Adapting a beloved anime in live action movie or TV is one of the most thankless tasks that a creator could be unlucky enough to get stuck with. Most are presumed to be doomed the moment they are greenlit, with several hundred pieces of convincing evidence, but, just because it’s likely to fail doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed.
The unfortunate failure of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop sounded the death knell for the yet-imminent One Piece adaptation. The latest in a very long line of live-action missteps has been famously canceled twenty days after the season’s release on the platform. The soldiers of One Piece advance without trepidation in the face of the disaster of their predecessor.
One Piece needs no introduction, it’s one of the most popular narrative pieces ever written. Eiichiro Oda’s current shonen franchise has laid the rock for most of the anime’s modern success and has broken the model several times. The manga will celebrate its 25th anniversary next month, marked by an uninterrupted streak of excessive success. Anime remains one of the most loved series in the medium after more than a thousand episodes. New trends come and go in the anime world, or even in the shonen genre, but One Piece remains arguably among the top names. With all that in mind, with the mountains of movies, video games, and other merchandise that the franchise has spawned, it’s shocking that it took this time to put a live-action adaptation to the screen.
The adaptation of an anime to live action varies in difficulty based on the esoteric nature of the series. Looking at the concept as a spectrum could put a more realistic anime like Ruroni Kenshin on one side and One Piece firmly on the other. Kenshin makes the transition to live action quite easy. The film’s multiple film adaptations come as a ton of other Japanese action films with enough of the series ’taste to make it feel special. Cowboy Bebop falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but the Netflix adaptation has also managed to fall short of the expectations of most fans. Money was indisputably part of the problem, but many producers did more with less. One Piece is much more of an uphill battle and doing something that resembles manga or anime in live-action will be a difficult challenge.
The best anime adaptations here include Wachowskis ’2008 on Speed Racer or Takashi Miike’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Capturing visual aesthetics is only one part of what makes these films great. The filmmakers in question have mountains of experience with original and adapted stories and possess the talent to find which pieces of a work are integral. A strong creative vision is key to capturing the spirit of a work and bringing it to a new medium. It’s a nebulous concept, but fans can choose the examples that stand out and the ones that are missing. The worst live-action adaptations sprang up in the face of the original work, flipping it on the head to pursue a more popular film idea. This is the unfortunate reality that holds Adam Wingard’s Death Note and Dragonball Evolution.
The Cowboy Bebop adaptation is probably the biggest red flag surrounding the One Piece adaptation. Both were produced for the same service, and shared a few members of the production team. This series went awry in a variety of ways big and small, but the most unforgivable aspects were in the way the characters were treated. If Netflix’s One Piece breaks the stereotype of Straw Hat Pirate equipment, everything else is secondary. Even if you miss great aspects of the narrative or deliberately erase most of the tradition, it doesn’t matter. If every line out of a hero’s mouth has fans sincerely convinced that they are always watching their favorite character from the anime, the series will always be fun for fans and newcomers alike. As long as fans hear the pictures of Luffy, Nami, Zoro, Sanji, and the rest are punctual, they will be happy to be with their beloved team of pirates on any non-sequel mission that Netflix sends them.
Netflix’s One Piece doesn’t maintain any semblance of the narrative format that story fans are familiar with. Although the elements of the plot remain similar to the source material will not be told in the same way, the events will be out of order, the pace will have to change, and it remains to be seen how much the material will translate. Any changes need to be made to adapt to the new medium, as long as Netflix’s One Piece understands what fans love about the equipment and atmosphere, the series can also flourish. It will never replace manga and anime, both of which will easily survive the memory of the live-action series. But, if handled properly, the series could be right next to the mountain of spin-offs and merchandise on this whale of a franchise. The best scenario, will be a killer entry point for a new generation of fans.
MORE: Jamie Lee Curtis wants to join Netflix’s One Piece Show
