One Piece live action series is here but do we more of these types of series?
Photo Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11737520/
By: Michael Levitas
One Piece, an anime/manga created by Eiichiro Oda in 1997, is still ongoing with more than 1,000 chapters. Netflix has done the unimaginable and brought One Piece to live-action, which has been anticipated since its release. It has also been confirmed that Oda himself was involved in the casting and development for the series.
The One Piece live-action series is definitely an interesting series. Live-action anime has a history of being incredibly poor adaptations, with movies like Dragon Ball Evolution being critically panned in the past for both being poorly made and unfaithful to the series. One Piece is interesting in that it tries its hardest to remain faithful to the original series, everything from the visuals, designs, characters, and costumes.
Iñaki Godoy, the actor who plays the main character Monkey D. Luffy, does a great job capturing the essence of the character. His appearance and mannerisms stay authentic to the character. The same could be said for the rest of the cast. Steven Ward, the actor who plays Dracule Mihawk, looks almost identical to how Mihawk looks in the original series. The series also adds original content to help extend the series to a full eight episodes.
The faithfulness of the Netflix series is to be appreciated. It was clearly developed by people who are fans of the anime/manga. However, this can also be seen as a negative. One Piece was very much designed for animation. For example, Luffy’s stretching powers look nice in the anime, but not as nice in the live-action, and no amount of CGI can fix that without the audience eventually picking up on it. The same is true of Mihawk’s appearance. In the anime, it blends very well with everyone else. Seeing a real-life person adopting the same look makes it hard to take seriously. It looks more humorous than serious. These are not the show runners’ fault, but trying to exactly match the anime makes you realize that a lot of things don’t translate well into live-action.
I am also curious to see how the live-action series will handle future stories and arcs. One Piece, besides being light-hearted, also deals with serious political and social themes. Anyone who has watched the series can verify this. One Piece live-action success may spawn other live-action adaptations, however I think it’s time we realize that certain series were made for animation and not for live-action. Animation should not be seen as an inferior medium of storytelling, but an alternative medium of storytelling where unique stories that can’t be shown anywhere else can be told.
