One Piece and Its’ Brand-New Live Action!
How One Piece Started and Where it is Today
The One Piece manga has grown exponentially over the years since it was first created by Eiichiro Oda in 1997. Since then, the sales have been amazing with the manga. Today, the manga alone has procured more than $500 million which is a huge accomplishment. It is also the world’s most published manga and has over 100 volumes and over 1,000 chapters. Additionally, over 500 million copies have been published globally. You can even find the first couple volumes in Dakota’s Media Center.
After being so successful as a manga in Japan, One Piece was picked up by Toei Animation to be made into an anime in 1999 and is now completely international with the help of Crunchyroll which is an anime streaming service. It now has over 1,000 episodes and 11 movies with One Piece Film: Red being the most recent. Unlike other types of anime, One Piece is aimed toward a slightly older audience, but anyone interested would have a blast watching it.
The Live Action
Compared to other live action series’ that have derived from an anime, One Piece got a ton of attention and positive reinforcement from the community. It instantly became the top series on Netflix and has a 95% viewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes. They utilized the $138 million budget amazingly with the special effects, sets, and costumes. The actors stay true to the characters they are playing throughout the whole show, making it all the better.
Recap of One Piece So Far
The One Piece anime is based on the adventures of the main character Monkey D. Luffy, and his crewmates traveling the world trying to find the ultimate treasure, the One Piece so Luffy can become the King of The Pirates. Luffy also has the gum- gum fruit which is a devil fruit that allows his body to have the properties of rubber which makes him a powerful adversary. The One Piece world is full of dangerous pirates, and marines trying to stop them. There are also Devil Fruits that you can eat to get powerful abilities that are all different, which makes all the fights different and exciting. In the beginning Luffy was on his own until he met his fist make “Pirate Hunter” Roronoa Zoro. Zoro’s dream is to become the world’s strongest swordsman, so he agrees to travel the world with Luffy to fight stronger opponents. On the same island, Luffy and Zoro find Nami who dreams to one day map out the entire world, so she also joins their crew early on. She agrees to be their navigator and they move on to the next island. Every good crew needs a sniper, so they recruit the best of the best, Usopp. Since they were becoming an established crew now Luffy and the gang needed a name, and they settled on “The Straw Hat Pirates” based on the straw hat Luffy always has on. On their way to the Grand Line, they ran into a cook who knew how to fight because the restaurant was robbed by pirates sometimes or they did not want to pay. His name was Sanji. They needed a cook, so Luffy offered him a spot on the crew and after thinking about it and seeing how everyone on the crew was, Sanji took the offer and they sailed away. 
The new Straw Hate Pirate group then ran into a problem. Nami was in debt with an extremely powerful pirate named Arlong and his pirate crew. She tried to pay him off, but he would not free her and her hometown like he said he would so Luffy, and the gang took him down so Nami could be free. This is the first big fight in the series and usually where people become hooked. This is also where the live action got up to before season one ended. Except for a couple details, the Live Action stayed consistent with the plot of both the anime and the manga.
My Thoughts
I have been waiting a long time for this live action to come out and I am not disappointed in the slightest. I am incredibly happy with the casting and how they kept the plot intact the whole way through. The special effects are also nothing to sleep on. The CGI was done very well the whole way through which is important when you have a show like One Piece that might have superhuman powers or huge sea beasts waiting to eat you at any given time.
In conclusion, the One Piece live action was not a letdown at all, and I hope for another season to come out very soon.
