Just like HBO’s “The Last of Us” finally gave us a great video game-to-screen adaptation, Netflix’s “One Piece” finally seemed to break the curse of adapting anime into live-action form.
The result has been both a critically well-regarded and quite popular series that has caught on with people who have never seen the original manga or anime series.
So, why did this succeed where others like “Ghost in the Shell” or “Cowboy Bebop” failed? Speaking to ComicBook.com, the director of the opening two episodes Marc Jobst was asked that very question.
He says it ultimately came down to a combination of the shows, wacky, playful nature, combined with a sense of grounded emotion underneath, thus it was able to capture the spirit of the story:
“It’s very playful. One of the freedoms that you get when you see people and you talk to people who work in two dimensions is you’re not hidebound by three dimensions, which means that the originations of those stories sometimes bursts out of the norm.
They’re free to use their imaginations to go into all kinds of crazy ways because they’re not hidebound by being human. I think we respond to that as readers. I think we respond to that goofiness that kind of, ‘Oh my God,’ outside the box thinking that blue skies thinking that anime and manga can do.
[T]hat makes it a real challenge to adapt into live action because we have to bring it back… and we have to bring it back into this human [form] in such a way that is true to the anime and the goofiness of the manga and all the rest of it.
But also [be] grounded in some kind of truth and authenticity so that your audience says: ‘I’ll go on this journey with these people because even though they’ve got rubbery skills and can do crazy things, or Buggy can split himself up into thousands of different pieces, somehow I believe in his emotional journey and I’m interested in his emotional journey.’”
This falls in line with comments from VFX artists at Corridor Crew this week who suggest part of the reason it has reached beyond the anime crowd is that the show doesn’t feel like an anime:
“Is this ‘One Piece’ as a live-action TV series or is this a live-action anime? What I’m watching here is not a live-action anime, it doesn’t feel like live-action anime, and if it was marketed as such I would be disappointed. As just a wacky fun adventure live-action TV series so far? It’s cool.”
Recently Netflix’s Ted Sarandos called out the show on the company’s recent third-quarter investor call, saying the series reached the #1 spot in 84 countries – an achievement even the likes of “Stranger Things” and “Wednesday” were unable to achieve.
He says it’s especially rare for an English-language show to be as popular as this was in markets like Japan, Korea, Brazil and in the U.S. at the same time. He also dubbed the casting of the lead character Monkey D. Luffy as one of the greatest casting challenges in the history of Netflix’s original programming.
They ultimately cast Inaki Godoy in the role, an actor who was already in the Netflix fold with shows like “The Imperfects” and “Who Killed Sara?” and who has become a “global superstar” now says Sarandos.
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