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One Piece Live Action
I watched the One Piece live action Netflix show last night. Actually, I was just going to check in on a few minutes to see what the live action characters were like, and sort of ... ended up watching the whole thing.
(There was a lot of skipping around, though - I basically speed-watched it due to not feeling any particular need to watch a lot of the individual scenes, like all the flashbacks - though the kid versions of the characters were super cute! - and the whole Buggy arc, and eventually I started skipping most of the fights. So essentially I watched 8 episodes in about 3-4 hours.)
But it was genuinely really fun! It's been ages since I read the manga/watched the anime, but I think if you don't know One Piece at all, you'd be able to watch this without being even slightly confused; they really do almost a shot-for-shot staging of the manga at some points, and all the major character arcs are in there and nicely developed. The live action version goes through the end of the Arlong arc, which actually is a great place for a season break and also (coincidentally) was *exactly* how much of the anime the fansubbers had gotten around to when I watched it the first time, give or take a couple episodes, so this ends very close to my stopping point the first time I watched it.
Production values are really excellent (though I do think the fight scenes are kind of lackluster, poorly choreographed or *something*; those were the only times when it started looking like cosplay to me) and the cast are incredibly charming. I really liked that they went with a multiracial cast and a lot of different accents, which fits well with the setting and the original.
Spoiler thoughts follow (most of which are just musings on changes from the manga/anime vs this, so not likely to provide a lot of additional information if you aren't familiar with it).
They had to really cut down the material to get all the way through the Arlong arc in the time they had, but overall I was happy with most of it and didn't feel like much that mattered was missing. The only place where it really feels to me like we lost something was in Nami's arc, which feels rushed even if you don't know there's a lot that got cut; she basically does an antagonist-to-friend speedrun. Though it does actually work *emotionally*, I feel; most of what she did to "prove" herself doesn't actually happen, so it's just Luffy accepting her as his friend because he's already decided she's his friend - but that's more or less the reason in the original too, it was just that she did more along the way to demonstrate that she was trying to work against Arlong and for them.
I actually liked Sanji, and Sanji's introduction to the crew, possibly better in this one?? I don't actually like Sanji in the manga/anime all that much, the lecher thing is hard to take and I just don't really enjoy his food-related schtick all that much; he's easily my least favorite of the OG crew. But he was *immensely* charming in the live-action version; the actor's little vulnerable smiles are the cutest, and I think his more low-key introduction to the crew here worked perfectly - he essentially comes on board because he helps them and cooks for them and they just like him, as opposed to doing anything dramatic to prove himself, and I liked that a lot.
Another thing I really liked about the adaptation is that the Coby and Helmeppo subplot (honestly one of my favorite surprises in the original, I really didn't expect it and loved where they went) is interwoven with the early arcs with the pirates, so you actually do get them all throughout the first season, albeit a bit differently, and they've bonded by the end of season one.
The dialogue delivery was also really good and I feel like they did a seamless job of translating the entire feel and humor of the original into a different language while also writing enough new banter to keep it funny and fresh. I especially liked some of the scenes with the crew and particularly Sanji and Zoro, which wasn't even a character relationship I pinged on much in the original because I didn't like Sanji all that much, but by this point I'd started to really enjoy live-action Sanjji and the live-action version clearly is leaning into the rivalshipping dynamic with them. ("New guy carries the clown head!") And honestly the amount of cursing, smoking, etc really surprised me in a good way - they didn't tone any of it down, they're clearly aiming for a teen-to-college audience and not a kid audience, Sanji still smokes and there are strong hints that we're getting Smoker in the next season (with his entire power set), characters call each other shitheads and there's at least one "fuck."
I was honestly astounded at how much of the Weird Shit they kept in the live-action version, which was ... pretty much all of it, from the snailphones to the absolutely *batshit* designs of some of the background characters (the guy with fluffy ears and whiskers on his Marines uniform ...) and even little things like the distinctive way Kaya's evil butler pushes up his glasses with his gloved hand. Like I said earlier, one of the few things I really didn't like were the fight scenes feeling kind of "staged", and I think a big part of this is that they were actually staging them heavily after the manga/animated version and it just didn't really work in live action; at least some of it came off looking a bit clumsy and silly, especially in the Arlong climactic fight scene and the Zoro-Mihawk fight. I think it might've worked better if they had ditched some of the manga staging and made it more naturalistic.
Seeing live-action version of weird sets like the Baratie and Arlong Park and the Marine headquarters was really pretty amazing, though. I think the Baratie might have been the one I liked best, just because it felt so much like a real place, especially the docks and boardwalks over ocean with people just walking around.
So basically yeah, I loved it a lot and I'm hoping for a second season. I'd love to see live-action versions of Smoker, Tashigi, Vivi, and (if we get that far) the Water 7 characters. My only real kinda-sorta ship for the manga/anime version was Iceberg/Frankie, so I'm curious if they'd still murder me softly in live-action versions; the casting so far has been so excellent that I don't want to get my hopes up too much AND YET this show could probably do them pretty well.
(There was a lot of skipping around, though - I basically speed-watched it due to not feeling any particular need to watch a lot of the individual scenes, like all the flashbacks - though the kid versions of the characters were super cute! - and the whole Buggy arc, and eventually I started skipping most of the fights. So essentially I watched 8 episodes in about 3-4 hours.)
But it was genuinely really fun! It's been ages since I read the manga/watched the anime, but I think if you don't know One Piece at all, you'd be able to watch this without being even slightly confused; they really do almost a shot-for-shot staging of the manga at some points, and all the major character arcs are in there and nicely developed. The live action version goes through the end of the Arlong arc, which actually is a great place for a season break and also (coincidentally) was *exactly* how much of the anime the fansubbers had gotten around to when I watched it the first time, give or take a couple episodes, so this ends very close to my stopping point the first time I watched it.
Production values are really excellent (though I do think the fight scenes are kind of lackluster, poorly choreographed or *something*; those were the only times when it started looking like cosplay to me) and the cast are incredibly charming. I really liked that they went with a multiracial cast and a lot of different accents, which fits well with the setting and the original.
Spoiler thoughts follow (most of which are just musings on changes from the manga/anime vs this, so not likely to provide a lot of additional information if you aren't familiar with it).
They had to really cut down the material to get all the way through the Arlong arc in the time they had, but overall I was happy with most of it and didn't feel like much that mattered was missing. The only place where it really feels to me like we lost something was in Nami's arc, which feels rushed even if you don't know there's a lot that got cut; she basically does an antagonist-to-friend speedrun. Though it does actually work *emotionally*, I feel; most of what she did to "prove" herself doesn't actually happen, so it's just Luffy accepting her as his friend because he's already decided she's his friend - but that's more or less the reason in the original too, it was just that she did more along the way to demonstrate that she was trying to work against Arlong and for them.
I actually liked Sanji, and Sanji's introduction to the crew, possibly better in this one?? I don't actually like Sanji in the manga/anime all that much, the lecher thing is hard to take and I just don't really enjoy his food-related schtick all that much; he's easily my least favorite of the OG crew. But he was *immensely* charming in the live-action version; the actor's little vulnerable smiles are the cutest, and I think his more low-key introduction to the crew here worked perfectly - he essentially comes on board because he helps them and cooks for them and they just like him, as opposed to doing anything dramatic to prove himself, and I liked that a lot.
Another thing I really liked about the adaptation is that the Coby and Helmeppo subplot (honestly one of my favorite surprises in the original, I really didn't expect it and loved where they went) is interwoven with the early arcs with the pirates, so you actually do get them all throughout the first season, albeit a bit differently, and they've bonded by the end of season one.
The dialogue delivery was also really good and I feel like they did a seamless job of translating the entire feel and humor of the original into a different language while also writing enough new banter to keep it funny and fresh. I especially liked some of the scenes with the crew and particularly Sanji and Zoro, which wasn't even a character relationship I pinged on much in the original because I didn't like Sanji all that much, but by this point I'd started to really enjoy live-action Sanjji and the live-action version clearly is leaning into the rivalshipping dynamic with them. ("New guy carries the clown head!") And honestly the amount of cursing, smoking, etc really surprised me in a good way - they didn't tone any of it down, they're clearly aiming for a teen-to-college audience and not a kid audience, Sanji still smokes and there are strong hints that we're getting Smoker in the next season (with his entire power set), characters call each other shitheads and there's at least one "fuck."
I was honestly astounded at how much of the Weird Shit they kept in the live-action version, which was ... pretty much all of it, from the snailphones to the absolutely *batshit* designs of some of the background characters (the guy with fluffy ears and whiskers on his Marines uniform ...) and even little things like the distinctive way Kaya's evil butler pushes up his glasses with his gloved hand. Like I said earlier, one of the few things I really didn't like were the fight scenes feeling kind of "staged", and I think a big part of this is that they were actually staging them heavily after the manga/animated version and it just didn't really work in live action; at least some of it came off looking a bit clumsy and silly, especially in the Arlong climactic fight scene and the Zoro-Mihawk fight. I think it might've worked better if they had ditched some of the manga staging and made it more naturalistic.
Seeing live-action version of weird sets like the Baratie and Arlong Park and the Marine headquarters was really pretty amazing, though. I think the Baratie might have been the one I liked best, just because it felt so much like a real place, especially the docks and boardwalks over ocean with people just walking around.
So basically yeah, I loved it a lot and I'm hoping for a second season. I'd love to see live-action versions of Smoker, Tashigi, Vivi, and (if we get that far) the Water 7 characters. My only real kinda-sorta ship for the manga/anime version was Iceberg/Frankie, so I'm curious if they'd still murder me softly in live-action versions; the casting so far has been so excellent that I don't want to get my hopes up too much AND YET this show could probably do them pretty well.