Based on One Piece by Eiichiro Oda
Developed by Matt Owens & Steven Maeda
Starring
Iñaki Godoy
Emily Rudd
Mackenyu
Jacob Romero Gibson
Taz Skylar
Vincent Regan
Jeff Ward
Morgan Davies
Narrated by Ian McShane
Composers Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli
Production companies
Kaji Productions
Tomorrow Studios
Shueisha
ONE PIECE is the most popular manga/anime ever done. There have been over a thousand manga since 1999, and a thousand anime episodes. There are 14 full-length feature films that attracted 45 million viewers in Japan alone. It’s just preposterously popular.
So it came as no real surprise that Netflix thought a live action version of ONE PIECE might sell.
“Big in Japan,” as Tom Waits might tell you, doesn’t mean huge popularity elsewhere. Yes, he has a song by that title. Like all of Waits’ stuff, it’s superb. I had seen ONE PIECE anime mentioned around, but the posters for it were very cartoonish, and anime drawn in that style tends to be intensely annoying, with lots of shouty characters who overreact to bizarre things such as mention of height or anything even remotely related to sex. If anime reflects the attitudes of actual Japanese people to sex, it’s no wonder their population is plummeting.
But I’ve seen some very good live action shows based on anime or computer games. The Last of Us is one of the best TV shows I’ve seen this year, and even though most fans hated it, the live-action version of Cowboy Bebop was more than satisfactory to me.
Reading an article about the then-upcoming Netflix version, I first learned of the incredible longevity and wild fanbase that ONE PIECE enjoys. I made a note to catch the live action when it dropped, and in the meantime, watched about a third of the first season of the anime.
The anime was, well, pretty damned stupid. The characters were cartoonish, overwrought, and embodied many of the traits that make a lot of anime pure rubbish. The pacing was appalling. One fight sequence that should have taken 30 seconds was stretched out to three full episodes while the characters monologued or even worse, have internal narrations describing the (lack of) action. I’ve watched two of the movies, and the animation is greatly improved, although pacing is still a problem.
Netflix spent $138 million on the live-action series, second only to the monumental $270m blown on season four of Stranger Things.
So I tuned in expecting I might see one of the great entertainment catastrophes of all time, right up there with The Last Airbender or Howard the Duck.
I’m happy to report that I am wrong. The live action version sheds most of the annoying anime elements and the sometimes horrific pacing problems, but keeps the generally goofy absurdity and wildly insane world of the original. Much of the budget went to CGI special effects, and for once it was a wise choice of spending. The main character, Monkey D. Luffy, a name that just screams gravitas, ate from a mystic fruit that turned him into a rubberman, capable of elongating or inflating himself and making him invulnerable to just about anything you can throw at him. His only vulnerability is sea water, which makes his choice to become an ocean-going pirate a curious one. Personally, I might have chosen to become a robber baron in the prairie, you know?
In any event, he decides he is going to become King of the Pirates, and in order to do that, he is seeking the greatest pirate treasure ever hidden, the One Piece. While the series has already been greenlit for a second season, don’t expect a resolution here. After thousands of manga and anime, Luffy is still seeking One Piece.
The rest of his crew are recognizably human, and play their corresponding characters in a fairly straightforward manner. The vast supporting cast, however, are under no such constraints, and are delightfully campy and over-the-top. Various characters can segment themselves into discrete fully functional body parts, or have a giant double-bladed axe for a hand, or can scream hypersonically.
It’s ridiculous, but between the sometimes amazing special effects and the engaging acting, it works incredibly well.
It’s already Netflix’s most popular show, surpassing Stranger Things in viewership?
So what of the fen who love the anime and tend to be fundamentalistic about such things. (That’s what sank Cowboy Bebop; it wasn’t quite enough like the anime).
Turns out they love it too.
ONE PIECE is a smash hit, and deservedly so. It eliminates the weak points, but keeps all the fun and the not-inconsiderable drama.
Now on Netflix.