Adapting manga and anime to live-action is one of the most foolish endeavors there is. As if animation in general wasn't already visually distinct enough to lose a lot in translation, most manga and anime that are popular enough to get a live-action adaptation simply have too big a scope and too fantastical a visual style for live-action to get anywhere near to replicating it. Of course, there are exceptions, with many a Japanese adaptation ("Rurouni Kenshin," "Kingdom") being surprisingly good.
That being said, there's been no bigger surprise when it comes to a live-action adaptation of a manga than "One Piece." This is a show that simply understands the characters created by Eiichiro Oda and perfectly translates them to live-action.
Still, it's one thing to have human actors portray human characters on stage faithfully, and another thing entirely to capture the world of "One Piece." That's because the show is set in a fantastical world where virtually anything goes. The story follows Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), a boy who dreams of becoming King of the Pirates and finding a legendary treasure known as the One Piece. This is a world filled with Devil Fruits that grant people extraordinarily weird powers — Luffy's, for instance, is having the properties of rubber à la Reed Richards, and we've also met a clown that can chop up his body into pieces at will — but that's just the start.
Where the first season of "One Piece" did a good job of introducing the world and various big players, season 2 — which is reportedly adapting the Loguetown, Reverse Mountain, Whiskey Peak, Little Garden, and Drum Island arcs — has a whole lot more to deal with, from introducing the beloved fan-favorite talking reindeer Tony Tony Chopper to actual giants. Thankfully, the first trailer for season 2 of "One Piece" is out, and if it's anything to go by, the show already passed its biggest challenge yet.
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The Trailer Captures The Tone And Scale Of One Piece
The trailer does two things very well: tone and visuals. Season 2 is a big step up from the first season in terms of visuals and scale (literally). This is the season when we meet giants for the first time, as we realize "One Piece" is not just regular people with powers, but a world full of wonderfully weird creatures of all shapes and sizes, but mostly sizes. That's because Eiichiro Oda continuously introduces extremely tall characters that make absolutely no sense yet are extremely cool to see — really, few manga or anime have as many 20-feet-tall people as "One Piece." Translating that to live-action is not an enviable task, but the trailer for "One Piece" season 2 already shows Brogy, the Red Ogre (Brendan Murray), who looks exactly like his anime counterpart from the prosthetics to the wardrobe and, obviously, the size of him. If the show pulls off the giants, then we're one step closer to the towering achievement that is Whitebeard.
The trailer also nails another important aspect of "One Piece": its tone. The anime and manga have a very particular tone that's serious when it needs to be (read: every flashback and backstory being emotionally devastating) but also as goofy as a Saturday morning cartoon — which makes sense when you consider the strongest power-up in the franchise is inspired by "Tom and Jerry." The trailer shows Smoker (Callum Kerr) who will likely be an overarching villain this season, smoking dual cigars for no reason, but also a giant whale, the aforementioned giants, and even a tease of Mr. 3 (David Dastmalchian) whose power turns everything he touches into wax. And let's not forget the previous tease of Tony Tony Chopper.
Now, the next challenge is whether the show can pull off Bon Clay, the first openly queer character we meet in the anime and manga, and also a fan-favorite.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
