One of the most iconic things about anime is, obviously, the animation. The characters and stories are way more expressive and action filled rather than most cartoons in the U.S. This has brought up a big question: what if animes were live action? We had some live adaptations of anime over the past couple years. Unfortunately, most of them were either too difficult to watch due to bad CGI or didn’t even go through the story of the anime itself. With these expectations in mind, I’ve decided to watch the Netflix One Piece live action show with a more close-minded view.
For some background information, One Piece is about the main character, Monkey D. Luffy, finding the rare treasure known as the “one piece” and becoming king of the pirates. He is also joined by other characters that have around the same goal as him. The anime is still going on to this day as well as the manga it’s based on. It is also known as one of the “Big Three” animes, meaning that around the 2000s it was one of the most high selling animes alongside Naruto and Bleach. The anime now has over 1000 episodes and is still selling well.
However, the One Piece live action has only eight episodes. Each one has about an hour of footage per episode. It goes through the first arc (or season) of the anime, called the East Blue arc, where we get introduced to the main characters and to some of the main antagonists. As someone who has watched most of the other live action animes, I can say this is the best live adaptation I’ve seen. It attempts to capture the anime scene-for-scene. With great camera shots and perfectly casted actors, the anime was portrayed down to a T. Although I’m not a big fan of the anime itself, this live action piqued my interest, and I watched the whole show. I even went back to watch it again.
Even though I enjoyed the live action show, there were some big differences about the characters and the story that don’t really match up to the anime. For example, one of the side characters named Merry was murdered by Kuro, an evil pirate disguised as a butler, but in the anime he was still alive. Ussop, another main character known for lying, has a distinctive long nose similar to Pinocchio in the anime, but in the show he has a normal nose. Most of the characters have an iconic outfit in the anime, however, in the show they change outfits every episode and only wear their iconic outfits for around three episodes. Even though live action overall did a good job telling the story, there were definitely some noticeable differences.
My overall opinion of the One Piece live action is that it is one of the best anime live adaptations I’ve seen. From the characters to the story, I feel like this has captured what all live action animes should look like and how the story should be told. Although Netflix is going through a strike in Hollywood right now, I hope the live action series will continue really soon.
