ONE PIECE: Zoro vs. Mihawk Fight | Netflix
It’s become a trope, at this point, that live-action anime adaptations rarely work. The tone is usually the culprit: Death Note tried to get us to sympathize with an inherently unlikeable character. Cowboy Bebop threw noir out the window and went for a more comedy-focused interpretation. And, in each case, it’s not the changes to the text of the source material that stings. It’s the inherent misunderstanding of the original series’ fundamental themes that really gets under the skin.
It probably helped, then, that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda was involved with Netflix’s live-action adaptation. He knows, just like we do, that the series needs to be silly. That protagonist Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) needs to be annoying. That, despite both of those things, we root for Luffy because of how easily he cuts through oppressive bullshit—usually by saying something along the lines of, “Hey, that’s oppressive bullshit,” and then punching the oppressor in the face. The live-action series is full of cheesy dialogue, cringey performances, and CGI stretched to the very limit of its capabilities, but it needs those things to balance out Luffy’s near-deranged optimism. His outlook wouldn’t make sense in a more grounded world and the live-action series recognizes that. It doesn’t try to make the setting or the story any less ridiculous. If anything, it leans even further into silliness than its source material. But the adaptation works because it embraces earnestness in equal measure. One Piece pulled off something that, before now, seemed impossible: a faithful live-action manga/anime adaptation that captures the spirit of its source material without falling into the trap of trying to make it more realistic. It’s realistic enough already—because Luffy’s relentless positivity could only exist in a world as weird as One Piece. [Jen Lennon]
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