Netflix has been adapting anime to live-action for a few years now. Their most notable attempts include Death Note and the most recent Cowboy Bebop. All of these have been poorly received by both fans of the original anime and mangas as well as new watchers. Some even claim that live-action anime adaptations are impossible as the medium of animation can do things that live-action cannot. But if Netflix's recent attempt with One Piece shows, it is possible to make a good adaptation.

The Netflix adaptation vividly brings to life the anime's world and zany characters into live-action and does it in a very entertaining way. The eight-episode first season adapts the anime and manga's "East Blue" arc. It does this well enough, However, certain characters and events from the manga are omitted from the adaptation. This is for the sake of time and money as they only have a limited time to get through the entire arc, as they don't have 100+ episodes to do it like the anime does. Despite these cuts, the plot is still faithful to the original manga's storyline. The sets are almost entirely practical and built well. Unlike most sets, the sets and ships used in the show were actually built and were a beautiful and stunning recreation of the locations and iconography of the original source material. Each actor shines as well as their respective characters and keeps to the original interpretation while adding in new personality traits to spice things up. For example, to make Arlong and the Fishmen pirates a much more imminent threat, for the live-action version, they are introduced until much earlier in the arc than the manga.