Netflix’s One Piece grinds down the best manga ever until it’s just content

Eiichiro Odas A piece may be one of the best comics ever made. It’s definitely one of those most comics ever made. An over-the-top action comedy about Monkey D. Luffy, a boy with stretchy powers and a dream to find the mythical treasure One Piece and become King of the Pirates. A piece is equal parts Looney Tunes and fantasy epic on an incomparable scale. With 1,090 chapters published in 106 volumes telling an ongoing story that began in 1997 – accompanied by an equally long-running anime adaptation with 1,073 episodes to its name, multiple animated films, video games, and a handful of plays — A piece‘s volume is matched only by its popularity as the best selling manga of all timeby a huge margin.

As a result, there’s live action from Netflix A piece Adaptation brings with it a litany of expectations. There’s the normal weight of huge fan expectations, but there’s also all sorts of complicating factors that make it so A piece is judged: as an American adaptation of a Japanese work; as the latest in a series of usually underwhelming live-action versions of manga and anime; and, most importantly, as Netflix’s latest attempt to bring a beloved anime live after the disappointment of Cowboy Bebop.

The Ghost of Cowboy Bebop

Photo: Geoffrey Short/Netflix

Photo: Casey Crafford/Netflix

If your first question about the live-action A piece is about how it compares to the live-action BebopThe answer is that it’s easily better, but also that maybe that’s an unfair comparison. Tonal, A piece is a much simpler job – just like the source material, that of Netflix A piece follows Monkey D. Luffy’s (Iñaki Godoy) quixotic journey to become King of the Pirates with nothing but the clothes he wears and the powers he gained as a boy when he ate a mystical fruit that turned his body into rubber. unlike Cowboy Bebopthat had to juggle all sorts of stylistic shifts and existential malaise present in the source material, A piece really has only one goal: to make Luffy’s quest, and the many friends and foes he encounters along the way, as interesting as possible.

At first, the show is happy with the work. Showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda deliver an opening salvo of a premiere that remarkably brings Oda’s work to life and introduces an uncanny world where virtually everyone is a pirate or neighboring pirate, and each of them has some gimmick. It’s great for a while to meet all these people: the taciturn swordsman Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), the intrepid thief Nami (Emily Rudd), the clown-themed pirate Buggy (Jeff Ward), and so on. Unfortunately, it all starts to fall apart at some point A pieces writers and directors stop introducing us to their world and start living in it.

Structurally, the eight-episode first season of A piece centers on the slow formation of Luffy’s crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, as he journeys across the pirate-filled East Blue ocean to make a name for himself and find One Piece’s treasure. As he stops at a variety of colorful locations – a pirate carnival or a gourmet restaurant in the ocean – Luffy makes a new friend and encounters a new foe, while flashbacks delve into the backstory of the emerging Straw Hat Pirates and what fuels their thirst for adventure . What holds it back isn’t so much that it’s a bad manga adaptation – in fact, it’s excellent in many ways – but rather that it’s a Netflix show.

One Piece has a Netflix problem

Photo: Joe Alblas/Netflix

Netflix is ​​a notoriously opaque company; the amount of creative control or input it exerts in its television programming, and how evenly that input is distributed throughout the program, is something viewers and critics have long had no hard data on outside of the programs themselves. After ten years of original Netflix programming, there is one visual house style began to emerge: a washed out color palette, dim artificial lighting and a reliance on very simple shots where the greatest flexibility a cameraman will make is the occasional tracking shot and way too many Dutch angles.

Similarly, Netflix dramas seemed to follow a house style in the way they were plotted and tempered, and thanks to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, we know that many of streaming TV’s dramatic ills can be back to how streamers develop their shows. Weird pacing, disjointed storytelling, and a lack of strong character writing are natural consequences of companies eschewing writers for a piecemeal approach where writers are hired and then let go, excluded from the show’s making process.

A piece It’s not necessarily made this way, but it’s made in this culture and it certainly adheres to the conventions. It’s also the show that has suffered arguably the most from these conventions since then The Sandman, another adaptation of a beloved comic with an indelible visual style that was swept away by Netflix’s signature approach. (That may not have been a small part of it Bebopdownfall too.) It’s actually tragic. Every aspect of A piece‘s production sings: the sets are beautifully designed, the costumes feel true to the manga, the fight choreography is extremely good at translating comedic action into 3D, and the actors are totally committed – enough praise cannot be given to Godoy’s performance as Luffy, a casting decision so perfect it hurts. Godoy is exuberant in the role, with the boundless energy of a cartoon character coming to life and a wide grin that endears everyone he meets. Yet it’s all undermined by that Netflix corporate identity, which obscures the vibrant colors and hosts performances in the middle distance.

Photo: Casey Crafford/Netflix

Like many Netflix shows, A piece feels both too fast and too slow, willing to chew through gobs of plot as it jumps from location to location and flits back and forth through time, but rarely willing to spend much of the 50+ minute episodes on simple character beats which show the cast just hanging out with each other and being pirates. Because of this, if the plot doesn’t take the audience to a new place or introduce them to a fun new face, A piece comes to an absolute halt as machinations around the Straw Hat Pirates take place and we wait for them to inevitably solve the problem for them. Again: not a A piece problem, but a Netflix problem: a show quickly feels stale if it’s all about showing the viewer something new, as Netflix shows all too often are. Television is not based on novelty, but on familiarity.

Manga battles, fighting manga

Image: Toei/Crunchyroll

It’s probably worth pointing that out A piece crazy foreign. To its credit, the Netflix series doesn’t shy away from its manga origins, meaning the tone, storytelling techniques, and tropes can feel wildly dissonant if you’re unfamiliar with manga as a medium.

For the uninitiated, watching A piece means dealing with the genre styles of shonen manga, comics created primarily with young boys in mind, even though their appeal extends far beyond that limited audience. All the hallmarks are there: a serious approach to friendship; gonzo battles featuring colorful characters with inexplicable gimmicks; and a tendency for characters to yell the names of their ending moves, as if they were both pro wrestlers and wrestling fans rolled into one.

As shocking as this may seem, ever A piece gets going, it’s not hard to recognize their quirks and see their appeal, especially when delivered with Godoy’s conviction and genuine charm. And that’s the frustrating thing about it A piece – it feels that way repairable. There’s a real treasure to be found here, a real celebration of Eiichiro Oda’s work just beneath the surface of these eight episodes. Maybe we’d see it if the show came from somewhere else.