Enthusiastic Monkey D. Luffy has a dream: to become the King of the Pirates. Accompanied by a peculiar crew, he will sail the seas in search of a legendary treasure, One Piece. With his inseparable straw hat, his rubber body and his companions, he will face various dangers, from abominable monsters to other pirates with similar ambitions or marines trying to enforce the law. The One Piece fantasy and adventure universe dates back to 1997, when the first issue of the Japanese Eiichiro Oda’s work was published. Today, this adventure with pirates with superpowers 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 other proofs of its enormous popularity. Now, the One Piece universe has broken a new barrier with the premiere on Netflix of its live action series adaptation.
Getting here has not been an easy task. As Eiichiro Oda himself explained, this adaptation, created in collaboration with Shueisha and produced by Tomorrow Studios and Netflix, began to be conceived seven years ago. The eight episodes of its first season were shot over six months in South Africa, and after filming was finished, Oda asked to reshoot numerous scenes because he did not feel they lived up to expectations. Not everything was worth to represent the universe to which the writer has dedicated so many years. Of course, the author, also an executive producer of the series, warns the followers of his stories that the real action forced them to adapt and adjust many elements. What does not change, at his express request, are the background stories of the members of the Straw Hats -those plots about their origins have a lot of presence in this first season- nor the powers and abilities that the demonic fruit grants to whoever uses it. eat, ranging from having a body as elastic as rubber to being able to cut it into dozens of parts and recompose it at will.
Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, aboard the ‘Going Merry’ boat from ‘One Piece’.COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Netflix’s One Piece is not only aimed at fans of manga and anime. He also wants to conquer those who did not know of his existence. The actors who give life to the crew of the Going Merry ship spoke about it, an eclectic quintet made up of the Mexican Iñaki Godoy (Luffy), the Japanese Mackenyu (Zoro), the Jamaican Jacob Romero (Usopp), the American Emily Rudd (Nami ) and the Spanish-British Taz Skylar (Sanji). The interview took place in mid-June in São Paulo, weeks before the actors’ strike left series and films without promotion by their protagonists.
“It’s a comforting, feel-good show,” said Emily Rudd. “It’s impossible to watch it and not feel like you can do whatever comes into your head. It is a series about found family, where we all encourage each other to follow our dreams and be the best we can be”, continues the actress. “There aren’t many things on TV that give you that aspirational boost. That is what I hope we bring to people”, adds Taz Skylar, an actor born in Tenerife. “But nothing we do can come close to how perfect the One Piece manga and anime already are. We just bring a new flavor, a new color and hopefully bring One Piece to people who had never heard of One Piece before,” adds Jacob Romero.
Nothing we do can come close to how perfect the ‘One Piece’ manga and anime already are. We just bring a new flavor
Jacob Romero
For Iñaki Godoy, the optimistic and brave Monkey D. Luffy, the biggest challenge when facing his character was finding the balance between Luffy’s energy and the realism that the series demanded. “In Mexican culture we like to celebrate and take care of our family. That has influenced my life growing up and also my role,” reflects the 20-year-old actor. For Jacob Romero, the fact of facing characters so established in the imagination of millions of people was a great challenge. “They have a lot of 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 to them what we ourselves are”.
Iñaki Godoy, in an image from the first season of ‘One Piece’.CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
Taz Skylar highlights the physical work. “Getting my body to act the way I needed to physically perform everything my character had to do was a physically painful process. And we had to maintain this painful process for almost a year for 10 or 12 hours a day, ”says the actor, becoming serious amid the joking atmosphere that he dominated in the interview. The training was also basic in the case of Mackenyu. His character, Zoro, is an expert swordsman capable of wielding up to three swords at the same time. “I was used to handling up to two swords,” admits the actor, who already had training in martial arts. “But the third… 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 choreograph his moves in the fight sequences.
Mackenyu plays the swordsman Zoro in ‘One Piece’.CASEY CRAFFORD/NETFLIX
In addition to the indispensable visual and digital effects, it was the desire of the heads of the series, Matt Owens and Steven Maeda, that the world of One Piece was as tangible and real as possible, for which they set out to reproduce locations and spaces that appear in the comics. In the case of the ships, they reused many of the ships that were built for the pirate series that ended in 2017, Black Sails (a good part of the team that worked on that Starz production is now participating in One Piece). But two ships were built from scratch: the Going Merry, the Straw Hats’ first ship, and the Baratie, the ship with a fish-head figurehead and hull inspired by a Spanish galleon. The actors highlight precisely these two locations and the detail and thoroughness of their recreation. “We had incredible locations that helped create a deeply magical world that is very true to the original but, at the same time, very fresh and real,” says Emily Rudd. “There were even things that the camera was never going to 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 celebrate and take care of our family. That has influenced my life growing up and also my role on the show.
Inaki Godoy
The day this interview took place, the actors already had their first big mass bath before the fans with their appearance at Tudum, the event organized by Netflix in São Paulo in June and where the name of the series and the characters They were chanted by thousands of people. Are you prepared for the good and the bad that the fan phenomenon entails? “Actually, I don’t know if we have to think about that. 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: “In addition, we know that 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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2023-09-04 03:17:18
#Piece #fantasy #true #Netflix
