Netflix just announced on Monday that its live-action adaption of One Piece, one of the most successful manga series in history, is coming to the streamer in 2023. A peek at the first two character posters has sent fans into excited anticipation and debate over the upcoming release.
The manga…
One Piece is a massively successful manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. It debuted in Shueisha’s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump in July 1997. As of November 2022, it has totaled 104 tankōbon volumes. Chapter 1072 was just released on Monday, January 23, 2023.
In 2015 and 2022, One Piece set the Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author”. As of August 2022, One Piece had over 516.6 million copies in circulation in 61 countries and regions worldwide, making it the best-selling manga series in history.
The story starts with the boy Monkey D. Luffy’s adventure with an impossible pirate crew in quest of the deceased King of the Pirates Gol D. Roger’s ultimate treasure -the “One Piece”. Sailing through the dangerous seas of the Grand Line, Luffy navigates the unknown and aspires to be the next King of the Pirates.
The fan reaction…
Fans are all excited from a first peek at the Strawhats poster.
And concerned with a few interesting issues, like how Luffy’s rubber elasticity will be animated, whether the objectification of the female body will be carried into the live-action, or, most importantly, if the adaption would do justice to the original or, instead, spoil it.
What to expect…
The producer and cast are not available for any comment at this moment, given that the exact release date has not been announced, according to Netflix. But the production seems to have doubled down on the feel of authenticity.
Extremely accurate concept art and ultimate execution of locations, including the Miss Love Duck, Going Merry, and absolutely massive Baratie ships, have appeared in earlier Netflix report.
Some believe that the producer is making a real effort to reproduce the original story since they have taken lengths to build the ships from scratch, despite that Luffy wearing different shoes than his signature flip-flop sandals in the poster.
Others have drawn confidence in the casting. The majority of the cast are One Piece fans themselves. If they were not before, they did become after the casting, like Inaki Godoy, who plays the part of Luffy.
And a lot of the fans are very satisfied with how buff the Sanji cast looks.
Inaki Godoy’s latest tweet discloses that the team has moved from South Africa to the Caribbean for a three-month secret shooting. In other words, fans have at least more than three months to wait before the final release.
Many have hoped for a summer release since Netflix announced “setting sail in 2023”. But no one knows for sure when we could finally embark on the adventure on the Grand Line with a real-life crew. Until then, the wait will be bitter and sweet.
