Live Action One Piece!?

This is actually an interesting approach if they so decide to do. I kid. Don't do it. Please don't.

One Piece does not translate to live action.

I'm rather surprised that veteran fans disagree with my statement. It's almost as if they like to watch the live action Attack on Titan movies. Yeah, because someone over-acting their craziness and flying with bad special effects is definitely not cringe worthy.

Here me out. You guys know I love One Piece. I'm a diehard fan of the series. It all makes less sense when you discover that Eiichiro Oda-sensei had given his blessings to the studio! Or does it?

Oda-sensei stated that American studios have a bigger budget and that was one of the main reasons he agreed to the deal. Selling such rights to a Japanese studio wouldn't (in all honesty) amount to anything more than a cringe-fest. Besides that, American studios tend to lean a little towards a more grounded scale of things and, take it as you will, is either good or bad.

I trust Oda-sensei. The only reasoning I can think of agreeing to such a deal is that the planned adaptation will feature the crew members' respective backstories, or an original story featuring either original characters entirely, only some of the main characters or just side characters. If they do the backstories, it'll be akin to mining gold. They can fail the mining operation but if done successfully, would be perfect.

Think about it, whitewashing does not apply to One Piece. I've seen SO many people say that! Do they not realise that Monkey D. Luffy or Cutty Flam ain't exactly Japanese names? One Piece is also a story that takes places throughout the entire world; if anything, it's a great manga to adapt! This is why I've also never attacked Cowboy Bebop's adaptation news. It's not a fully Japanese cast! It actually works well.

One Piece has some FANTASTIC backstories to adapt. How about the infamous straw hat?

Now that that is out of the way, we get to my reasoning as to why it won't work UNLESS done as stated above.  I'm basing this entire thing on the fact that they're going to be rather faithful to the original.

Death can happen in an instant and at anytime through any means. This will be a big slap in the face to today's youth.

One Piece is a silly action-packed slapstick comedy manga with lots of emotional screaming and willpower combat. Let me list it out for you:

1) Silliness: One Piece is kinda dorky, even in the art style (I love it but let's be a little frank here). Are they going to use CGI/cutouts on Franky? And yes, let's get a 7" actor but CGI a skeleton on him, because that makes a lot of sense.

So, back to my argument above, they can either play their backstory to avoid unnecessarily ugly CGI or kick them out altogether.

I'd cry watching this. I think mothers would cry too.

2) Action-packed: One Piece has LOADS of fighting. Loads of drawn out fighting. Loads of Avengers-level fighting. They plan for this to be a TV-adaptation. I ask you, how are they going to play out Luffy's stretchiness without it looking fake as hell? How about Chopper? Is he just going to be CGI all the damn time? Is Robin going to creep me the hell out!?

Back to the argument, they either go with their stories before their abilities or remove them from the story.

Not everyone is how they seem. This is definitely what we need to see considering how fast people are judged nowadays.

3) Slapstick comedy: Humour that works in one medium doesn't work for everything. You ever seen someone pull a deadpan Narukami in real life? I've tried it. It's awkward. Sometimes people don't get that it's supposed to be funny or sometimes they just think I'm daft. One Piece has a lot of humour which involves a lack of tact, impulsive aggression and lots of silly faced screaming.

Referring to the top, by going with the backstories, they can re-focus the theme onto something more engaging and realistic. Alternatively, they can just go with someone else's story to preserve the slapstick humour while introducing something more acceptable in a live action scenario.

This'll teach a lot of people a little something about value.

4) Emotional screaming: Really? You'd wanna hear Captain America scream consistently as he fights back against impossibly strong opponents? People can scream. But scream once. And make the scream sensible. Luffy screams every time he uses an ability! He screams when he cries!

As stated above, their backstories are relatively grounded and therefore, putting young actors in the frontlines actually work in favour of both the source material and a sneaky scream if they so decide to add it. Or just go with a cast and story that won't require screaming. One Piece has an immense world with tons of content to sift through.

Passion through sacrifice. I think fathers would cry here.

5) Willpower combat: "I will protect my friends! I will be the Pirate King! No matter what, I can't FALL HEREEEEEEE!"

Do I really even need to explain how this won't work? Correction, it will work only once. After that, it becomes a cliched trope. I admit, I love this trope but again, live action can't handle it unless you're REALLY good at crafting your script.

Why not just target xenophobia?

That's just a few reasons as to why a full-on Straw Hat Crew adventure won't work. However, the reasonings themselves should prove that other approaches to the adaptation can work very well. Here's hoping!

And now, allow me to finish the gallery below!

Try as you might, you can't go against everything. But you can certainly rebuild and get back up.

Promises must be kept.