Why Netflix One Piece Works

The One Piece tv show that came out on Netflix on September 2023 was a big hit, so big that everybody already knew that it was going to be renewed for a second season, which, in this world of canceled tv shows out of nowhere, is a rarity.

I am not a big anime or manga fan, but my best friend is, and she loves One Piece. Coincidentally, she came to visit me the day before the show came out, so we took advantage of the fact that we were going to spend a whole week together, and watched it together.

Well, I loved it.

I’ve never been really into comics, and there is something about anime animation that just makes my head hurt, so even though there are loads of stories that I find interesting, if they are available only as manga or anime, I am not going to read or watch them. I just don’t get interested in them and I can’t keep up on the long run.

Which is why I was very excited about One Piece and Avatar: The Airbender getting a live action, and I quickly learned that I was not the only one.

But there is also one very specific reason why this tv show is working well, while there are others that aren’t.

The producers of the show are big fans of the anime themselves, and they collaborated strictly with Eiichirō  Oda, the author of One Piece, to create the script, choose the actors and bring this story to life.

See, the main difference, for example, between this show and the Witcher, is that in this one the produces really cared about the story, and what it meant for the author, and they were not the only ones: the actors are fans themselves and they have never tried to hide their love for the story and the characters too.

When a movie or a show is done with respect and love for the craft and the story in mind, for the artist who created it in the first place, you can adapt it to television from other forms of medias without ruining it or getting a massive fandom angry. There were differences from the original, at least this is what I was told, which is inevitable because some things that work in animation would not work in a live action, and we also need to consider the different timings of production, but these differences were added for a reason and did not hurt the story at all.

Netflix One Piece is an impeccable example of how to do things right, and that the love for the craft and passion behind creative works is what actually brings them to life and turns them into successful masterpieces.

You don’t have to do it all (overworked, burnt out, overwhelmed, doing it all, stress relief)