I ran into that issue again, and as fun as the set design is in this episode, there was just an omnipresent darkness obscuring everything that isn’t front and center for the camera. I’m not sure the answer here if you’re having issues as well, but there is a version of this show that looks crisp and with nice colors so I’ll try not to take points off for that unless it’s particularly egregious. What I can still take points off for is the camera work which indulges in far too many close-ups, and they are fine for certain scenes, especially when we get too up close and personal with Buggy, they are becoming far too noticeable and a bit distracting. I’m also curious what they are doing with Coby and the Marines which appear to be heading in an interesting direction, but as good as this series has been so far I’m unsure if it will pay off as well as it needs to. Any live-action adaptation can throw enough money around to recreate the look and tell the same stories, but a proper series needs to work within its medium and this pulls that off with aplomb. Diving deeper into everyone’s pathology was not necessary to make a fun Buggy episode, but the added effort to give this episode its own thematic reason to exist and not just another piece of a season-long storyline is what hopefully will set this apart from other attempts at bringing properties like it to life. Whatever technical limitations are present are barely noticeable when the writing is this strong and I can’t wait to see where else this show will take us; especially given that we have two more crew members yet to make an appearance!
The Reviewers Unite 