Netflix is doing One Piece... Good Luck!
Netflix, what are you doing? No really, I'm worried about you buddy. Because if the recent news is any indication, I'm curious if you have any clue into how to actually earn money. What, the fuck, are you doing Netflix!?
For those who haven’t been paying attention, Netflix, like the rest of Hollywood, has been hit with the reboot bug. Not that I blame them given the wasteland of creativity that is modern Hollywood. I mean, why waste millions of dollars that you increasingly do not have on a new idea, when we can continue to release increasingly shitty reboots of things people actually like.
Look, no one likes reboots. If there’s one thing people can’t stand it’s a bad rehash of a beloved IP. Disney’s live action remakes may make a lot of money, but trying to find someone who likes them is like trying to find a needle in a hay field. But Netflix reboots are they’re own unique blend of unbridled bullshit.
To give an idea for how bad Netflix are at reboots, of the 3 Masters of the Universe reboots they’ve done, the only one that can even remotely be called a success is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. You know, the show that was more interested in shipping characters than actually developing them. That's the best of the bunch folks.
But say what you want about She-Ra, Revelations and the upcoming Fortnite knockoff masquerading as He-Man, at least those shows knew to keep within the realms of animation. I mean it’s not Netflix are going to make a live-action version of a beloved cartoon franchise or anything, right, RIGHT!
Oh sweet Jesus we’re fucked. I guess Netflix learned nothing from the Death Note movie and have gone hard in on live action versions of beloved anime series. Cowboy Bebop is first on the docking and already is looking like a total dumpster fire. It's not exactly a good sign when the backlash for the show is so great it causes the lead actress to address fan criticisms by acting like the smuggest hipster in the Starbucks folks. That shit is dead on arrival at this point.
But not even that is enough to dissuade Netflix from this pathway to oblivion. So here’s a query, what if we take the same company behind the upcoming train wreck that is the Cowboy Bebop reboot and, wait for it, have them adapt one of the longest and most cartoonish Anime on the planet?
Thus, we have the live-action version of One Piece. Really dipshits, you think you can handle One Piece, the Anime series with nearly 1000 episodes. You think you can properly adapt all that into live action form. Oh wait, my bad, this isn’t based on the anime, it’s based on the original Manga. Oh well that’s not so bad, I mean there’s only over 1000 chapters of those to adapt, might get 5 maybe 6 seasons out of that.
For fucks sake, even animated adaptations have to cut something out. The Devilman Crybaby anime had to cut portions of the manga out to fit within its 10-episode run, and the Devilman manga was only 5 volumes. One Piece has nearly 100 and, if rumours are to be believed, the first season of 10 episodes is going to cover the entire east blue saga, which was nearly 100 chapters long on its own. They're going to have to make more cuts than Edward Scissorhands to condense that down to 10 episodes.
Folks, I've seen some bad ideas in my time, but trying to adapt one of the longest, most over the top Anime and Manga series of all time into live action has got to be among the absolute dumbest decisions in recent memory. Not one thing about it seems like a good idea.
And I know the show isn’t out yet, we haven’t even seen a trailer or a preview image for it at the time of this writing, so maybe I'm being a little presumptuous here. I mean the guy behind it is a big fan of One Piece and even got the blessing of the original creator. So, who knows, maybe it will actually be good. Maybe I'm just being a negative Nancy. Well, I hate to burst the bubble of those optimistic for this, but let’s just say if history is any indication, this will not end well.
Live action anime adaptations have historically been complete and utter dog-shit. From The Guyver, to Dragon Ball Evolution, to Fist of the North Star, western anime adaptions of anime don’t exactly have the best track record of quality. Hell, even the Astro Boy movie, which was animated, is largely seen as a forgettable and generic kids movie.
And before you bring it up, I'm aware of Alita Battle Angel. That movie was amazing, but let’s be honest folks, it was the exception that justified the rule. Plus, that was a movie that had years of development put into it by creators who were genuine fans of the work. It also wasn’t very well known in the west upon release. In short, it was a passion project by people who wanted to share the original work with a new audience. You cannot make that argument for One Piece.
The One Piece reboot may have a fan working on it, but this is a pure cash grab through and through. The only reason this is getting green lit is the money. I mean, One Piece just outsold Batman for Stan Lee’s sake, it’s one of the biggest media franchises in the world, you tell me why they’re doing this.
But let’s cut through the bullshit here. Putting aside anime adaptations, live action adaptations of any kind of animated property whether they be western, eastern or French is always a bad idea. And it’s for one very simple reason, what works in animation does not work in live action. They simply do not translate well.
This is why the recent Tom and Jerry movie wisely kept the two title characters as cartoons. Because Tom and Jerry’s style of cartoon violence would not look good with realistic looking animals. I mean the movie still sucked, but credit where it’s due I suppose.
But let’s actually talk about One Piece for a beat. This is one of the most cartoony and over the top anime and manga series ever made. I mean the main character is a rubber man who can stretch and bend his body into different shapes and sizes, how the hell do you translate that into live action.
That's not even getting into some of the more out their characters like the Fish People and Tony-Tony Chopper. This is not a live action friendly series folks. Trying to adapt One Piece into live action is like trying to bash a square peg into a round hole without any arms. It is entirely possible they could pull it off, but they’re in for a bigger uphill battle than the Grand Old Duke of York.
To go back to something I mentioned before, the live-action Fist of the North Star movie did attempt to at least be a faithful adaptation of the source material, especially the series ultra-violence. The problem, outside of the bad acting and abysmal script, was that the ultra-violence of the original manga simply did not look good in live action. It simply couldn’t be done.
One Piece may not be as violent as Fist of the North Star, but it is far more over the top. One of the series reoccurring villains is a character named Buggy the Clown for God’s sake, whose powers are the ability to detach pieces of his body and launch them at people. I don’t care how much money you throw at this; you will never make that look convincing in live-action.
And Buggy is one of the tamer villains in the series. There are other characters with far more over the top abilities and powers. Look at this fight scene and tell me this series can be done in live action.
How the hell are they going to translate that? If this were a movie with millions of dollars behind it I could maybe see it working, but this is a 10-episode tv series with a television budget. I know television series have far more ambitious in recent years with budgets that have ballooned out of control, but this is going to need some serious financial backing to pull it off effectively. And let’s be honest, with Netflix’s financial troubles they probably don’t have the money this thing needs anyway.
But here’s the question I have, is it even worth the trouble? I mean if Netflix wanted One Piece on their platform, they could have just bought the rights to the anime. It would have been cheaper, and they would have had hundreds of episodes of content up automatically. Why waste money on an expensive live action adaptation that isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
Look, I'm not saying this going to be the next Dragon Ball Evolution. It's too early to make that call yet and it would have to be pretty bad to be Evolution levels of awfulness, but I'm not exactly confident in its chances either. I mean I would be skeptical of anyone attempting a live action adaptation of One Piece, but Netflix doing it? Yeah, no, this is gonna be a train wreck.
And yet, despite logic and reasoning indicating this show will be a disaster, there are people out there that are actually looking forward to this. I'm not one to call people out for their opinion, but what the fuck is wrong with you people? This thing has more red flags than a Communist rally, and yet people are OPTIMISTIC of its chances. What’s the definition of insanity again?
Alright, in all seriousness, the reason people are looking forward to this isn’t because they think it will be good. Even the most optimistic of fans have to admit this things chances of being decent are worse than my chances of banging a super-model. No, the reason they’re looking forward to it is because of the hope that it will bring in new fans into the series.
And if you do think like that, consider the following. Superheroes are more popular now than they have ever been before. Thanks to the MCU, characters like Iron Man, Captain America and even the frigging Guardians of the Galaxy have now become household names. Nobody knew who Rocket Racoon was, outside of Marvel vs Capcom 3 anyway, and thanks to James Gunn he’s one of the most recognizable comic book characters on the planet.
So why, with all this popularity and mainstream success, are comic books featuring said characters selling like liquid ass cancer. Have you seen the comic book industry in 2021, these companies will be lucky to survive the next decade once the superhero craze ends. It's almost as if there’s not a lot of crossover between the casual film/tv viewer and comic book readers. What precisely makes you think that One Piece, which is part of the far more niche Manga sub-genre of comics, will be any different here.
One Piece isn’t even that well known outside of niche Manga and Anime circles in the west. Anime like Dragon Ball and Pokémon are far more recognizable because those had major mainstream success. I mean you couldn’t escape those at the height of their popularity, there was merchandise for them everywhere back then. One Piece has yet to see any of that kind of success, at least in the west.
In its home country of Japan it’s a cultural phenomenon, but not so much in the west. You mention One Piece to anyone in the west and they probably think you’re talking about the least sexy swimwear imaginable. There isn’t a lot of mainstream success for One Piece in the west, and I doubt a shitty live action version would change that.
Not to mention that One Piece isn’t exactly at the height of its popularity. Oh it’s still going strong, but there has been a noticeable decline in recent years. Understandably so, it’s been going on for a long time and it’s beginning to reach its conclusion, it’s inevitable there would be a drop off in its audience. Netflix aren’t exactly striking while the iron is hot is what I'm saying here, I doubt they will attract many new fans with this.
And can I just say that maybe attracting a new breed of western fans might not be a good thing. We've already seen Twitter puritans go ape-shit over giant Anime booba, can you imagine how many more of them they’ll be if this thing takes off. I don’t think characters like Nico-Robin and Nami will go over well with modern western audiences.
And speaking of which, which black actress will be hired to play Nami exactly. We all know it’s going to happen; red heads do not exist in modern Hollywood after all. And I'm sure changing one of the most iconic females in anime will in no way attract any kind of backlash whatsoever. I mean it worked like a dream for Cowboy Bebop, if by dream you mean crack induced nightmare.
Look Netflix, I know streaming services need a ton of content and you’ll greenlight basically anything at this point, but you seriously need to stop with the reboots. Not just because they’re a bad idea, but because you’re fucking terrible at them. I feel like the fish who beat up the old man in SpongeBob, how many times do we have to teach you this lesson Netflix?
Netflix, I'll tell you the problem in doing what you did, it didn’t require any discipline. You read what other people had written and then you took the next step, you didn’t earn the success they gained so you have no responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to make something as fast you could, and before you know what you had, you marketed it, packaged it, slapped a logo on it and now you’re selling it. You were so preoccupied with whether you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.