One Piece is the final boss of TV watching. The long-running anime series has been going on strong now for over 1000 episodes, and that was technically just Season 1. So when Netflix set about adapting the series for live action, it went without saying that not everything would be included. Season 1 introduced the impeccably cast Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) as the rubbery kid who wants to be King of the Pirates, but most of its eight episodes were spent on establishing the premise, focusing on the backstories of characters, and uniting the crew of the Going Merry, Luffy’s ship.
In Season 2, now streaming on Netflix, One Piece can finally move past the table setting and actually get to what has kept viewers coming back year after year and arc after arc: island-hopping adventures, scary yet campy villains, and stories that make you cry without realizing it.
Back with Luffy and the gang.
The last we left Luffy, he had finally become captain of a full crew: navigator Nami (Emily Rudd), expert swordsman Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), warrior and storyteller Usopp (Jacob Romero), and ship cook Sanji (Taz Skyler). Now, they’re setting sail for the Grand Line, the big band of islands that encapsulates the globe.
Complicating matters a bit is Baroque Works, a group of assassins set on taking down Luffy at any cost — even a quick trip to do some shopping turns into a life-threatening escape thanks to them. It’s with Baroque Works especially that One Piece is able to show off its best element: interesting villains with interesting Devil Fruit powers.
There’s Mr. 3 (David Dalmastian), who can manipulate candle wax, Miss Valentine (Jazzara Jaslyn), who can change her body weight at will, and Mr. 5 (Camrus Johnson), who has explosive bodily fluids. These are full, campy, mustache-twirling villains, each with their specific aesthetics and fighting style. Is it realistic? Absolutely not. But this is One Piece, where the suspension of disbelief is about as big as a suspension bridge. It doesn’t really matter.
The Baroque Works villains bring a campy edge to the Straw Hats’ first foray into the Grand Line.
Once the crew hits the Grand Line, One Piece settles into almost a Star-Trek-esque format: the ship reaches a strange and mysterious island with a strange gimmick (ruled by a tyrannical regime! Inhabited by giants! Giant whale!). Usually, the crew splits up, and slowly each character learns about the new setting — and the threat that inevitably finds them.
Like any good episodic series like Star Trek, One Piece is perfectly paced. What would normally take a handful of 22-minute anime episodes can be adapted seamlessly into an hour-long live-action episode, with a couple two-parters towards the end.
Tony Tony Chopper’s live-action depiction is sure to become a fan-favorite just like his animated counterpart.
I’m going to admit it: I’m not the biggest fan of the animated One Piece. I love the characters and the stories, but sometimes the stylization and format can get in the way — it’s hard to get excited about a fight if it’s interrupted every 20 minutes by a credits sequence. This live-action version essentially takes every arc from the original anime and translates it both into English but also into a more digestible product. It almost resembles an episode of Lost: a current-day obstacle, intercut with flashbacks that let us get to know new characters even better.
And those characters are here in spades. Each Baroque Works assassin is more over-the-top than the last (I mean, they’re not called Minimalist Works), and every gonzo moment from the anime is translated faithfully with the perfect amount of earnestness. So when you meet Tony Tony Chopper (Mikaela Hoover) in the last three episodes, your first thought isn’t “a talking reindeer? That’s a little much.” Instead, it’s “I have known this talking reindeer for five minutes and I would do anything for him.”
That’s the magic of One Piece. Thanks to Luffy’s incessantly optimistic perspective, the show itself operates like an empathy factory, generating likable character after likeable character; even the villains may be dastardly, but you still love to hate them. In Season 2, the story engine is fully revved up and ready to go. There may not be 1000 episodes in this show’s future — it’s still Netflix, after all — but this formula won’t get old any time soon.
