One Piece mangaka Eiichiro Oda played a major role in making the Netflix live-action series popular among the masses. Acting as the creative consultant for the show, Oda stressed the importance of certain details and gave valuable feedback in order to make the Straw Hat crew come to life. He undoubtedly had an incredible visual presence.
However, not every step or decision was smooth sailing. Fitting almost the first 50 episodes of the anime into eight episodes of 50 minutes each required brainstorming. They also needed to stick to the source material to develop certain themes and impress the hardcore manga fans. As such, certain fight scenes such as Zoro versus Cabaji and Luffy versus Don Krieg were either cut or shortened.
Eiichiro Oda wasn’t satisfied with some scenes in the One Piece live-action
Instead of the action sequences, viewers got backstories. It was a necessary part of the whole series as revealed by Eiichiro Oda during a recent interview with Games Radar. Backstories help viewers relate to the characters and gain a wider perspective of each of their motives: Luffy desires to capture the One Piece treasure, Sanji wants to find the All Blue due to a promise he made to Zeff, Nami wants to draw a map of the whole world in honor of her adoptive mother, and so on.
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Oda didn’t want to compromise on any backstory. It came to a point when he thought of stopping the shooting, working on the story to incorporate more scenes, and then resuming. This would have massively delayed the release date of the series. He told GamesRadar:
“There was a time when I really thought we had to postpone this until next year or something because we were getting down to the wire. May or June we were still discussing various details, and I was giving notes on a lot of different scenes, a lot of very detailed things. And I wasn’t sure if it was going to be possible.”
Luckily, the fans didn’t have to wait for 2024. One Piece live-action was a resounding success after its release on August 31, 2023, now boasting an Audience Score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Eiichiro Oda was “blunt” in his notes during the One Piece live-action shooting
One Piece showrunner Steven Maeda called Eiichiro Oda “opinionated” and “very challenging” to work with. The mangaka himself confirmed the fact that he wasn’t always satisfied with the action and scripted changes that were carried out as Sanji did for Nami.
“Whether it’s in the outline form, whether it’s the scripts, whether it’s the editing, they allow me to essentially say, ‘This is good enough to go out there.’ And if I wasn’t satisfied, this wouldn’t see the light of day. And there were times when I would be very, very blunt with my notes about things that I wasn’t happy with, and they responded to all of those.”
Writers and producers learned the One Piece story from Oda and implemented it in the live-action series. It is now set for a Season 2 which is expected to be released at the end of next year.
Eeichiro Oda revealed that Chopper will be one of the new characters introduced in the next season. Also, we got a peek at Marine Vice Admiral Smoker in a post-credits scene from Season 1. He will debut once the Straw Hat Pirates reach Loguetown, if Netflix decides to continue sticking to the source material.
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Source: GamesRadar
