directed by various
written by various
About a little over a week since its release at the end of August, the live--action adaptation of the wildly popular anime series One Piece (itself an adaptation from a super popular manga series by Eiichiro Oda) had proven to be a runaway hit for Netflix, who produced the show. After getting badly burned by their last live-action adaptation of a beloved anime, Cowboy Bebop, I was extremely hesitant to check out this series. In fact, I did not immediately finish the first episode because I found it a little long. I had not seen the anime or read the manga and so I had no reference point, but I still had my misgivings.
After I got around to finishing that first episode, though everything changed.
One Piece, for the uninitiated like myself, takes place in a fictional, oddly anachronistic world which is run by a single government whose security force is a group of baseball-uniform wearing marines and whose biggest threat, apparently, is pirates. The biggest pirate of them all, Gold Roger (Michael Dorman), is executed at the very beginning of the show and proclaims to the throngs gathered below that his fabled treasure, the One Piece, is theirs for the taking if they have the courage to hit the high seas. Years later, the young Monkey D. Luffy (played by Inaki Godoy), dreams of finding the One Piece and becoming the new King of the Pirates. He teams up with thief Nami (Emily Rudd) to steal a map of the Grand Line, where the One Piece is believed to be, and on his journey he recruits others to his crew, namely brooding swordsman Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), sharpshooter and teller of tall tales Usopp (Jacob Gibson) and chef and martial artist extraordinaire Sanji (Taz Skylar). Finding the One Piece won't be easy, with other pirates like Buggy (Jeff Ward) and Arlong (McKinley Belcher III) standing in their way, as well as the Marines, led by no less than Luffy's grandfather, Vice-Admiral Garp (Vincent Regan).
After getting through that first episode, I found myself binge-watching the rest of the eight along with my kids. The show is extraordinarily entertaining and has superb production value. It may have helped that, not having seen the anime, I had no point of reference like I did with Cowboy Bebop, but as a causal fan of anime in general I really got the sense that unlike Bebop, which seemed to treat its source material with disdain, this show wholeheartedly embraced its anime heritage, and all the quirkiness, silliness and occasional cheesiness it entailed. Sure, some tweaks were needed to the dialogue and story beats here and there, but this series definitely has a distinctly anime sensibility in every single episode.
It helps, I think that the showrunners, headed by Oda himself, has assembled a winning cast headed by the energetic and charismatic Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, all of whom have fantastic chemistry together, and all of whom are really game for the series' very physical stunt sequences.
I really immersed myself in this world because the cast and crew were so clearly invested in it, bringing to life an unlikely combination of whimsy and, well, pretty intense violence that must have been a really tough balance to strike. Everything about this production, from the cinematography to the art direction to the fight choreography and visual effects, was quite lovingly rendered, and the love shows.
The best part was how the first eight episodes tie together and tell a story that gets a satisfying conclusion, even as it clearly sets the stage for much more to come.
8.5/10
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