Everything You Need to Know Before ‘One Piece’ (2023) Set Sails

Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist. Gather round crew. We have a very important adventure into uncharted territories that we need to discuss. At the end of the month, Netflix will be unleashing a live-action One Piece adaptation into the world which objectively is a wild sentence to be typing even by the wild standards of the current timeline. But it is in fact happening, so at the very least I can do is offer a guide in preparation.

In the grand time scale of One Piece’s literally historic run, I am a relative newcomer to the fandom. I watched the original 4Kids dub when it aired on Fox and then let the memory fade until around 2020, whereupon at a friend’s insistence I started watching the series proper. And over the course of three or so years, I have become, as the kids say, “current” in the content and have become ingrained in the fandom of one of the most meticulously planned and executed manga I think might have ever existed. Eiichiro Oda has managed to capture and captivate the minds of the steadily growing masses, and Oda’s direct involvement with the show is perhaps the biggest sign that this series will not follow the example of several other live-action anime adaptations that we won’t be reliving. But as such, we’re gonna do this two times. Once for those who haven’t set sail before, and one for those who have been f…