Everyone Loves One Piece Live Action... I Didn't.

I hate to say I told you so but God damn if I didn't tell you guys so one piece liveaction has been released to the world for quite a little bit now and from what I can tell people actually like this series man it was ranking up in Netflix's catalog with the likes of Witcher and stranger things it was almost immediately greenlit for a second season and you even have a bunch of people going off to watch the anime and read the Manga just because of how much they enjoyed the live action I have a friend that I have been trying to convince to watch One Piece practically since we met almost a decade ago and he is just now getting into the series after finishing the liveaction I think it's pretty safe to say that whatever they were hoping to achieve with this Netflix series they did it which is a far cry from the reactions you would have seen back when this was first announced and even after that first trailer drop this is a series that definitely had a lot of doubt going in but also had an s+ marketing campaign that slowly won over people to eventually giving this a shot and being pleasantly surprised however not me man no sir if you know who I am if you have followed me to any capacity you will know that I was always a believer in this series even from day one here's me telling everybody on Twitter that you should godamn trust in Oda because he's mentioned multiple times the involvement that he has had in this Pro project here's me making a video when the cast was first announced pretty much gushing over how perfect I thought they all looked and here's me earlier this year talking about the positives and negatives of that first trailer but ultimately saying hey it's still too early to doubt this entire project let's wait it out and see what this Series has in store and pretty much immediately after that first trailer dropped every subsequent trailer every subsequent promotional video General marketing it all all kept impressing and winning people over more and more until you reached a point where you were the weird one if you weren't excited for this series I think an executive would love to know what magic what lightning in a bottle they captured to win people over as hard as they did because it's definitely not something that you see very often so with that lengthy Preamble out of the way the series is out I finished it and you're probably wondering what the deal is with that title contrary to everything that I just opened with I did not love the one piece live action the series biggest champion and biggest Defender prior to it coming out might in fact dislike it more than most people who gave it a shot and I want to talk about why I don't think this series is horrible I want to make that clear right now there are things that I do like quite a bit I actually very excited still to see this series continue to see what this team does with the alabaster Saga and hopefully even further but I also want to talk about why this series isn't quite there yet for me as a successful adaptation of one of my favorite stories of all time I'm late to the party but I have a mountain of notes and many many thoughts to share with you all today so let's take this Arc by Arc until we eventually make our way to the Grand line [Music] right from the very first episode from the very first scene I immediately felt like something was wrong and I promise this video isn't just going to be non-stop negativity because again I don't think this series is awful or anything but the first impression definitely wasn't strong now one thing I'm going to try to do in this video is actually focus on the things that I think will actually resonate with people like I could in theory just list nitpicks in this series for days but I think saying that I wish the devil fruit in Luffy's flashback was just out in the open for him to eat instead of being locked away in some random box that he has no reason to open or know what's inside yeah that's something that weirdly bothered me a lot but it's also something that I doubt most people even care about instead I want to start here with this very first goddamn scene with gold Roger being sentenced to death and laying the foundation for this entire story this is one of the most iconic scenes in all of One Piece it perfectly lays the groundwork for the entire Series in a way that immediately hooks you and it's one of the things that I thought a live action would greatly benefit from just bringing in viewers right from the very first scene but in my opinion they completely butchered it man this connects to an overlying issue with a lot of the series but in this episode specifically it not only feels like there's an arbitrary checklist to really match some of these scenes with their dialogue and structure in the source material not a bad thing in concept but also that there's some hidden time limit that we're not aware of that the showrunners are absolutely not allowed to go over there is a very choppy weird usually rushed Pace to how scenes are written and delivered across many episodes in this series and it's most apparent from the very start yeah gold Rogers says his lines yeah he does the thing but the actual way these lines and the way that that thing are being conveyed here in this scene doesn't really feel like it understands the actual intent or gravity that this scene should communicate it's so fast none of these lines have any impact or any time to breathe I almost wondered if I would even understand what is happening in this scene if I didn't already know what the entire point was and being fast isn't necessarily A downside in itself I'm sure many people welcome this series being a lot faster than the anime or the manga but it's when that speed comes at the cost of losing the entire point and the entire intent of a scene that it becomes a real problem in my opinion and it's something that you're going to see a lot throughout the rest of this series that isn't to say the series is always concerned with being overly one toone with the source material though and one thing that I'll give the live action both in episode one and just across most of these episodes is that it is willing to change things in ways that make sense something we'll talk about a lot more in these upcoming arcs but even just from the first episode there are a lot of fun rearrangements and additions that make this Arc even more enjoyable and even Elevate the material and Elevate the foreshadowing in really cool ways it's just cool seeing Mr 7even from Baroque Works come to recruit Zoro this is something that we only heard about in an off-hand comment from Zoro in the source material and yet here we are not only seeing this character for the very first time in any form of media but we even get to see this fight between them and set up Baro works as an element for the future that's just really goddamn cool I also really like the way that they bring Nami in early in this storyline as well in my opinion it just makes sense to have Zoro and Nami together after after the very first Arc and the best scene in the episode is this undercover infiltration of a Marine base with Luffy and NAMI it's incredibly fun and also completely original to the live action these are changes that not only fit the source material but improve upon it these are the parts that make the liveaction click however there is one pretty big change in this Arc that really did not work for me at all I get the point I get why they did it but it really takes away a a lot of the first impression for me and that is the introduction and role of Kobe's character within this Arc now there's a lot to say about Kobe with how much they've changed his role across the entire East blue but I want to talk specifically about his role here one of the biggest focal points of this Arc is seeing how Kobe begins growing out of his cowardly submissive Persona into somebody who's actually willing to chase his dreams it sets up his character it sets up Luffy's character and overall it's a big theme in the beginning showing how Luffy inspires people to chase their dreams and while you do get that in concept within this episode it's just another example of the liveaction taking and adapting the most important scenes without really understanding why those scenes are there or what should lead to them being there Kobe is ultimately a very small part of this first episode he essentially disappears entirely once they reach this Marine base only to come back at the very end half-heartedly so that he can say his line join the Marines and that is that but one of the biggest Cuts in this episode that I really don't understand at all is this moment with Kobe and elvita where what's supposed to happen is Kobe is inspired by Luffy stands up for himself and says the words that he's wanted to say to alvita ever since he was captured it's incredibly satisfying to see a character like Kobe already start showing this side to himself it's practically the starting point for his character Arc and it's completely absent from the live action Kobe just continues whimpering and being a coward the entire episode until the very end where he punches helmo I just that's not satisfying to me that's not the treatment that I think Kobe deserves and I do understand that in the live action they're molding Kobe's character Arc so that it can work across the entire season but I still don't think it's justification to remove one of the most satisfying scenes of this early storyline there are some other pros and cons to this Arc that I'll get into later but I think I can definitely say that I was very concerned by the end of this episode and the end of this Arc with how they were adapting this story and how they were treating the characters but my expectations were completely flipped when we get into the next Arc if there's one thing that I can say the live action handled almost unanimously well across the board it was the villains the antagonists in one piece live action are almost better casted than the straw hats themselves and you immediately get that sense when you encounter Jeff Wards buggy the clown one of the biggest worries that I had with buggy especially with the teaser they give at the end of episode 1 is that he would be written like some Diet Joker and just be overly serious and overly maniacal I don't know about you guys but even disregarding the direction buggy goes in later on in the story even from the very beginning he was always a very silly and very light-hearted antagonist Odo wasn't afraid to have fun with him and make him a joke and thankfully that aspect of his character is very Faithfully translated into the live action there's just a really strong understanding here of his character and one that makes him in this entire Arc so much more fun with the interactions and the dialogue that he has with Luffy and the crew this Arc overall was just such a huge improvement from episode one in my opinion and I think the reason why it was an improvement is because they completely changed the context of this Arc while still maintaining the core ideas that were important to the story and this is a trend that you're going to see for the remaining arcs as well the series just seems to operate on a better level when it's allowed to toss away the check list a bit and really put its own spin on things and the reason why most people were okay with it is because these changes just make sense having this entire Arc set within a circus tent with buggy putting on a show for all of these captured villagers it's just so much more creative interesting and fitting for buggy as a character than how this Arc was handled in the source material I have to say that this is also the episode where I really started loving Luffy not to spoil my thoughts too much but I do think that most of the straw hats are really really well casted and I think inaki godoi as Luffy might be my favorite out of the five of them which I really wasn't expecting going in I always did think that he looked good but I'm really surprised at how well he captures the spirit of Luffy without necessarily being one to one with the way Luffy is in the source material because naturally a character like Luffy from The Source material just isn't going to translate perfectly to live action there do need to be changes you need to tone him down in some areas while toning him up in others but overall I think the writers and inyi himself do a very good job of still capturing the essence of what makes Luffy Luffy and this goes especially for his flashback that is concluded in this episode as well now I don't love splitting the flashback up across these two episodes that doesn't really work for me it really all should have been an episode 1 and I would even go so far as to say that the part of the flashback that's in episode one gave me a little concern considering how it was molded around that episode and just overall I wasn't a fan of the execution however this episode handles its section of the flashback so much better in fact the flashback here is one of the two times in the liveaction series where I can say that it genuinely made me cry the scene where Shanks saves Luffy shanks passing his hat down to him Luffy proclaiming his dream this is one of the few direct one-to-one scene adaptations where I think they just nailed the heart and the intent of the source material 100% perfectly shank's actor is amazing I just really can't say enough positive things about this flashback which unfortunately is not something that I can do for most of the other flashbacks but we'll get there when we get there however for as much as I enjoyed this episode there is one thing in particular that I really didn't enjoy and it's less on this episode specifically and more just an overarching problem and kind of a hold over from episode one I did say that I liked most of the straw hats and I'll go ahead and elaborate on that and say that I like everyone in the crew except Zoro now from what I've seen from online discourse I think most people actually really like Zoro in this series so I'm already prepared for that to be the most controversial thing that I say in this video but to me Zoro in this series just does not feel like Zoro Luffy feels like luffi Nami feels like Nami Sanji Usopp even most of the supporting characters I think they really captured most of these characters really nicely but Zoro to me does not feel like Zoro in this series it almost feels like a fan interpretation of Zoro and I want to elaborate on that because I feel like a lot of people just really don't understand Zoro as a character they want to project on him so badly all the time that he's just this nonstop badass he doesn't turn off his cool guy switch he's basically the cadest of Chads residing in this series and while I definitely do think that that is a part of Zoro especially later on where I feel like Oda started making that most of his entire personality that is not all Zoro is to me honestly in the beginning arcs of the series Zoro has just as many silly light-hearted comedic moments as he does badass moments and he's not constantly trying so hard to be a badass Zoro is just a generally laid-back somewhat stoic guy who still jokes with the crew and also has his extremely cool moments that is what makes Zoro who he is to me I love how multifaceted he is without really falling into those kinds of stereotypical tropes which is why his treatment in the liveaction feels so unfortunate to me because it does feel like somebody wrote his character in mind with that tryhard cool guy exterior it just it gets so old and generally the most light-hearted that you do see Zoro get in this series is when he's saying incredibly dumb onliners after every single scene Zoro has more onliners in this series than literally every other character combined does it come with a free face tattoo my favorite is number one kind of got my own thing going on doesn't leave much time for playing dress up let be some other homicidal unicycle riding clown you probably need some new stuff I mean what Zoro is not the oneliner guy that is not zoro's character yeah he has some cool onliners every so often but the screenwriters for this series just took it to an absolutely absurd level that aside though the other big issue that I have with Zoro at this point in the series is that due to a cut that they made in episode 1 he really doesn't have any reason to be here he has no reason to be following Luffy around and helping him out in fact that is very unzor like to be doing when you don't have that critical scene in episode one of Zoro proclaiming his loyalty to Luffy instead by the end of episode one that scene is pretty much completely absent zor just joins the fight with ax hand Morgan for the fun of it which okay fair enough he wants to repay the debt of Luffy rescuing him but then after the fight is over Zoro is just like all right I guess I'm going with you guys now no justification no character motivation it's just extremely silly and you kind of just have to roll with it which even with all of that being said I can roll with it to an extend but then you have scenes within this next episode where Zoro is saying incredibly horny things about Luffy saying that he didn't have a place to go before he met Luffy saying that he believes in himself and I'm just wondering the whole time since when did you guys have this kind of relationship was that cuts scene of you proclaiming your loyalty actually there and I just missed it it feels like it was ridden with that in mind but just got cut the last minute and I do think there's a reason for that which I will get into later but It ultimately ends up feeling incredibly awkward and it takes away another aspect ECT that could have made zoro's character good even with the general characterization of him which I am not a fan of I mean it just feels weird to have a one-piece story where Zoro isn't the first person proclaiming their loyalty to Luffy the first person to actually join the crew I mean that's just such a big big part of zoro's character the fact that he was the first person to do those things and it's just completely missing from this screenplay Zoro aside though the buggy Arc was very enjoyable over all my hype and expectations were significantly raised after finishing and thankfully the streak would continue as we move into the next [Music] Arc I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret here the syrup Village Arc with Usopp and Captain curo was easily my favorite Arc of this entire liveaction series now again from the discourse that I have seen I think that might be a little bit of an underrated controversial take hell I wouldn't have even expected that myself considering it's probably on the lower end of arcs for me within the East blue Source material but in my opinion this Arc really showcases a lot of the liveaction strengths while mostly minimizing its weaknesses and to really discuss those strengths we have to talk about something that I have been avoiding talking about to save for this very moment set design baby forget the casting forget the music forget literally every aspect about this series by far the area that this team knocked it out of the park the most with are the production values and the sheer Artistry that went into the set prop and costume design for this series it is just unbelievable seeing the world you only knew from a manga page or anime screenshot and seeing it come to life so vivid ly in this liveaction setting it is impressive to behold from the very first episode but it was this Arc with Usopp and the set pieces within ka's Mansion specifically where I just really felt the magic of these production designs the most it's the kind of treatment that I genuinely think justifies a liveaction adaptation in its own right even if everything else in this series sucked just seeing the locations within this season Imagining the future locations and the way that they'll bring those to life it's honestly what has me the most excited for the prospect of future seasons and I just I can't praise that side of the team enough for what they were able to accomplish here but it's not just about visual eye candy though just like in buggy Arc what I really like about what they do with this Mansion is that they actually utilize it to make the ark and the storyline here a lot more interesting and engaging instead of fighting a bunch of pirates on a non-descript hill like in the story Source material what we have here is almost a horror movie Thriller sequence of trying to escape this mansion and eventually having the final encounters within the Mansion itself it's just so fun to watch at pretty much every turn and even Beyond these set pieces themselves there's just a bunch of really nice changes that make a lot of sense I like that this town is actually known for being a shipyard now I like that Usopp is actually a part of that Shipyard even if he's not actually ship right it just makes sense for his character to be somebody who's been around that kind of environment and it makes sense for this Village itself to be that kind of environment but above all what really brings this Arc together for me beyond the sheer creativity in the set pieces are the characters with Ka and captain curo now you're not going to hear me say this again so savor it while you can but these two characters are genuinely better written than they are in the source material now it does help that these two characters were never really that interesting in the original Arc but what makes the two of them here great is great for two different reasons Kaa is just so much more compelling in live action than she was in The Source you just get a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of what she's going through what her motivations and her inner struggles are and how those inner struggles actually play into the ark and play into Captain Kuro who is also absolutely excellent in this Arc but not because he's suddenly more compelling or intriguing than he was in The Source he's still very much just an absolute bastard but it's the way this actor Alexander manius I hope I pronounced that right it's the way this actor plays him that brings him alive as the absolute bastard in the best possible way he is just mesmerizing to watch on screen when you reach that final setpiece where he's chasing Kaa down and searching ing for them in this room all while taunting Kaa and digging into her insecurities and her inner conflict so precisely the way that only he could do it's just so so perfect he is easily the best villain and best portrayal of that villain within this entire series and both of them made this Arc into an actual improvement over the original that definitely doesn't mean it was perfect though and there were a couple of things that I still didn't really enjoy within the context of this Arc and they're actually pretty common complaints that I saw thrown at the series when these episodes came out uh for one it does kind of suck that within his very own arc Usopp doesn't really get his defining moment that really sets him apart by the end of this storyline in the anime Usopp not only puts his life on the line to stop pirates from invading but even gets a sick finisher move to take out Jango a character that said Sly didn't make the final cut here however in the live action while you do technically still get usapp putting his life on the line it definitely felt a lot more tangential to what was happening rather than an actual moment where Usopp gets his shining Spotlight moment it's not a huge deal for me when the rest of the Ark and his character are generally so fun to watch but it definitely would have been cool to see a moment of some kind where Usopp obviously not taking down Captain Kuro but maybe just having a cool moment that gives Luffy an opportunity to take him out some kind of Duo finisher I don't know just something cooler than what they ended up going with more of a minor complaint for me in the grand scheme of things but there is another much bigger one that I want to discuss as well now I'm a live action Zoro hater of course but even if I wasn't putting his backstory in this stretch of episodes just doesn't make any goddamn sense in the slightest there is no thematic narrative element tying that backstory to what is going on in this Arc it just feels so out of place especially when you have a mihawk fight coming up in the very next episode huge wasted opportunity there but that's not even the worst part about this being here a little out ofpl flashback whatever you can easily Overlook something like that in the grand scheme of the story the real problem here is that the backstory just sucks man it's terrible zoro's backstory isn't even some kind of Masterpiece of writing or anything but I genuinely question how you [ __ ] it up this badly where none of the emotional weight or the core of the story are communicated in a way that feels impactful the child actors here are just awful the dialogue is so stilted and so forced they might as well just be reading their lines directly from the manga with no intent behind it and it even manages to completely Miss some core themes within the backstory story that are what Drive the entire character Kina didn't just suddenly think that girls can't fight that's not something that she came up with on her own it was her father who was pushing these ideas onto her and it's Zoro who convinces her otherwise it's what makes that moment of Zoro inheriting his dead daughter's Katana hit so hard he has to approach her father himself and yet not only is that Sensei character barely even in the flashback I don't even think they mentioned once that he was her father they cut the flashback down so heavily so that they wouldn't even need to expand on that character and this ties back yet again into this overarching problem that plagues a lot of the liveaction just the sense that what's here feels like a cut down version of Something much more expanded on something that there I say was supposed to have 10 episodes instead of Eight Episodes and what you're seeing in a lot of these story lines is the last resort of cutting down some of these content so much while trying to preserve a cliff noes version and yeah that mostly does keep the core ideas intact zorao wants to be Kina Kina dies zorao won't lose again but in the process of cutting these sections down so much even if you do have those core scenes and ideas there you don't feel them you don't feel them the way that you would in a screenplay that actually lets these sequences breathe and conveys that intent in a more deliberate manner this is without a doubt the biggest problem that the liveaction faces on a consistent basis and even though I obviously really enjoyed this Arc a lot more than any other in the series it does still have that problem as well to a certain extent and unfortunately that problem only continues to escalate as we transition into the next [Music] Arc now I've been avoiding talking about a certain plot thread that stretches over the entire series because one it really didn't start bothering me until this Arc specifically but two it's also just the loow hanging fruit of this liveaction series because from what I can tell this is the one thing that everyone can agree was pretty bad in this series Kobe story in the source material essentially boiled down to him getting left behind at this Marine base you check in on him one more time before the crew heads to the Grand line he forms this relationship with helppo and starts training under GARP and then he comes back way later at the end of Annie's Lobby to show the progress and training that he's made over that whole stretch of time it's a cool little way of bringing the character back considering how important he becomes later on but in concept and I'll even say some of the actual execution I really really like letting Kobe have his own character Arc over the entire stretch of East blue I really like having this character come back and keep growing gradually until you get that final payoff by the end it feels rewarding I think I can confidently say that Kobe is one of my favorite characters in the live action and even his relationship with Helo feels like it gets a little boost seeing how they gradually grow to consider each other friends the real issue with them doing this at least the way they've executed it here is that you also need to give GARP a much bigger role in the story as well and let's just say in the context of a lot of the original material in this series they didn't fully understand who garp's character actually is and it's only when you get to the Sanji Arc within the baratier that you really start seeing how bad this adaptation can truly be hopefully me gushing about the Usopp Arc has laid to rest the idea that I can't welcome original changes because obviously I am all for original changes as long as they're actually good but it's in baratier where you start seeing the downsides of this mix of Canon and original that they've been experimenting with across the entire series within the baratier arc you essentially have three different arcs all coinciding with each other in a way that really really doesn't work you have Kobe and garp's side of the story GARP is chasing Luffy and not only sends Kobe after him but also godamn mihawk more on that in a bit you have arlong side of the story who is also chasing after Luffy and has kind of been on the trail ever since they left buggy and then you have the actual Sanji and baratier Arc in the midst of those two other things and the result is that this Arc feels incredibly over stuffed and it takes away a lot of the focus from the stuff that actually matters and the stuff that's actually good Sanji story The baratti Arc in my opin opinion is when you really start seeing the strengths of one piece of Storytelling sanji's backstory zoro's L to mihawk the relationship and departure from Ze it's just all some of my absolute favorite moments in East blue and for the most part I really think the live action misses on conveying why these things are so great let's start with garer or should I say the actor that is impersonating GARP because this is not the character of GARP at all in my opinion and I don't think that's necess neily a bad thing at least not at this point in the story because again these writers are relying entirely on completely original content with GARP here and if it was just GARP acting like a wise old man to train Kobe into a good Marine I don't think that's quite in line with how I see GARP but at least it's relatively fitting with where both of these characters need to be by the future of this story the real problem here is that GARP is a goddamn Maniac sorry not even just a maniac a hypocritical Maniac GARP from The Source material would literally punch this GARP in the face for some of the [ __ ] that he does in this season one of the most unintentionally funny moments in this entire live action is when GARP is talking about the Warlords of the sea and he says how Marines should really not be working with pirates it just fundamentally goes against his ideals of what the Marine should be and he says word for word that he refuses to play by these rules that the higher up Marines have set all fine so far that is all perfectly in line with GARP but and no joke no exaggeration in this very same episode I think minutes later he literally calls up mihawk and tells him to chase down Monkey D Luffy he is sending a goddamn warlord of the sea after his own grandson this is already so absurd and so out of character to me on multiple levels but what really makes this plotline so unsatisfying and I have to jump ahead a bit to really talk about why this bothers me so much by the final episode in this series despite how vindictive we've seen GARP act the entire series the level of commitment that he has shown that he's willing to violate his own character and his own morals to stop Luffy the way these writers justify that by the end of this season is a Twist that GARP was testing Luffy the entire time he wanted to make sure that he was 100% ready and committed to this idea of becoming a pirate I really just don't know what to say about this man in concept again I have to say those two words so often when talking about this series in concept I kind of see the vision here I I see what they were going for in concept but the actual execution is just so out of touch and so off base that it turned off pretty much every single fan of the source material who was watching this series thankfully next season we have a much more fitting Marine antagonist with smoker really looking forward to that but man what they did with GARP this season just was so rough and that kind of brings us to mihawk's role in brati as well because yeah GARP called him in that's pretty goddamn weird but ultimately he does still belong in this Arc he was here in the original the Zoro versus mihawk fight is an iconic moment to this day and I definitely wouldn't want him not to be here he needs to be here the problem is that this stuff just sucks man I'm sorry guys I'm not a hater I don't want to be a hater I just don't like seeing my favorite moments from my favorite stories treated this way Zoro versus mihawk has a lot of the same problems that I've mentioned before with pacing yeah the core ideas are all here but the execution just feels so incredibly strange and awkward Zoro challenging mihawk inside of a bar this forced drama of Luffy doubting himself because he didn't tell Zoro not to fight mihawk himself I don't know who told mihawk's actor that he's supposed to be this pompous sassy nobleman but I can tell you for a fact that that is definely not mihawk's character and in my opinion it absolutely ruined one of the all-time greatest scenes and greatest lines of dialogue in the entire series wounds on the back are a swordsman's greatest shame magnificent this is a line of genuine respect that sets up mihawk and zoro's relationship for the entire series but in the context of the scene it just sounds like the actor is mocking Zoro it's just terrible none of this worked for me in the slightest but I do kind of want to elaborate a bit on this stuff with Luffy doubting himself and Zoro eventually waking up and proclaiming his loyalty finally after the entire series I've seen a couple of people mention this scene being one of the few where this really doesn't feel like Luffy Luffy beating himself up over his entire crew falling apart the interesting thing about this though to me is that this actually isn't out of character for Luffy this actually happens multiple times across the entire Series where you really see a more nuanced perspective of how Luffy views himself after his own failures the most notable examples I can think of being when the Creer was separated by Kuma and when Luffy completely loses all faith in himself after the war at Marine Ford Luffy does do these things he does beat himself up when he feels like he isn't adequate to lead the crew and I really love those deeper looks into a character that I think most people write off as pretty simplistic but I don't love it here and the main reason I don't love it here is because one I just really don't feel the bonds between the crew nearly as much but two Luffy would never ever ever tell Zoro not to fight mihawk luy would never regret Zoro fighting mihawk and losing out of every outof character moment in this entire Series this one stood out to me far Above the Rest even more than garps out of character moments just because this is so antithetical to Luffy's character he is the kind of guy who will support you and encourage you to chase your dream no matter how impossible or unlikely it seems and he would never ever regret seeing someone go for it even if it resulted in Failure he'd get angry for the sake of that person sure we even see him launch himself to fight mihawk immediately after Zoro loses but he's not going to regret or beat himself up over that decision that just does not feel like Luffy to me in the slightest and it's what made this entire plot point and this entire dramatic sequence just fall pretty flat for me however I have to say that the one thing that didn't fall flat for me in this Arc was in fact the thing that I thought should have been the focus the entire time get rid of the GARP stuff get rid of arlong really double down on the stuff with Sanji and zeff because this genuinely had the potential to be the strongest material in the entire liveaction these two actors are just absolutely perfect as these characters Sanji gets a lot of flack in the source material especially these days because Oda really plays up the whole L struck pervert angle of his character but I think that people forget that early on in the story especially Sanji wasn't really a pervert as much as he was just this really kind swave Charming Prince season 2 reference right there and I really think that the actor Taz is capitalizing on that angle in a way that makes his character here incredibly likable just like he was in those early parts of the story I also know that his actor and the actor who plays zeff actually had a genuine Mentor Protegé relationship in real life which is not only incredibly fitting for them as people and actors but it also kind of just speaks for itself when you see the two of them acting together in these scenes they have such incredible chemistry that really carries the core in the identity of this Arc and my only real complaint with the two of them is that there just isn't enough of them for this being sanji's Arc for his character who is so important to the storyline here he feels almost tangential to a lot of the stuff that's going on around him he unfortunately just gets shoved into the background a lot of the time and again that recurring problem that keeps popping up you can point to the big Landmark moments and they will be there and I'm sure you're going to see plenty of praise for that online but it just doesn't really mean as much to me when you get rid of the context and the scenes in between those landmark moments that are equally important by the end of the Ark you get that incredible scene between Sanji and zff when he's leaving the bartier to join the crew and it just almost Works entirely on the sheer Talent of these actors and the bond that you can genuinely feel between them through the screen but because of how rushed and cobbled together the screenplay is for this Arc the lack of weight in what is actually happening in the story how uncommitted it was to showing their relationship or why Sanji would even want to join the crew in the first place it all just feels so half-hearted in a way that really disappointed me considering how much I love this Arc and these moments in the source material it's at this point where I'm starting to get genuinely worried about where this adaptation is headed because our last stop in this series is in fact one of my favorite arcs in the entire show it's easily the best Arc in East blue in the source material and it's also the arc that turns most people into lifelong fans of this entire [Music] franchise one thing that I continued repeating over and over again up to this series actually coming out was how important it would be to get arlong park right don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Nami and arlong park are going to singlehandedly decide the fate of this series this really is the arc when it comes to early one piece a lot of people will repeat those terrible jokes about one piece getting good at episode 5 00 or whatever but in reality this is the arc that really determines if you're going to actually like this series or not and I can say personally for myself that the help me scene and the walk to arlong park genuinely might be the reason that I even watch anime right now to begin with that moment made me a lifelong one piece fan and it's what eventually led me into exploring the rest of this medium however despite me saying all of that or maybe because I said all of that and set some kind of death flag tragically I don't think they got arlong park right I really do not think that they captured this Arc well and just like before I want to talk about the big pivotal things that resulted in me thinking that and hopefully convey it in a way that makes sense even if you don't agree and it all really begins with the setup for this entire Arc arlong Park is of course the ultimate payoff to what we have learned about Nami throughout the rest of East blue she hates Pirates she's stealing money for her own personal goals and she refuses to become close or open herself up to the rest of the straw hats these are all critically built up throughout the rest of the series and I would say that the live action also does a suitable job at establishing all of this beforehand however it also hasn't been afraid of changing things surrounding those up to this point either Nami joins up with Luffy a lot sooner than she otherwise did arlong actually knows about Luffy before he even shows up and Nami herself leaves with arlong instead of abandoning the crew by herself these are all interesting but not necessarily super impactful changes to the way that arlong Park unfolds it does kind of suck losing that awesome moment when Luffy punches arlong and arlong doesn't even know who he is but in general everything is still going according to plan however it's when you actually get to Coco yashi Village and learn about the situation that's unfolding there that you really start witnessing one of the worst changes that one piece liveaction has made to this storyline one of the worst changes across the entire series The Village doesn't know about nami's sacrifice noo her sister doesn't know about her sacrifice this absolutely sucks but it's possible that the reason why this sucks might be lost on some of you so let me paint a picture here in the source you have Arlon right this terrible pirate who comes and WS havoc in nami's Hometown kills nami's mother and charges everyone who lives there if they don't want to share the same fate Nami ends up becoming a slave and working underneath arlong secretly saving up money so that she can buy back Koko yashi Village from arlong and rescue everyone who's basically being held for ransom now there's already a few notable changes to this storyline that I'll talk about in a bit but the biggest one is that in the source material the village and noo herself know what Nami is going through they know that she is only working underneath arlong for their sake and they don't tell her about this because they don't want to be a hindrance or a burden in her resolve and what she's been working for all of these years thematically that is is really godamn important when you establish something like this you have a sense of community you have this entire Village supporting Nami in their own way you have noo supporting Nami in her own way those tattoos that noo have she only got them as a way of emotionally supporting and reassuring Nami that she wasn't alone that she still had family waiting for her and they're in that together it's such a sweet empathetic moment within this Ark and in the live action those tattoos mean absolutely nothing the chemistry between Nami and noo is non-existent because noo hates Nami because of a lie because of this misunderstanding to me this is already taking away from a core aspect that I really love about this Arc but it's not even the big reason why this sucks though the big reason why I genuinely can't forgive this change is because of how critical it is to easily the most important moment in the entire Arc and easily the most important moment Nami has had in the entire series the moment where she finally asks for help the moment that made me a lifelong fan of this franchise to continue the picture here arlong has betrayed her he's stolen the money that she has spent her entire childhood saving up she was just almost there to finally buying back Koko yashi Village and even though she's initially Furious and heartbroken when this happens she gets right back up she is ready to start all over again for the sake of her Village that's just the kind of character that Nami is it's only when you have this scene between Nami and the village the context that these villagers have supported and waited for Nami all of these years and are finally standing up to arlong to fight for themselves and to fight for Nami after this betrayal this is the moment that Nami finally breaks this is the moment where she genuinely has no idea what to do she has no idea how to save them or who to turn to and it's in this moment of complete and utter desperation in the middle of a breakdown that Nami finally asks for help this is one of my favorite scenes in all of fiction and I went to painstaking effort recreating this for you because because with this one change of the village and her sister not knowing the truth behind the situation the actual help me scene in live action has essentially none of the context or weight that make this scene so good the scene is there it's well performed the dialogue is one to one there's fan service shots that people convince themselves mean that this scene was Faithfully adapted but in reality it just has so little of what made me fall in love with this character and fall in love with this story arlong just randomly decides to torch the village in liveaction and that's basically all the setup you get for this alternate version of the scene now this already would have likely been a huge hit to my enjoyment of this Arc that scene means everything to me but there's two other areas in arlong park that I think it failed just as much if not more so one would be nami's flashback this is top three flashbacks top 10 sequences in the entire one piece Series this flashback means more to me than most anime I have watched in my entire life and this recurring trend of the liveaction cutting down and Cliff noting the most important moments might be at its absolute worst with arlong Park and this flashback you don't feel the life that Nami had with bamir here you don't really get a sense at all of what her dream is or her mapmaking skills the tension and slow dread of arlong invading this Village is replaced with rushed Exposition and genzo poor genzo basically isn't even a character anymore it is comically ironic how well ginzo sums up the live action's biggest problem the arc ends with a beautiful shot of a pin wheel Nami still has her tattoo that is half pin wheel it's all 100% accurate to the manga but the actual meaning of the pin wheel the reason why that's there to begin with was pretty much entirely cut and replaced with a single shot of making pen Wheels out of tangerines it is just so tragic the changes and cuts they had to make here because of this low episode count and even more than this flashback for I really felt that horrendous pacing in the final fight with arlong now don't even get me started that the walk to arlong park itself was just completely cut and basically just jump cuts to them being there that's already an insult to my very core uh but the real problem is that this fight and pretty much all the fights and climaxes in arlong park had to be incredibly cut down because oh we still need to spend half the final episode resolving the gar plot thread and uh oh we also need to get our crew to the Grand line before this season is over I don't know if my remarks about pacing and cutting things down the entire video gave it away but literally this was literally supposed to be a 10 episode series and was turned into an 8 episode series after the screenplay was already written the way that ultimately impacts the final episode results in a bunch of smaller issues like us stops fight sucking and completely missing the point of that fight or the Nami you are a friend scene feeling incredibly awkward and rushed but beyond those it also leads to much bigger problems within this fight with arlong himself one of my favorite Parts about this Arc and about Luffy in the source material is how little Luffy actually knows about what's going on in the village he just does not care in the slightest what nami's past is or or what the actual context is to arlong being here all he knows is that Nami needs his help and he's going to be there for her no matter what in the live action this is almost entirely changed Luffy hears nami's entire backstory Nami herself gives exposition to Luffy about the map room and how she was locked up here you let me stop wearing them when I was 12 said it was a birthday gift it just feels so wrong in so many ways ways but the biggest way that it let me down is in that final climax in the battle with arlong the moment that Luffy decides what he needs to do is destroy arlong park because of what Nami went through here the moment Luffy sees the map room he doesn't need to hear any of that Exposition or hear that backstory to understand the pain that Nami went through here and it's why that moment and why the final blow in this fight hit as hard as they do because it wasn't even Luffy attacking arlong it was Luffy attacking this room that has tormented Nami for all of these years but well you guessed it none of that is in the live action they not only cut it out completely but I'm pretty sure that this fight with arlong only lasted a couple minutes it's just so underwhelming I genuinely hate how this Arc turned out and the only Silver Lining with any of this is the stuff that comes afterwards now I've already talked about the stuff with GARP in this final episode I obviously did not like GARP and I hated how this whole thing was just a test but I did really really like how they concluded Kobe's Arc here and the relationship that he has with Luffy it really does encapsulate their Dynamic and their relationship in a very heartfelt way you do feel a genuine sense of friendship and respect from both of them and I think that does a really good job of setting up their Dynamic and setting up that reunion that comes later in the series so well done there was it worth having this entire storyl line including GARP take up screen time from the rest of the series uh probably not but you have to acknowledge the wins when they come and that goes especially for the final scene of the liveaction more than any other scene in this entire season season we're not quite to the Grand line we're not quite past lockdown but it wouldn't be right if we didn't at least finish on the iconic Barrel scene where you see the entire Straw Hat crew proclaim the dreams that they will be pursuing for the rest of the series and in my opinion they completely nailed and elevated this scene in a way that truly made me cry it's honestly even in spite of everything negative that I've said this entire video this is what still gets me excited about the prospect of a season 2 the fact that they're able to capture the series this well even before the barrel scene itself you just get a bunch of little crew moments and Dynamics and camaraderie that were not only really good but it also just kind of makes you wonder where these were the rest of the entire series seeing that bond between them now it's all just so so wonderful and I hope that with a season 2 they're able to write a more complete screenplay that lets you have these moments among the rest of the story being told because this is what makes one piece special to me all I can say is that if you made it this far I would love to know what you personally thought about the one piece live action in the comments below and rest assured even with how ridiculously long this video turned out there are still a lot of my own thoughts both positive and negative that I didn't quite know how how to structure into this video I thought the wigs looked terrible but I really liked how faithful they were willing to be with the costumes I wish there was more blood in the important scenes and less blood in the fights with jobbers I actually really liked most of sanji's flashback I wish they could have ended the series in logtown as a way of coming full circle and oh my goodness where the hell is Hai cut every character in East blue that you like but how in the hell are certain plot threads in the story even going to function later when you don't have Hai what was even the point of cutting him when you have the other two fishmen right there don't even ask me what they were thinking because we may or may not see far into the future I'll definitely be here for season 2 without a doubt and just maybe I will make another hopefully more positive video about it join the Discord server in the description if you want to talk about one piece liveaction or anything else thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in the next video we are

Channel: PhenomSage

Views: 8,512

Keywords: one piece live action, one piece live action review, review, one piece, live action, netflix, one piece netflix, live action vs anime, anime vs live action, comparison, analysis, reaction, season 1, season 2, season, phenomsage, phenom, sage, opla, op, remake, anime, episode, everyone loves one piece live action

Id: 2JYL9JIS95w

Length: 58min 3sec (3483 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023