I've previously claimed that adaptations of anime always suffer, because a) a lot of cartoon stuff simply doesn't translate into live action very well, and b) the fans demand you have it in there anyway, no matter how bad it will end up looking. Having heard that Netflix's One Piece is the "show that did it right", or "the show has beat the anime adaptation curse", it has gotten my attention.
One Piece is set in a Universe where everyone is a pirate, and yet everyone operates on the vaguest definition of that word. We get pirates who are circus clowns, cat butlers, and goddamn fish people, and none of them seem to do any actual plundering. Our main character is at one point derisively asked, "what sort of pirate are you?!", implying there is some sort of convention all these other guys had been following.
Our protagonist, by the way, is Luffy, a hyper-optimistic lad with special powers, who wants to make his name pursuing the greatest treasure hunt known to man. For that he needs a ship and a motley crew, which is how we spend our first 8 episodes. I've not read the manga and I only ever watched the first dozen episodes of the anime, giving up on the discovery there was another thousand left to go. Thankfully, Netflix's adaptation is a shorter order.
The appeal of the anime was its wacky, colourful, gonzo characters. The adaptation makes an honest attempt to reflect the utterly ridiculous character designs, and this presents the first major hurdle for audiences. A lot of people will take one look at the boy with a rubber body, the talking snail phone, and the metal mouthed police chief with a shitty axe hand, say "this looks terrible!" and give up. That's understandable, stuff that looks cool in an anime often does look really stupid in real life, and One Piece is far from an exception. But the show tries to take ownership of how cheesy this all looks, going for a tongue-in-cheek approach, and I welcome that.
Where the show falls down is that it also borrows the bad bits from the anime too. For instance, the bad guy de jour has a tendency to monologue constantly, threatening the hero for what feels like 30 minutes per episode; Netflix gets one point for faithfulness, negative ten for being boring in that respect. The other issue is that whereas One Piece was written for 10 year olds, Netflix chooses to marry the kid friendly stories with adult gore and swearing. It's not a very natural juxtaposition.
All this to say One Piece is a mixed bag. I can't say if coming to it as a fan of the manga or anime makes a difference, but the deftly choreographed fight scenes and silly aesthetic was enough for me, and that's what kept me interested until the end.
Non-Practising Piracy
I've previously claimed that adaptations of anime always suffer, because a) a lot of cartoon stuff simply doesn't translate into live action very well, and b) the fans demand you have it in there anyway, no matter how bad it will end up looking. Having heard that Netflix's One Piece is the "show that did it right", or "the show has beat the anime adaptation curse", it has gotten my attention.
One Piece is set in a Universe where everyone is a pirate, and yet everyone operates on the vaguest definition of that word. We get pirates who are circus clowns, cat butlers, and goddamn fish people, and none of them seem to do any actual plundering. Our main character is at one point derisively asked, "what sort of pirate are you?!", implying there is some sort of convention all these other guys had been following.
Our protagonist, by the way, is Luffy, a hyper-optimistic lad with special powers, who wants to make his name pursuing the greatest treasure hunt known to man. For that he needs a ship and a motley crew, which is how we spend our first 8 episodes. I've not read the manga and I only ever watched the first dozen episodes of the anime, giving up on the discovery there was another thousand left to go. Thankfully, Netflix's adaptation is a shorter order.
The appeal of the anime was its wacky, colourful, gonzo characters. The adaptation makes an honest attempt to reflect the utterly ridiculous character designs, and this presents the first major hurdle for audiences. A lot of people will take one look at the boy with a rubber body, the talking snail phone, and the metal mouthed police chief with a shitty axe hand, say "this looks terrible!" and give up. That's understandable, stuff that looks cool in an anime often does look really stupid in real life, and One Piece is far from an exception. But the show tries to take ownership of how cheesy this all looks, going for a tongue-in-cheek approach, and I welcome that.
Where the show falls down is that it also borrows the bad bits from the anime too. For instance, the bad guy de jour has a tendency to monologue constantly, threatening the hero for what feels like 30 minutes per episode; Netflix gets one point for faithfulness, negative ten for being boring in that respect. The other issue is that whereas One Piece was written for 10 year olds, Netflix chooses to marry the kid friendly stories with adult gore and swearing. It's not a very natural juxtaposition.
All this to say One Piece is a mixed bag. I can't say if coming to it as a fan of the manga or anime makes a difference, but the deftly choreographed fight scenes and silly aesthetic was enough for me, and that's what kept me interested until the end.