Arctic Light

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).

( Adaptational chat )

The library had a bunch of early One Piece volumes (through Alabasta) and then basically everything post-timeskip, so I've now read the entire Punk Hazard arc.

And ...

A CHARACTER HAPPENED.

But probably not the one you think.

( Punk Hazard spoilers )

I have the house to myself tonight and some uninterrupted Internet time, so I am getting through the rest of the DVD commentaries and answering comments (STILL SO BEHIND) and generally hanging out online; hello!

My sister and I have managed to watch an absolute fuck ton of One Piece over the last 2-3 days. We got through the entire Water 7 arc and are now into Enies Lobby. ( Kinda spoilery comments on a couple characters )

Assorted links from around my flist:

There's an interesting post at selenak's journal about the fannish term "manpain", like "Mary Sue", coming to be used so generically that it's useless. (Also, I suppose it's a sign of how much time I've been spending on Tumblr lately that my instinctive reaction to finding a thoughtful post was first of all "reblog it so my friends can read it!" No no, self, we have a way of handling these things on LJ, WE LINK TO STUFF.)

I also jumped into a discussion at chordatesrock on dark hurt/comfort and how fandom deals with trauma. Interesting topic and it made me ponder a bit.

There's also a link in the above post to this absolutely amazing comic strip that has a beautiful metaphor for the true worth of creativity that others deem worthless.

Oh hmmm, what else. It looks like both festivids and yuletide are taking signups now. I'm not doing either one of them this year (though I may try to do a festivids treat; I really do want to get back into vidding!).