One Piece is known for its expansive world filled with pirates, fishermen, strange aquatic animals called Sea Kings, and so on. Recreating them in the Netflix live-action series would’ve required a massive budget. This is the reason why most shots were awfully focused on ships like the Going Merry rather than the oceanic atmosphere.
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece consists of multiple arcs, with each taking place in a different country or island. The journey to these places required at least five to ten episodes. Given that the Netflix series operated on a fixed budget of $18 million per episode and had to encompass the first 90 episodes in a single season, they had to be meticulous in their use of Visual Effects.
Steven Maeda Disclosed That The Camera Focused More On Ships Due To The Cost of The Visual Effects
One Piece Live-Action utilized VFX in Monkey D. Luffy’s battle scenes, depicting the Chop Chop Devil Fruit abilities of Buggy The Clown, as well as recreating the treacherous waters of the East Blue before the Straw Hat Crew set sail for the Grand Line. Victor Scalise served as VFX supervisor while Scott Ramsey acted as the VFX producer.
Screenwriter Steven Maeda revealed that one of the biggest concerns about the series was featuring more sky and the ocean-atmosphere. The producers had to focus “25%” of the time on the ocean while the rest was towards ships. As disclosed by Maeda to The Wrap:
“Our VFX producer and supervisor were on set every single day telling us stuff like, ‘You can’t look this way. You’re going to be seeing the ocean in every single shot, and the cost of that ocean replacement for the tank is going to be too onerous.’ So we can look that way 25% of the time, but the rest has to be looking back towards ships and other surfaces that we won’t have to extend with VFX.”
Alvida and Buggy’s ships were featured at the beginning of the series. While Alvida’s ship had to be recreated due to a tremendous fight scene against Luffy, Buggy’s ‘Big Top’ vessel rarely got any screen time. The action took place primarily in the circus that his crew had created for the ‘forced merriment’ of the Orange Town natives.
The absence of Big Top meant more focus and resources towards the Going Merry. Introduced in the middle of the series, the vessel that carried the Straw Hat Crew towards the Grand Line became the highlight. Most of the action and interaction took place inside the deck.
One Piece Screenwriter Was Left Heartbroken Due To A Certain Moment During The Production
Apart from VFX, another major drain on budget and resources is the set creation. One Piece Season 1 captured the events in the Baratie – a seafood restaurant situated close to the entrance of the Grand Line. It was depicted as a lavish restaurant that served pirates from all over the world despite the bounties on their heads.
Baratie is a memorable part of One Piece anime and live-action due to the luxurious atmosphere that it created in the middle of the ocean. Unfortunately, the wonderful set had to be destroyed after a couple of episodes. Steven Maeda was upset that the place they adapted from the manga after focusing on intricate details and spacious interiors had to be torn down.
“It really is insanity as a television series in a lot of ways because you could theoretically spend an entire season or an entire series at Baratie, for example. It was such a big, wonderful set. Only using it for two episodes and a couple of scenes and then having to tear it down was a heartbreaker, for sure.”
Maeda also revealed that they had planned to incorporate the Loguetown arc in Season 1. However, budgetary restrictions caused the series to be reduced to 8 episodes instead of the planned 10.
