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One Pice
Romance Dawn
Season 1
Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Casey Crafford/Netflix/CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most important manga of all time, an epic tale with vast world-building and an intricate sense of history and lore. It’s also a tale that was considered to be essentially impossible to turn into a live-action series. Aside from the enormous task of adapting an ongoing story with over 1,000 issues, One Piece is famous for its goofy, cartoony visuals, tone, and humor — like a running Looney Tunes–style gag where the characters’ eyeballs pop out when they’re surprised.
The difficulties of adapting the source material, plus Netflix’s history of misfires in transforming manga to the small screen (remember Death Note? Or Cowboy Bebop?), mean the odds are stacked against the new live-action One Piece. Which is why it brings me immense joy to say that the first episode of the show is … rather good? If nothing else, it manages to capture the spirit of adventure and the silly tone of Oda’s epic, and the cast is simply perfect.
We begin, just like the manga and the anime adaptation do, with the King of the Pirates, Gol D. Roger, facing his execution by the World Government. Before he’s brutally executed (really, two blades through the back? A bit over the top), Roger uttered a message that would kick-start the Golden Age of Piracy: “My treasure is yours to find.” Hundreds of ships immediately set sail from Roger’s execution site to look for the titular One Piece.
After the prologue, we meet our main character, the self-proclaimed future King of the Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy. From the second he shows up onscreen, Iñaki Godoy just embodies Luffy, especially his relentless sense of optimism and buffoonery. Like two of the great dum-dums of cinema, William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan, Luffy is not stupid; he’s essentially a puppy in the shape of a human. But he also has the powers of Mr. Fantastic, since he ate a nasty-looking Devil Fruit — magic flora that gives people who eat it strange powers — which turns his body into rubber.
Luffy doesn’t just want to be a pirate, though he idolizes them and everything he thinks they represent — fun, seaside adventures, and camaraderie. As a kid ten years prior, Luffy was so obsessed with joining the crew of a pirate named Shanks he proved his valor by literally stabbing himself in the face like a maniac. (Again, he’s not the brightest guy around.) In the world of One Piece (at least so far, and as Luffy sees them), pirates are not murderers and thieves but the cool older neighbor who teaches you about R-rated movies and whom you just want to impress.
Before Luffy can claim Roger’s crown and treasure, he needs a ship, and also a crew, and probably a map to the ocean route where the treasure lies. It doesn’t help that his makeshift boat immediately sinks and a violent group of pirates, led by the ruthless Alvida, take him captive. Though there’s blood and violence in the manga, One Piece is pretty kid-friendly, but the live-action show seems a bit grittier. Alvida smashes some random guy’s face into a gory pulp with a mallet, and bloody beheadings are commonplace.
While the change is a bit jarring at first, it kind of serves to juxtapose the complex and high-stakes world of pirates and governments with delightfully silly costumes and designs as well as goofy characters. Rather than fully becoming a cartoon or completely disregarding the exaggerated art of the source material, One Piece leaves its cartoon characters exactly as silly as they are and puts them in a dangerous and bloody world they are unprepared for — and that’s the best we could ask this adaptation for.
Before leaving Alvida’s ship, Luffy befriends Koby, a kid working as part of the crew who hates the very idea of pirates. He doesn’t see them as fun or free. He’s terrified of Alvida and how much she demands of her crew. What’s more, Koby’s dream is to become a Marine, which would mean he’d be Luffy’s enemy, but the rookie pirate encourages Koby anyway and pushes him to embrace his goal. To Luffy, it doesn’t matter if their dreams are in direct opposition; he’d die rather than see someone being told what they can’t do. (Luffy and John Lock from Lost would be best friends.) This fight for freedom and for chasing one’s dreams is Luffy’s biggest strength, despite his many flaws. Like Dominic Toretto, he has his own gravity that attracts others to defy logic and be part of his family crew.
Speaking of crew, we meet two of them, introduced in their own little side adventures that lead them all to Shells Town — where Luffy and Koby also head to in order to find a map to the Grand Line. We meet Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), a bounty hunter specializing in killing pirates and one of the most badass anime characters ever devised, and Nami (Emily Rudd), a navigator who absolutely hates pirates. Zoro immediately gets into a fight with the bratty son of the local Marine captain, “Axe-Hand” Morgan, for mocking a small girl and gets tied to a crucifix with no food or water as a punishment (crucifixion is a rather common trope in Japanese media). As for Nami, she infiltrates the Marine base by stealing an officer’s uniform, looking for the same map Luffy came here for.
Despite much initial reluctance by both Nami and Zoro, Luffy’s Toretto-like gravity pulls them in as they try to escape from the Marine base. They all may immediately refute anyone who tries to call them a crew, but the three have fantastic chemistry, even if they are (as of now) mostly just archetypes — the tsundere who is initially cold and hostile, the silent loner with incredible prowess, and the overenthusiastic and bighearted protagonist. Rudd is very good at hinting at the deeper motivations and pain that Nami carries with her, but the second half of the episode belongs to Mackenyu as Zoro. There’s a reason he’s the most popular non-Luffy character, and Mackenyu not only captures Zoro’s nuanced, almost-impossible-to-see-at-first humor, while also being rather good at the quite demanding physicality of the role.
Indeed, the fight to escape the Marine base is not just visually impressive but quite thrilling. We get some re-creations of iconic shots from the manga and anime as well as a decent variation of shots and camera angles. Zoro’s sword fights have stunning choreography, and the moment he finally puts on his bandanna and uses his three-sword style (putting a sword in your mouth cannot be good for your teeth!) is just the right amount of badass and silly. Even Luffy’s Gum-Gum powers, one of the trickiest things to pull off in live action owing to how cartoony it looks, fit for that very reason, as it’s clear there are things in the world of One Piece that defy logic. It doesn’t just look good, either; it sounds spectacular with the sound design really capturing Luffy’s rubbery powers.
The episode ends with two end-tags. The first shows the Marines’ response to the assault on the base and the theft of the map, and a big-time admiral (in a badass metal-covered ship) that uses a giant snail as a phone and is very interested in hearing about this pirate in a straw hat. It seems stealing the map was the bigger crime here for some reason, and also a big deal, because the second tag shows a pirate reporting to his scary-clown boss about a crew getting to Morgan’s map before him. That pirate’s name is Buggy the Clown, and we know this because the episode introduces him, like Alvida and Roger, by showing us their wanted poster and bounty, which is a rather cool way of not just making each new pirate feel like a special part of the world but also showcases the increase in danger (and money involved) that Luffy and the others are facing.
• Manga and anime fans may recognize some familiar faces in the opening scene, like Mihawk, Shanks, and baby Smoker.
• Zoro’s introduction with Mr. 7 is a scene that the manga and anime reference but never actually depict, so we’re seeing this for the first time here. It’s a small detail but one that enlarges the scope of the story by teasing what’s to come — and what else is out there.
• Likewise, Garp’s appearance teases an adaptation of Koby and Meppo’s cover stories from the manga, a cool little side story that makes the world feel bigger and more connected. That he also mentions the criminal organization Baroque Works — a major player in a later story arc — may indicate a bigger (and earlier?) role for the group than in the source material.
• The wall of wanted posters gives us brief teases of future and iconic villains, including Don Krieg, Foxy, Bellamy, and Cavendish. It’s unlikely we’ll see the latter three so soon, but it’s cool to see an acknowledgment that they are out there wreaking havoc way before we see them.
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