Season 1 Review 

The One Piece live action Netflix adaptation attempted to stay true to form and went the extra mile to make the atmosphere and characters come to life on screen for fans. But it dialed certain things down, a bit due to budget and rating. The way the actors portray their characters made me feel like I was watching a Disneyland form of One Piece that, while enjoyable, stood alone from the original. Let’s talk about how it measured up to its predecessor and if we can really justify its existence. Did we need a live action adaptation and what did it achieve that the cartoon didn’t? If anything.

A Difference in Portrayal 

When adapting any already existing work into a different format, changes must be made for interest’s sake. No one is going to see the exact same thing done in a different style when they could just stick with the original. Yes, pivotal scenes and characters should remain the same so the audience doesn’t forget what they fell in love with in regards to the original. I’ll give the live action One Piece credit for trying to be unique while staying true to the original material but they fell short in some areas. 

1. Wasted Time 44 episodes in 8 

Netflix tried to do 44 episodes worth of material in 8 episodes of about an hour each. This was not an impossible task. Anime is known for its extended fight scenes and filler episodes since the source material is so long. They could have condensed what was vital in 8 episodes, but instead they still managed to fill time with unnecessary scenes and dialogue. 

• The first two episodes were pretty good. The first episode brought Luffy, Zoro, and Nami together and in the second one they face Buggy the clown. Not much time was wasted. The third episode, however, introduces Usopp, the cast plays dress up, and girl/guy talk ensues. Usopp’s arc with Kaya could’ve been done in one go. Unlike the Anime, there is no pirate attack on the beach so we literally could’ve put all relevant scenes into just one episode. The writers must have felt we needed time for the characters to grow on us but this is an example of too much telling instead of showing (something we’ll get into later on.) 

• Episode 5 introduces Sanji and does little else. Luffy spends quality time with Sanji while we have unnecessary scenes with the marine crew and Zoro and Nami do shots. This arc could also have been done in one episode. In the Anime, Luffy and Sanji fight Don Krieg and his men, not Arlong’s fish dudes. Fighting Arlong adds another episode of material that isn’t there in the cartoon. We could’ve met Sanji, fought Don Krieg, had Zoro fight Mihawk and Nami ditch them all in episode 5 alone. 

• In episode 7 we spend the majority on Nami’s backstory and the strawhat crew sitting around with nothing to do until the last scene where Luffy decides to help free Coco village from Arlong. At least in the Anime things are happening before they go to face Arlong. Zoro fights a bunch of fishmen and hilarious comedy ensues between the crew while they wait to see what Luffy is going to do. This episode had the material to be split into two if they’d followed the pattern of events more closely from the Anime. For instance, in the Anime, Zoro and Usopp went ahead to find Nami so we get some fight scenes and see Nami isn’t as bad as she pretends to be. In the live action, they all arrive together and we’ve already seen how Nami cares about them. 

Basically, the writers made a creative choice to put scenes that weren’t there in the Anime and to remove scenes that were. This is unavoidable in an adaptation, but we didn’t expect to have most of the scenes necessary for plot and character development removed to be replaced with pointless heavily revealing dialogue. This brings us to our next complaint. 

1. Character Portrayal (Telling us EVERYTHING instead of showing) 

• In the Usopp arc, they felt the need to have the guys all talk in the kitchen about whether or not Kaya likes him. In the Anime, Usopp having feelings for Kaya, and vice versa, goes without saying. Usopp leaves to become a pirate and Kaya stays to become a doctor; they promise to see each other again but don’t confirm romantic feelings. Having them kiss randomly in the live action makes Usopp look worse for leaving her because something definitive happened between them. 

-In this same arc, Nami and Kaya talk about feelings and how Nami isn’t as bad as she comes off. This really removes tension and character development from Nami later on. 

• Nami’s drinking talk with Zoro is a perfect example of telling us to feel sorry for her and giving us all the reasons why she’s so jaded and ends up pushing people away. The Anime gives us none of this. Nami doesn’t explain herself, she just ditches them by taking their boat and the first sign that she gives a hoot is when we see her crying as she does it. In the live action she also tells Arlong to spare Luffy’s life and leaves with him, an obvious act to save Luffy’s life and she only leaves because Arlong is already there. No doubt this was supposed to be the scene to replace the one in the cartoon where she saves Zoro from Arlong (that scene did a better job of showing how good an actor Nami is and how Zoro can read her). Her saving Luffy tells us nothing we didn’t already know. She was already begging for them to save themselves prior so we know she cares. I feel the writers didn’t trust us enough to come to our own conclusions about the characters so they had to overshare.

1.  How things felt out of whack from the original with certain character portrayals. 

• Nami and Zoro’s dynamic: I’m cool with actors having their own take on the character, they should make the character their own. I feel like most everyone in the live action One Piece attempted to do this. Nami was definitely more serious and Zoro’s actor took on a very solemn subdued approach. That was fine, until they did some things which felt completely out of character for both of them. When Zoro wants to fight Mihawk, Nami is practically begging him not to and telling him how great he is so he won’t. Zoro, in response, is a jerk to her. This doesn’t match the Nami of the Anime who is always picking on Zoro and he takes it like a gentleman most of the time. They fight but he ends up helping her with whatever she wants instead of ignoring her in the cartoon. Then, in the live action, when Zoro is injured, Nami stays by his bedside and reads to him. (I believe they have chemistry in the Anime and I don’t buy this). In the Anime, Nami and Zoro work because she is unbearably annoying and he won’t bow to her like Sanji but he’s still too nice a guy to refuse her when she needs something from him. For this reason, I believe Nami respects Zoro but not Sanji. I believe it’s also the reason they won’t date because neither will bend to the other’s will. 

• Sanji and Red Zeff: The Sanji actor did a good job, and he went the extra mile in doing all his own stunts. He made Sanji more likable than the one in the Anime (Not better as a character necessarily, but a nicer guy). We liked Sanji more than Zoro in the Netflix version. He’s not a jerk or a pervert, he just comes off as charming and mildly flirty. This was a problem in his dynamic with his mentor, though, because Sanji feels more henpecked than a punk who needs discipline. Red Zeff criticizes Sanji on everything, including how he cuts carrots, and Sanji doesn’t retaliate like in the Anime. It doesn’t feel as earned when Sanji leaves Red Zeff and cries. In the Anime, Sanji and his mentor have been fighting like cats and dogs because both are too stubborn to admit how they feel. Sanji won’t leave Red Zeff because he owes him too much and cares about him. Red Zeff won’t tell Sanji that he’s an amazing cook and he deserves better so instead he mocks him to get him to leave. Finally, Sanji is tricked into leaving in the Anime but discovers the trick before leaving with the straw hat crew. This leads well into him crying because he understands his mentor’s behavior now. We didn’t get this done as well in the live action. 

• Monkey D. Luffy: Luffy’s actor felt the most off kilter from the original. The actor tried to copy what he saw in the manga and we ended up with a happy Luffy but not a complete one. In all fairness, it’s a hard job to copy the energy of Luffy from the Anime. It wasn’t the energy that was lacking so much, though, as it was his acting coming off as merely surface level. Luffy wasn’t relentlessly ambitious or aggressively protective of his friends. The actor’s performance was like a more repressed Luffy. He also had less to do and in the scenes he was in, his punches were pulled by the way they chose to do it. 

Example: Luffy helps the Baratia in the Anime because he accidentally damages the restaurant saving his ship. He agrees to work off his debt and this shows us his character. In the live action, he simply orders everything on the menu with no concept of paying (and I guess none of the others had any money either, though they’re buying drinks later on). He’s forced to work in the kitchen instead of it being a choice. Realistically, the whole crew should be in the kitchen since they all ate, but whatever. 

Example: Luffy also helps protect the Baratia in the Anime from Don Krieg but in the live action since there’s nothing to do, they have him needlessly fight Arlong. This takes away the suspense in us waiting for him to fight this Arlong guy he’s never even met in the Anime all because he made Nami miserable.     

1. Budget limited portrayal 

More that could have been done wasn’t because they didn’t have the budget for such outrageous fight scenes like in the Anime. While limiting though, if they’d used their scripting wisely, as mentioned earlier, they could’ve made a better show. 

Example: We have a very long scene of the evil butler chasing (with all the speed of a snail) Usopp, Kaya, and Nami. They hide from him for a while like a scene from Scooby Doo before Luffy faces him. Luffy’s fight with him is basically him standing still while the butler disappears around the room. This was probably due to a rating. We can’t have the butler with the long blades for fingers carving Luffy up like in the Anime. (Yet for some reason in episode 1 we can have nudity, which wasn’t in the original) The way they did Luffy’s fight with the butler didn’t translate well as a very entertaining scene. 

Example: In the Anime, the evil butler has a crew and Zoro has a knock down drag out fight with two of them. In the live action, his fight with the two evil cat people is done mostly off screen. 

Note: The Finale at Arlong Park was good and reminded us most of the original. 

All in all, the show was fun but didn’t need to exist because we have the Anime. However, I feel the unspoken goal was to get non-Anime fans to watch One Piece as a live action since some people say they don’t watch cartoons. If this was the goal, I understand. Our own brother, who is not a big Anime fan but appreciates the extensive creativity behind it, watched the first 2 episodes but got disinterested by the 3rd where it began to drag. This was the biggest issue–the live action doesn’t show you the same magic as the original. We could simply watch the Anime. It wasn’t bad, and if you’ve never seen the Anime the comparison wouldn’t fall as short. Will we be watching Season 2 when it comes out? Yes, Lord willing. It’s still fun and interesting to watch One Piece converted to live action. Feel free to check it out if you want a more manageable One Piece you can actually finish in one sitting, whether you’ve seen the Anime or not.