There’s a lot of curiosity around the imminent release of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece. It’s based on perhaps the most popular manga series ever, which already has an extensive anime adaptation, yet the transition to live action has rarely served manga well. Now, the original creator of One Piece, Eiichiro Oda, has stated that he “acted as a guard dog to ensure the material was being adapted in the correct way” by Netflix.
In an interview with The New York Times, the manga-ka spoke about the “history of failure” that plagues live-action adaptations of manga, adding that “Netflix agreed that they wouldn’t go out with the show until I agreed it was satisfactory”. That has included providing notes to the creative team and signing off on the scripts, which he acknowledges can’t be a straight one-to-one reimagining of the manga.
For example, the televised format demands more dialog, but “it involves really thinking about what fans love about the characters, the dynamics among them — and being faithful to those elements”, said Oda. A part of that involved shifting his own thinking, and Oda said that the way he approached his advice changed on seeing the show in action, moving from focusing on how Monkey D. Luffy acts in the manga to how he should act through star Iñaki Godoy’s interpretation.
Oda also talked about how, when starting out on One Piece in 1996, he didn’t want to create something that could be made into live action. That changed, however, when he saw the 2001 film Shaolin Soccer, which “felt like a manga-esque world brought to life” and prompted him to shift “to finding the right partner to bring the manga to life.”
We’ll see the outcomes of that very shortly, as the live-action adaptation of One Piece on Netflix on August 31. Stay tuned for our review of the series, but make sure to check out the latest chills-inducing trailer in the meantime.
