Having seen Death Note and Cowboy Bebop burned at the stake, One Piece arguably presents Netflix with its trickiest balancing act yet when it comes to bringing wildly popular anime and manga properties into live-action.
Not only does it need to avoid the pitfalls that blighted the aforementioned failures – something helped exponentially by creator Eiichiro Oda’s involvement in the series – but it needs to strike that delicate balance between ensuring it doesn’t alienate its built-in audience while still appealing to a brand new one completely unaware and oblivious to its status as the best-selling manga in history with a complex and complicated lore that needs to be laid out, expanded, and built upon in the space of eight episodes.
The good news is that for the most part, it works a treat. Of course, it should be noted to any of the One Piece-loving readers out there that this writer’s knowledge of the property is about as nonexistent as it gets, and yet the streaming service’s latest blockbuster-sized original still delivers heart, humor, charm, adventure, and no small amount of eye-popping action sequences by the boatload. However, there are issues sure to affect newcomers unfamiliar with the mythology, to the extent that it feels much too slavish at way too many points throughout.
That being said, the first episode is a spectacular way to introduce One Piece to the masses, regardless of how invested you are. Right off the bat, director and executive producer Marc Jobst sets out a stall the rest of the team follows by luxuriating in sweeping visuals, attention-grabbing closeups, and a sense of grandeur that lays out a stall as an expansive epic from the very first scene.
It takes a while for the rhythm to set in narratively, though, with the timeline hopping backwards, forwards, and sideways with regular and often reckless abandon to cover the who, what, when, where, and why of its major players (of which there are many), which was inevitably to be expected given the sheer amount of ambition required to execute such a vast swashbuckling fantasy on this sort of scale.
Essentially a “getting the team together” story for five of its eight installments – which drags on at points when there’s an awful lot of table setting and recruitment sidequests for such a perfunctory and somewhat predictable payoff come the finale – Iñaki Godoy’s Monkey D. Luffy sets about achieving his dream of becoming King of the Pirates by anointing himself as the first person to track down the elusive titular treasure, no questions asked.
Of course, he needs a ship and a crew, which leads him into the path of Mackenyu’s swordsman Roronoa Zoro, Emily Rudd’s navigator Nami, Jacob Romero’s teller of tall tales Usopp, and Taz Skylar’s high-kicking chef Sanji, all while Luffy tries to embody what he’s always dreamed himself of being in the face of various threats that include scenery-chewing clowns, hulking fish-men, and Vincent Regan’s Vice Admiral Garp, who takes a particularly keen interest in the self-proclaimed leader of the Straw Hats.
In a nutshell, the casting is about as close to pitch perfect as it gets. Sure, some may find Godoy a little grating and Mackenyu’s stoicism often comes across as monotonous and one-note, but their disparate personalities bounce of each other excellently, with the central quintet generating chemistry and sparks aplenty as Luffy’s relentless optimism eventually forges them into the tight-knit crew several of them had no interest in becoming part of.
Two elements above all help cement One Piece as Netflix’s latest must-see series regardless of whether or not you’ve ever heard of it before, though, and they fittingly complement each other masterfully. The action sequences are frequent, expertly-choreographed, and impeccably-staged, plunging you into the thick of the various scraps through fluid camera movement and a seamless blend of practical combat and effects-enhanced trickery, while the soundtrack from beginning to end serves almost as a character in its own right, creating an intoxicating audiovisual experience that makes it stand out from a crowded pack of CGI-assisted and vastly expensive fantasies that swamp the market.
Being accessible while still reverential is a problem to have plagued many live-action adaptations of iconic IP over the years, and there are some moments where One Piece falls to far into the latter camp. That’s not to say it doesn’t soar at its highest, but there are moments when those without an affinity or awareness of its machinations may find themselves beginning to tune out, although that underlying infectious enthusiasm is never too far away from injecting fresh pace and urgency into the proceedings whenever things threaten to slow to a crawl.
The best way to get the most out of One Piece is to simply strap in, go along for the ride, and allow yourself to be swept up in its world. Those in search of sophistication and substance may need to look elsewhere, but if one of the major criteria behind your viewing habits is the promise of a light, breezy, propulsive, and undeniably excitable bingeable adventure above all else, then Netflix’s latest possesses it in spades.
Happy to jump between the playful and the serious as its various intertwined storylines begin to converge, it does take a couple of episodes for One Piece to settle into its groove and begin firing on all cylinders. When it does, there’s a near-limitless amount of fun to be had. Impossible to take seriously but in a good way given its rampant eccentricities on every level of story, design, and execution, the overarching message is one of the most simple; Luffy is following his dream, and there’s nothing or nobody out there who can stop him from making it happen.
An offbeat, irreverent, unstoppably quirky hybrid of high-seas swashbuckler and essentially superhero origin story with lashings of action, comedy, and drama thrown in that coats the entire thing in layer upon layer of tragic backstories, interconnected destinies, and familial trauma all wrapped up in a fast-paced fantasy that takes place in a lawless world where anything can happen at any time sounds like an awful lot to take in. However, if you can get on the same wavelength as One Piece, then it’s nothing short of a delight.
