Once thought impossible, Netflix and Tomorrow Studios actually pulled off a live-action adaptation of One Piece. Not only were fans pleasantly surprised by the first season, the follow-up was received even better and the crew is currently shooting the third season.
Following the second season premiere, we chatted to executive producer and Tomorrow Studios president Becky Clements, co-showrunner Joe Tracz, and writer Ian Stokes, who’s been promoted to co-showrunner for Season 3. We learned what it was like to work with Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, why they included some surprise characters in the show, and how long they see the show going. But first, I was curious to see how they consumed One Piece: manga or anime?
It’s not an anime adaption, it’s a manga adaptation
Becky Clements: Manga. Always manga, never anime for a number of reasons. It’s already hard to go manga to live action, and to add that interim piece where it’s manga to anime to live action felt like we would be losing some of the beauty and purity of the manga. Because anime is a moving image, it may have more of an effect on our live action shows.
And even when we were in casting, we would ask representatives and actors to only read the manga if they didn’t know it. But that was impossible to do. You could tell when they were anime-first because they were often just performing a version of the anime character. So it was always manga.
Ian Stokes: You’re going to kill me for this. I’ve never actually watched the anime.
IGN: Me neither. I’m a manga only guy. I don’t have that kind of time.
Ian Stokes: But we don’t have the rights to the anime. We have the rights to the manga. I didn’t want to watch anything that would put something in my head about how this show could be performed or done.
Joe Tracz: I see a lot of people talk about our show as an anime adaptation. In fact, we’re adapting the manga. And so, you know, I love watching the anime, but on one hand, you got to put that aside and say, if you’re just looking at the anime, you’re doing an adaptation of an adaptation, whereas the manga is the original source material, that’s the Bible. So sometimes the anime does things differently. Obviously, the anime has stories that are not canonically in the manga so sometimes we find some ways to nod to [them], but by and large, we’re adapting the manga. We’re treating it as if this is something that’s being adapted right on page to the screen for the first time.
Eiichiro Oda’s involvement is key to the show’s success
So even though we all call it a live-action anime adaptation, the team is actually seeing it as an adaptation of the ORIGINAL source material – the manga. Which is why they’re also working so closely with the author and mangaka of One Piece, Eiichiro Oda.
Becky Clements: So Oda has been very involved. He reads outlines, reads scripts, he watches cuts, he looks at casting. We send him concept art. He is as involved as producers on all of our live action shows.
Ian Stokes: Again, everything we do is always approved by Oda-san himself. Nothing is a surprise. And so sometimes he will say, “no, put that back in” and we’ll say, “but we don’t have any money.” And he says, “find the money.” And then we find the money [laughs].
And we might push back on something if we need to, but the egg is always on my face because he’s always right. Every time we look at it first I’ll be like, “Aw man.” And then I read it again and I’m like, “no, he’s right. That’s better.” I’ve been getting notes on scripts and outlines since I started writing television. But the care and thought that he puts into every note he gives us on our written material is so amazing and so rewarding.
Joe Tracz: All our scripts go to Oda for notes. I think last year Oda discovered how to type in Final Draft because sometimes there will just be a typed page, “Wait we didn’t write that page. Oh, Oda did.”
He’s very involved. And obviously that’s an incredibly welcome role for him to play because this is his world. He created these characters that people around the world have cared about for decades. So we would be foolish not to treasure that wisdom, not to listen to his feedback. So while he has veto power, it’s also a case of like, well, why would we ever want to do something that wasn’t what he intended?
IGN: Do you have any specific examples of the kind of feedback he gave?
Joe Tracz: Probably the last thing that was done for Season 2 was finessing the cloud over the drum that looks like a sakura blossom tree. We had these versions of it that were very realistic that were like, “well, if you were shooting spotlights into a cloud, and there’s a mountain it would look like that” and he said, “look, this doesn’t have to be realism. This can be poetry.” And it felt like, oh, of course, like what you want is the emotion for the moment. So, even though we’re live action and we’re saying we’re grounding things, we’re adding texture, we’re making things feel real, at the end of the day, the story moves because it’s poetry. There’s something beautiful and moving and we should be leaning into those cinematic qualities and not letting realism be the thing that keeps you from achieving wonder.
How long can this last?
One Piece is now over 1100 chapters – and it’s still not finished. If you wanted to watch the anime, it would take you about 450 HOURS to catch up. The Netflix series is taking things at a quicker pace, sure. But that still begs the question – how long can they keep this up?
IGN: The big elephant in the room for fans is how long do you plan to keep the show going? I think as of now, some estimates put the story that you’re at maybe 10% through right now. So are you prepared for a 20 season thing?
Becky Clements: No, we are not prepared for 20 because if I’m Zooming with you in 20 years, something’s wrong. [laughs] We have multiple years beyond this. We have plans, and it depends on who you talk to. I just love it so much. So I’m going to want to do 10, 12, 15, 20. I think there are certain parts of it that, just from a live action construction, there are certain moments where it makes sense to get to them. Others, it doesn’t make quite so much sense. But you want to see that story. So we have many years ahead.
IGN: In the leadup to the first season, I saw an interview from you that said maybe 16 seasons was the goal. Is that still the case?
Becky Clements: Well, that is again, me being the most aggressive and most optimistic. I think we almost feel like we’ve already broken through season eight, and then we can figure it out from there.
IGN: Apparently Oda has kind of an arc “goal” that he wants to get to with the live action. Do you know what it is?
Becky Clements: I do.
IGN: Is it the same goal for you? Are you aligned? Are you trying to go further?
Becky Clements: I think he is more realistic than me. He and I are aligned in that I think we have 8 to 10. The 16 is me just wanting to do it all.
Joe Tracz: I’ve seen people say it’s where he wants it to get to. It’s more like, here’s a story he wants to make sure we tell in live action. I think we all hope, continuing beyond that, but we’re building these characters, we’re building this world. I think none of us want to say goodbye before we’ve had a chance to continue paying off the things we’ve set up.
When to make alterations to the source material
But let’s not look TOO far ahead. Some of the most talked about aspects of the season were the changes made to the story and the most notable of these changes was including characters like Bartolomeo, Brook and Sabo much earlier into the story than the source material. Here’s Joe explaining their approach to introducing future characters into the show.
Joe Tracz: I think one thing we’ve done in the live action is sometimes things get revealed sooner. In an anime or in a drawing, it’s easy to sort of hide something. Oda draws his silhouettes of characters. It’s really hard to film a silhouette because even if you film a silhouette, you’re casting an actor, you’re putting a costume on them. You’re still making choices. So sometimes it’s about that, and sometimes it is about just having the wealth of knowledge of saying, we know where the story goes in a way that maybe when Oda first wrote the story, he didn’t know. So we can actually start planting seeds sooner, or give this dimension to a character who, at this point in the manga, hadn’t yet accrued that dimension.
Ian Stokes: I was at the LA premiere, and you would have thought a bomb dropped when Bartolomeo appeared on screen for the first time. I had no idea the fans were going to respond so positively.
The story had been broken without Bartolomeo, and I remember thinking, the town feels empty. Even with the addition of Smoker to Shinji in that episode, which are more canon.
I’m missing in my last half someone for Luffy to talk to. My memory is that Randy Troy, our in-house One Piece encyclopedia, had pitched bringing Barto up in a cameo, and instantly I recognized the opportunity we had to tell real Barto’s story.
When we go to a new place, it’s the new characters we meet. It’s the new world. It’s that exploration of finding friends. And overall, the theme of “Luffy leaves a place and he’s changed it.” We didn’t have that element in [episode] one until we introduced Bartolomeo.
IGN: Sabo and Brook, as far as the actors go, are they the same actors that you intend to bring back?
Becky Clements: Yeah, for yes. Always. Yes. There’s a lot of “ifs” there, but that would be the hope.
IGN: What stood out to you about Marshall’s audition for Brook?
Joe Tracz: We write fake scenes. I think the scene that we wrote, the Brook/Yorki audition scene was two down and out musicians counting what they earned from a gig at the end of a day. It was nothing about Brook at all. And the scene ended with the character singing to another character to cheer them up. And so we wanted someone who could really act the hell out of his character scene, who could sing beautifully. And also because Brook is pretty tall. Marshall has a lot of photos standing next to other people. As we were in the U.S. and he was here in Cape Town, you could just see just how tall he is. He’s very tall.
IGN: So no “yo-ho-ho’s” in the audition?
Joe Tracz: No yo-ho-ho’s. But then obviously once he knew he was playing [Brook] You know he’s like, well, are we going to show Brook or not? It felt weirder to not show him and to not have it be a part of that flashback because of how important he is and his music is to Laboon.
It felt like if you were telling Laboon’s story and just seeing the Rumbar Pirates in silhouette or hiding them, it would feel like you weren’t getting that full picture, that story. And obviously in Season 1, you hear Bink’s Brew playing in a scene between Luffy and Shanks. So we already have established in Season 1 that this is a song that Luffy would have heard in his time with Shanks. Those seeds were planted. The payoff was here. When he sings a song that means something to him and to Laboon, both thinking about a pirate who left them behind. For Laboon, it’s the Rumbar Pirates, it’s Brooke and Calico Yorki. And for Luffy, it’s Shanks. And that feeling of “here’s this person who I wanted to join, and he said, stay here.”
IGN: Who is the actress playing Sabo? Is it just a stand in right now?
Becky Clements: It is just a stand in right now. Yeah, it was the surprise of “Oh my God, Sabo!” at that last step into the door.
Manga and anime fans might have forgotten, but Ms. All-Sunday’s introduction was also much later in the original source material. Here’s Ian talking about why they made her fight scene the opening to the whole season.
Ian Stokes: You’ve got to start with a bang or we’re going to lose people. We were blessed that they brought us back almost immediately after we wrapped season one to start writing season two, which is great, except we had no idea what the reaction to Season 1 is. We don’t know what people like, what people don’t like. And so I guess my gamble was, I’m willing to bet people are going to like the action on this show. So we better start with a big action scene. Also, if we’re going to say this this season is upping the danger, upping the stakes: let’s see our villains in action. There’s a scene like this later in Alabasta that was the inspiration for Ms. All-Sunday using her powers this way. But also both [co-showrunner] Matt Owens and I had come from Marvel, Netflix shows where the pinnacle was a good hallway fight. And we were like, “I never seen one of those where hands are bursting out all over the place breaking necks!” But I think it really sets up the story well. It brings the intrigue. It got a huge reaction at the premiere. People were excited about it and Lera [Abova] is fantastic. I can’t wait for you guys to see even more of her.
The Straw Hats
With the crew’s introductions out of the way, the writers were able to not only develop deeper character arcs, but to write for their actors’ voices as well. That’s not to say a little adlibbing wouldn’t slip in from time to time. Fans immediately suspected this line was unscripted based on Taz Skylar’s reaction.
Joe Tracz: Oh yeah, that was definitely a genuine improv, by the way. That was all Jacob. I wish we could have written a line that good, but we could have a whole other show of just Jacob riffing as Usopp.
Ian Stokes: I’ll say, for any of these guys, Kiki, Jacob, all of them will come and be like, “can I say this?” And we’ll just be like, “yeah, go for it.” That’s the rule of a comedy room. If it makes you laugh on the day, we know it’ll make you laugh on TV.
A big thing that’s different about Season 2 versus Season 1 is in Season 1, we had no idea who these actors were. We had all eight scripts written. Then we go out and cast. Writing the show now is so much more fulfilling and fun. Writing a line like, “Oh Kiki will kill this. Oh, Jacob’s going to love that. Oh, this is going to be great for Emily, Taz, Mackenyu, all of them.” It’s so much fun to write in their voices. And, yeah, there’s probably a little bit of the actors creeping into the characters as well, but I think it goes two ways also.
Fans of the source material were also delighted to see some Sanji lore show up early into the story. His history with his mother wasn’t revealed in the manga until hundreds of chapters later. Here’s Joe on how that came to be.
Joe Tracz: We talked about the season is every island is focused on a particular Straw Hat. So for Luffy, it’s Loguetown because here’s where Gold Rogers’ legend was born. And he’s being confronted with Buggy saying, “what does it mean to be king of the pirates?” For Nami, it’s Twin Capes and Laboon because it’s about navigation and how that doesn’t work the same way in the Grand Line. For Zoro it’s Whiskey Peak, where his defeat from Mihawk is fueling his desire to prove himself. For Usopp, it’s Little Garden because this is his chance to see what a brave warrior of the sea is really like in the giants. So that left us with Sanji for Drum. And thinking of how do we really step up Sanji?
Him almost losing Nami in a way that he lost his mother would just be beneath his desire to climb a freaking mountain to get her help. We had an opportunity for him to actually share that with her. He cares for her in a way that isn’t just about always trying to flirt with her. He actually cares about her in a deep way because she’s part of his crew, his nakama, his family in the same way that his mother was.
In early versions we were going to have flashbacks where we obviously had a young Sanji who we loved in Season 1. Should this be a flashback sequence? Should we see Sanji bringing the food to his mom? And at a certain point – Taz is an incredible actor. If we just gave him a monologue and put the camera on him and let him tell the story, he can do that in a more direct, honest, beautiful way than all the flashbacks in the world could.
Much to the delight of fans, Zoro’s fight against 100 Baroque Works agents was adapted to even further detail than the manga – he actually defeats 100 enemies on-screen. Go ahead and count them! But were there really 100 stunties?
Joe Tracz: We always knew from script stage on that it was going to be 100, and that was one of the first things we talked to our stunt team about when they came on board the new season, “look, Zoro is going to fight a hundred guys, so we need a hundred guys.” But we didn’t have 100 stunties.
Some of those stunties would get killed by Zoro, go put on a different costume, a different wig, and go get killed again. So I think there’s at least one stuntie who probably gets killed by Zoro three different times playing three different Baroque Works agents.
In the leadup to Season 2, Luffy actor Inaki Godoy revealed it was his idea to have Luffy put chopsticks in his nose. And while it may have been a bit dangerous, his pitches didn’t stop there.
Joe Tracz: He said, “I did it myself over the weekend, and it’s totally safe.” We were like, “do not stick anything up your nose. We need you to be our Luffy.” So of course, the chopsticks he puts up his nose, we cut them in half so he does not have entire chopsticks up his nose. We do not want to risk our actors having a brain injury. We appreciate his commitment, but we’re going to do this safely.
Ian Stokes: He texts me all the time while we’re on set. One of his texts, you’ll hear a chime. Look at it, I might be on a meeting. And then by the time I finally get to it, 40 more texts have come in. Him making the pitch, him sending me the picture of the manga, 800 GIFs and memes. He is such an awesome steward for this character. He makes PowerPoints, he comes in with all sorts of things. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it next season.
Joe Tracz: He knows the manga, he takes it so seriously and he’ll come up to me, Ian, and open his laptop and give us a PowerPoint. We all pull panels. When new directors come on, we give them a visual deck with panels. Kiki would bring us panels as well and say, “I think this is really important- The way Oda frames it, look how small Luffy is. Look how big this character is. That spatial relationship is saying something.” So, even if it’s not about recreating that panel. Let’s think about why Oda drew it this way. What was the intent in conveying this piece of visual information?
Obviously we’re adapting the Season 3 material right now, those pages are printed out all over the office. So anytime anyone wants to check a reference, they could pull up on the computer or they could literally walk in the hallway and point to it on the wall. We just want to make sure that that visual material is around us at all times because it is a thing we keep going back to. Anytime we have a question, we’re stuck, we’re trying to figure a moment out. You go back to the manga and you say, “oh, right, it’s right there.”
IGN: He also does this little moment when he’s singing to Laboon. He does a little dance… Is that a Nika reference?
Joe Tracz: I never want Easter eggs to feel like they’re alienating an audience who doesn’t know the manga. You want to feel like this is a show where everyone’s welcome to the party, no matter whether they’re a manga reader, anime viewer, or someone who’s like, “hey, let’s check out this show. It’s called One Piece. What’s it about? I like pirates.” Everyone should be able to experience the show and get everything they need from it to feel fulfilled. But it is fun.
We can have something that feels like, “if you know, you know.”
Easter Eggs and references for manga and anime fans
Speaking of Easter eggs, we wanted to pick the showrunners’ brains on how some of these deep cuts came to be. Starting with a statue of Loki – well, before his face ever gets revealed, anyway.
Joe Tracz: It was very fun because while we were filming the Little Garden episodes is when the Elbaph arc was starting in the manga. But at the point when we did make the Loki sculpture, we actually hadn’t seen Loki’s face in the manga yet. So then we’re like, do we change the sculpture?
We’re like, you know what? It’s representational and Brogy wouldn’t know. So, it is an Easter egg. But we were like, “oh man, do we need to change the Easter egg?”
During Sanji’s fight with Mr. 13, the Den Den Mushi plays some familiar hold music for anime fans.
Joe Tracz: Obviously “We Are” was in Season 1 and we use “We Are” at a point in season two as well, but it did feel like, well, this section of the anime has its own theme song, where are we going to put that in? And then, we knew we were going to have this otter fight that was going to be a single camera locked off with the fight happening in the background while we were seeing the snail.
So we wanted hold music for that and was like, well let’s get “Believe” in there. And I was the most fun to talk to composers to- I was sending them clips of like, let’s just [do] terrible elevator music, like 80s synthy. And they would do it. And I was like, it’s still too good. Make it dumber! And so what we have is the dumbest possible rendition of a really awesome anime theme song.
Anime fans might also have recognized a tune at the very end of the season.
Joe Tracz: Obviously, Crocodile has iconic music in the anime. And so when you watch our final Crocodile face reveal at the end of the season, I think fans who know the anime music there will hear some familiar piece teasing the Banana-dile reveal at the end of season.
One of the bigger alterations made to the source material was the addition of a mutant, monster army straight from Wapol’s mouth. And although these monstrosities were never in the manga, they do have their roots in a manga moment. Here’s Ian talking about why he included the monster army in the season’s big finale.
Ian Stokes: It wasn’t as big as I wanted it to be for a finale. And the answer is always in the manga. And when he fuses Chess and K.M. into the one entity, I got really into that image. We needed two fights. We needed something for Zoro and Usopp outside and everyone else inside.
And the monster army was just a fun idea that popped up. The early sketches gave me nightmares. Seeing them in person gave me nightmares. They are hideous. All those guys were just guys in latex, guys in suits, and everyone on our team just wants to cut loose. And with Chopper being predominantly CG, they were just itching to get into something big like that.
And the monster army is one of my favorite designs of the series.
Another original character to the show was Miss Thursday, a Baroque Works agent only ever referenced to in the manga. But surprisingly, not only was she an original character designed by Oda, she has a connection to a future character as well. Here’s Joe talking about how she came to be.
Joe Tracz: So, again, we looked at the manga. In the manga, we see they’ve captured Mr. 11. It happened off screen or off panel. It felt like a chance to actually see Smoker and Tashigi in action. So we’re like, well, if we’re going to have Mr. 11, we should have his partner. We reached out to Oda. We said, “hey, we were thinking of having Ms. Thursday in this in this sequence with Mr. 11, can you if you have time, would you draw up how you see Ms. Thursday?” And I think in our wildest dreams, we never imagined that what he could draw is another baseball themed assassin who’s related to Mr. 4. One day I showed up at work and I heard, “Oda replied to our email!” And you’re like, there’s an attachment. And you open it. You’re like, oh my gosh, I’m seeing an original Oda character for the first time. Things leak, castings leak. I was very proud that the Ms. Thursday casting is one that did not leak because I was very excited for when the show came out. People were like, what the heck is going on?
IGN: I guess it’s reassuring to know too, that I guess we’ll see. Mr. 4 in Season 3?
Joe Tracz: Yeah, you’re gonna see Mr. 4 in Season 3, I guess that’s a scoop that you guys have first. And I don’t think it’s a [inaudible] headline. But you know, that character from the Alabasta arc appears in the Alabasta arc.
Amongst all of the many character additions to the show, there was one notable absence: Vivi’s sidekick duck, Karoo. Here’s Joe explaining why he was cut from the season and if we’ll see him in the future.
Joe Tracz: Here’s the thing I will say about Karoo. We wrote Karoo into Season 2. Karoo was originally in our first draft of Season 2. At some point in the room, I was like, “I will not make this show. If we had to cut Karoo” because I love Karoo. And then we did end up having to make the decision to Karoo, which is a little bit of a story reason. It does strain believability that Vivi would go undercover, bring her Alabasta duck along. It starts to feel like Baroque Works is not the cunning organization they’re made out to be. I remember when the trailer was coming out, people saying, what is that bakery cart we keep seeing? Well, the role of Karoo in Whiskey Peak is played by a bakery cart. And we made sure that Vivi would talk about Karoo, so that even though Karoo’s not a part of this leg of her journey, he’s there in spirit. It was very important when we had that scene with the dinosaur that we gave lip service so that people would know we love Karoo, too. Don’t worry, he’s in Alabasta.
IGN: So he’s in Season 3?
Joe Tracz: Karoo fans should get out their popcorn.
We’re filming Season 3 now, but it’s been so amazing to just see everyone here. The entire crew, everyone puts so much detail into everything. And that’s why there are so many Easter eggs. Sometimes they come from us in scripts. Sometimes it’s our production design team, our set-dec team, our costume designers coming to us and saying, hey, we know this is something from the manga, could we work this in here? Can we put this in here? And we’re so happy that everyone here loves the source material so much that they want to put those things in, and that we have fans that actually will catch that and appreciate that work. That’s really incredible. Not every show is so lucky to have people watch that closely and pay attention in that way.
Image credit: Netflix.
Josh Du is the Director of Social Media Video. You can find him on all of the algorithms that serve you quick-hit dopamine fixes. Otherwise, he’s probably playing Balatro on his phone again.
