One Piece Live Action by Netflix
Michael’s Netflix One Piece Review
TLDR: Netflix’s One Piece adaptation is worth watching. It begins strong enough, but really picks up after the pirate crew is together. It is fun! I give it all 4 stars (of 5), and below identify some areas of the production and key moments of Straw Hat lore that met or did not meet expectations.
Music. It must pretty rough as a filmmaker to have to compete with 1000+ episodes of VERY iconic anime music. I think the mission here was to get good standard movie music in place, ensure the music doesn’t get in the way of the rest of the production, and come away with one or two new themes the viewer might care about. I think it was a success and I’m very pleased.
Casting. I think this is about as close to perfect casting as you can get for most of this show. Inaki Godoy is a fantastic Luffy and captures the character brilliantly. The other characters are good as well, but I especially note that Emily Rudd and Jacob Romero really shine as Nami and Usop – the characters with the most complicated and nuanced stories and performances. For Luffy and other heavy combat focused characters, the most important things are usually shouted. Nami and Usop’s roles (in the manga and anime) are very much to be the heart of the crew and the glue that keeps things together while the big bounty heavyweights are fighting admirals and warlords. I do hope we get to see more of that in a second season, but I think Emily and Jacob did wonders with the short time allowed to them, despite the very much accelerated pacing of these initial 8 episodes.
Costumes (and more importantly… hair!). It can be very difficult for an anime/manga adaptation to walk the fine line between creating recognizable characters and presenting something that looks less like a very high budget cosplay and more like a real person. I think the costuming looks great, but anyone with a long OP history will have certain things they will find jarring. The fishmen look amazing though, like, really amazing. It would have been so easy to make Arlong and crew look really bad, but they look quite good. It is also a ton of fun to see so many of the different, iconic Straw Hat Crew outfits come to life. Bright hair can always be tricky, but I think they made a good choice keeping the colors subdued – green hair isn’t Zoro’s personality, it’s just something on his head.
Action. It is a story about pirates fighting after all. Taking into account that the original source material (anime and manga) involved clouds of fists representing lots of fighting action instead of anything resembling fight choreography, they did a wonderful job creating good action that retains the fun and the drama of OP stories, but looks like decent film fight scenes.
Key moments – Surely one of the trickiest things about creating any adaptation of OP is that the audience has such a hardcore following, and certain scenes or lines are so iconic to the franchise that getting it quite right can be difficult, or may look very different to many people. I spent a lot of time anticipating key lines that came at a different pacing, or in a different scene, some that packed a punch and some that fell flat. Here area few key moments I noted did/did not quite live up to the grandeur they hold in my mind:
Roger’s Execution/Beginning of Great Pirate Era. This was technically done very well, but didn’t live up to the excitement of Roger’s infamous “I left it all in that place, search for it!” **DON**. Perhaps nothing could do this one justice though.
Shanks vs mountain bandits and sea king. This one was probably really hard to get right. Honestly, I think what was missing was a four second scene pointing out that Shanks and his crew aren’t playing. They don’t take killing lightly and that’s why it’s such a big deal they don’t hesitate to shoot a bandit to protect their friend Luffy. Similarly with Shank’s gift of the hat, the scene was executed fine, but for a show with so much lens flare, they missed an easy silhouette image of this (you know the one).
Boarding the Merry Go. This was very well done. Some of the lines and story around everyone getting on the boat differed from my canonical recollection, but it is a really beauty when they set sail with the ship that will carry them through so much together.
Zoro duels Mihawk. I think this fight and the Mihawk dialogue was done quite well, and matched my expectation of the encounter.
Zeff and Sanji. I didn’t initially have this on my list of key moments, but some of the best chemistry in the whole season is between Chef Zeff (played by Craig Fairbrass) and Sanji (played by Taz Skylar and Christian Convery). We’re treated to some great origin story and farewell scenes bookending a beautiful rendition of the “argument” about leaving the restaurant to join the Straw Hat Crew.
“Luffy… Help me…?” I don’t think I’ve rewatched any scene of any anime more than the eight or so minutes of Nami really joining the Straw Hat Crew (anime episode 38, for reference). The original anime voice acting (Akemi Okamura) is masterful – absolutely nailing the drama of this scene with her hoarse, broken voice. It’s a tall order to follow that. It’s the kind of acting challenge that I would imagine gives actors nightmares. Here, on the whole, I think they really pulled it off this time around, with no small amount of credit to Emily Rudd’s acting. My only complaints have to do more with translation, but I know that translating an iconic scene like this will always leave someone upset, so I don’t mind that too much.
Luffy emerges from the rubble. We all know what Luffy doesn’t die in season one (it would be a very short pirate story). But many of us have a certain image seared into our minds from the manga of what this looks like. It’s iconic, like the hat-gift from shanks. I think those who haven’t watched anime/read manga will enjoy this scene just fine, but it didn’t hit as hard as I’d hoped.
Crossing the Red Line – We didn’t cross it yet!?!?!? Previews gave me a good view of the barrel toast where the crew really solidifies as a crew, which was nice, and that scene actually exceeded my expectations, but we stopped just short of crossing the Red Line. So… hopefully we’ll get the mountain river scene next time!