Hogan Reviews

After failing with Death Note and creating the utter disaster that was the Cowboy Bebop live action series when I heard that Netflix was tackling One Piece I laughed at the idea given the One Piece world is weirder and wilder than either projects they previously got so wrong. So imagine my surprise when I started hearing that it was actually good, so positive was the reception that against all my instincts I gave it a go, and you know what? It is good! Not amazing, it has flaws not just related to having to condense so much story into so few episodes, but the fact I enjoyed a live action version of One Piece at all is some sort of minor miracle. So let’s take a deeper look at the show, a good few weeks after its relevant because I’m me and I do that sort of thing…

Rather than starting by talking about the story let’s first take a look at the main cast, starting with Inaki Godoy as Luffy, as he does a great job with the role despite the manga / anime original being extremely animated (no pun intended) and childish which often doesn’t translate well into live action. His Luffy is goofy and not very bright but definitely endearing and something about the way Inaki pronounces certain things, including “Monkey D. Luffy” very fast made me smile, a little bit of his Mexican speaking slipping into the role. Emily Rudd as Nami makes for a good “thief who comes to find a place with a good group of people”, especially as the live action Nami has a lot fewer selfish moments and more scenes where she’s shown to care about the people she meets. Mackenyu looks the part of Zoro but can come across as a little too closed off and one-note, even his big emotional pieces from the original story seem far less impactful.

Luffy at the beginning of his long…. long…. still-going-several-decades-later long journey.

Jacob Romero Gibson’s Usopp is fine, you can’t do the super over-the-top coward stuff like the original Usopp in live action so instead he’s a bit of a show-off and makes stories up about himself but in a fun way, which is the best way to go about it really. Lastly for the Straw Hat crew Taz Skylar plays Sanji but given he appears in the last few episodes there doesn’t seem to be a lot of time to establish him as anything other than a cook who just randomly decides to follow Luffy. We get his backstory but not much focus on him, his intro arc is far more focused on Nami and Zoro, plus a new early showdown between Luffy and Arlong… Overall though by the end of the series they do all bounce off each other well, so I’m looking forward to seeing them as a crew in the now confirmed Season 2, with all the introductions out of the way.

As for the story itself, we get basically a “greatest hits” of the East Blue arc, all the major plot points are covered and most of the major fights as well, it’s just they tend to be short-hand versions, especially the fights (I know the show had a major budget but they still needed to cut back on some of Luffy’s stretchy powers, I guess!) Monkey D. Luffy wishes to become a pirate like Red Haired Shanks (Peter Gadiot) and ends up with rubber-based devil fruit powers and his icon’s straw hat, leading to him eventually going out into the ocean and run across a pirate ship led by the ruthless Alvida (Ilia Isorelys Paulino) where he meets and frees captive crew member Koby (Morgan Davies) Together they reach an island with a Marines base led by Axe Hand Morgan (Langley Kirkwood) and meet pirate hunter Roronoa Zoro and thief Nami. Zoro takes out a member of Baroque Works (something mentioned but not seen in the original manga/anime) by slicing him in half, which was a nice showing that the occasional bloody violence seen in the source material wasn’t being held back but ends up arrested a short while later. Luffy frees Zoro and recruits him, and soon the duo plus Nami take out Axe Hand and humiliate his son Helmeppo (Aidan Scott). Luffy, Zoro and Nami head out to sea and Koby enlists in the marines.

I guess a clown pirate who can float his head around while throwing knives would be scary, never really thought about it…

This is where the biggest departure from the source material appears as Luffy’s grandad Monkey D. Garp (Vincent Regan) is introduced right away and takes Koby and Helmeppo as recruits on his ship and the trio appear in pretty much every episode on the trail of the Straw Hats, with Koby learning both that not all pirates are evil and not all marines are good. Honestly I could’ve done with far fewer of these scenes so the core plots could’ve had more room to breathe, but hey-ho. I guess they really wanted a subplot! Luffy, Zoro and Nami end up encountering Buggy the Clown (Jeff Ward) soon after departing, with some fun use of the clown’s “Chop Chop Fruit” powers, some of which weren’t in the original fight and generally a much more sinister vibe from his whole deal. His weird crew are mostly absent but again, needs must. This is where we get most of Luffy’s backstory with Shanks and co. as well. The trio then meet Usopp as they search for a proper ship and get caught up with his friend Kaya (Celeste Loots) and her mysteriously evil-looking butler Klahadore (Alexander Maniatis), with the latter revealing himself to be pirate Captain Kuro and trying to kill Kaya to inherit her shipyard but eventually being defeated. It’s well adapted, Usopp and Kaya are a sweet pair and new scenes with Kaya and Nami helped this Nami’s more quickly apparent soft side get more airtime. We also get Zoro’s flashback of growing up with a friend and rival who died before he ever got to beat her, and all that jazz.

I’d be interested to know how Garp got a Scottish accent while his grandson sounds Hispanic, but hey-ho there are far odder things in the series! (plus there’s plenty of ways that would make sense in real life, like his grandson having at least one Hispanic parent and growing up somewhere different, but shhh. I just wanted to mention Garp’s accent!)

Usopp becomes part of the crew and they get the “Going Merry” ship, soon coming across a restaurant in the middle of the ocean and having a meal, with Luffy not realising he’d have to pay and so getting stuck doing the dishes. This is where Sanji in introduced, creating amazing dishes that head chef Zeff (Craig Fairbrass) doesn’t want to serve. As mentioned we get the flashback of Sanji and then-pirate Zeff getting stranded on a rock in the middle of nowhere and surviving a few months with Sanji slowly pacing out food and then going to get some of Zeff’s only to find out the pirate had given him all the food and eaten his own leg to survive. Guilt trip alert! Beyond that though we jump to Nami looking to get a boat out of here and Zoro finding Dracule Mihawk (Steven Ward), the world’s greatest swordsman and the man he wishes to beat and challenging him to a duel that he easily loses. Again Zoro’s joy the meeting him and teary promise to Luffy that he’ll never lose again just didn’t land due to Mackenyu’s over stoic-ness. Once again we get more soft-hearted Nami as instead of leaving everyone behind she stays with Zoro as he heals, oh and the whole Don Krieg story from the original series? Cut completely, Krieg appears briefly being killed by Dracule and that’s it, instead Luffy faces off with Fishman Arlong (McKinley Belcher III) and gets his backside handed to him before seeing Nami confirm she is a member of Arlong’s group as she leaves with them…

So as mentioned at just 8 one hour episodes it’s forced to condense a lot of plot, especially since they added a wholly original subplot with Garp and Koby, a subplot that routinely felt like it slowed down the pace and interrupted things, which is made more annoying due to the knowledge of how little impact Koby makes on the story going forward even if his role is expanded here. I’m also happy to say some of the weirder parts of the series, like the transponder snails and the fact some people just wear really weird often animal-based outfits are correct and present, complete with nobody thinking any of its weird. Top marks there!

Overall Thoughts:

Live action Straw Hats! … in a show that’s actually good!!

One Piece’s live action debut blew me away, not in the sense that it was amazing but because it was actually good rather than terrible. It had everything going against it but despite being far more of a challenge to turn into a live action show than Netflix’s other attempts it succeeds where the others dramatically failed. The crew is fun, the wacky visuals are kept and the plot was mostly kept intact. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m looking forward to season 2!

Luffy, Zoro, Usopp and Sanji manage to track Arlong down thanks to Buggy’s head in a bag they took from Arlong (a weird new addition, but a funny one!) and soon find Nami shaking down her old village for money before they stay with Nami’s sister Nojiko (Chioma Umeala), and soon we have Nami’s tragic backstory and the reveal that she only stole things because she was trying to buy her village off of Arlong followed by the horrible scene where Arlong rats her out to a corrupt Marine member who takes all her hard-earned money. This leads to Nami breaking down and finally asking Luffy for help, who gently places his straw hat on her head and declares “Of course I will!”, a scene that turned me from a casual watcher to a fan way back when, so it was nice to see it even if Inaki’s “Of course I will!” didn’t have as much emotional impact as the original scene.

Fishmen in live action are quite disturbing, especially Arlong (obviously intentionally!)

The Straw Hats arrive and fight with Arlong and his pirate group, complete with the latter’s Fishman racism rants (which would be good if they weren’t all shown to be bastards…) and Usopp and Sanji getting big moments (Zoro’s opponent of Hachi was cut, no doubt due to the complexity of having a octopus man fight with six swords in live action…) Luffy defeats Arlong and confronts his grandad, who is happy his grandson is so strong and lets him get on his way. We end with the reveal of Luffy’s bounty and the Straw Hat crew declaring their goals on a barrel of beer, a great way to cap off Season 1!