I never really got into One Piece. Pirates being good guys just doesn’t work with me, even if the Straw Hats don’t really act like pirates. Piracy is a terrible thing and still a part of the world we live in. Don’t bother telling me how good it is…considering how long the manga and anime have been producing new stories that’s a given. It’s just not for me. I know just enough to see that their Monkey D. Luffy seems a bit old (or maybe it’s the voice acting from what I have seen), the tone is slightly off, and the third thing we’ll get to later.

Could this be good? The creator, who has worked on the whole series, is involved and hopefully for fans will avoid the mistakes of Death Note and Cowboy BeBop…although both of those were Netflix live-action remakes as well…or rather re-imaginings. My question as always is “why do we need a live-action version”? The answer is the Hollywood mindset I’m going to start referring to as the “anti-mation crowd” (final name to be determined), that group of directors and actors that seem to outright hate cartoons, comics, and video games for not starring them. At this point I’m surprised they haven’t tried to bring back Full Motion Video despite that failing hard as a video game style, or trying to push photocomics despite it never looking quite right, but that’s an argument for another time.

Also of interest is Disney’s continued live-action de-makes. The Little Mermaid is doing poorly for various reasons, and now Disney has announced their live-action Moana is being delayed but still going through while in talks with a director for a live-action Bambi. This is actually worse than what Netflix is doing because Disney is doing it to themselves. It’s just the latest series of mistakes when it comes to animation’s haters in Hollywood.

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