My wife and I binge-watched the ONE-PIECE LIVE ACTION together. She grew up as a little girl watching it every morning, and I read it in junior high and high school, occasionally jumping into it when in the mood.
Needless to say, it was very good as we both enjoyed it. Not just us, but everyone, my social media is covered with praise for the new live action show.
Much of the commentary talks about how faithful it is to the anime, and it’s true it very much is. People talk about the cinematography and special effects, how well the actors portrayed the characters. All of that is great and all, relevant.
But I want to talk about the differences between the two adaptations of the manga. I don’t have too much to say about it, but I want to highlight some things.
What the show did better:
-It’s faithful to the anime, so if you love this franchise, you won’t be disappointed. But if you’ve never heard of one piece or watched it, you’ll also enjoy it. It doesn’t explain certain things, because the original source material doesn’t. The show goes right into the characters and story, and it lets the world building and exposition happen naturally. The characters all are recognizable, and I also found I liked some of the actors better than the anime versions, they were cartoony enough to be accurate to one piece, but grounded enough that I took the characters more seriously.
-The pacing is great, very good. The anime for as good as it is, often is action packed, but some of it is fluff, there is a lot of extra stuff going on, and while it serves a purpose, the story would be just as good or better if it’s cut out. The live action doesn’t have this issue, the characterization and plot moves faster, and as a result it’s far easier to pay attention without forcing yourself to. You don’t worry about missing much because you’ll naturally pay attention, while in the anime, sometimes I found myself doing something while it’s on in the background, keeping an ear out in case something important happened.
What the anime did better:
-While the anime often has a bunch of interesting but unimportant stuff happen while the main plot moves along slowly, when something did happen, it happened with a bang. For all the time filled up with random gags and weird side quests, it constantly builds up consistency with the characters until the story reaches a big climax, as well as character arcs. The music, the voice acting, the art, the animation all creates a number of scenes and moments that are much more memorable than the Live action show. The live action version does decent copies of core moments in the anime, and they are still good, but on rewatching it in the anime is always better. The words of speeches in these moments are better, the movement. All of it.
The big moments are just better done, leave a bigger impact.
-Action scenes in the anime are by far much better. That isn’t to say the action in the live-action version is bad, they choreography is good and all that, apparently the budget for this show was huge, they had alot of funding.
However, most of the important battles in the anime are very strategic. A small change of tactics or approach by the characters changed the battles greatly back and forth. The way Luffy and Zoro defeat characters often reveals a great deal about their psychology and intelligence.
Meanwhile, in the live action show, they mostly just fight until someone loses. I won’t spoil it, but the final fight of the first season of the live action show has Luffy defeat the villain in a way that’s far less satisfactory than what he did in the manga and anime, and far more in character.
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