Though the involvement of franchise creator Eiichiro Oda in developing the series has been a widely-touted fact ever since it was first announced, showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda recently provided insight into just how closely the mangaka watched over the production of Netflix’s live-action One Piece.
Owens and Maeda, the former best known for writing Marvel’s Luke Cage, The Defenders, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the latter for producing such television series as Salvation and CSI: Miami, spoke to the topic of Oda’s involvement in Netflix’s press notes for One Piece (which were prematurely leaked and subsequently pulled by the streaming giant ahead of their official street date).
Beginning with his thoughts on “meeting and collaborating” with the esteemed mangaka, Owens told Netflix, “I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous for anything in my entire life.”
“Here was this person who has created this story I hold so much love and reverence for, and I’m asking him to trust me with his baby,” he added. “I’m not going to lie, he was tough in the beginning – this wasn’t the first attempt at a live-action One Piece, and we weren’t the first people to try to express it in a new way. But I think once he realised we were coming from the right place – trying to protect this series and create a new avenue for even more people to fall in love with it – he started to trust us.”
From there, both showrunners were pressed on whether there were “any aspects of the story that Oda didn’t want you to change?”.
Taking the reigns, Owens began by recalling the “two biggest things that Oda wanted to make sure the One Piece Live Action kept it as close as possible to the manga”.
The first, he said, was “The Straw Hats’ backstories, because they’re so pivotal to who they are as people, what their dreams and motivations are, and how Luffy digs into that as he meets them and helps them rediscover those dreams.”
Meanwhile, Oda’s second sticking point were the character’s “power sets”, as “Specific Devil Fruit powers and other skill sets were all carefully crafted by Oda and a lot of imagination went into what different people can do and what the rules are with that, so that was something we were asked not to mess with.”
Chiming in, Maeda asserted, “For us, the one thing we tried to do instead was really instill the sense of optimism, which is pervasive throughout the entire manga, and really try to find that fine line that would make these characters feel real and grounded and organic, but at the same time, let them be themselves and be the characters as they were drawn.”
“The big thing was to make sure that the Straw Hats had the right introductions, the right screen time, the right explanations for who they were. that being said, anything new to the series had to be discussed very intensively with Oda and his team – like certain storylines that needed to be pulled up – but canonically nothing has changed
“It’s not an exaggeration how involved he and his team were in this show,” added Owens. “They saw outlines, scripts , dailies, cuts. Sometimes he would see something and go, ‘I imagined it like this!’ which was always incredible to hear…but if he saw something that he had a question about, he would bring it to us. He would explain what the original intent was and the process became an ever-evolving conversation.”
Taking note of Oda’s clear love for and protective nature towards his seminal work, Netflix then asked the pair why they wanted “to undertake the challenge of adapting this story for live action?”, to which Owens asserted, “I think anime and manga are still sometimes seen as things for kids or nerds. That’s a hurdle that’s difficult to get over, and what this series can hopefully do is show people that anime and manga stories are for everyone.”
“One Piece is the most phenomenal story ever told,” he said. “If people are more willing to give it a chance in live action – it’s worth it. I would love for people to find this show and then go read the manga to see what happens next. That’s the hope. Spreading the gospel of One Piece is worth it.”
“For me, there’s nothing like an impossible challenge to make you go, “Okay, I think that can be done” and then figure out a way to do it,” opined Maeda. “But the gigantic challenge of it all was made bigger because of this passionate fan base. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m sure we will be heavily scrutinized every step of the way, but I welcome it. We’re really proud of what we’ve made.
Netflix’s live-action One Piece sets out for the Grand Line on August 31st.