Adapting a manga to live-action presents many challenges, but in the case of Netflix’s new One Piece series “a really tricky balancing act” was determining how to weave in the backstories of its five protagonists while also advancing the main plotline over eight one-hour episodes. The showrunners found their solution in One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda’s interactions with his fans.
One Piece’s main storyline follows Monkey D. Luffy’s quest to become King of the Pirates as he searches for a fabled treasure called the One Piece. In order to accomplish this, Luffy (played by Iñaki Godoy) assembles a crew who come to be known as the Straw Hats: Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), Nami (Emily Rudd), Usopp (Jacob Romero), and Sanji (Taz Skylar).
In IGN’s exclusive featurette on the making of Netflix’s One Piece – which can be viewed via the player above or the embed below – co-showrunner Steven Maeda elaborated on how the creative team cracked adding backstories for the Straw Hats.
“It's a really tricky balancing act, trying to figure out what you're going to put in and what you're going to leave out. The hardest part was finding the right story arcs and emotional arcs for characters that would make for a wonderful season of television,” Maeda said.
“A big challenge was figuring out how to include backstory. These backstories are all in the manga and we made a decision early on to parcel it out and tie it into present-day story.”
The solution came, indirectly, from Eiichiro Oda himself. “We went by Oda-san's SBS chapter notes where he answers fan questions at the end of chapters in the manga,” Maeda revealed.
“It's full of character backstories and birth dates and heights. … Their favorite foods and things like that. So we scoured those and thought that brought a lot of wonderful emotional grounding with the characters.”
Watch the video featurette above for more on how the creative team adapted the look, costumes, and lore of One Piece for live-action.
For more coverage on the Netflix series, read our One Piece review and discover what One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda’s specific demands were for the show.
