@Captain:
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of adaptations that have been elevated by additions and tweaks made by a good director. My position on all of this would be very different if there wasn't already a One Piece anime and it wasn't the way it is. But any remake that wants to a) catch up to the present in less than a decade and b) have any hope of earning any of the audience that was interested in One Piece but overwhelmed by its length needs to be different. I want to see a director who's able to function as an editor, making tough decisions about what to streamline and cut to get the story into its fastest-moving form with minimal loss to its complexity and atmosphere. The place for directorial flourishes in an adaptation like that would be in character animation, particularly if some expressive body language can get across an emotion that was previously stated aloud or put in an inner monologue. You could do some really creative things with all the powers and body types available, but the current anime is so stiff outside of the final episodes of big fights that it never gets to capitalise on that potential.
The action vs comedy bit also stems from what the current anime does. Don't take it to mean I don't like One Piece's comedy or that I think there should be none. The gags make good, low-budget padding, so joke scenes are stretched out and running gags run even deeper into the ground. Meanwhile the need to stretch the budget over a whole year means a lot of non-major fights end up pretty janky, and even the major ones get watered down with things like extended power struggle sequences. The old anime tips the scales one way, a new one made with that in mind should tip them the other.
That's really the long and short of it. There's key things in the current anime that fall short of what I'd ideally want, and so I'd like to see any new adaptation go as far out of its way as possible to satisfy those things, even if it means de-emphasising stuff the current anime already got right. I also think from a marketing perspective being a lot shorter and feeling a bit more fighty would go a long way to make a new anime a distinct product and maybe lure in some of the audience who didn't think the series was for them the first time around. These newcomers can then be prodded toward the more even pacing and tone balance of the manga.
But I really am just spitballing dreams and ideas. None of this is realistic, least of all a hypothetical new anime sticking it so hard to the old one just as a show of faith to me, personally.
I agree that the remake needs to take different narrative directions here and there in order to a)make it more accessible, b)preserve time and resources, and c)make every aspect of the story in general more polished and concise, especially the pacing. That doesnt mean it cant add filler however. What i basically want is a trimmed down but at the same time fatter version.
One of the best adapted and paced episodes to me is episode 93. Despite the limited production and reference material, there isnt a single scene that feels dull, stretched-out or unnecessary. The screenplay, voice acting, music placement and added filler scenes are all excellent. It set the standard for how i want chapters to be adapted, at least the "regular" ones. Episode 199 is also on the same level, probably even better, but unlike 93 its completely filler so its not as useful of a reference point as 93 is in this case.
I still cant agree with the comedy vs action bit but if thats your ideal, fine