An Honest Review of Netflix One Piece

if there's one thing you can always count on a one-piece fan to do it's never ever shut up about how you personally need to read one piece we can we can't help it it's pulsion this series just does something to your brain probably involving worms or maybe either way it's physically impossible to read even a fraction of this manga without feeling an overwhelming urge to tell everyone you meet about it don't believe me go ahead try it and prove me wrong almost got you there unfortunately many folks just like you are getting wise to our tricks by now and more importantly have just made up their minds in general that this thing isn't their kind of thing either because the cartoony art style turns them off or they fall off before the series really pops off which happens like only 90 chapters in so I don't know what everyone's complaining about with its truncated eight hour retelling of the mangas literally and literally epic prologue plus a bunch of real ass people in place of those potentially off-putting cartoons Netflix's live action adaptation had the chance to fix all that and Usher a whole new wave of viewers onto the cruise but of course before it could do that it had to actually be you know good which is a big ask for Hollywood trust me I would know yes that man does have condoms stuck to his chest but then in a shocking twist Netflix actually started showing us bits of the show and from the real ass ships they were building on the sets to the Pitch Perfect casting to glowing apparently hard-earned endorsements from Oda himself to fix foxy the show might actually be like really good or at least I thought so but then I do have them one piece brain snails like real bad plus full disclosure I got my fair share of One Piece stonks some might even say big stalks you might even call my excellent and informative videos about the series a form of stonks so obviously there would be some profit in it for me if this show did turn out to be good and then lots of people liked it and the entirety of the a society we live in could finally get off the Joker's dick and pay some long overdue respect to the real clown Prince of Crime can I get a buggy fan cam amen go back thank you so yeah a little bit of bias there plus all I really had to build my hype on was blatant propaganda from the same dark marketing Wizards who managed to make cow Flick's net Bop look halfway appealing in a short little proof of concept video that turned out to have nothing to do with the actual show which you might recall me spending the better part of an hour being disappointed but not at all surprised about back when that happened and the thing about that is I also got me some very serious Cowboy Bebop stocks which did not stop me from toughly but fairly taking that show's broke metaphorical ass out back when it couldn't make good on the checks it's marketing Department's mouth had written I went into one piece fully intending to give it that same painfully honest treatment and I don't gotta tell you the show was good for it everyone knows at this point the haters are silent the one piece is real can we get much higher I think we can don't get me wrong the show is really really good 10 times better than anyone had any right to expect Netflix and tomorrow's studios are a hundred times stronger than they were two years ago but let's not overdo it here it's not the greatest anime adaptation of all time that some people are making it out to be that's still Speed Racer Speed Racer is literally perfect there's no shame in coming a close second to Speed Racer one piece does come pretty close though if the team behind this show can learn from the few mistakes they did make which they already seem to be doing with the reshoots that Oda reportedly requested future Seasons could easily be contenders for that Crown I mean even if it stays on its current level it's still an adaptation fully worthy of the name a love letter to fans of the anime and manga that simultaneously serves as an amazingly accessible introduction for folks who've never heard of either make no mistake I am gonna spend the vast majority of this video just absolutely slobbering all over this thing but I will not hold back as a critic or a fan where I do think that it falters first though real quick I've basically been writing non-stop for the entire last week to make this video as good as possible and I just didn't have time to throw together the goofy gamercepts one piece skit that I wanted to on top of that so instead of that I'm going to give you a testimonial these are the real waifu cups that I went through in the process of putting this video together uh I drank a lot of the stuff currently my favorite flavor is two parts kahoe's bloody orange one part caffeine free lemonade shit's delicious all of their stuff is stupid tasty and I cannot recommend enough that you try it for yourself and maybe snag the cute new pillow talk or space Punk waifu cups they have while supplies last uh what else Lincoln the doobly-doo use the promo code basement for 10 off all right let's get slobbering [Music] maybe the most impressive thing about one piece the live-action one that is is that it's even remotely watchable to begin with it is notoriously difficult to turn anime or Manga into any kind of good live action thing and that's with regular manga one piece is the Looney Tunes of Lord of the rings's an Epic Fantasy Narrative of essentially unrivaled scope set in a world where almost anything is possible as long as it's funny starring a main character with the combined power set of Mr Fantastic and Bugs Bunny I honestly don't think there's ever been a more challenging adaptation to get right when this show is first announced no one thought it would work X marked the doubt for aichiro Oda himself when he first started writing one piece the comic book one in 1997. it was only after witnessing the marvelously cartoonish martial arts action of Stephen Chow's 2001 Shaolin Soccer that he began thinking a live action take on his work could work at all let alone be good which I think shows impeccable taste on sensei's part since Ciao's 2004 Masterpiece Kung Fu Hustle is the exact movie that said every one of my expectations for what Dragon Ball Evolution would eventually fail to be imagine the world we'd be living in in the day if Chow had agreed to direct that movie instead of just producing it or if the execs at Fox had actually like remembered why he was their first choice to begin with OR gave even the slightest about the film's quality but there's no point pining for what could have been at least not anymore not now that we finally have a Hollywood jump adaptation right in front of us that properly emulates Chow's chaotic yet artfully composed fight choreography and surreal Visionary wire and effects work let me tell you it is every bit as beautiful as I imagined it could be it may not be as structurally perfect as Speed Racer but if there's one thing one piece beats every other anime adaptation on even Elita it's making its fights feel like anime not just in the way that punches send dudes flying after an exaggerated wind-up and dudes can slice entire battleships in half from the beach with a literal freeze but the Artful layering of that over-the-top action and it's carefully orchestrated musical timing you know the precise most important thing about anime action in general and cowboy bebops specifically oh that flicks boy netbop most aggravatingly failed to get right every shot of every fight in Netflix feels like that bit where the sakuga hits right when the OST is busy dropping and you remember why you're still watching Naruto for the second time that episode according to Netflix's behind the scenes stuff it apparently took them five days to film that fight in the courtyard with Captain Morgan and his Marines and I absolutely believe it looking at the finished product also if you're not aware when I say them I'm talking about the stars of the show who are actually doing their own stunts here thus enabling the series to use these long beautiful takes where every Straw Hat has their own entertaining thing going on in a big complex brawl like a ballet where get cut in half sometimes because the camera doesn't have to keep jumping around to keep us from noticing that nami's been replaced by some wiry 40-something dude to twirl her extendo bow staff for her Luffy may not really be made of rubber but he's really bouncing around and vaulting over dudes to kick other dudes in the chest Zorro is really I mean really swinging those Katana around sanji's really kicking pistols out of dude's hands while perfectly balancing a platter of food mihawk is really one hand no selling that at least 20 pound prop and Usopp is really running away I know that sounds like a glib punchline but scrambling over Rocky terrain is not an easy stunt good job Jacob Gibson ha but these actors deserve praise for far more than just their stunt work you know the precise second most important thing that calbot flicks boy surprisingly did get right the way Mustafa Shakir absolutely embodied jet black and John show was you know pretty good as Spike everyone in this show is cast and costumed at least that well GARP gold Roger mihawk Chef zeph Shanks yasop Ben Beckman lucky Rue and the rest of the red hair crew Kobe helmeppo ax hand Morgan Captain curro Butchy and Sham alvida every one of the arlong Pirates nojaco belmare buggy buggy oh my God buggy we'll get back to him kabaji looks like he stepped right out of the manga and half of you just had to Google who that even is this is the only drawing in existence of the original Mr Seven but yup no doubt about got it that's a Mr seven right there if I've ever seen one or he was anyway you'd think the combination of such absurd anime Ultraviolence with even more absurd cartoon characters would create a dissonant clashing tone but Oda made it work in the original manga and threw a steadfast commitment to honoring his extremely weird and unique Vision at every level of production this show makes it work too in defiance of General Hollywood Trends toward gritty cinematic realism one piece creates and sustains its heightened Reality by embracing a very theatrical brand of absurdism performances from leads and bit players alike are exaggerated and expressive falling somewhere between a Broadway musical and pay-per-view wrestling in their energy and commitment it's the kind of acting that makes you want to buy into the fantasy because everyone involved is clearly having so much fun with it the costumes are impressively detailed and generally well made feeling period authentic despite the intentional anachronism of one piece's setting but there may be a little too well made a little too clean color is a little too perfectly curled you're constantly reminded that what you're looking at are in fact costumes not that you'd ever forget it with dudes like Moji Mary and Captain nezumi strutting around as their 100 manga accurate bad cells the sets meanwhile feel authentically cluttered and lived in props artfully arranged to tell us more about the world and the characters who inhabit it with Easter eggs foreshadowing and newspaper headlines ripped straight from the wiki timeline hidden throughout this shows production designers deserve a medal for everything they've done to bring one piece's world to life and fully immerse Us in it but then perhaps the arrangements a Touch Too Artful the proportions of the environment a wee bit too dramatically satisfying the distressing on the wood to notice noticeably intentionally aesthetic as with the costumes it's impossible to forget that these are handmade sets not because they look cheap or fake but because the the care and craftsmanship that's gone into them is simply too impressive to ignore which can still be seen as a flaw if you're coming at one piece from the realism is King good production design needs to be invisible mindset that decided talking animal Hamlet the musicals remake had to look like a David Attenborough documentary but nobody who wants that was ever gonna like any good version of One Piece anyway I think the aesthetic sweet spot this show finds between hook Muppet Treasure Island Pirates of the Caribbean and a little bit of Baron Munchausen is a perfect fit for the manga's world I mean we're talking about a universe where scary pirate ships have heart prints Swan themes sometimes guys are also fish and all the telephones are snails and in this cinematic version of that Universe not only are all those ships real ass ships but those snails are real ass Muppets I'm sorry I just I never dreamed it could be so beautiful over a year ago now when I first started pondering the possibility this show might actually be good on the second Channel I argued that Muppets aren't just the second greatest art form after anime they're also the ideal medium for creating believable live-action fantasy Critters the obvious glaring unreality of Puppets being puppets actually helps to keep them on the safe side of The Uncanny Valley while paradoxically encouraging greater suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience just think about how much easier it is to believe that Kermit the Frog or Elmo is actually talking to a late night talk show host than any CG character they've tried to do that with and one piece of snails are proof positive that I was right this summer you will believe a man can tell a conference on a mollusk hashtag make Chopper a muppet other Critters like the the news coup and Lord of the coast have been rendered in CGI but the cartoony exaggerated proportions under their realistic scales and Feathers like Pokemon and detective Pikachu still make them feel right at home within the real fake world of props and sets and costumes by calling so much attention to the artifice of its production one piece conditions the viewer to accept that stuff in this world just looks like that so when Buggy's bits start floating a boat and Luffy goes all oh God even though the effects aren't monumentally better than insert your favorite god-awful Fantastic Four movie here and sometimes they're even worse they fit within the cartoony hyper reality the show's created kind of like how the mask makes its 90s ass CGI work and later when mihawk is swinging around his big obviously fake sword and all the fish men are obviously just guys in makeup we're primed to just roll with that too what I will not roll with though under any circumstances is this production team getting snubbed for any and all eligible makeup design and effects Awards this year Emmy committee this is your one warning There Will Be Blood and it won't be corn syrup of course it is entirely possible to get all of that tone and aesthetic stuff right and still end up making a bad show some of the worst sequels and adaptations out there are the ones that prize brand recognition over their own own artistic Ambitions [Music] Jurassic world is an embarrassingly bad movie only surpassed in its passion for pissing all over the original by its even worse sequels it is full of problems no part of it is not a problem but if I had to pinpoint one single moment where I knew with absolute certainty that I would hate this movie for the rest of my life it's the second the theme song drops Jurassic Park's theme is one of the most powerful iconic tracks that John Williams himself ever composed the swelling Melody at once Majestic and a little playful perfectly captures Sam and Laura's Indescribable Wonder at the scientific miracle that is real live dinosaurs it's a key component in one of the most breathtaking moments in cinematic history and in the name of instant brand recognition Jurassic World deploys that theme five minutes in to capture the Majesty of a monorail and the Hilton new blar Lobby [Music] it must be water you suck my balls thank you so much for to eating my ass if Jurassic world was actually like a work of art inspired by the original and not you know a cynical product designed to cash in on our memories of it the people making it would have at least tried to earn the feelings associated with that song and drop it like a mic like it deserves instead they dropped it like a load of dishes the marketing for One Piece has been Keen to emphasize that everyone working on the show the cast crew writers directors even the producers loves the source material and is working their hardest to make something Oda himself would be proud of I mean I believed it as soon as I saw Matt Owens talking about how important nami's map room is to the story and inyaki godoy's quote about how he wants everyone and their Grandma to know about One Piece if that's not the most authentic one-piece fan dialogue conceivable I don't know what is but if I did hypothetically need extra convincing after all that plus watching for great episodes my little Grinch heart would have no doubt swelled at least three sizes when I finally heard are this is just a perfect scene the first time Luffy Nami Zorro and usop hit the Seas together on going Mary is the moment they go from now to truly being the straw hats Luffy is officially the captain of his own ship usopped unofficially so and we are officially on the cruise I respect the choice to hold this song back until episode 4 so much the Temptation must have been nigh irresistible to drop it earlier I mean fans were clamoring for we are as the title theme demanding to hear it in episode one or they'd walk and the show does quite tactically deploy Binks Brew in an episode one flashback to Sate those folks appetites but it makes sure to properly Savor this musical main course and it's better for it this also gives the series original soundtrack composed by Sonia belosova and Gianna astinelli room to assert its own musical identity and thankfully that soundtrack is also amazing Luffy's leap Motif in particular evokes a sense of swashbuckling Whimsy and high seas adventure with enthusiastic distinctly tropical orchestration that it'd feel right at home in a Monkey Island movie [Music] that is when it wouldn't feel more at home in Pirates of the Caribbean [Music] which is pretty much the exact Venn diagram I was hoping to hear coming out of my home theater when I put this show on I was admittedly not expecting the our long rap dang you ready to fight hey welcome to almond Park but I'm definitely not complaining about it speaking of speakers this shows soundscape sings The Waves crashing all around you the creaking deck in the background the shouts and Cannon blasts that punctuate the big battles it really puts you right in the heart of the action though I can also attest from filming the reaction that I'm making an excuse to plug right now that it sounds great on headphones too unfortunately it doesn't look even half as great on a computer as it does on a TV and it's got to be a 4K HDR Ready TV at that like many Netflix shows this is clearly just not color graded with lower end displays in mind on the right screen in settings the colors absolutely pop especially the mood lighting and night but in SDR it's all washed out and Dusty orange like they threw a whiskey Peak filter over everything which is a real shame because in every other respect this is a show worth looking at through painterly cinematography color Curry Clockwork stunt choreography and the Star Wars Ian no muppetsian eye for Meaningful authentic detail in the construction of its Mison sen one piece demands and commands the viewers full attention at all times magnificent they call this a show but it's essentially a series of eight remarkably tight and gorgeous short films with the budget of early Wes Anderson pictures each one bookended by its own bespoke title card variant which are just so sick I love the buggy one and this progressively evolving end credit sequence that gradually fills in the East blue sea chart with the new islands introduced in each episode which the app automatically skips over after five seconds so as not to get in the way of your binging which brings us to the other major problem with how Netflix one piece emphasis on the Netflix has been presented by AI Netflix the binge model everything about this show is designed and really deserves to be savored but the way it's all been dumped on us all at once just doesn't leave time to properly digest it at least not if you want to join the conversation on time and stay ahead of spoilers I believe one piece is best enjoyed about two episodes at a time it splits very cleanly into four satisfyingly self-contained feature-length chunks and while nobody can dispute the numbers that this big content drop is currently doing for Netflix both domestically and globally I think the show might have garnered even more hype if they released those chunks on like a weekly basis you know give the fans some time to really get hyped about that we are drop give the Netflix onlys wow can't believe I just said that unironically a week to Stew in the aftermath of nami's betrayal before our long part starts there's just so much to talk about in this show and I wish we got more time to talk about it but of course nobody would be talking about it to begin with if one piece's producers hadn't first accomplished one other seemingly impossible task casting the perfect Straw Hat crew even after he was convinced that the world and action of One Piece could conceivably be caught on film Oda never really believed that his irrepressibly upbeat hero Monkey D Luffy could truly exist in our world but that all changed the day he met inyaki Godoy from the start of the Soliloquy that he delivers to a disinterested news coup on his rapidly sinking starter boat to the final gum gun ax Smackdown he lays on arlong and Beyond iniaki lives and breathes this role even in the earliest scenes of the pilot where the actors were clearly still finding their footing in the world and Luffy occasionally sounds like he's just reciting a line rather than voicing his own thoughts I'm not gonna kill you all right need you to be quiet still feels like Luffy reciting that line not just some actor Godoy is always effortlessly in character even when he's not on set alright everybody Welcome to my ship tour so right here we have um the things and they erase this thing right here and uh this thing right here this is called a quarter lift yeah it's uh it races the thing called boom that's right it's uh it's pretty cool this is the ship this is our ship yeah this man was simply born to play Monkey D Luffy watching some of Netflix's bonus material it's kinda uncanny how much it feels like Luffy himself is the one walking between the overburdened desks of the shuisha office accepting the hat from Oda Sensei and mayumi Tanaka and goofing around with his crewmates backstage hey we're the cast of lumpy and amazingly every other member of the crew fits their role just as snugly Jacob Gibson perfectly captures usopp's facade of bravado his nervous Swagger the playful adventurous way that he enhances the truth that makes you want to play along with his fantasies he has a subtle natural Charisma about him that makes his insistence on playing Captain even when Luffy's around feel endearing rather than arrogant task Skyler Sanji likewise walks an impressive tightrope between Charming Ladies Man and kind of a creep honestly embodying The Chef's salty Sea Dog attitude and all the Hopeless naive Romanticism that still drives him underneath it Emily rudge shows impressive necessary range as Nami playing the charismatic con woman The Adventurous sarcastic-free Spirit who so effortlessly fits in with the boys and the scared vulnerable young lady almost but not quite broken by arlong's cruelty with equal skill which is vital for this first season especially East blue is nami's story after all its emotional climax would completely fall apart if she couldn't carry it but it also bodes well for the rest of the series if Luffy is the heart of the straw hats the Nami is the cruise lone overworked brain cell so Rudd really needs that range to properly bounce off of everyone around her the stubborn pragmatism to balance Luffy's infectious zaniosity the subtle Grace to brutally and hilariously swerve everyone of sanji's unwanted advances the calculated criminality and untreated alcoholism that makes her zoro's kindred spirit in particular she has some very strong screen chemistry with Gibson's usop and that is amazing news because the weakling Trio is the most entertaining and essential aspect of the whole Straw Hat Dynamic you fight me and as long as they hashtag make Tony Tony Chopper a muppet I think this show can really do that Dynamic Justice might even work with CGI Chopper although I have my doubts their counterpart the monster Trio has already been assembled by the end of this season and it is very much working as intended Luffy has quite authentically passionate bromances with both his loyal first mate and the ship's cook he and Sanji are instantly ride or die after he gives the chefs experimental cooking the respect they both know it deserves and true to the Manga and Anime there is not a doubt in my mind that if this Luffy asked him to this Zorro would not hesitate to suck you don't think she like like likes me to you you're asking the wrong guy and of course as they should Sanji and Zorro hate each other from the jump because they both think only one of them can take the top spot as Luffy's one true Shonen rival their manga relationships basically Betty and Veronica and these actors totally get that it's the least you can do considering I save your ass from this Fishman well I saved Euros now which of these two fights the goodest is a topic of endless debate in the one piece fandom with Oda himself refusing to confirm or deny one way or another in live action though it's a lot less debatable it is exceedingly impressive how Taz Skyler learned to kick carry himself and even cook like Sanji over the course of this season's production even cooking for his castmates behind the scenes but even in the face of all that effort Zorro easily steals every last fight scene he's in his fight with Shaman Butchie is the absolute peak of the whole season as one of Japan's most prom young actors mckennu has by far the most experience out of anyone in this cast in bringing anime heroes to life he did a bang-up job as okuyasu and the diamond is unbreakable movie the best he could is Twinkie J Rock Scar and FMA and just this year he starred as Saint Seiya himself and you know that Sunny chiba's son is a trained martial artist with plenty of stage fighting experience who already knew his way around the katana R3 before he was even cast if inyaki was born to play Luffy then mckennu has been training his whole life to become the perfect roronoa Zorro well almost perfect he does play the role a little more edgy alcoholic badass than cocky alcoholic doofus the widespread online criticism that this show made Zorro too hot is in fact valid and true but hot Zorro still has the right chemistry and contrast with the rest of the cast to perfectly fill regular Zorro's boots his hotness even kinda adds another layer to why Sanji would feel so instantly threatened by him and it thankfully doesn't get in the way of him doing all the essential goofy zoroisms in his own edgy way do you know where to find me I didn't thought I was headed back to the house the one big compromise the show does make with its characters is the way it's forced to cut down each straw Hat's introduction to fit the run time like we barely have time to find out what each new friend's all about and what they can do before Luffy invites them on to the crew sanji's core value of feeding every hungry man he meets is lished with gin but turn means that Luffy doesn't get the chance to really earn the cook's loyalty by Saving his childhood home and syrup Village only gives usop one brief hero moment to offset all his lying and cowardice before everyone else is just like yeah we'll spend the rest of our lives with you the characters do eventually prove themselves to each other over the course of the Season except usop his one big hero moment happens out of I shot of everyone else but before that the main justification for everyone ending up on going Mary kind of seems to just be like Vibes which feels pretty unsatisfying from a writing perspective but the actors kind of save it the way inyaki plays Luffy really highlights the captain's emotional intelligence so when everyone proves themselves after they've passed his Vibe check it kind of reads like his good character judgment has been validated and the cast as a whole kind of just Vibes with each other in a very natural feeling way especially in usopp's case a lot of the behavior that was kind of annoying in the early manga reads is way more endearing and playful here because of how he plays it and how everyone reacts to it and I didn't stop until I single-handedly defeated arlong and is deadly crew with a little help of course three cheers we could have done it without it just a testament to the skills of the actors though it is equally impressive how much of these characters the writers were able to preserve as they whittled the story around them down to essentially five minutes a chapter [Music] when he finally got the chance to meet aichiro Oda showrunner Matt Owens told him quote one piece is really a story about how everyone has tragedy pain sadness in their life but it's not what defines you what defines you is how you use that to motivate your future and no one has to do it alone when you find those people around you who motivate you lift you up and help you that is the greatest power in this world and that is the story I want to put out into the world in response to that Oda simply said I have 100 faith in you now the one piece fandoms Faith proved a little harder to earn responses to the writing in the first teaser for the series ranged from skeptical to outright hostile with a particular style of writing drawing a lot of iron I'm sensing a little bit of tension amongst the crew not a crew all good Fighters call out their finishing moves no they don't wetinism's MCU writing whatever you want to call it characters making snarky smirking self-aware comments on the Ridiculousness of whatever ridiculous situation they've found themselves in can be found pretty much everywhere in modern American television movies and even games a formulaic shortcut to Comedy and relatability that's often taken at the unwitting cost of undercutting the audience's ability to take those stories seriously and buy into their fiction at all if the characters don't give a about what's happening or even believe the world they're in is real why should we in the worst case it can make the audience feel bad about having fun with the silly fun stuff the characters are making fun of and even in the best case if you overdo it it can often make all the characters in a story come off as less relatable than like vaguely psychotic which can be a fun Dynamic Community is a top tier TV show but that's probably not the tone that you want to see in one piece thankfully the fandoms worries about those lines prove to be unfounded I am happy to report that the straw hat crew is every bit as sincere and happy to be here as they all ought to be what little edgy snark there is in the script comes mostly from either Zorro who is essentially the party's reformed murder hobo so the vaguely psychotic thing kind of works for him and Nami who is at this point trying to emotionally distance herself from these new friends she doesn't think she deserves and the adventure that they're going on her snark reads more as a defense mechanism and that gives the show some serious emotional oomph when she finally drops it opens up and asks Luffy for help it also helps a lot that as the series goes on we see time and again that Zorro's hot take on finishing moves is deeply unpopular as it should be in the one piece universe [Applause] [Music] Mouton shot oh great fires called out there finishing moves yeah you're gonna fit in just fine I mean he's not come there it may also be that mihawk simply didn't think that situation merited that kind of deadly force the writing's definitely not perfect the show does have an unfortunate the thing though definitely not too persistent habit of blunting perfectly good punch lines with unnecessary quippy padding don't worry I'm stealthy foreign even there you could argue that filler comment is in character for the very nervous Kobe and any annoyance that stuff does cause is likewise blunted by how perfectly good great even most of the punch lines are if there's one thing a one-piece adaptations writing needs to get right before it's epic adventurous or action-packed it needs to be funny and this script is often uproariously so not just with clever dialogue and well-timed explosions either some of the visual gags like hell mepo posing with zoro's sword had me howling amazing camera work in that scene and right before that well-timed explosion the bit where Kobe's all like oh man I should have stayed with alvita while he's looking directly at her entire crew burning to death like right there hysterical the pair of them are even funnier together you know something [Music] Gob is Luffy's grandfather oh I don't know from the way they both love meat considered they're probably the best best part of the a whole new B plot about GARP chasing down his grandson with the Marine recruits in tow [Music] uh okay not entirely new technically it's based very Loosely on one of the manga's cover stories which if you're a Netflix only wow that it still just does not sound right to say Oda draws these cute little wordless bonus stories on the cover of each chapter about what various characters have gotten up to since the straw hats left many of which turn out to be crazy plot important years after the fact the best one in East blue is about buggy trying to make his way back to his crew after Luffy sends him flying all the while dealing with the humiliating handicap of being just an adorable little guy unfortunately the show wasn't able to adapt that one but the framing of Buggy's side plot does still leave a Time window open for his whole mini adventure to have happened off screen which is generally how the show approaches any of the cuts that it does have to make for time wherever it changes or simplifies a character it keeps them consistent with the manga so if you only watch the live action you still understand them but if you read The Source material you understand them a lot better sadly Monkey D GARP is the exception that proves that rule Vincent Reagan definitely gets the look and voice of the character right but his personality in the manga is a lot more cheerful and he's definitely not the type of Dude to stomp on someone else's dreams especially not Luffy's not even as a test which kind of feels like a huge cop-out as an explanation for his behavior this season and it might have been exactly that like maybe GARP just doesn't want to admit that Kobe With a Little Help from mihawk and his whole speech about leaving the world for the Next Generation to take over changed his mind about letting Luffy go I mean if they did run with that that could actually be like a good plot justification for garp's character developing to be more in line with who he is in the manga but in this season yeah his part of the story is super awkward and out of character and ends with a real wet fart of a fight that steals precious screen time from the brawl with arlong and I just I just wish it didn't happen but other parts of that whole Marine subplot specifically the Kobe and talnepo parts do really work in particular I'm about to blaspheme a little here but I think that having Kobe be the one to give Luffy his first wanted poster is better than how the manga handles that moment and ties a beautiful little bow not just on their friendship but the whole East blue Journey plus the Marine subplot does allow the series to front load a whole bunch of World building from later in the manga that you know realistically knowing Netflix probably good that they're getting that done early on the subject of World building though garp's weird portrayal here does have other negative effects on it indirectly when he asks Dracula mihawk to hunt Luffy down for for him this does make sense as a justification for the warlord being at baratier for Zorro's big moment without needing to get the creek Pirates involved who've been replaced in this version by orlong's crew so the show has more time to beautifully handle nami's big emotional Arc and do more of the big cool fight that follows it in our Long Park proper which was probably the right call to make all things considered Creek Pirates are kind of boring again here comes the blasphemy I kind of like that part of the manga less than how the show uses Krieg as an unusually memorable and funny jobber in mihawks intro scene which you gotta admit is one of the hardest most anime things that has ever been filmed who's the Quarry and that scene mostly does mihawk's manga World building job of skyrocketing our power expectations for the rest of the series and establishing the seven Warlords as scary but in the manga it was the fact that a that scary just showed up out of the blue to ruin everyone's day for no reason in particular that made one pieces World suddenly feel so much Huger and by the same token having mihawk show up looking for Luffy specifically makes the show's World feel way smaller like insert your favorite arrowverse series here where the world only really seems to exist when the protagonist or a villain is looking directly at it in the grand scheme of the grand line the straw hats should be just another rookie pirate crew at least until they proved themselves in Alabaster and even when baddies do start coming for the Bounty or other beefs it's mostly small time Crooks like Fox see oh no boss I didn't mean that you're big time the biggest now I'm willing to give one piece as writers a pass on this for at least getting the rest of mihawk so right but next season if the next warlord's response to Luffy sand so I'm gonna kick your ass is anything other than I don't even know who you we are gonna have beef unless they also decide to confirm the other even crazier crocodile fan Theory then I might be cool with it what I'm not cool with though is how our long also comes after Luffy personally at baratier one episode later although I do like how he uses Buggy's severed head as a tracking device to get there I'll take pretty much any excuse to give Jeff Ward more screen time the problem with this excuse though is it kind of completely undermines The Season's big bad arlong is a big fish from the grand line biting his time in this very small pond as he plots literal world domination for him to go this far out of his way even to collect tribute from some 15 million Barry nobody on the other side of East nowhere makes him seem less ambitious less intimidating and weaker as a villain overall to then let himself be distracted from that distraction by the mere mention of some genetically inferior human kid who doesn't even have a wanted poster is kind of just pathetic our long should be too busy pursuing his own dreams to care now Luffy does have the map to the Grand Line That's The Season's big MacGuffin we try along technically does need for the sake of his dream but like he could get one of those from any Marine base right and Captain nezumi is already in his pocket so still early hour long is kind of essential to The Season's whole Speed Run Strat and giving buggy more screen time is just good business sense so even if I did have magic time powers that let me fix Netflix shows I think I'd only change like maybe two things about this plot line firstly I'd have kirobi and chew be the ones to put the screws to Buggy by themselves in episode three not only with delegating like that make our long seem more distant and dangerous as a villain but it would give the goons a bit of time to be built up as their own characters and heck it might even make enough room in the season for best boy Hachi to be written back in okay I know they definitely cut him because his arms would have been way too prohibitively expensive to animate but if I was in charge I would have simply made half the show's budget the Hachi budget which is probably why I don't get to decide how 100 million dollar plus streaming series are plotted out but if I did the SEC second thing I do is have buggy escape from those fish goons and Chase Luffy down on his own if he gave our Long's best guys the slip that would give their boss at least a stuff to show up at baratier which is also way less of a trip for him than going all the way to Orange town for some clown and from there he could you know give his big fish man Supremacy speech attack the restaurant get in a fight with the straw hats that scares Nami into going back all that good stuff that happens in the show except that buggy would also at least briefly be involved in the fight long enough to get his body stolen so that he could then be an annoying talking head for the next couple episodes and flip everyone off and leave the second he gets his body back I just love that whole bid even if his last one-liner is kind of boring I'd love to make things right but it's time to exit stage left generally on the rare occasions show something fun and new and authentically one piece like bodyless buggy to balance that out for example it kind of makes no sense now how Captain Kuro of the Thousand plans big plan to turn Kaya's house into a locked room and then murder her inside it would have realistically resulted in the suspicion-free life of inherited wealth and luxury that is his ultimate goal as a villain for plausible deniability's sake an accident in the middle of a full-blown Pirate Invasion is clearly the much smarter way to go butts full-blown pirate invasions are very expensive to film and Kaya's Mansion does make a beautifully one-piece feel and backdrop for some absolutely breathtaking swashbuckling the show also kind of needs the run time that it saves by scaling the big battle down to flesh out her and usopp's relationship which ends up being timed very well spent nice and I pulled bro and even if the whole slasher movie bit doesn't fully make sense for kuro's calculating character it absolutely makes sense for his character design the shot where he sneaks up on Mary and The Wine Cellar and just guts him Shivers every time in spite of how it diminishes his complexity and cunning as a villain this change doesn't take one iota away from kuro's cool factor in some ways it even enhances it though not quite as much as the other brilliant tweaks that one piece makes to Binky Boogie Burpee buggy buggy the clown buggy the genius Jester wow I bet everyone in the East blue knows who you are in the manga Buggy's introduction was menacing memorable over the top and basically impossible to film on anything less than a feature budget I mean his Pirates turn a whole ass Town into their playground of Destruction he personally blasts some entire block of buildings Away by himself on camera and on top of all the sets and effects it requires they'd need an actual trained lion to do one of the fights Justice where oh where was the dancing lion so yeah it's totally understandable that they'd need to rework the ark but the way they reworked it is actually genius the show moves the fight mostly inside to a moodally lit circus tent which I don't have to tell you is a perfect fit for Buggy's whole brand with only brief exterior shots to demonstrate the devastation of orange town but that one shot is all it takes to start us thinking on why these citizens are so nervously compliant and clapping and laughing along with the show buggy and his freaks are putting on for the straw hats the terrified Twisted Smiles that we see in the captive crowd as they're forced to cheer on their tormentors imply all these horrifically violent things that are so much worse to imagine than any special effect buggy is straight up scarier here than he ever was in the manga and that is really impressive that said even this change has its downsides by neglecting to properly demonstrate the true terrifying power of a buggy ball one piece's writers have effectively kneecapped their ability to deliver the funniest punchline in manga history five or so Seasons from now but worry not one piece showrunners who are definitely watching this you still have plenty of time to incorporate a buggy ball into the big log Town brawl at the start of season two especially what with the very cool and historically important strike that you were quite possibly in the middle of when you dropped everything to watch this video the second it appeared in your feeds Jeff Ward's performance is an is an absolute show stopper after he Teeters with perfectly calculated balance on the edge of a very self-aware self-conscious brand of Madness playing up the whole crazy clown bit that's kind of been forced on him by his very unfortunate facial growth with the desperate energy of a used car salesman and the violent passion of a self-proclaimed Visionary it's pretty obvious that you Riders worked him into arlong's plotline solely as an excuse to give that performance more time to shine and I don't blame you at all so I think we're all on the same page that it would be a massive shame if Jeff Ward never got to make that face and when I say that I'm also talking to the cancel happy Netflix execs who no doubt just shook their spouses awake to tell them about the new Jeff through video the one-piece fan base wasn't expecting much from this show we never really thought it was something we'd need or even want but now that we do have it and to our great surprise like it quite a bit if you take this away from us we are going to become the Joker and it'll be your fault for failing to provide a society with the objectively superior killer clown role model now is the show actually worth burning a city down over yeah that's subjective I would but I'm from Vancouver rioting's the only sport we're good at one piece is my favorite piece of live action TV in years though and while I haven't seen succession yet unless that show's gotten Muppets I ain't heard about it's probably not gonna change that if you put a gun to my head and said slap a number on this show now I'd give it like a high eight maybe a low nine out of ten it's definitely not perfect but it definitely is one piece very very one piece sometimes it's even more one piece than one piece as a classic swashbuckling Adventure Enthusiast a scholar of anime and manga adaptations and a brain snail victim looking for more efficient ways to turn my friends and loved ones one piece is everything I hoped it could be and more than I dared dream possible it's a work brimming with raw creative passion and love for a thing that I also happen to love and I'm officially on board for this hype Cruise straight to the Bittersweet end or until executive meddling ruins it and I sign up for the Juggalos whichever comes first I'm Jeff THU possible future clown criminal politely asking you to uh not tell clown Minority Report about that thing I just said they're kind of like regular Minority Report only you know more Tom Cruise

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 840,970

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, Anime Analysis, one piece, one piece live action, one piece live action review, live action, going merry, eiichiro oda, painfully honest review, netflix one piece, netflix, honest review, one pice worldbuilding, live action anime, inaki godoy, jacob gibson, emily rudd, taz skylar, mackenyu, matt owens, steven maeda, jeff ward, buggy, luffy, nami, usopp, zoro vs mihawk, Zoro, zolo, sanji, mihawk, Garp, coby, helmeppo, arlong, arlong park, east blue

Id: 43K-H_dtQ9g

Length: 54min 12sec (3252 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 10 2023