It would’ve been almost two years ago that I started watching “One Piece,” an incredibly popular Japanese anime that has been running since 1999, and even before that as a manga series by author Eiichiro Oda. It has sold over 500 million copies, making it the highest-selling comic series by a single author. Recently, Netflix picked it up with the goal to make a live-action adaptation of the series, a daunting task as the anime is (as of writing this article) 1075 episodes long and still growing. The first season released at the end of August, and I think they did an incredible job with it.
When Netflix announced that they were embarking on the project, I definitely was a bit skeptical. Netflix doesn’t exactly have a great track record for adapting anime into live action, with previous projects like “Death Note,” “Cowboy Bebop,” and “Bleach” all being unappealing at best. However, when I started seeing castings and early trailers, they looked good, so I kept a cautious optimism. As more promotional material came out, I kept getting more and more excited. It was hard not to, as this is a series that I’ve been very involved with for the better part of the last two years, and the trailers showed a lot of promise for the series.
When it came out, a couple friends and I watched all eight episodes together. And wow, I could not have asked for better. As an adaptation of a series this long, of course they are going to have to cut some things out and take some creative liberties. This adaptation covered the first 45 or so episodes of the anime, but it overall stayed very close to the source material, which was a nice surprise. The castings were great, the emotional moments hit where they needed to, and it was funny without being completely overbearing. Overall, a very good balance of the things that make this series what it is, while also appealing to a wider audience.
The plot follows a young man named Monkey D. Luffy (played by Iñaki Godoy) who dreams of finding a massive treasure left behind by the former King of the Pirates, Gold Roger. Even 22 years after Roger’s execution, nobody has been able to find it, causing a lot of skepticism about its very existence. Luffy travels around the seas, looking for crewmates to join him on his adventure, including a bounty-hunter swordsman, a thieving navigator, a cowardly sniper, and an incredibly skilled but unappreciated cook. This rag-tag group of pirates wants to go to the Grand Line, a dangerous ocean that is rumored to be the location of the One Piece, Gold Roger’s famous treasure.
The casting of this show is one of the things that was going to make or break this series for me, and oh boy did it ever make it. Most, if not all, of the castings are spot on to the original, and each of them even adds their own little bit of personality to the character. Sanji (played by Taz Skylar), who is my favorite of the protagonists, was a very welcome surprise in this adaptation, as he went above and beyond my expectations for him in this adaptation. Many other more minor characters, such as Garp, Dracule Mihawk, and Buggy the Clown were also portrayed brilliantly and made me love them even more than I ever did when I watched the original series.
Overall, this adaptation is absolutely incredible. It’s action packed, fast paced, and very friendly for new watchers to get involved in this modern epic of a series. I cannot recommend it enough; this show is an enigma and crazy fun in all the best ways possible. “One Piece” I think is a must-watch Netflix series, and it is available now!
