One Piece (Live Action)
English language adaptation of the wildly succesful ongoing manga series by Eichiro Oda. One Piece as a property I've always somewhat admired, but never quite found it in me to actively follow. As a teenager I watched the anime series on German television (which is why I won't entertain any foreign delusions about Ruffy being named Luffy and pronounced "Loofy") where it aired... I think up to the Skypeia plotline, I don't think I remember anything beyond it. I never read the manga and haven't gone out of my way to pick up the anime again, which even as a kid I realized had fairly poor pacing and questionable production values. But I have at least passively kept up because unlike some of the other series from my childhood, I genuinely got into its world and characters.
So, One Piece is set in a world of near endless ocean ruled by a ruthless world government enforcing their hegemony on the seas with an iron fist through a naval armed force called the Marines. Consequentially, almost any independent seafarers are considered pirates, describing both well intentioned adventurers and explorers as well as... well, the regular definition of the term. At his execution Captain Gold Roger, titled "King of the Pirates", announces that he left his accumulated treasure at the unexplored end of a particularly treacherous stretch of ocean called the Grand Line, causing thousands of people to take up piracy and search for Roger's treasure. One Piece follows the adventures of young Monkey D. Ruffy and his crew as they are searching for the titular treasure.
It's at its core a very simple and straight forward adventure story but what makes One Piece a uniquely odd choice for a live action adaptation is that the world and overall style of One Piece is... very eccentric, to say the least. It's sort of a Adam West Batman meets Terry Gilliam approach to an adventure story full of bizarre powers, creatures, places and people. Ruffy acquired Mr. Fantastic style rubber powers after eating a magical fruit as a child, other people throw cannonballs with their bare hands, wield giant swords or can sever and independently control parts of their body.
Translating this kind of material into live action seems like a rather thankless task and following their embarrassing failure to adapt Cowboy Bebop (a much more grounded source material) it was difficult to imagine Netflix succeeding at it. Nevertheless, One Piece mostly does, impressively so. While as far as I'm aware none of the people involved with Cowboy Bebop worked on it, it shows that at least the management has taken some of the right lessons from their mistake. One Piece actually kept the original materials author as a consultant and had faith in the source material rather than trying to turn it into something it isn't. Where there was clearly some executive intention to reimagine Cowboy Bebop as an off brand version of Guardians of the Galaxy, One Piece is perfectly happy being One Piece.
You gotta give the show some credit for sticking to the bit. Almost not a single idiosyncracy, no matter how whimsical, has been streamlined away. Newspapers are still delivered by seagulls in sailor hats, people still use telepathic snails as telephones (and they're actual puppets, too!) and a high ranking officer can show up at a military base wearing a goofy dog hat without getting so much as a sarcastic remark. In other words, it has complete faith that what works in a manga will work just as well in a live action television series.
What One Piece does isn't quite experimental anymore, movies like Scott Pilgrim, Speed Racer or Sucker Punch have certainly paved the way for this kind of nerdy, hyper postmodern, cross media melange, and last year's Everything, Everywhere All at Once has proven that, if presented right, it can do well with critics and audiences. Nevertheless Netflix's One Piece is very exciting for much the same reason the source material is, the sincere and unflinching intention to construct a long form fantasy epic out of all those clashing, if not sometimes downright tacky, ingredients.
What I felt distantly reminded off, and not just because of their shared love for dutch angles, was CW's Gotham. A brave and bold attempt to produce a long running crime drama based on an interpretation of the Batman mythos that was definitely closer to Tim Burton's heightened gothic expressionism than Nolan's realism. Another series that has always had a special place in my heart, deserved or not.
One Piece mostly lives up to its own ambitions of translating its story to a different medium. The actors all have a decent likeness to their drawn alter egos and mostly capture their personalities well. Enthusiastic Captain Monkey D. Ruffy and his crew that'll eventually grow to include sassy navigator Nami, swordsman Lorenor Zoro, cowardly sharpshooter Lysopp and charming chef Sanji have all the chemistry needed to make for a likable adventuring party.
The production values are clearly quite high, with some impeccable sets, costumes and props and appropriate over the top stunt work, the cinematoraphy on the other hand is a mixed bag that doesn't always do it justice. I mentioned before that I had some issues with the overly washed out color grading (which gets better over time) and the over use of wide angle close ups (which doesn't). It has its share of very well executed shots, especially when it comes to framing "iconic" set piece moments but some of the connective tissue inbetween doesn't measure up.
At the end of the day, One Piece is the beginning of something extremely exciting. A day ago I joked that I liked it enough to be preemptively upset for when it'll eventually get cancelled, but at least one more season has already been confirmed. I'm sure manga purists will have their misgivings about the way it condenses the material into something overall a bit more compact but I imagine even those will have to admit that it's clearly a labor of love. To even try, much less pull off, something like this deserves some serious kudos.
English language adaptation of the wildly succesful ongoing manga series by Eichiro Oda. One Piece as a property I've always somewhat admired, but never quite found it in me to actively follow. As a teenager I watched the anime series on German television (which is why I won't entertain any foreign delusions about Ruffy being named Luffy and pronounced "Loofy") where it aired... I think up to the Skypeia plotline, I don't think I remember anything beyond it. I never read the manga and haven't gone out of my way to pick up the anime again, which even as a kid I realized had fairly poor pacing and questionable production values. But I have at least passively kept up because unlike some of the other series from my childhood, I genuinely got into its world and characters.
So, One Piece is set in a world of near endless ocean ruled by a ruthless world government enforcing their hegemony on the seas with an iron fist through a naval armed force called the Marines. Consequentially, almost any independent seafarers are considered pirates, describing both well intentioned adventurers and explorers as well as... well, the regular definition of the term. At his execution Captain Gold Roger, titled "King of the Pirates", announces that he left his accumulated treasure at the unexplored end of a particularly treacherous stretch of ocean called the Grand Line, causing thousands of people to take up piracy and search for Roger's treasure. One Piece follows the adventures of young Monkey D. Ruffy and his crew as they are searching for the titular treasure.
It's at its core a very simple and straight forward adventure story but what makes One Piece a uniquely odd choice for a live action adaptation is that the world and overall style of One Piece is... very eccentric, to say the least. It's sort of a Adam West Batman meets Terry Gilliam approach to an adventure story full of bizarre powers, creatures, places and people. Ruffy acquired Mr. Fantastic style rubber powers after eating a magical fruit as a child, other people throw cannonballs with their bare hands, wield giant swords or can sever and independently control parts of their body.
Translating this kind of material into live action seems like a rather thankless task and following their embarrassing failure to adapt Cowboy Bebop (a much more grounded source material) it was difficult to imagine Netflix succeeding at it. Nevertheless, One Piece mostly does, impressively so. While as far as I'm aware none of the people involved with Cowboy Bebop worked on it, it shows that at least the management has taken some of the right lessons from their mistake. One Piece actually kept the original materials author as a consultant and had faith in the source material rather than trying to turn it into something it isn't. Where there was clearly some executive intention to reimagine Cowboy Bebop as an off brand version of Guardians of the Galaxy, One Piece is perfectly happy being One Piece.
You gotta give the show some credit for sticking to the bit. Almost not a single idiosyncracy, no matter how whimsical, has been streamlined away. Newspapers are still delivered by seagulls in sailor hats, people still use telepathic snails as telephones (and they're actual puppets, too!) and a high ranking officer can show up at a military base wearing a goofy dog hat without getting so much as a sarcastic remark. In other words, it has complete faith that what works in a manga will work just as well in a live action television series.
What One Piece does isn't quite experimental anymore, movies like Scott Pilgrim, Speed Racer or Sucker Punch have certainly paved the way for this kind of nerdy, hyper postmodern, cross media melange, and last year's Everything, Everywhere All at Once has proven that, if presented right, it can do well with critics and audiences. Nevertheless Netflix's One Piece is very exciting for much the same reason the source material is, the sincere and unflinching intention to construct a long form fantasy epic out of all those clashing, if not sometimes downright tacky, ingredients.
What I felt distantly reminded off, and not just because of their shared love for dutch angles, was CW's Gotham. A brave and bold attempt to produce a long running crime drama based on an interpretation of the Batman mythos that was definitely closer to Tim Burton's heightened gothic expressionism than Nolan's realism. Another series that has always had a special place in my heart, deserved or not.
One Piece mostly lives up to its own ambitions of translating its story to a different medium. The actors all have a decent likeness to their drawn alter egos and mostly capture their personalities well. Enthusiastic Captain Monkey D. Ruffy and his crew that'll eventually grow to include sassy navigator Nami, swordsman Lorenor Zoro, cowardly sharpshooter Lysopp and charming chef Sanji have all the chemistry needed to make for a likable adventuring party.
The production values are clearly quite high, with some impeccable sets, costumes and props and appropriate over the top stunt work, the cinematoraphy on the other hand is a mixed bag that doesn't always do it justice. I mentioned before that I had some issues with the overly washed out color grading (which gets better over time) and the over use of wide angle close ups (which doesn't). It has its share of very well executed shots, especially when it comes to framing "iconic" set piece moments but some of the connective tissue inbetween doesn't measure up.
At the end of the day, One Piece is the beginning of something extremely exciting. A day ago I joked that I liked it enough to be preemptively upset for when it'll eventually get cancelled, but at least one more season has already been confirmed. I'm sure manga purists will have their misgivings about the way it condenses the material into something overall a bit more compact but I imagine even those will have to admit that it's clearly a labor of love. To even try, much less pull off, something like this deserves some serious kudos.
