One Piece (Live Action) - They finally did it, they created a great live action anime adaptation! And its based off one of my favorite shows! There really aren't many decent handlings of live action anime, Alita is okay (I still don't like her big cg eyes), and I heard the Rurouni Kenshin movies are good, but I don't care about that series, but if there was ever an adaptation that would fail, it would be One Piece. It's an anime specifically designed to benefit from being a cartoon. Crazy character designs, crazy abilities, crazy world. Death Note? That should've been an easy home run, it's basically just a high energy drama with death gods showing up every so often.
The whole cast is great, I think it benefitted certain characters quite alot, like Usopp was not a character I enjoyed till much later on in the series, and Sanji was always grating with his loverboy routine, so dialing both of those characters back makes them way more enjoyable. They aren't different, just less extreme. I loved that we got more Buggy, who kinda stole the show for a lot of people. I actually can't think of anyone that I would point to as being way off base. I also appreciate that they leaned into their character designs. Some look silly, but they are silly characters. Garp gets his silly dog hat, people get their wild hair colors, I've seen folks say that it's very "cosplay", but yeah...there's not much other way to go about it and I'm very glad they didn't dial up the realism too far. One Piece is silly, let it be silly.
Story hits all the major story beats it needs to, there are definite shortenings, and some changes, characters not included, but this has to happen, they can't follow the anime exactly, or even the manga, it would be way too many episodes and unrealistic, but the story does what it needs to and that's what matters most. I've seen some folks rag on the differences, but I think some people are just unwilling to admit that some stuff has to be different to make it work as a live action show. Personalities have to be dialed down, things tweaked, characters and moments dropped that we really liked for the sake of a snappier, better paced story.
I would recommend this to fans and non-fans. I've been dying for a way to rewatch One Piece at a brisker pace and it's a fun experience to see a variation on a story I like. For non-fans, it's a fun comedic pirate romp with goofy characters, that's both light-hearted, but also abit of an edge, much like One Piece has always been. I really hope we get a couple more seasons, like I feel that's a longshot even if it's successful for them, it's a pricey and very involved show, like I would love to at least see up to...Water 7 perhaps, that would be like Season 4, but we'll see.
