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The One Piece Netflix Series Has Us Questioning People’s Common Sense
Credit: LeonardoAI/MyTechPiece
When Netflix first revealed the trailer for their live adaptation of the cult-classic manga One Piece, it’s seemed like a train wreck you can see coming from miles away. We’ve heard all sorts of comments from fans taking a dump on it, based on the trailer. Since then, the show has aired, and surprisingly, everyone is now claiming it’s a miracle, and that this series broke the curse of manga adaptations.
Perhaps, there was a great flu we weren’t aware of, and the world caught a delirious fever. Maybe Netflix unlocked a higher budget to pay out critics, we don’t know. However, what we do know is what we’ve seen, and we’ll talk about it openly here.
Please note, we enjoyed the anime and a few mangas years prior to the release, so to confirm some of the aspect we consulted with people who were fans and knew the anime better. Funny enough we came to the same conclusions and what disturbed us was systematically something added by the show.
The First Scene is The Epitome Of What’s Wrong With The One Piece Netflix Show
The first episode of One Piece opens up with something everyone must love. Rubbery CGI water and ships with a PS2 texture of rocks in the background to present a city. Perhaps with a $150 million budget, buying stock footage of the coast of Barcelona would have been easier.
After this magnificent shot, we’re treated to the famous scene of Gold Roger’s execution (22 years ago, that’s important). Gold Roger is supposed to be The King of Pirates, a charismatic leader, so what’s better to represent him than a short man with his shoulders down, wearing a kilogram of make-up to make him appear older, and a fake mustache bought off Amazon?
Then you have the crowd, which consists of bad cosplays, people you’d come across in a Starbucks, and a minority of people with lore and era accurate costumes. Also remember, the date mentioned earlier? The show runners have altered the timeline, so Luffy wasn’t born during this scene and isn’t in the crowd. It’s problematic because it’s a character-defining moment. Perhaps, it will be retconned later, but it’s idiotic to skip it at the beginning.
Credit: LeonardoAI/MyTechPiece
The Positives Of The One Piece Netflix Series
We’re not hating for the sake of it, so before continuing down the rabbit hole, we’d like to highlight what we enjoyed.
Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro are perfectly portrayed by two talented actors. Sometimes Luffy’s delivery can seem awkward, but it’s because the show has decided to stick to the original and kept showing him like he’s animated, not the actor’s fault, but a script issue.
The second aspect we enjoyed was the music. Sure, it’s mainly reworked themes from the anime, but this added orchestral vibe works wonders for it, and we can feel a sense of adventure through it akin to Pirates of the Caribbean’s music. Although, it never reaches the highs of the Hans Zimmer score.
The final aspect that helped us keep going, like a life raft thrown at stranded pirates, are the sets. Many of them are practical, or at least partially built and completed with CGI. The effects work most of the time, and most people won’t realize it’s fake, so job well done on that. Then there’s the rest.
Credit: LeonardoAI/MyTechPiece
It’s Not Only a Bad One Piece Adaptation, It’s a Bad Show
The One Piece series adapts the East Blue arc, culminating in Arlong’s defeat. This arc is already reputed to be slow, but the sluggish screenplay achieves to make it slow. The fights in the manga and anime are dynamic with powerful attacks. Here, it looks like a high-budget fan fiction with normal people just executing a bad choreography. No joke, we can see some of the actors literally count their steps instead of acting. Zoro’s fight scenes are the only ones that hold up until the fight with Mihawk.
The fourth wall breaking gimmick of having the posters of the pirates show up and then be torn is done to the bone and breaks the immersion, in addition to look ugly. Actors performances apart from those mentioned earlier, and maybe Sanji’s mentor, Zeff, can be qualified as light as best. We often drip drown in the uncharted territories of bad acting.
The final nail in the coffin for this sinking ship is the directing. It’s rarely inspired, except when it copies the anime. We get the short focal cliché when showing a menacing figure, horrendous artificial bokeh, and the 180° rule gets broken several times for no reason. It acts crazy, without knowing the rules it’s trying to disrupt, resulting in a lack of engagement.
Credit: LeonardoAI/MyTechPiece
Anachronism Isn’t a Treasure Island
Another aspect which seriously challenged our engagement with the show is lack of respect for what it adapts. Sure, One Piece isn’t an historical piece by any means, but it convokes a specific imagery. Even though it’s never stated, and it’s not our world, the characters supposedly live before our era. So, it’s particularly shocking to see Luffy or Garp wearing sneakers.
It could have been fine in a way if everything was modernized, but we have people in the same scenes wearing 18th century garments and others wearing clothes from our era. It’s especially irritating when it happens with two persons or more coming from the same place with the same cultural background, and it doesn’t help the audience identify who is who. That said, when the series reproduces the anime’s costumes, it’s not always better.
Ussopp’s costume is perfect, for instance, apart for the absence of his Pinocchio nose which is important to the character (even the logo for his episode shows the nose). On the other hand, Mihawk or Axe-Hand Morgan look like they’re begging for coins on the 5th Avenue.
Credit: LeonardoAI/MyTechPiece
Pirates of The Costco
Overall, this Netlfix One Piece adaptation fails in almost every aspect to entertain. A dedicated fan, someone who knows about it and watched the first arch and read mangas all his life, and another person who knows nothing about it came to the same conclusion: “It’s a One Piece of shiiiit!”
The original manga loses a lot of its impact, the new audience it’s aimed at won’t find anything worthy if they enjoy good productions, and the Disney-like tone is patronizing at best (a polite manner to say they think you’re dumb).
Don’t agree with our review? It’s fine, we invite you to discuss it in the comments, and we will be happy to read what you have to say.
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