The enthusiastic Monkey D. Luffy has a dream: to become the Pirate King. Accompanied by a strange crew, he will sail the seas in search of a legendary treasure, the One Piece. With his inseparable straw hat, his rubber body and his companions, he will face various dangers, from hideous monsters to other pirates with similar ambitions or the Marines trying to enforce the law. The fantasy and adventure universe of One Piece dates back to 1997, when the first edition of the work by Japanese Eiichiro Oda was published. Today, this adventure with super-powered pirates already includes 105 volumes, of which more than 516 million copies have been sold in 61 countries. One Piece is the best-selling manga in history. An anime with more than 1,000 episodes, 15 animated films and several video games are further evidence of its enormous popularity. Now the One Piece universe has broken a new barrier with the premiere of its live-action series adaptation on Netflix.
It was not an easy task to get here. As Eiichiro Oda himself explained, the conception of this adaptation, made in collaboration with Shueisha and produced by Tomorrow Studios and Netflix, began seven years ago. The eight episodes of the first season were filmed in South Africa for six months and when filming was completed, Oda asked to reshoot numerous scenes because he felt they did not live up to expectations. Not everything was worthy of depicting the universe to which the author devoted so many years. Of course, the author, who is also an executive producer of the series, warns followers of his stories that due to the real plot, many elements had to be adapted and adjusted. What doesn’t change, at his express request, are the backstories of the members of the Straw Hats – these stories about their origins are very present in this first season – nor are the powers and abilities that the demonic fruit grants to anyone who uses it It eats, from having a body as elastic as rubber to the ability to cut it into dozens of pieces and reassemble it at will.
Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, aboard the ship “Going Merry” from “One Piece.” COURTESY OF NETFLIX
One Piece from Netflix is not only aimed at manga and anime fans. He wants to conquer even those who did not know of his existence. The actors who play the crew of the ship “Going Merry” spoke about this, a versatile quintet consisting of the Mexican Iñaki Godoy (Luffy), the Japanese Mackenyu (Zoro), the Jamaican Jacob Romero (Usopp) and the American Emily Rudd (Nami ). and the Spanish-British Taz Skylar (Sanji). The interview took place in São Paulo in mid-June, weeks before the actors’ strike resulted in series and films starring their protagonists not being advertised.
“It’s a calming, feel-good series,” said Emily Rudd. “It’s impossible to look at it and not feel like you can do anything that comes to mind. “It’s a series about building a family where we all encourage each other to pursue our dreams and be the best we can be,” the actress continues. “There aren’t many things on television that make you so ambitious. That’s what we hope to convey to people,” adds Taz Skylar, a Tenerife-born actor. “But nothing we do can even come close to the perfection of the One Piece manga and anime. “We’re just bringing a new flavor, a new color, and we hope to make One Piece accessible to people who have never heard of One Piece,” adds Jacob Romero.
Nothing we do can even come close to the perfection of the One Piece manga and anime. We just bring a new taste
Jacob Romero
For Iñaki Godoy, the optimistic and courageous Monkey D. Luffy, the biggest challenge in portraying his character was finding the balance between Luffy’s energy and the realism demanded by the series. “In Mexican culture, we like to party and take care of our family. “That influenced my growth and also my role,” remembers the 20-year-old actor. For Jacob Romero, it was a great challenge to take on characters so ingrained in the imagination of millions of people. “They have a long history behind them and it would be easy to try to recreate what we have in mind. But I think we also had to add who we are to them.”
Iñaki Godoy, in a picture from the first season of “One Piece”. CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
Taz Skylar sheds light on physical work. “It was a physically painful process to get my body to behave the way I needed it to physically perform everything my character needed to do. And we had to maintain this painful process for 10 or 12 hours a day for almost a year,” says the actor, turning serious amid the jocular atmosphere that dominated the interview. At Mackenyu, the training was also fundamental. His character, Zoro, is a skilled swordsman who can wield up to three swords at once. “I was used to handling up to two swords,” admits the actor, who already had training in martial arts. “But the third one… We had to do a lot of training with specialists, it was fun and challenging at the same time.” The series’ stunt coordinator and a master swordsman helped him choreograph his moves in the fight sequences.
Mackenyu plays the swordsman Zoro in “One Piece”.CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
In addition to the essential visual and digital effects, the series’ top executives, Matt Owens and Steven Maeda, wanted the world of One Piece to be as tangible and real as possible, which is why they set out to create locations and locations reproduce spaces that appear in the comics. As for the ships, many of the ships built for the pirate series Black Sails, which ended in 2017, were reused (much of the team that worked on that Starz production is now involved in One Piece). But two ships were built from scratch: the ship Going Merry, the Straw Hats’ first ship, and the Baratie, the ship with a fish-head figurehead whose hull is inspired by a Spanish galleon. The actors highlight these two locations and the detail and thoroughness of their recreation. “We had incredible locations that helped create a deeply magical world that was very faithful to the original but at the same time very fresh and real,” says Emily Rudd. “There were even things that the camera would never show but that we saw. Things behind doors, labels on cans…things you would never see but were there,” adds Taz Skylar.
In Mexican culture, we like to party and take care of our family. That influenced my life as an adult and also my role in the series.
Inaki Godoy
On the day this interview took place, the actors had already had their first major public bath in front of fans with their appearance at Tudum, the event organized by Netflix in São Paulo in June, during which the name of the series and the characters were sung by thousands of people. Are you prepared for the pros and cons of the fan phenomenon? “Actually, I don’t know if we need to think about it. “I can’t wait for people to see the series, especially people who aren’t already One Piece fans,” said Emily Rudd. And Jacob Romero added: “Besides, we know we have each other.” Just like the Straw Hat Pirates.
Jacob Romero, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd, Iñaki Godoy and Taz Skylar, the Straw Hats from “One Piece”.CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
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