Netflix has announced that it will be bringing the hugely popular Japanese manga series “One Piece” to life as a live-action series, marking both an exciting and concerning development for fans who have been disappointed by previous Hollywood adaptations.
The series follows the swashbuckling adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young pirate with a heart of gold. It has already been adapted into an anime TV series with an impressive 900 episodes, as well as 13 animated movies, video games and a range of merchandise.
Nina Oiki, a gender and politics researcher at Tokyo’s Waseda University and a “One Piece” fan since elementary school, is keen to share her verdict. Having read the manga when it was first published in Shonen Jump magazine in 1997 and watched the accompanying animated show, Oiki is aware that previous American attempts to depict Japanese comics and animated works have been underwhelming at times.
“There are some concerns about what might happen with the Hollywood remake,” Oiki acknowledged, highlighting the disappointments of previous American adaptations of Japanese works, such as the poorly received 2017 Netflix adaptation of “Death Note,” a manga and anime series about a book that can kill people. Moreover, Netflix cancelled “Cowboy Bebop,” its live-action adaptation of the space Western manga and anime series after just one season in December 2021.
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