One Piece: Season One (Television Review)
One Piece
2023 Netflix
Season One
The Nicsperiment Score: 10/10
Monkey D. Luffy wants to find the famous hidden treasure, One Piece, and become The King of the Pirates. There are just two problems: He doesn't have a ship. He doesn't have a crew. Monkey doesn't care. He has supreme confidence in his dream, and that confidence draws out other dreamers--there's Zoro, who wants to be the world's greatest swordsman, Nami, who wants to make a map of the world, Usopp, who wants to become a great warrior of the sea, and Sanji, a chef who wants to find the mythical All Blue, a sea that connects all others together. When this group comes together under the banner of Captain Luffy's Straw Hat Pirates, no one can stand in their way!
I've never read a page of the One Piece manga or watched an episode of the One Piece anime. The posters and trailer for this very show didn't do much to convince me that Netflix's 2023 One Piece live-action adaptation was worth my time. However, a couple of people whose opinions I trust recommended the show, so I gave it a shot. I've watched it alone and now watched it a second time with my family.
One Piece is the best new show I've seen since the pandemic. Every detail and aspect of the show is handled with the utmost love and care. The writing is tightly constructed, with every moment holding value and importance, all of it paid off with perfect timing The performances are pitch perfect. I can't state this enough: they do not make shows like this anymore. The golden age of television nosedived off a cliff somewhere in the late 2010s, as streaming became the prevalent delivery system for "content," and quantity over quality became an unstated but obvious mantra. A few shows from the "before times" like Better Call Saul released their long delayed final seasons during the 2020s, and felt like magnificent, impossible relics from a time when giants walked the Earth. Talent, knowledge, and a network or streaming service that promotes those things have seemed near non-existent. And then this goofy show, One Piece, where people look ridiculous, eat magical fruit to gain superpowers, and use giant snails to make phone calls comes along...
When it comes to the "quantity over quality mantra," Netflix has been offender #1, pumping out endless low-quality productions, without anything approaching care. Netflix's live-action anime adaptation reputation is somehow even worse, as their 2021 take on the legendary anime, Cowboy Bebop, is an unfathomable abomination...hold on a second...okay, I'm back, I just watched 40 or 50 Cowboy Bebop anime clips to cleanse my mind of even the idea of the live-action version. Anyway, and speaking of Cowboy Bebop, this first season of live-action One Piece reminds me of that incredible animated show. You've got a nice little crew of strangers who end up as a makeshift family aboard a ship, but the key difference here is that these fresh-faced, eager young lads and lass aren't all obsessing over the past, but eager and optimistic for the future! When one of them is stuck in a past that won't seem to let them go, the group unite as a crew and deal with the problem together. Like Cowboy Bebop, One Piece is buoyed by an absolutely outstanding soundtrack, this one by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, who provide the series with a brilliant and versatile musical theme that is worked into so many fun variations and tones depending on the circumstances and setting onscreen, it becomes a blast to pick it out as the show hums along. Iñaki Godoy is absolutely phenomenal as Luffy, the kind of optimistic, aspirational lead I can't remember seeing in years. In contrast to Cowboy Bebop, and its introverted, quiet, brooding lead (who I also love), Luffy is an open book, a selfless, self-sacrificial hero who will do anything for his friends, and the shared dreams they hold. The rest of the cast is equally up for the task.
I think, in the awful grimdark farce of current television, I forgot that a great show with a positive outlook can actually make the viewer very feel good and UPLIFTED. For all its flaws, Netflix is perhaps most worst known for delivering second and third seasons that fall off a cliff for the few of its shows that start off strongly. I strongly hope One Piece doesn't do the same, but even if it does, this first season, with its supremely satisfying conclusion, will always serve as a reminder of just how good an adaptation can be when it serves the source material, and is created by people who both love and respect said source material. In a world of Jake Skywalker, Indiana Joke, Rings of Poop, and Dr. What the Hell Happened, where every franchise in the popular world of science fiction and fantasy seems to have been bought and destroyed by multinational conglomerates who couldn't give two shits about them, I'm glad something like One Piece can somehow exist.
When it comes to the "quantity over quality mantra," Netflix has been offender #1, pumping out endless low-quality productions, without anything approaching care. Netflix's live-action anime adaptation reputation is somehow even worse, as their 2021 take on the legendary anime, Cowboy Bebop, is an unfathomable abomination...hold on a second...okay, I'm back, I just watched 40 or 50 Cowboy Bebop anime clips to cleanse my mind of even the idea of the live-action version. Anyway, and speaking of Cowboy Bebop, this first season of live-action One Piece reminds me of that incredible animated show. You've got a nice little crew of strangers who end up as a makeshift family aboard a ship, but the key difference here is that these fresh-faced, eager young lads and lass aren't all obsessing over the past, but eager and optimistic for the future! When one of them is stuck in a past that won't seem to let them go, the group unite as a crew and deal with the problem together. Like Cowboy Bebop, One Piece is buoyed by an absolutely outstanding soundtrack, this one by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, who provide the series with a brilliant and versatile musical theme that is worked into so many fun variations and tones depending on the circumstances and setting onscreen, it becomes a blast to pick it out as the show hums along. Iñaki Godoy is absolutely phenomenal as Luffy, the kind of optimistic, aspirational lead I can't remember seeing in years. In contrast to Cowboy Bebop, and its introverted, quiet, brooding lead (who I also love), Luffy is an open book, a selfless, self-sacrificial hero who will do anything for his friends, and the shared dreams they hold. The rest of the cast is equally up for the task.
I think, in the awful grimdark farce of current television, I forgot that a great show with a positive outlook can actually make the viewer very feel good and UPLIFTED. For all its flaws, Netflix is perhaps most worst known for delivering second and third seasons that fall off a cliff for the few of its shows that start off strongly. I strongly hope One Piece doesn't do the same, but even if it does, this first season, with its supremely satisfying conclusion, will always serve as a reminder of just how good an adaptation can be when it serves the source material, and is created by people who both love and respect said source material. In a world of Jake Skywalker, Indiana Joke, Rings of Poop, and Dr. What the Hell Happened, where every franchise in the popular world of science fiction and fantasy seems to have been bought and destroyed by multinational conglomerates who couldn't give two shits about them, I'm glad something like One Piece can somehow exist.
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