What to Watch to Get Through the Strike: Live Action One Piece (Netflix)
Hey, hi. It’s been a while, yeah? Sorry.
The writers’ and actors’ strike is still going on and people are looking for stuff to watch, so now maybe is a good time to start this back up again. Because no, you really don’t need to watch The Office for the 19th time, there’s other stuff out there you’ll like. I swear, it’s true.
So with that in mind, welcome back to Channel Surfing.
Look, I don’t like anime. Or, more accurately, I’ve not really enjoyed any anime I’ve ever watched. Even if I like certain aspects of it, I tend to not like others. I don’t think there’s a single example that I’ve ever enjoyed top to bottom. If I like the animation, I hate the story (Evangelion). If I like the story, I don’t like the art (Ghost in the Shell). And then there are the tropes that just plain drive me bonkers, which I won’t go into right now because I don’t really feel like hearing about why they’re ok, necessary, or really not that bad.
I bring this up not to start a fight or (god forbid) get your recommendations for anime I’d really like, but to establish my frame of mind as I started watching the live action One Piece that recently dropped on Netflix. I knew One Piece was a manga and an anime, and a very popular one, and I think I maybe knew it was about pirates, but that’s about it. Definitely not my usual choice of programming, but people wouldn’t shut up about how good the new series on Netflix was, and so I figured I’d give it a shot. The live action of Cowboy Bebop had been panned by fans, so it wasn’t just a case of feral fans devouring whatever was being offered. Worth a look, surely.
So, yes, One Piece is, indeed, about pirates. It takes place in a world almost entirely covered in water, with disconnected islands dotting the four seas (North, South, East, and West Blue, collectively). All manner of pirates ply their trade, the Marines try to enforce some degree of law and order, and bounty hunters fill in the gaps by collecting fat wages for capturing or killing privateers. This all happens in a storybook world where eating a Devil Fruit can give you special powers, fishmen are a subjugated race, and nobody bats an eye at guy with mouse ears and whiskers. It’s fanciful and colorful, but not silly; I won’t go so far as to call it “adult,” but it definitely gets darker than you’d expect from something with pirates who wear cat ears.
I expected it to be insufferable and, to be fair, the first episode almost is. The main character of Monkey D. Luffy is cheerful to the point of psychopathy; his pal Koby does little more than stare, wide-eyed, and worry at everything. These are accepted anime tropes (remember me mentioning those earlier?) that just plain don’t make the journey to live action all that well. We weren’t off to a great start.
What nearly sent me packing was another hallmark of the anime — Luffy’s stretchiness. Luffy ate a Gum Gum Devil Fruit when he was a kid, and it made him super stretchy. Kinda dumb, but in keeping with the world. But when he fights, he calls out his finishing move: a stretchy punch might be preceded by a shout of “GUM GUM PISTOL” and an axe kick will be heralded by a drawn out “GUM GUM BATTLE AXE!” It’s so dumb. But it’s also part of the source material’s DNA. You can’t do One Piece and not have Luffy do that; it would be like never having Wolverine call someone “bub.” So I wasn’t mad at it, but I also wasn’t vibing with it — if the entire show was like this, I was going to hate it. But it was undeniably well-made, so I decided to watch the second episode; if nothing else, I could appreciate the craftsmanship.
The problem with One Piece is that it spends a lot of its early time in flashbacks, setting up Luffy and why he wants to be a pirate. And honestly, Luffy’s backstory is the least interesting thing about the show. (Long story short, he idolized a pirate named Shanks when he was a little kid and wants to be just like him. Shanks is where Luffy gets the straw hat for which he becomes famous, by the way. The hat is a Whole Thing with him.) Once it opens up and starts to focus on Luffy’s quest to find a crew, get a ship, and head to the Grand Line to search for the titular One Piece, which is Gol D. Roger’s lost treasure, it becomes a goddamn delight.
Seriously, I cannot stress how quickly I went from “Eh, I respect the effort” to “I am obsessed with this world and everything in it.”
The world of One Piece is colorful and weird, and never feels over the top despite constantly being so far over the top it’s landed in the neighbors’ yard somewhere. I mean, just look at this:
Between the facial hair, the stupidly-large sword on his back, and the hat that would be at home in a high school production of The Three Musketeers, Mihawk should be absurd. Design-wise, he’s a sneeze away from Snidley Whiplash territory and yet Steven John Ward plays him with a minimalism that perfectly counterbalances the excessiveness. Zoro twirls two katanas and brandishes a third in his teeth, and anywhere else, that would be stupid or played for laughs, but here it not only fits with the world, it serves to express how seriously he’s taking this fight. Describe each element of this scene to someone and it sounds ridiculous, but see it in motion and it all makes perfect sense.
Nothing in this scene should work, but it does because of the care with which it was crafted. Look at those costumes. It’s ok if you don’t know that they’re dead ringers for the anime (they are), just take a minute to luxuriate in the details put into every single inch of them. The colors. The textures. The fit. Even if you’ve never seen a single minute of the show, you can infer the personalities of the characters based on their costumes. And the music? It’s not just some throwaway back and forth flourishes, it’s an aural backdrop that’s as much a part of the scenery as the ships bobbing in the ocean. And yes, all the fights are this thoughtful. Some are splashier (literally; there’s a lot of water in One Piece), some are more intimate, most have lots more participants, but they’re all wonderful to watch.
There are two crucial reasons One Piece is successful. The first is that inasmuch as was possible, everything about the world was done in-camera. The fishmen were created with prosthetics, the sets were real, and filming took place in beachy locations all over the world. The actors were able to mentally be in the world of One Piece they were physically in the world of One Piece. And that ties into the second crucial fact: Everyone involved with this show took it seriously. They were respectful of the source material without being overly reverential to it. They knew they have to get you to buy in to some pretty absurd stuff in order for you to take the journey with them, and they were willing to do the legwork to make that happen.
The care with which they approached the creation of this world means you accept that sure, Arlong is part sawfish and Sanji kicks ass in a perfectly-tailored suit. Miss Kaya’s accountant is a sheep-man and the Vice Admiral of the Marines wears a bulldog-shaped hat. Of course that’s how it is, how else would it be? In any other setting, those kinds of details would feel bizarre, or like clumsy attempts at worldbuilding. Here, they’re just seasoning. The world of One Piece is so fully realized and thoughtfully rendered that for any individual aspect to be made more normal would feel wildly artificial.
Now, look, I’m not going to tell you that One Piece is overly sophisticated; the characters are all pretty one-dimensional and the plot is more or less Luffy and friends versus the pirate of the week. If you’re looking for character development or themes beyond “supporting your friends,” or “follow your dreams,” you’re likely going to come away disappointed. But if you want an adventure that’s been crafted with exquisite care, look no further. Season 2 has already been approved, and I sure hope they get to make it. Gum Gum Crossed Fingers, I guess.