#'so zoro is dumber than animals' luffy laughs

[franeridan]

i love the way luffy is so consistent and insistent in making fun of zoro for having no sense of direction that it slowly brainwashed everyone into forgetting he's just as bad himself

[of-cloves-blog]

One Piece Live Action

All of the live actions Hollywood has done has been an ass of a disaster. Just getting that out there.

I personally haven’t watched DBZ or the recent Ghost in the Shell but I’ve been in the midst of the generally dissatisfaction, to say the least, about both. And we all know of the unspeakable Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) live action.

But with One Piece(OP), that’s a whole monolith of a story that ATLA and Attack on Titan and others haven’t been before with almost a thousand chapters and episodes ongoing.

I think the main problem live action movies and their writers and directors have is that they can’t get the idea of the source being from an ANIME. It just sticks in their head and doesn’t allow them to treat this as a movie as it should be. An anime, a tv series, a book, and a movie are all different mediums and have completely different rules.

The thing I’m afraid about is that the live action will try to get the whole crew together in one movie and the fans know how long it took to get to Brook. I’m thinking that the best way to approach this is by following the animated movies’ lead, such as Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island and Dead End Adventure, and create an original narrative and plop it into the flow of OP’s storyline, kind of like what they do for filler.

Then comes the main purpose of the live action even existing, which is to appeal to an audience that typically wouldn’t watch anime and haven’t even heard of OP. So if they do as I said and make an original narrative like which was made for only the fans in mind, it might alienate the other half of the population.

Which comes in the whole situation of treating this like a movie instead of an anime. Get your head out of that anime is weird belief that everyone still has, writers and directors. You don’t need to spoon feed us everything by stating it directly and I think the audience who weren’t fans originally would agree even if they don’t have previous knowledge.

Let’s take Avatar again. The writers and director had a hard time with that one as they felt the need to add narration and world building and backstory within the characters’ dialogue and thus sucking any characterization from them and making it seem like the movie was just regurgitating information at you. Narration and Dialogue can be utilized to do worldbuilding, but it needs to be done right and not overused or repetitive. As I’m not an expert I can’t dive into this knowledgeably but I think this is the general consensus, unless they would do something smart and innovative with those things, but I digress. Even taking the anime in consideration, OP doesn’t use its narrator often, he mostly just shows up to recap on the fights or show where Zoro is lost at the moment. There needs to be a balance for both the fans and the ones who don’t know what they’re getting into. So worldbuilding is important, backstory is important, but what I believe should be the main focus is selling the characters and the spirit of One Piece.

This doesn’t mean doing as Percy Jackson the movies did by changing things unnecessarily, such as the character’s ages and the entire plot and the wit and spirit Rick Riordan put into the books. I think the Harry Potter franchise did the best in this case as they sold the spirit of the books, stuck to the plot, but was good at knowing when to trim some details off to fit the movie format.

So what I’m trying to say is that you’re translating something from a different medium to another, so it should be different from the main material. Of course, OP is going to be better as a manga because it works best as a manga. It has basically no restrictions on when it should stop and this way the writer, Oda Eiichiro, can more freely get people involved in the characters and the backstory. But there is a restriction on movies, and clearly the formula of shoving everything into a medium that has different rules isn’t working. The movies aren’t something the populus should expect to see an entire book in or an entire anime series in.

Another example is Howl’s Moving Castle, which is a stretch as it was inspired by the book and not based. But in my personal experience, I checked out the book because it did beautifully in an ANIMATED format but was completely different from the book.

So, if ATLA had been given and promised multiple movies, then they should’ve stuck to the plot. If possible stick to the plot. But it wasn’t because they weren’t promised another movie. And I believe, trying to fit the entirety of season one into one movie wasn’t the right choice for a solo movie. They should’ve cut it down. They should’ve stopped after the Winter Solstice, maybe cutting out Avatar Kyoshi and Omashu, though those are really important parts in themselves. The success of a movie done right, even though it didn’t have everything could’ve brought on the chance of another and maybe even more live action movies.

If OP is given more movies then they should stick to the plot. But the big difference between OP and ATLA is their versatility. OP as an anime series is more malleable and, in my opinion, has written the better filler arcs of anime. ATLA had a strict almost book like structure that builds off of each episode. So OP can have the possibility of straying off the original plot more than ATLA had.

To sum up, sell the spirit and character, never change things unnecessarily like Percy Jackson, don’t stick to the plot with a giant of a story like One Piece, and treat this like what it is: an action and adventure movie.

I know for a fact, it’s almost a given, that the movie will begin with Gol D. Roger’s execution and his last words about the one piece that prompted the Pirate Era. (and then Cinema Sins will say ‘roll credits’). Then it can go multiple ways. A montage of Luffy meeting his crew, young seventeen Luffy about to leave with his little boat, thinking back to Shanks and his hat, or just the flashback to Shanks putting the straw hat on luffy, and my personal favorite is just cutting to Luffy’s grin and the crew fighting on the deck of the Sunny where they can show their relationship to each other while in combat and their role in the crew. Or maybe a mishmash of all of them.

My hopes are that they will make Chopper cute and– the elephant in the room–not whitewash the Straw Hat crew. Personally, Usopp and Brook should be played by black actors, Nami could be latina, Zoro should be asian, Robin could be filipino or Indian but definitely someone dark skinned, Sanji and Franky can be white but Sanji needs to be or must resemble a french origin. Luffy can be anything to be honest as long as he acts like the character.

And the thing is, One Piece didn’t catch on in America as well as Naruto did back in the day, because of the horrible 4kid’s adaption that tried to make the show kid friendly which One Piece really isn’t (and that whole issue with making things kid friendly or maybe even dumber for kid’s to understand is also something that gets on my nerves). It ruined the chance of the show to be something even more amazing than it already is. The same thing happened with the live action of ATLA which made people disinclined to check out the animated show and affected the success of Korra.

I’m very passionate about One Piece, it’s dear to my heart and I really hope the live action isn’t a complete flop. I don’t remember OP for the fights, honestly, (naruto fights are more well animated and interesting) and I don’t like OP for them either, I like the story, and the characters. Luffy and the others say some profound things that have resonated in me and motivate me to this day. OP makes me laugh and cry and feel a connection to the characters. Not saying it doesn’t have faults, but I can see why it made the top and has stayed the top in shonen manga.

This is just my messy attempt at making a suggestion for the infamous anime live action. Oh yeah, and there’s the whole deal with how weird and wacky one piece can be, especially for western audiences. Well, if they can handle a movie about humanized emojis I think they can handle a rubber man and a talking reindeer.

Really hoping live action FMA is good though.

Thank you to nchanstories who talked this through with me and who I can’t tag at the moment because theyre getting some rare hours of sleep