Season 1 General Discussion

Robby

Well, we're about half an hour our from this crazy thing going live to the world. I sadly won't be watching it on launch, I'll be watching it with my wife tonight and we both have to work, So I'll be a day or two behind a lot of you.

So, for good or for ll, I'll just leave these thoughts I had the day it was revealed when it was first announced in July 2017, on the first page of this thread.

@Robby said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

You can't make it like the anime and it's doomed if it even tries, it would fall apart the second you tried to put a 14 foot tall guy on screen or matched some of the crazier character designs. Chopper and Franky will not translate without looking stupid, so get that out of your heads now. They probably wouldn't even be in the first season anyway, assuming the first chunk is getting the crew together. And on-film stretching effects look really weird, so I imagine they'd have to tone Luffy down a smidge.

So you're not going to get that aesthetic. To even try would call for a ridiculous budget and it would mostly just look ridiculous or like the Speed Racer film. But go for something that strikes the spirit of One Piece and manage something like Hook or PotC and it could work.

Or Guardians of the Galaxy. Hell. If anything proves it could work it's freaking Guardians of the Galaxy. There's presumably no budget to make a Rocket Racoon quality CHopper on a regular basis, but he and Groot show audiences are willing to accept some crazy nonsense. But also look at Yondu. WHo in the comics had a GIANT fin mohawk… which was made considerably smaller for the film. Keeping the idea, the spirit... but not the exact visual.

Colorful and fun but not insane. At it's heart OP is a character piece with some great fight scenes and some really great stories within it. And several manga have been adapted into live action in Japan and worked quite well, though they're not quite as crazy as OP is design and energy wise.

Long as it doesn't turn into the Mario Brothers movie or Dragonball Evolution, there's always reason to be optimistic. If they're actually shooting for a series rather than standalone movie, there's much better chance of some of it being right.

Kaiolino

It’s getting similar complaints from critics that GotG 3 did (the emotional beats of the flashbacks feel tonally at odds with the otherwise light-hearted material) so that’s fine by me, because GotG 3 is by far my favourite of the bunch.

shadyagent

I m currently at work (europe) and lurking on twitter. I still havent decided if i should watch the Live actions series. To me it seems a risk reward thing.

Kaiolino

I had to look a particular name up in the credits of course.

alt text

Robby

As pointed out in the Greg teacher thread, Greg has spent the the last week talking up his life story and some of the troubles and successes he's been through on twitter. It's a fantastic read. I knew most of the stuff in it already and still got emotional.

.
That culminated with the announcement that, aside from that credit....

"Who is Greg?"

:::

This kind of clears up a lot of comments from the last few months, I think.

Sun. D.

Looking forward to watching this after work been following the LA news since it's anncounment it's going to be awesome to finally see it :)

andre

I woke up early to walk my god and then watched episode 1. I thought it was awesome and all the changes freshened things up in a good way so far! It doesn't have mind-bending cinematography or anything, but the overall direction is good. I can't wait to get home and watch some more with my wife.

Riddler

The season has a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Super impressive, I can't believe it's getting such a positive reaction! Can't wait to watch tonight, but I'm still at work, damn it. I would love to watch it all at once immediately, but I also promised a friend we'd watch it together, which would mean it would probably take us a couple of weeks to watch everything..

Man if Netflix doesn't renew this for a second season, they are officially dead to me.

FatDogForMidTerms

Here's a quick review with couple episodes under my belt:

Luffy doesn't feel like Luffy. He is too talkative and like, clever? Quippy? The actor is fine (i got used to his line delivery) but the writing is kinda off.

Great work on Nami and Zoro. Nothing bad to be said there.

It's amazing that for how much the show costs, it still manages to look really cheap at times.

I liked the battles! I can see some influences from old kung fu movies.

Overall a solid 7- effort. I will check out the rest of the season.

Dahaka

Imo Luffy is as much Luffy as he could be in a LA show that aspires to be an actual mainstream TV drama.

He's different, but let's be honest, I don't think it's possible to do a manga Luffy in a TV show. He's just... too cartoony.

andre

The way I understand it is that a lot of Oda's early changes were involving Luffy, but he really fell for Inaki's performance and charm and allowed them to write Luffy a bit different for Live Action. So yeah, he should feel different. I can get if that's a turn off for any given person, but it is intentional.

Captain M

Watched the first two episodes, and while I can't (shouldn't) write a lot about them now because it's late here and I need to get to bed, I gotta say the series' energy is infectious. It's genuinely just a lot of fun to watch. And all the background details and easter eggs had me on the edge of my seat pointing at the screen.

There are additions that feel so at home with the world and characters it's hard to imagine they weren't there to begin with (Morgan having a big grinder in his office for axe sharpening that he casually uses while people are trying to have a meeting with him is perfect), but there are also superfan nit picks and things that maybe got too streamlined (Chou Chou being reduced to a cameo is tragic). I can't wait to see what they've done for the rest of East Blue.

Cinder

I added polls to each of the episode threads!

edit:
I got an alert saying that Chapters 1-108 is free to view in celebration of the Netflix release.

So if you've got someone watching with you who isn't familiar with OP, this is the opportunity!

https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/one-piece

Dahaka

Finished the show.

Stared very good, first two episodes' comedy and action were really cool but unfortunately once episodes with drama hit, the show wasn't able to handle it. Nami's arc was really rushed and barebones. Some scenes didn't even make sense, because stuff that made them stick was cut. Flashback were very mid, which hurt especially during Nami's one.

Fight choreography also took a hit after first two episodes, so action fell off too.

Such a shame, I was really enjoying the first two episodes.

All Fiction

The show is now sitting at 81% certified fresh at Rotten Tomatoes.

Dragon D. Luffy

I just watched ep. 1 of One Piece with my mother.

That's the sentence.

I remember her bashing the hell out of it (and bashing me for liking it) when I saw it in 2007. Now she's watching it and liking it.

Gear 4 Sauce

Kuro and Mihawk are the best characters. Though they did a great job with everybody really.

GuetaMinute

Loved it. I don’t feel like getting into what I didn’t love, pretty much what a lot of others would agree, with some important and memorable moments cut, some badass Luffy moments I felt would’ve been nice to include, pacing issues. Still highly enjoyed the whole thing.

zeltrax225

I finished watching the adaptation and everything considered, this is a 6 for me.
When they nailed it, they've nailed it. But everything else outside of what they've done right was lackluster and felt like a shallow shell of what was the source material's otherwise great character work. I'm being completely serious when I say that the live action has removed more than half, say 80%, of characterization that the manga had. It was shallow, felt shallow and gave most people who watched it nothing much to think about or to really feel about. This largely had to do with the pacing and a bunch of creative directions that I disagree with but mostly have to do with my newfound appreciation for manga as a medium and how thankful I am to have been able to read the source material because One Piece as a whole truly only works in that form. The first season of live action didn't surpass that, nor did it need to, but it was also unnecessary outside of a little distraction you'll get.

Fantastic work by the actors all around. Emily Rudd stole the show. Inaki as Luffy still hasn't grown on me. Mackenryu had a great showing. Pretty much all of the straw hats were cast well and outside of Luffy, felt very much like their anime/manga counterparts but in real life.

It's a solid 6. It's not great, not that bad but nowhere close to being meaningful either.

D.aelthasaar

I didn't get why the production had to force the Garp storyline.
I mean, the execution is good, all the actors/characters involved are great but

A - It removes the reveal payoff of post Enies Lobbies
B - It takes screen time off character building

Not a fan of the Orange Town and Syrup arc being mostly indoor...it feels claustrophobic, when it's not really needed

In the end...it's great when it follows the original source, it's mid when it moves aaway from it

In regards to the character...I didn't feel Mackenyu too much from the trailers, but I must admit he's great, I think Emily is too serious, and I don't feel the angry/serious Inaki...he doesn't have the face and stare for it
Totally love Sanji and Usopp, which are perfect

shadyagent

@zeltrax225 said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

Fantastic work by the actors all around. Emily Rudd stole the show. Inaki as Luffy still hasn't grown on me. Mackenryu had a great showing. Pretty much all of the straw hats were cast well and outside of Luffy, felt very much like their anime/manga counterparts but in real life.

It's a solid 6. It's not great, not that bad but nowhere close to being meaningful either.

That is pretty much how I felt about the show as well. It was fun watching and even finished the series in one go.

I know I m biased and I m trying not to compare to it the manga but that is my take:
I really liked the crew interactions overall and that made me happy about the TV show overall to the point I was not looking forward towards the action then rather was hoping to see more "crew screentime". It reminded me of How I met your mother where every character aside from the main chracter was great which was kind of on purpose. I could imagine that might have been a similiar approach in the live action adaptation as well.

While watching it I was always trying to imagine how would someone feel about the show with fresh eyes not knowing anything of One Piece. But that was not possible.

Buggy was hilarious and loved how he was kept involved. Sanji and Zeff and their history were incredibly good depicted in the sense you "could feel them". Compared to that the whole Nami/Arlong episode felt rushed to the point it left a shallow impression but I guess that was owed to my expectation caused by loving the manga.

What is great about the OP live action are the crew interactions specificly how it was its own thing, a tv show thing. The crew was fun was and interesting but not because of their background story. I felt a gap between their shown history and the chracterisation overall but cant put my finger why that is in particular - maybe because I compared them to the manga version in my head. Looking in the future at possible future seasons I m not sure how the Live action adaption could further bank on their interactions solely without improving in other areas. To be blunt the action and the visual adaptation kind of had a negative impact on the fun I had seeing the characters interacting.

Anyways, I m glad a lot of people have fun with the show. I love the manga, I hate the anime and everything that comes with it since Fishman island and I like the live action adaption for what it is.

zeltrax225

It doesn't really help that Arlong Park's screentime and total duration were close to and almost the same as that of Syrup's. Which...would be fine if it was not THE arc of the entire saga. I've said this in another thread but a lot of the world lacks the charm of the source material and that is not because the live action medium disallow it to work. The liveliness and the feeling of a community is not something that is impossible to translate in this medium. The removal and irrelevance of certain key characters that form the very community that contributed to the bedrock of the straw hats as characters irritated me to no end once it became noticeable what they were doing. Islands don't feel like they have their own community and their own sense of life to them and exist just as a backdrop. When the straw hats were supposed to feel like a small of a greater whole, everything in this show shows the opposite: that they exist just for the straw hats to do things and have no agency of their own.

That's one thing I dislike and the other being how key characters like Luffy were handled but that's another rant of its own.
People tend to forget that what makes up the characters, especially ones like Luffy, is not when they decide to do an introspection and make conversation about said introspection. Rather, most of what makes the straw hats so lovable is how they interact and act with the people they've met and most of those said people and interactions were missing here.

Honestly, the length of the season (8 episodes) and its pacing does not do the series justice at all.

shadyagent

@zeltrax225 said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

The liveliness and the feeling of a community is not something that is impossible to translate in this medium. The removal and irrelevance of certain key characters that form the very community that contributed to the bedrock of the straw hats as characters irritated me to no end once it became noticeable what they were doing. Islands don't feel like they have their own community and their own sense of life to them and exist just as a backdrop. When the straw hats were supposed to feel like a small of a greater whole, everything in this show shows the opposite: that they exist just for the straw hats to do things and have no agency of their own.
.

That is a point I really can relate to. Reading that made me rethink especially the character of Garp and that I m gettling less fond of that version of him. Im pretty sure the writers are aware of that and made the decision on purpose evolving everything "just for the strawhats". In my opinion it might not fair to critize that deliberate change in a completly negative way. For that reason it is now hitting harder that the show kind of failed in making Luffy an "entertaining character" in the world of live action One Piece for me given the fact the enviroment was seemingly sacrificed/centralizied around Luffy for story telling reasons. Hmmm....

Robby

@D-aelthasaar said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

I didn't get why the production had to force the Garp storyline.
I mean, the execution is good, all the actors/characters involved are great but

A - It removes the reveal payoff of post Enies Lobbies
B - It takes screen time off character building

They have 8 episodes to play with, and may only EVER have 8 episodes, so they have to build up and have a payoff that works in one go. And if you're going to have Coby in the first two episodes, well, then he's the plot element you've got. Keep following him as the C plot so that there's some sort of payoff.

Enies Lobby best case scenario, if the show gets renewed for multiple seasons, is 3 seasons away. You can't just hold those characters and the Coby payoff for half a decade like you can in an ongoing manga or a novel series.

Yeah its great that we got that reveal of Garp and Coby's glow up 11 years into the manga. That just wouldn't work here.

black-leg jex

Yeah, I think utilising Coby and Helmeppo now while they have them, is a good call, and ultimately they managed to tie-it in to the overall themes of the show (creating parallels between Garp and Zeff was a brilliant move).

I get the frustration with the locations only feeling like a backdrop, Cocoyashi in particular suffering from this, but in the grand scheme of things I would much rather they focused on the five Straw Hats and letting the audience get to know them and giving Luffy a character arc to follow instead of spending time diving into areas we'll never see again. They only had 8 episodes so they needed to get their priorites right and I think they did.

FatDogForMidTerms

@zeltrax225 said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

It doesn't really help that Arlong Park's screentime and total duration were close to and almost the same as that of Syrup's. Which...would be fine if it was not THE arc of the entire saga. I've said this in another thread but a lot of the world lacks the charm of the source material and that is not because the live action medium disallow it to work. The liveliness and the feeling of a community is not something that is impossible to translate in this medium. The removal and irrelevance of certain key characters that form the very community that contributed to the bedrock of the straw hats as characters irritated me to no end once it became noticeable what they were doing. Islands don't feel like they have their own community and their own sense of life to them and exist just as a backdrop. When the straw hats were supposed to feel like a small of a greater whole, everything in this show shows the opposite: that they exist just for the straw hats to do things and have no agency of their own.

That's one thing I dislike and the other being how key characters like Luffy were handled but that's another rant of its own.
People tend to forget that what makes up the characters, especially ones like Luffy, is not when they decide to do an introspection and make conversation about said introspection. Rather, most of what makes the straw hats so lovable is how they interact and act with the people they've met and most of those said people and interactions were missing here.

Honestly, the length of the season (8 episodes) and its pacing does not do the series justice at all.

I agree with everything here.

The series feels for some reason very claustrophobic which is the exact opposite of what One Piece, set on the ocean and being free, should feel.

shadyagent

@FatDogForMidTerms said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

The series feels for some reason very claustrophobic which is the exact opposite of what One Piece, set on the ocean and being free, should feel.

In the manga the world building came with entering the grandline. Before that the whole focus relied on getting a crew. I would argue that is a topic that could be tackeled and focused on in a later seasons.
Also seeing the scene how Luffy was trying to show Coby to make his own decision and seeing that Coby needed to hold on his own guts on his adventures beside Garb, it had more impact that the world "still felt claustrophobic". Do not forget "normal" people live in the four oceans and are cut off in a tophographical sense. The grandline is the main street where all the people who are seeking freedom are passing through.
That is how I feel about that point.

Zanze

I'm only 4 episodes in, but this is pretty good?
The characters work, Zoro in particular cracks me up and Luffy is every bit as dumb as he is in the manga but in a more grounded way. Koby is perfect, Kuro and his henchmen worked very well.
I also like how they kept the story but changed the plot's structure, it keeps things fresh and different enough, the fight with Kuro happening inside Kaya's mansion in particular is a very inspired choice. Having Koby and Garp take a more active role in the plot also works, it's more fitting for the TV format.
The locations are great, the acting is good, the action works...
There's a couple of changes I haven't loved (mostly the way a lot of things about Usopp felt rushed), and it's not really anything mindblowing, but it's just minor complaints from me. They did a great job. Can't wait to see Mihawk.
It has also mostly passed the Girlfriend Test which is not something I was expecting

FatDogForMidTerms

@shadyagent said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

@FatDogForMidTerms said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

The series feels for some reason very claustrophobic which is the exact opposite of what One Piece, set on the ocean and being free, should feel.

In the manga the world building came with entering the grandline. Before that the whole focus relied on getting a crew. I would argue that is a topic that could be tackeled and focused on in a later seasons.
Also seeing the scene how Luffy was trying to show Coby to make his own decision and seeing that Coby needed to hold on his own guts on his adventures beside Garb, it had more impact that the world "still felt claustrophobic". Do not forget "normal" people live in the four oceans and are cut off in a tophographical sense. The grandline is the main street where all the people who are seeking freedom are passing through.
That is how I feel about that point.

I mean more how the scenes were filmed and how the settings felt

King Cannon

@zeltrax225 said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

It doesn't really help that Arlong Park's screentime and total duration were close to and almost the same as that of Syrup's. Which...would be fine if it was not THE arc of the entire saga. I've said this in another thread but a lot of the world lacks the charm of the source material and that is not because the live action medium disallow it to work. The liveliness and the feeling of a community is not something that is impossible to translate in this medium. The removal and irrelevance of certain key characters that form the very community that contributed to the bedrock of the straw hats as characters irritated me to no end once it became noticeable what they were doing. Islands don't feel like they have their own community and their own sense of life to them and exist just as a backdrop. When the straw hats were supposed to feel like a small of a greater whole, everything in this show shows the opposite: that they exist just for the straw hats to do things and have no agency of their own.

To be fair, worldbuilding before the Grand Line is rather poor. Most of the places are generic rural villages, Baratie and Gaimon's island being the sole exceptions. There's nothing like Arabasta, which has like three distinct, important towns, or even Drum, which has an unique climate and geography.

The focus in East Blue WAS the Straw Hats. That's why every prominent character had some relation to Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp or Sanji. And when you have only 8 episodes to hook the audience, it makes sense to focus less on the "community".

There's a reason Oda once said East Blue was more of a prologue than anything, best apparent by the saga ending at Loguetown.

shadyagent

@King-Cannon said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

@zeltrax225 said in One Piece Live-Adaptation Drama Announced:

It doesn't really help that Arlong Park's screentime and total duration were close to and almost the same as that of Syrup's. Which...would be fine if it was not THE arc of the entire saga. I've said this in another thread but a lot of the world lacks the charm of the source material and that is not because the live action medium disallow it to work. The liveliness and the feeling of a community is not something that is impossible to translate in this medium. The removal and irrelevance of certain key characters that form the very community that contributed to the bedrock of the straw hats as characters irritated me to no end once it became noticeable what they were doing. Islands don't feel like they have their own community and their own sense of life to them and exist just as a backdrop. When the straw hats were supposed to feel like a small of a greater whole, everything in this show shows the opposite: that they exist just for the straw hats to do things and have no agency of their own.

To be fair, worldbuilding before the Grand Line is rather poor. Most of the places are generic rural villages, Baratie and Gaimon's island being the sole exceptions. There's nothing like Arabasta, which has like three distinct, important towns, or even Drum, which has an unique climate and geography.

The focus in East Blue WAS the Straw Hats. That's why every prominent character had some relation to Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp or Sanji. And when you have only 8 episodes to hook the audience, it makes sense to focus less on the "community".

There's a reason Oda once said East Blue was more of a prologue than anything, best apparent by the saga ending at Loguetown.

That is a valid point, thank for that. Looking back, the issue for me popped up during Baratie: it is a microcosmos of its own with its own people: the hardboiled chefs. It should have been possible to easily show off the Baratie with the quriky people without more effort. I think that is what is meant by everything around is just a backdrop

zorosempai

This post is deleted!

Razh

Man, it's gonna take me like a week or 2 to get through the whole thing. You guys are crazy!

Lord Gaimon

watched a clip from this, why is luffy giving generic motivational speeches lol

zeltrax225

@King-Cannon I can see why it was done but I also didn't like it. The children at Syrup village add a lot to Usopp's character, Shells town even if we were there for a brief time really showed how corrupted and feared Morgan was. Coco village felt like it was worth fighting for because of how much we know about the community there (Genzo serving a role similar to a parental figure, Nojiko always being there for Nami). All of that felt lost with this adaptation. Baratie, the location that is arguably the most well done out of the rest, pretty much functions just like every other kitchen to the viewer. You don't feel the craze, closeness and brotherhood that you've experienced in the manga between the chefs either.

This adaptation does a lot of what is known to be "doing for the sake of doing" and does that for the sake of not upsetting the fans. Gin's scene is a very good example of ticking off a checklist to include everything but also losing a huge chunk of its original intent and what made the delivery so good. The connection between Gin's starvation, Baratie's existence and why it exist for both pirates and marines, along with Sanji's backstory never felt like it all fall into place. This goes for Usopp where his intention was also to protect the village yet the LA framed it as mostly Kaya and that you walked away thinking "well, he probably want to protect the village cos he's a "good" guy" as opposed to the original material where the villagers actually do miss his antics and see him as a part of the place.

I get it. I get the whole "this is for western TV angle" where you need to have 3-4 POVs, characters have to be relevant for future seasons, people need to be NPCs to prop key characters up, etc. But I've always thought that a huge part of what makes early One Piece so great was the importance given to "minor characters" and the interactions that make up the heart of the series which in turn make the world feel more alive and different. I'm on the side that believes that the entirety of the Garp/Coby storyline can be scrapped and the time to be used to expand on the characters and the bonds that the straw hats have with others. And then we might actually have an 8 episode that doesn't move at a breakneck pacing where you barely get to know someone and they are gone. This is especially so when both of them only appear a lot further down the road (if the LA is successful and in a miracle timeline, 8-10 years we'll get post EL).

It's really a matter of weighing the scales. The LA utilizes Luffy's exposition and his encounter with

spoiler

to hammer in that he is someone worthy of being the pirate king and that he has this depth to him. The manga, with its cast of minor characters such as Chou Chou (the dog) and actions such as Luffy's refusal to listen to Nami's past, shows that he is different, self-assured and is a good person at heart. Here, we have Luffy constantly doing more telling than showing such as the constant use of the word "good" pirate in the show. I'm not saying whether one is objectively better or worse for the audience (I do see the POV that this might be a better approach to hammer in Luffy's character to the audience) but that I much prefer how he is very often a character who you can get an insight on through how he acts and connects with the minor characters in the world.

FolhaS

Just finished it.

I liked it.
I felt that for every change they made that I disagree with, or just plain don't like, they also made a change or adaptation that I very much enjoyed.

Don't get me wrong, on those moments I don't agree with how the show handled something it hurts and pains me, but as an adaptation and condensed version and as a way for my friends that don't watch anime to know a bit about my favorite comic book series it is good.

Though I did noticed they almost always had the BGM turned on and I actually felt like that took something out of the scenes.
A few days ago when the Sanji and Zeff scene hit the internet I liked it very much, you could really feel those actors coming across, but on the actual show there's a bit of background music on that scene and it end's up eating the moment away.
I'm fully aware of how important background music is for films and series, it does really add a lot most of the time, but they could've let some scenes breath a bit more. They could've created a few more moments without the music so that when you turn it on it hits harder.

Kitsune Inferno

@Lord-Gaimon this is why you gotta watch the show? If it's what I think you are talking about (the path "speech") then you definitely don't have all the context.

Sun. D.

Finished the show. One of my main gripes is how the handled Garp

FatDogForMidTerms

I really hate the obvious "night filter" that they use so much

danie

I was liking it but it fell off for me in episode 6.

black-leg jex

Looking back at the whole show, I find it kind of odd that we had a scene of Kuro escaping on boat. He never comes back again in the manga so I would assume he doesn't come back in this either (unless they plan on having him take Jango's role somehow).

Dahaka

@black-leg-jex

I think they wanted to emphasize the "Luffy is not killing his enemies, he is crushing their dreams, because that is worse"

Kuro wanted to quit piracy and live an easy life with Kaya's money, but instead he got forced to take to the sea again with no ship, no crew and no money, basically having to start over as a criminal.

kevo_koma

Hmm, I don't know why but after watching the entire show, I really don't get why Luffy is considered to be impressive in the show.

Like, I don't understand what Mihawk sees in him that makes him..special. Is it because he had the hat?

I don't get why Sanji chose the SH pirates to join, out of all the other crews he could join.

To be honest, if I was a first time watcher, I would be so confused what the hype was all about with Luffy.

Robby

Just got through episode 4l Really digging the whole thing.

RomanceDawn

My family and I watched episode 1 last night and I am genuinely impressed! Episode 2 tonight! And probably all the rest tomorrow.

Congrats to all involved.

What country did this shoot in? Anyone know?

Kira_

@RomanceDawn They shoot the series in South Africa if I'm not mistaken.

Kitsune Inferno

Yep South Africa.

danie

Just finished it. Can't say i feel entirely negative over it but negative enough that i'm not really interested in a second season.

On the bright side, i now have a strong urge to reread the manga...

Kaiolino

fana

Honestly a nice surprise. It had its flaws in some of its action scenes (especially Luffy's but there were a few other weird choregraphy cuts) but overall it was enjoyable.

Maybe if it gets a season 2 with more budget, they might be able to make Luffy's fights more fun to watch.

My main gripe when it comes to this kind of adaptation they couldn't do anything about it in the first place (some cheesy lines get worse when spoken in a language you understand).

So the fact that it managed to be enjoyable besides that gripe is evidence that they did a good job.

The story structure and the changes made to fit East Blue in 8 episodes were pretty smart.

Casting was overall great. I enjoyed Mihawk and Garp a lot.

I know that the Nojiko casting will be memed a lot. While I don't care that they casted a black woman (it doesn't make any difference considering her part) I would have advised them not to keep the blue hair or used a different shade because it didn't do her any favor.

Anyway, good stuff. Hopefully it gets enough success to at least get a season 2 with enough budget to avoid making some of the changes they had to in season 1 (RIP LA Hatchan).

If we can somehow get the BW arc adapted next (probably skipping Little Garden for obvious budget reason), that would make a great end of 2-part Netflix series.