Is it bad that a part of me wants to see Kuina (who beat Zoro at fighting over 2000 times, training to be the greatest swordswoman, acutely aware of what people say about her gender and how it impedes her dream) meet Sanji (refuses to fight a woman just because they're a woman), just to see what type of trainwreck ensues. I feel like it would either be awful or absolutely hilarious.

One Piece Live Action

I started One Piece LA thinking that I'll just take 2-3 days to watch it.

I binged the entire series in one day... XD

More semi-organized but mostly unorganized thoughts below~

Prior to watching, I had like medium/medium-high expectations for the LA because the trailers looked quite promising and was reading in various places that Oda praised it too. I still had that little part of me thinking that if it flops, then it's okay because surely it can't be worse than uhh... FMA live action (never saw Netflix Death Note which I heard was really bad so never checked it out)??

First episode exceeded my expectations!! I think by episode 4 I was still convinced I wouldn't finish the entire season and still have some to watch the next day, but before I knew it, I was on the second to last episode already LOL. Epic fail on my end for underestimating both the series and my ability to binge.

Cast: I think the cast is amazing!! Going into the series, I wasn't 100% sure about characters like Nami or Sanji, but wow, they were so great. I loved how the actors took in like the "essence" of the characters and kinda made it into their own instead of going for carbon-copy same-exact-thing as their anime counterparts. I think that would have led to more exaggerated/awkward acting which might have been not so good. Like imagine if Sanji was the same exact version as LA, I think I would've been kinda uncomfortable to watch cuz if the actor failed to pull it off, he might've turned Sanji into kinda sleezy/creepy skirt-chaser (works in anime cuz it's funny but in LA, maybe not so much). I found the amount of "comedic" interactions just perfect for the series. The chemistry between the cast was really great too, especially Luffy-Zoro-Nami, the very first members of Straw Hat crew. There were some minor-ish characters that grew on me really quick too even though initially I was kinda meh about them (i.e. Koby and Helmeppo). Oh, another example of a character that was kinda changed/adapted for the series instead of being mainly comedy relief would be Buggy. I really love how Buggy's portrayed in the LA, I would prob say he's my fave villain in S1 lol.

Story: Story-wise, I found the pacing to be just right, esp for S1 with the initial crew and each of their backstories. The amount of plot they covered felt just right imo, esp with first ep of Luffy wanting to set out while he's on his little raft, meeting Koby and sharing about how he wants to his own wanted poster etc, and then we wrap it up with the final episode of the season where Koby sees Luffy off with his Wanted Poster, and Luffy setting out with his crew on his own boat.

Music: I love the music! I loved that one motif that keeps replaying throughout the episodes. I thought it was the same theme, but I listened to the OST after and noticed a bunch of different tracks with that motif playing. It's quite catchy. I loved the moments where they included "We Are"--I legit teared up hearing it when they were setting off with Merry and the music was playing. I never thought I'd get this emotional over a live action adaptation, but here we are.

CG: The CG was also better than expected. Not over the top. I think I was most concerned about Luffy's abilities, but they were done well. I think things to worry about in the future is how they handle other Devil Fruit users' abilities.

Anyways, I would give it like a... 9-9.5/10. There were some scenes that kinda made me go ???? but those were minor things I guess. One was whenever Garp & Koby played Go and the way they held the Go stones made me kinda cringe. Another moment was the scene of young Zoro and his sensei at Kuina's funeral and they bowed to each other. Young Zoro's bow was appropriate, but the sensei's bow in return was kinda ??? when you bow, you usually don't tilt your head up look up at the other person cuz it's kinda rude, so seeing the sensei do that, it's like giving off the wrong vibe. Just itty bitty things that threw me off.

S1 finished strong, but time will tell how S2 will go. Especially for characters like Brook or Chopper... I imagine them to be CG'd in so that might affect character interactions, and if they're not CG'd in, well I hope it won't be too distracting...