Monkey D. Luffy is a young man with an impossible dream:
To become King of the Pirates. To
accomplish this, he’ll have to set sail for The Grand Line, where the most
powerful of Pirates and Monsters lurk but so does the greatest treasure in the
world, the One Piece. But Luffy’s not
alone in his quest. A deadly Swordsman,
a beautiful Thief, a lying Sharpshooter and a highly skilled Cook all find
themselves drawn to this straw hat wearing power house with Rubber Powers
granted to him by the Devil Fruit. Together,
they embark on the journey of a lifetime.
The One Piece awaits and nothing will stop Luffy from fulfilling his
dream.
I’m sure there are plenty of Anime fans still pissed
about the dumpster fire from 2021 that was Netflix’s Live Action Cowboy Bebop
series.
Despite a strong leading cast,
the series never understood what made Bebop special in the first place and
instead relied heavily on visual cues alone to win fans over.
It failed and it failed hard.
So one can understand the amount of pressure
Netflix is under to NOT botch a Live Action One Piece.
Bebop is special for sure but One Piece has a
very, very long history behind it (and a massive episode count to boot).
And like Bebop, the One Piece trailers have
looked promising.
Plus Netflix has the
official blessing of original Mangaka Eiichiro Oda, which is going a long way
with fans I know.
Well the time for the
Live Action One Piece to set sail has come and…yeah it’s off to a good
start.
At least the first episode is way
better than the Cowboy Bebop Premiere.
With 8 episodes set for the season, I saw that the
runtimes for each installment clock in close to about an hour each, maybe a bit
more.
It’s no wonder then that the
Series Premiere feels like a movie sized special event.
Having watched the first episode of the Anime
prior to this series (see my other First Impression also up now), I can say
that this isn’t going to be a beat for beat adaptation of the Anime or Manga.
Many storylines and first encounters are
woven together and are done so fairly well.
You could call it coincidence that Luffy, Zoro and Nami all end up in
the same place.
But like Marvel’s The
Avengers, you can just call it fate that this trio assembles for the first time
and are destined to do great things together.
We also get pieces of Luffy’s backstory with Red Hair Shanks and his
discovery of the Devil “Gum Gum” Fruit for good measure, something that’s bound
to be expanded upon in future episodes.
There’s a lot crammed into this opening salvo but it never feels
overstuffed and I never felt bored or lost by anything.
Like Cowboy Bebop, what’s gonna do a lot of the heavy
lifting with One Piece is its cast.
Even
when the show got really, really bad, John Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella
Pineda were all a joy to watch as Spike, Jet and Faye.
For One Piece, Inaki Godoy brings his own
charm, wit and easy going nature to the role. He’s not quite as blunt as his
Anime counterpart but he’s still honest to a fault and comes across as a guy
who tells it like it is and you want to have a drink with him.
Just like he has with his other Anime roles
in Rurouni Kenshin and Fullmetal Alchemist, Mackenyu absolutely kills it as
Zoro, literally and figuratively.
The
man just oozes coolness and seeing him pull off Zoro’s signature three sword
style moves is something else.
Meanwhile
Emily Rudd’s Nami reminds me a bit of Daniella Pineda’s Faye from Cowboy Bebop
in all the best ways.
She’s aggressive
and skilled with that bowstaff and has enough allure and charm that its easy to
see why she can get away with so much as a thief.
Bonus points go to the casting of Ian McShane
as the Narrator of the opening featuring Gold Rogers demise, the man sounds
like he was a Pirate in a past life (we’ll just ignore the fact that he was in
the absolutely terrible 4
th Pirates of the Caribbean movie).
Visually, the premiere shows us that the people working
on this are trying to hue as close as they can to the look and feel of Oda’s
expansive world at sea.
At times, the
sets can feel a bit underwhelming, not quite matching the theatricality they
might have been aiming for.
Other times,
you can ignore it for the sake of just enjoying the ride.
I was pretty impressed with how much we got to
see of Luffy’s Gum Gum powers in action.
With the ability to stretch his body to almost any length, you’d think
they’d want to show as little of it as possible to save up for later
episodes.
Nope, Luffy’s rubber arms are
used more than you’d think and they don’t look bad actually.
There is serious money being thrown into this
project with the amount of effects being used for sea creatures and battleship
skirmishes.
But nailing the look and
feel of Luffy’s signature power feels like it was top priority and thankfully,
it doesn’t look too bad.
I’ve made it clear that I’m not the biggest One Piece guy
though I do respect what it’s brought to the world of Anime.
I know there’s a lot riding on how well this
series can do and after the first episode, I have to say I’m on board and ready
to see where this ride leads to.
Be they
bright horizons of a Second Seasons or the dark abyss where Cowboy Bebop
resides, the Live Action One Piece has left port.
And with a trio of ready to go lead
characters, I think we’re all in good company.
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