One of the biggest problems Netflix’s One Piece has with Luffy just got even worse. Live-action anime adaptations have a long and storied history of being plagued with problems, whether they be with production or just overall quality. Many people have feared that One Piece would end up in a similar situation, and a recent trailer from Marvel casts some doubt on how well Netflix will do with a vital part of Luffy’s character.
Ever since its announcement, people have questioned how the live-action adaptation of One Piece is how the show will handle a lot of the whacky, inhuman aspects of the setting. Features such as fish-men, giants, giant-sized people, and characters with bizarre appearances could all be difficult to translate into live-action. Among all of that, the most amount of discussion has centered around Monkey D. Luffy who, thanks to the Gum-Gum Fruit, has a body made of rubber and can stretch and inflate himself at will. Superpowers that let people stretch their limbs have a long history of looking terrible in live-action, so audiences have wondered what Netflix will do to try and make Luffy’s powers buck the trend.
Unfortunately, new evidence to suggest a lack in quality for Luffy’s powers in live-action has arisen, and it comes from, of all places, the first trailer for the upcoming Ms. Marvel series. In the comics, the titular character, also known as Kamala Khan, is an Inhuman with the power to stretch her limbs and alter her size, but based on the Ms. Marvel trailer, it appears that the MCU is changing her powers to be an energy-based ability. It’s unknown why her powers were changed, but one possibility is that with a budget comparatively smaller than a Marvel movie’s, the show wasn’t able to find a way to make her stretching powers look good in live-action. If that’s true, then it could be bad news for Netflix’s One Piece; if a Marvel show isn't able to make stretching look good, then a Netflix show, which is likely to have a smaller budget, might not be able to do the same.
Netflix’s One Piece not being able to make Luffy’s Gum-Gum Fruit powers look good would do a lot of damage to the show’s credibility. The show already has to deal with the stigma of previous anime adaptations not being very good, which was recently reinforced by how the live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, also by Netflix, was met with a largely negative reception and was canceled only a few weeks after its release. If, in addition to that, the most iconic aspect of the main character doesn’t look good, then there could end up being little reason for viewers to get invested in the show.
There’s a lot working against Netflix’s One Piece, whether it’s other shows paining a bad picture of what it’s capable of or just the general history of live-action anime adaptations. However, this doesn’t mean the show doesn’t have anything going for it. Eiichiro Oda, the original author of the series, is attached as an executive producer, so it’s likely that at least the story and plotting will be handled better than other live-action anime adaptations. Similarly, everyone who’s been cast so far looks like they’ll be a good fit for their parts. If the people working on the show can find a way to make the visual aspects work, then that, combined with the other factors, could help set it apart from other live-action anime adaptations in the best way possible.