younglegends | [op] one piece live action (Reply)

hi guys most annoying op liker ever has logged on

my sister and i stayed up til 4 am to watch the first half of this when it dropped and then finished the rest the next day and it kind of killed me? i can't stay up late anymore you guys it's so over for me. <- guy writing this post at 1am 😐

ok. FIRST. stuff i liked 😃

my FAVOURITE thing about this live action by far was the character introduction bounty posters!! the way each pirate would interact with their own poster was sooo fun hehe and made me so excited when new characters showed up
in that vein they really got the overall goofy vibes of op. it's actually kinda hard imo to maintain that balance of not taking it so seriously while actually being So serious about it so good for them! No idea how the vibes felt to non-op fans actually but i enjoyed it a lot, they did a great job with the atmosphere and the general feeling of the world: the pirate era, the wacky gimmicks of different characters, the sense of freedom to be anyone or anything, and yet at the same time the darker parts of brutal violence and lawlessness, the not so free aspects of oppression and exploitation and powerlessness, people DYING FOR REAL like i cheered ep 1 when alvida bashed that guy's head in lmfao.
my favourite eps were the first two... i was grinning so bad all through the first episode like OMG the barrel... omg koby... omg alvida... omg helmeppo etc. had so much fun with luffy's first meeting with zoro, with nami, spotting all the cameos, and honestly i'm probably not appreciating how well done the fight scenes were because i'm not someone who cares about those things but yeah luffy's stretchiness actually looked great! though i was fearing for zoro's actor's teeth every time he pulled out wado lmfaooo
very happy with the performances of the extended pirate cast. I remember when shanks showed up and i was like oh i don't like this actor and then by the end of the show i was like damn so i really did like the shanks actor after all lol... shanks, mihawk, buggy, alvida, kuro, everyone was so fun and committed 100% to their characters and got me so excited for potential future seasons and seeing everyone to come like CROCODILE?! baroque works? ahhh
strawhat casting (for the most part)--they were so cute and had great chemistry!! loved most of the crew interactions of course. nami's actress was definitely strongest overall for which i am so thankful lol. of what i consider to be every strawhat's essential Moment in east blue saga, emily rudd nailed hers the best. repeating arlong's name with such hate and helplessness -> tattoo stabbing -> what are you doing here? i told you to get out. you don't know anything about what's happening here. so leave. -> luffy... help me. IT WAS SOOOOOOOOO PERFECT TT
certain pacing rearrangements for television: op pacing is the worst thing ever so obviously anything would be an improvement. appreciated the natural build-up toward future enemies throughout the entire season like kuro and ofc arlong. I won't lie i was like What The Hell when nami didn't leave when she was supposed to but i get for pacing reasons they needed her to have that one big betrayal bc they had arlong come to the baratie instead of don krieg, which actually worked out fine in the end. there were certain other things about this that weren't so fine but we'll get to those lol
definitely appreciate that a live action is not going to do the stupid shit op does about women Lol so nice to see nami actually doing shit in fight scenes <3 kaya also got more fleshed out and had more agency which is what i'd expect.
THE NAMI ZORO DRINKING GAME SCENE. Yes i screamed. (my sister voice: What is this?? Fanfiction??) LOVED it, loved that zoro totally failed to clock nami (fell for city slicker stereotypical surface appearances without considering that she would have something genuine she wants to protect, underestimating her in a way that would come back to bite him), loved that he TRIED to clock her, loved that nami totally failed to clock zoro (fell for stoic detached stereotypical surface appearances without considering that he would have the capacity for the kind of intense emotion and passion that fuels his friendships, underestimating him in a way that would come back to bite her... Well in the anime/manga canon at least), loved that they both fell for each other's pretenses, loved that they both assumed the other was alone when the truth was that they were both just intensely loyal, loved that they didn't lie, loved them sharing their language of betting and alcohol... ok i'll shut up now

ok now onto the stuff i didn't like.

in any adaptation the issue of which scenes are left out is always going to be contentious. nobody likes pedants and an adaptation is by definition different because if you wanted the original just go read/watch the original etc. That said i am most annoying op liker ever and everything is that serious to me so i'm about to get into all that. :D
obviously scenes are left out due to medium constraints, time pacing budget logistics. but there's a difference between an important scene that's cut because you understand its significance but you can also convey it in a different way/scene vs an important scene that gets cut/changed because its significance was clearly not understood lol OK I'M SORRYYYY. No I'm not
gonna attempt to organize this...

arlong park

i was ultimately OK with the changed timing and circumstances of nami's departure because they needed arlong to be set up sooner as the villain, and having her betrayal play out in front of everyone instead of fleeing without explanation and dragging out the chase makes sense. of course there are consequences to this changed pacing. for me the three important ones are:

nami's character is inevitably softened because her attachment to the crew is made much more explicit and her betrayal is much more obviously false. i'm ok with this because they simply don't have the time for drawn-out misunderstandings and reveals. Honestly nami's clear attachment to the crew actually surprised me--it felt like she very clearly weighed them up and valued them more than wanting to save the village which ??? i kept being like NAMI WHY ARENT U GONE YET... NAMI WHY ARENT U STEALING THINGS... Nami ur motivations. But again this was ok for me because i understood what they were trying to do and they did it well for the most part, also I won't complain about more nami crew interactions even if it does change her character, like i'm ok with it for an adaptation.
cut the scene of nami fake-stabbing usopp. I get it there was simply no time for all that. i just think it's unfortunate that in general usopp, and usopp's relationship with the others, felt underdeveloped to me, and taking this out kind of exacerbated that problem. because usopp was the one who trusted nami the least after her betrayal so it was kind of a missed opportunity
cut the scene of zoro letting himself fall into the water to call her bluff. Lol guys i'm sorry but if you know me at all you know that's like my #1 scene in all of op (ok, #2. #1 is luffy, help me.) so i was always going to make a big deal about this obviously. But it's crazy to me that they cut this because i swear they were going above and beyond in developing nami and zoro's relationship?! like zoro was fucking ASKING ABOUT HER and trying to get to know her?? and she STAYED for zoro's duel against mihawk and cared about him almost dying and yelled at luffy for it and READ STORIES TO HIM WHILE HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS, LOL????????? I was like omg the payoff is gonna be so huge!! Guys there was no payoff. There. Was. No. Payoff. And i'm actually like wtf but you set it up so perfectly........... what's going on... *wastes away and perishes*

the villagers not knowing the truth... kind of don't get this one. In general the villagers in these arcs are getting shafted so bad lmao and like ok fine it's just time and pacing and budget, they're just the villagers after all. but the consequence is that the sense of closeness between nami and her village is simply not there. That she would do all this for the sake of her village in the first place, that the villagers would hate themselves for having to rely on the suffering of a child, that she thinks she's protecting them, that they know she thinks this and they want to protect that belief in turn, that when they see her finally fight for herself they join her in happiness even if it means their own deaths... all of it is lost in the translation and, well, that's one thing to be lost, sure, fine. BUT NOJIKO'S ENTIRE CHARACTER AND RELATIONSHIP WITH NAMI????? That was straight-up bad i'm sorry. And if they were gonna have nojiko not know and hate nami the whole time why would they not show nojiko's reaction to nami joining the arlong pirates 😭 Bleargh. whatever
argh i'm not done yet... i have to talk about luffy. ("you literally don't have to" "no, i'm gonna.") I have to talk about luffy destroying the map room. And to do that i have to talk about luffy trying to find out nami's backstory. And to do that i have to talk about the larger problem which is that they decided to make luffy more... what's the word. Palatable? Generic? Heroic? so instead of luffy not caring to find out what's going on and nami's reasons for betraying them and what's happening to the village if nami doesn't decide to tell him herself, luffy actively asks about it like anyone would, and gets enraged by it like anyone would, and wants to defeat arlong like anyone would. instead of luffy destroying the map room because it was nami's cage for years and years, luffy destroys the map room because it's the strategic thing to do that will directly ruin what arlong has built. (luffy destroying nami's map room is on the levels of THE HANDMAIDEN LIBRARY DESTROYING SCENE to me i am so serious rn!!!)
yes, luffy would always destroy whatever kept people from being free, but his ways of doing it are so much more unique than the way anyone else would do it simply because it's the right thing to do. Freeing everyone was almost incidental to freeing those he cared about, but was in fact also inextricably tied to it as a natural consequence, a natural requirement: ending arlong's reign because it was what kept nami from being free, breaking out the others from marineford in his pursuit to free ace, declaring war on the world government so robin wouldn't hold back anymore and could finally say she wants to live. You couldn't free one person you loved without freeing the world.
So like... that they would change his very clear motivation for destroying the map room... you do not understand <3
also i was rereading my own oppost about arlong park and it's so hilarious that every single one of my bullet points for that arc was left out of this adaptation... They said fuck me in particular

baratie

sanji... you were soooooo close. You were so close to being fine. But what the hell was that farewell scene!! the farewell scene at baratie is what i consider to be sanji's essential Moment in east blue saga and they clearly did not think the same 😭 honestly they didn't emphasize enough that sanji's sense of indebtedness to zeff was what kept him from pursuing his dream. The fact that he wasn't even going to say goodbye... ???
zoro mihawk duel. I already talked about the changes wrt nami so let's talk about zoro. obviously zoro's defeat and vow is his east blue essential Moment, and i'm sorry to zoro's actor but he really felt the weakest to me because he played zoro as stoic when he needed to emote... or maybe he was trying really hard to emote and it just didn't come thru idk.
in general they really made zoro talk way too much. mfw they had him make a SECOND, SEPARATE VOW to luffy after waking up from his coma like?? why? the first one didn't mean anything or what? on that note what was wrong with the succinctness of "YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, PIRATE KING?" zoro as a character is incredibly easy to understand: he means everything he says, he says everything he's thinking, and everything he feels is written clear on his face. So the fact that they thought people would not understand zoro so they had to have him say shit that he would not say... maybe that's a u problem then lol
if nami was going to be here for the zoro mihawk duel, i like that she got upset with luffy for letting it happen, because that's a very nami thing to do, esp early on. the same way nami didn't understand why luffy and zoro didn't fight back against bellamy at jaya. But i don't like that they made luffy confused about it like damn should i not have let zoro duel mihawk... because that's very not luffy LOL
btw i was not sure what they were trying to do with luffy's Being Captain Means Making Tough Decisions pseudo-arc in general. setup for water seven?? my thoughts on this are mostly just Well, THAT happened

syrup village

villagers got shafted again... again felt like something was lost because they had to cut usopp's relationship to the villagers, which isn't just that he annoys them with his lies but that they love him as a part of their village and miss him when he leaves :( in that vein. TAMANEGI AND THE OTHER KIDS... ok they probably wouldn't be as cute in live action anyway. But what about the themes of legacy and leaving and lying and mythologizing and *gestures uselessly*
usopp leaving... they changed it so that usopp wasn't going to leave at all without being pushed by kaya and on one hand i can see that characterization of usopp, that he wouldn't want to do the thing his father did, that he's too scared. On the other hand... usopp leaves!!! that is a thing he does (more than once lol)
By the way that flashback scene where usopp is in the middle of talking to his mom and she literally dies right there. WE LAUGHED SO HARD?? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT
I get it jango was annoying as hell, goofy as hell, and contributed nothing to the story. That said, this reddit comment is me.

marine shit

Lol the way my smile dropped so fast from my face whenever a scene with the marines came on. i'm sorry but why did koby kinda overstay his welcome for me... i was all Aww omg i love koby in ep 1 and then when he stuck around forever i was just like. bro? but overall i get why they had to have so much of the marines, it provided a clear counterpoint to luffy's adventures + that larger sense of marines vs pirates, and coalesced by the end into the proper confrontation. Like it served its purpose narratively. I didn't enjoy it tho :D
also i didn't realize people were that serious about garp. Scrolling through the reddit reactions everyone was like "OMG... GARP REVEAL SO SOON? GARP'S CHARACTER IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT?" Like you guys seriously cared about garp...? damn
btw the way smoker was teased at the end like thanos. Sooooo freaking funny like he's being built up as this intense enemy when he's just smoker... i love it ngl

i had more thoughts on of all things THE WEATHER but i get how insane that would make me sound, and also nobody on this earth cares about it aside from me and my sister. So. that's all!

um why is this post so long. As much as this post makes me sound like i hated the live action i had fun 😃 enjoyed watching it, enjoyed discussing it, and enjoyed writing this post. and i'm very excited for s2 if there will ever be a s2! honestly it's really fun whenever an adaptation of something i love comes out because then i get to really understand exactly why i love the original thing so much... LOL.

[op] one piece live action

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