If you're in to anime or manga, you'll already be familiar with One Piece, the fantasy-swashbuckling series about Monkey D Luffy & the Straw Hat pirates as they search for the fabled treasure known as the One Piece. The English language live-action adaptation debuted on Netflix a few weeks ago, and it's rather great, one of the few live-action English language anime adaptations that has gone down well with the critics. I've only seen 1 One Piece film and none of the nearly 2000 episodes of the anime, so I can't comment on how it compares to the long running series, but the Netflix adaptation has managed to transfer it to the more grounded live action without sacrificing the more ridiculous aspects of the series. Inaki Godoy is well cast as Luffy, portraying both his idiocy and determination in great measure, and the rest of the supporting cast do a great job. It's already been renewed for a 2nd series, so hopefully it will continue to be a hit. If you've not familiar with the original, it is still worth a watch if you were a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean.

I've been very very steadily watching some of the anime over the last few years (though every fan tells me to read the manga I'm terrible at doing that) and I imagine at the point I'm at, a whole 5% of the way through so far, seeing this would basically just cover the material I've watched already.

 

need to see One Piece Film Red as I've heard so much hype for that from my anime corners but I don't know how familiar one might need to be with the story so far even if it is just a musical film set in the world of One Piece

 

HOWEVER this does look like it'll be a step above the live-action Cowboy Bebop and certainly above the live-action Death Note (or insert basically any other anime live-action attempt). If they can keep it going for a few seasons it could be a good alternative. The casting for the main 5 of the One Piece crew looks good and Buggy looks like a riot in live-action when he could easily be cringey.

We've watched this and I thought it was a bit overrated tbh. I'm not familiar with the anime or prior film, but I felt like this just had something missing - and I think that thing was genuine plot progression. It just felt like each episode/double episode was introducing a new character rather than actually progressing the overall story - but maybe if it was originally lots of stand alone(ish) stories then that's how it is meant to be - kind of a bit like the Series of Unfortunate Events adaptation.

It just felt like each episode/double episode was introducing a new character rather than actually progressing the overall story

That's pretty much what the animated series does. Drops a new main character and a villain, gives a 6 or seven episode arc and backstory for the crew member (whilst keeping Luffy out of the action through some contrived means, until he turns up and demolishes the villain at the end).

 

I'm about 100 episodes in and they've just about paused on introducing a new crew member every few episodes. Although this is apparently only a pause on that. Took about 80 episodes before you feel like the story is going somewhere

First look at season 2, coming 2026:

The trailer also confirms that the show's been renewed for a third season!

Exciting. Having not followed the original series at all I found this an entertaining watch so will be good to see where it goes next ~